The chance of cross-border conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo is rising as United Nations forces take the offensive against a rebel group in the DRC with ties to Rwanda.

Impunzi

The UN’s first-ever attack unit began waging war last week, shelling M23 rebel positions and carrying out aerial strikes.

Snipers assigned to the UN’s 3,000-member intervention brigade have also gone into action, a South African military official told the Associated Press.

Sharpshooters drawn from the ranks of South Africa’s Special Forces have been “taking out” rebels stationed at machine gun posts, Pikkie Greeff, the national secretary of the South African National Defense Union, is quoted as saying in an August 29 AP dispatch.

“The possibilities of casualties are very high … and we see the possibility that soldiers could die in combat,” Greef remarked, according to the AP report.

A Tanzanian member of the UN strike force died last week in fighting near Goma in the eastern DRC. M23 is meanwhile said to have killed 13 civilians in shelling directed at Goma, while Rwanda charged on August 29 that a shell fired by Congolese troops killed a woman in Rubavu town and wounded her two-month old baby. A total of 34 bombs and rockets have been fired into Rwanda in the past month by DRC forces, officials in Kigali said on August 29.

At UN headquarters the same day, Rwandan deputy ambassador Olivier Nduhungirehe told reporters that “a line has been crossed.” Citing “intensified” shelling of Rwandan territory, allegedly by the DRC armed forces, he warned that “this provocation can no longer be tolerated.”

On its part, the UN said its military mission in the DRC has confirmed that the shelling of Rwandan territory between August 22 and 29 “originated from M23 positions.” UN forces in the DRC further reported that they have “not witnessed any Congolese Armed Forces firing into Rwanda territory during this period.”

DRC officials meanwhile accuse Rwanda of inventing charges of Congolese attacks on its territory as a pretext for possible intervention to protect M23 rebels and to loot the region’s mineral wealth.

The long-running war in the eastern DRC thus appears likely to escalate, with potentially dangerous consequences for the United Nations, Rwanda, the DRC government and, most of all, civilians in and around Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.

Stratfor, a private geopolitical intelligence firm based in the US, suggests that a stalemate may be the most likely outcome of the expanding multilateral conflict in Congo.

“The involvement of the UN brigade makes it highly unlikely that M23 will be able to mount another offensive to capture the provincial capital,” a Stratfor analysis states.

In addition, the presence of a UN combat force “makes Rwanda’s traditional support for Congolese rebels much more precarious,” it states.