Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: THE United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo will send its first team to monitor a ceasefire between Congo’s government and the AFC/M23 rebel group in the coming days, Qatar’s foreign ministry said on February 2 after hosting talks.
Qatar said the team would be deployed to Uvira, a strategic city in eastern Congo that AFC/M23 fighters captured in December during a rapid offensive, and which Congolese forces and allied militias re‑entered last month, restoring government control after the rebels announced they would withdraw.
The announcement is a sign of progress in Doha-mediated direct talks between Congo and the AFC/M23 rebels, who last year seized more land than they had ever held before in eastern Congo.
The United States is hosting separate talks between Congo and Rwanda, which the United Nations and Western powers say backs AFC/M23, an allegation Kigali denies. The Qatari foreign ministry said that Congo and M23 had agreed on detailed terms of reference for the ceasefire monitoring mechanism created under an agreement reached in October, and reaffirmed their commitments under the broader peace deal framework signed in November. The latest push to activate ceasefire monitoring comes amid persistent fighting in the east. Over the weekend explosive‑laden drones targeted the airport serving the northeastern Congolese city of Kisangani, Congolese authorities said.
If confirmed to be an AFC/M23 operation, it would be the furthest west the group has struck as part of its offensive against the government in Kinshasa. In December fighting flared up in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between the M23 rebel group and government forces, a day after United States President Donald Trump hosted DRC and Rwanda leaders in Washington as they signed a peace deal aimed at ending decadeslong conflict in the country. Analysts say US diplomacy paused an escalation of fighting in eastern
