Rwanda’s foreign minister warned on Saturday that Kigali would pull its counterinsurgency troops out of Mozambique unless the mission receives what he called “sustainable funding,” linking the potential withdrawal to how Rwanda’s forces have been treated amid mounting foreign pressure. Olivier Nduhungirehe said Rwanda’s troops were being scrutinized and blamed by countries that, he said, benefit from Rwanda’s intervention in Mozambique.
In a post on X, Nduhungirehe argued that Rwanda’s relationship with Mozambique’s fight against insurgents was not hypothetical, saying it was “not that ‘Rwanda could withdraw.’” He added that “Rwanda WILL withdraw” its troops if sustainable funding is not secured for Rwanda’s counter-terrorism operations in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique’s northern province. He also wrote that Rwandan troops were “being constantly questioned, vilified, criticized, blamed or sanctioned by the very countries that benefit from our intervention in Mozambique.”
The warning came as the U.S. government has increased pressure on Rwanda, after the U.S. State Department imposed visa restrictions on “several senior Rwandan officials” last week over allegations tied to fueling instability in eastern Congo. The report said the unnamed officials were alleged to support Congo’s M23 rebel group, which the U.S. government has said persists despite a U.S.-mediated peace agreement signed in December between Rwanda and Congo.
The conflict around M23 has caused deaths and displacement, and Congo, the U.S. and United Nations experts have accused Rwanda of backing the group. M23, the report said, grew from hundreds of members in 2021 to around 6,500 fighters, and it emerged in 2012 as a Tutsi-led rebel group that said an earlier 2009 agreement—covering issues including integration into the army and the return of refugees—was violated by Congo’s government.
Rwanda’s leadership has disputed the accusations. Paul Kagame has described M23’s struggle as justified in defense of the rights of Congolese Tutsis who, he has said, sought shelter in neighboring countries. The report said Rwandan authorities have criticized what they describe as injustice in U.S. sanctions, saying Congo had not been targeted for its own alleged violations of the agreement.
In Mozambique, Rwanda’s troops are operating to help deter the insurgency that began in 2017 in Cabo Delgado. The report said the insurgent group, Islamic State-Mozambique, gained notoriety after launching a 12-day attack on the coastal town of Palma in 2021, killing dozens of security officers, local civilians and foreign workers, and prompting French energy company TotalEnergies to halt a $20 billion offshore liquefied natural gas project nearby.
That halted project, according to the report, is key to Mozambique’s development; the report said Mozambican authorities welcomed Rwanda’s deployment of peacekeepers in July 2021. Nduhungirehe said in his post that the deployment reflects what he called Rwanda’s “ultimate sacrifice to stabilize this region” and to allow internally displaced people to return home.
Separately, Rwanda’s government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo said on X that the cost of deploying to Mozambique is at least 10 times more than about 20 million euros (nearly $23 million) disbursed by the European Peace Facility. She was responding to a Bloomberg report that European Union funding for Rwanda’s deployment in Mozambique will expire in May, and she said that if Rwanda’s military authorities determine that the work in Cabo Delgado is not appreciated, they would be right to urge the Mozambican government to end the bilateral counter-terrorism arrangement and pull out.