Rwanda has threatened to withdraw its counterinsurgency forces from Mozambique

Kampala, Uganda — Rwanda will withdraw its counterinsurgency forces from Mozambique if foreign backers of the mission do not maintain “sustainable funding,” the foreign minister said on Saturday.

Foreign Affairs Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe said in a post on X that the troops were “constantly questioned, vilified, criticized, blamed or endorsed by the countries that benefit from our intervention in Mozambique”.

Nduhungirehe said: “That “Rwanda can withdraw.”

“Rwanda will withdraw its troops” from Mozambique if it does not secure sustainable funding for its counter-terrorism operations in Cabo Delgado, he said, referring to Mozambique’s northern province.

Last week, the US State Department imposed visa restrictions on “several senior Rwandan officials who fueled instability” in eastern Congo, intensifying pressure on the East African country after sanctions targeting Rwanda’s military.

The US government says unnamed Rwandan officials are supporting Congo’s M23 rebel group, a US-brokered peace deal signed between the Rwandan and Congolese governments in December.

The M23 insurgency in eastern Congo has left thousands dead or displaced. Congo, US and UN experts accuse Rwanda of supporting M23, which has grown from hundreds of members to nearly 6,500 fighters in 2021, according to the UN.

M23 emerged in 2012 as a Tutsi-led rebel group whose members said a 2009 agreement signed to look after their interests – including integration into the army and the return of refugees from elsewhere in East Africa – had been violated by the Congolese government.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has described M23’s fight as defending the rights of Congolese Tutsis, who have sought refuge in neighboring countries for years.

Rwandan officials have been critical of what they feel are unfair US sanctions. Congo is not the target of its own treaty violations, he says.

The sanctions mark an ongoing shift in US government policy toward Rwanda, which has for years avoided international condemnation for its military involvement in its large neighboring region.

In Mozambique, however, Rwandan forces are helping to contain a jihadist insurgency launched in 2017 in Cabo Delgado.

The insurgent group, known as Islamic State-Mozambique, gained notoriety in 2021 when it launched a 12-day attack on the coastal town of Palma, killing dozens of security officials, local civilians and foreign workers – and forcing French energy company Total Energies to halt a $20 billion offshore liquefied natural gas project nearby.

That project is key to Mozambique’s development — officials there welcomed the deployment of Rwandan peacekeepers in July 2021.

Nduhungirehe complained that Rwandan forces were being condemned, despite making the “ultimate sacrifice to stabilize the region” and allowing internally displaced people to return home.

In a separate post on X, government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo said the cost of deploying to Mozambique is at least 10 times more than the roughly 20 million euros (about $23 million) disbursed by the European Peace Facility. Makolo was responding to a Bloomberg report that European Union funding for Rwanda’s deployment in Mozambique will expire in May.

Makolo said that if Rwandan military officials “do not appreciate the work being done by the Rwandan security forces in Cabo Delgado, they will be right to demand the government to end and withdraw this bilateral counter-terrorism arrangement”.