Burundi has become the first country to deploy troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo following a recent decision of the East African Community (EAC) to launch a joint mission against rebels.
A contingent of the Burundian army officially stepped on Congolese soil on August 15.
And, according to the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC), the boots will be deployed to South Kivu, in the east, to hunt down armed groups.
The Congolese army said this was within the framework of the joint forces, recently agreed on by the EAC heads of state under the then chairmanship of Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Until Monday, neither the troop contributing countries nor the actual timelines had been made public.
The Burundian soldiers will be stationed at the Luberezi training centre, about 100km from Bukavu, the largest city in South Kivu.
In this area, coalitions of Mai-Mai armed groups on the one hand, and Twirwaneho and Gumino on the other are locked in endless clashes.
They have been carrying out a series of revenge attacks, killing civilians and looting livestock.
There are also Burundian groups such as RED-Tabara that have been fighting the Bujumbura administration from the DRC.
And while the deployment was made official on August 15, RED Tabara has since July been reporting battles between them and “a group of Burundian National Defence Force soldiers in South Kivu”.
According to Patrick Nahimana, military spokesman for the armed group, RED Tabara is calling for “the review of the Arusha Agreement for peace and reconciliation”.
The armed group accuses the United Nations, the African Union, the EAC and the International Conference for the Great Lakes Region of “impotence in the face of the CNDD-FDD regime” in Burundi.
The source in Bujumbura replies that “negotiations with the Burundian government are impossible because this movement [RED Tabara] has no forces”.
In the DRC, neither the duration of the Burundian army’s presence nor its strength has been communicated.
The Congolese army “calls on the population to remain calm and to collaborate frankly with the loyalist forces in order to put an end to this activism by irregular forces”, said its spokesman in South Kivu, Lieutenant Marc Elonga.
Meanwhile, Ugandan military says its troops hunting down insurgents in eastern DRC will be immunised against the Ebola virus.
The military said its medical department together with the ministry of health and the World Health Organization will, starting on August 19, vaccinate the troops including those operating along the common border with the DRC.
Ambrose Musinguzi, Chief of Medical Services, said the troops in eastern DRC face a high risk of contracting the deadly disease.
"The vaccine to be applied is from Merck and is 100 percent effective. We have used it before in Uganda not only on health workers but also in districts of Kasese and Bundibugyo and in some units of UPDF (Uganda People's Defense Force)," said Musinguzi.
Henry Kyobe Bbosa, the UPDF Epidemiologist, said medical personnel had been trained as Ebola Rapid Response Team and Vaccinators to contain and control the outbreak.
"We have conducted TOT (Training of Trainers) workshop of 30 experts in different areas who are going to train other medical workers in the field who will in turn be conducting case findings, managing alerts and carry out vaccination. We are also to deploy three mobile laboratories to be able to manage any signal case," Bbosa said.
Uganda and DRC in November last year launched joint military operations against the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an insurgent group hiding in the jungles of eastern DRC.
The ADF is an affiliate of the Islamic State in central Africa and is also blamed for the bombings in the Ugandan capital Kampala last November that left six people dead and 33 others injured.
