Kagame's 'hatchet man' Kabarebe, named by US as Rwanda's liaison to Congo rebels

By Sonia Rolley and Hereward Holland

(Reuters) - When Rwanda's ex-spy chief Patrick Karegeya was murdered in South Africa in 2014, his former brother-in-arms James Kabarebe was blunt: "When you choose to be a dog, you die like a dog."

The line, quoted in Rwandan media, illustrated two notable characteristics of then-defence minister Kabarebe: his unvarnished talk and unswerving loyalty to President Paul Kagame.

Kabarebe's comment was "one of those moments when you got a glimpse of what Kagame himself really thought," said journalist Michela Wrong, who wrote a book about the killing, which South African prosecutors linked to the Rwandan government, denied by Kigali.

Kabarebe has "been for decades Kagame's co-conspirator, key enabler and hatchet man," Wrong said.

Their bond was propelled into the spotlight last Thursday when the United States Treasury announced sanctions against Kabarebe, identifying him as "a Rwandan government liaison" to M23, the latest Kigali-backed rebellion in neighbouring Congo.

Rwanda denies directly supporting the M23 rebellion, and says its own forces are acting in self defence in the region against Congolese troops and militia that have joined forces with ethnic Hutu perpetrators of Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

Rwanda's government spokesperson Yolande Makolo called the sanctions on Kabarebe unjustified: "If sanctions could resolve conflict in eastern DRC, we would have had peace in the region decades ago."

Makolo did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Kabarebe's role or military record. Calls to a number listed on the website of the foreign affairs ministry, where Kabarebe is now state minister for regional integration, went unanswered.

In imposing sanctions on Kabarebe, the U.S. Treasury did not discuss President Kagame's own level of involvement in the war in Congo.

But David Himbara, a former Kagame advisor now turned critic, based in Canada, said criticism of Kabarebe implies criticism of Kagame himself, as the two men are "attached at the hip".

Serving at Kagame's right hand since the early 1990s, Kabarebe's fealty helped him rise from personal bodyguard to cabinet minister and to remain in Kagame's favour when so many others, like Karegeya, fell out.

It has also seen him play a central part in a string of Rwanda-backed insurgencies in Democratic Republic of Congo in which millions of people died, some in massacres, most from hunger and disease.

The latest rebel incarnation, the ethnic Tutsi-led M23, re-emerged in 2021, and has recently captured eastern Congo's two largest cities, sharply aggravating a humanitarian crisis and stoking fears of another regional war.

The United Nations and U.S. Treasury say Kabarebe is a key architect of the uprising, having "designed and coordinated" M23's operations, according to a 2023 U.N. report.

'VERY GOOD JOKER'

Kabarebe grew up as an ethnic Tutsi Rwandan refugee in Uganda, taking part in President Yoweri Museveni's seizure of power in 1986, before returning to his home country Rwanda as part of the Tutsi-led force that halted the 1994 genocide there.

Two years later, he helped lead the revolt that toppled dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in Congo, then known as Zaire.

He served briefly in Congo as head of the military under President Laurent Kabila, a Rwandan ally at the time. After Kabila pushed him aside, he led an assault with hijacked airplanes at a Congolese air base in an unsuccessful attempt to dislodge Kabila.

He is celebrated at home for having helped end the genocide in which some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred by the army and Hutu extremist militias.

"James is very disciplined, never drinks or goes to bars," said a former Rwandan soldier who worked under him. "He is a very good joker, even if he is very shy ... He's not a politician, he is a technician."

But across the border in Congo, however, he is almost universally reviled for his role in two bloody Congo wars that sucked in armies from across Africa.

The U.N. and others have documented multiple examples of bloodletting by forces under Kabarebe's command. In 1996 Kabarebe led a mixed force of rubber boot-wearing Rwandans and ragged Congolese recruits 1,500 km (900 miles) across Congo.

That campaign left a trail of tens of thousands of massacred Rwandan Hutu refugees in its wake, according to a 2010 U.N. mapping report.

Rwanda's government said at the time the report used flawed methodology, and that Hutu fighters, often posing as civilians, had used the refugee camps as cover.

"There are decades of crimes that have gone unpunished. We have never had justice for these atrocities committed against Rwandan refugees," said Norman Ishimwe Sinamenye, a Rwandan activist and former Hutu refugee living in Congo.

'REAP WHAT YOU SOW'

In addition to supporting the M23, Kabarebe manages much of Rwanda's and M23's revenue generation from Congo's mineral resources, the U.S. Treasury said, referring to the trade of tin and tantalum which U.N. experts say nets the group $800,000 per month.

For ex-Rwandan army chief Kayumba Nyamwasa, once a close friend who shared a flat with Kabarebe in Uganda's capital Kampala before they attacked Rwanda in the early 1990s, the sanctions are an overdue comeuppance.

After the Congo wars of 1996-2003, Nyamwasa fell out of Kagame's inner circle and fled to South Africa, where he joined forces with Karegeya to form an opposition group. He narrowly survived an assassination attempt in 2010.

"I have no vendetta with anyone, but there is a saying that a thief lasts for 40 days," Nyamwasa told Reuters by text message.

Kabarebe "has lasted for 28yrs!" he wrote. The U.S. sanctions mean "he has been grouped together with similar murderous drug cartels. You reap what you sow."

(Writing by Hereward Holland; Editing by Robbie Corey-Boulet, Ammu Kannampilly, Peter Graff)