There is something almost breathtaking about President Félix Tshisekedi’s latest peace maneuver. After signing an international arrangement requiring the neutralization of the FDLR and its associated armed groups, Kinshasa has deceptively discovered a much easier answer—to ask the FDLR to sign a piece of paper saying it will disarm itself.

Maybe he started by asking some questions like: Why fight an armed organization when you can simply give it an agreed upon protocol? Why rip to pieces a network you usually support when you can simply rename the process? Why neutralize an armed genocidaires’ group when you can turn its leaders into diplomatic correspondents? Enjoy the latest episode of Congolese Peace by Acrobatics.

The problem for DRC leaders— is that the October 2024 CONOPS is extraordinarily resistant to this kind of diplomatic magic. Its language is remarkably accurate. It doesn’t say consult the FDLR or say negotiate the FDLR’s political future. It doesn’t say wait for the FDLR to volunteer its disarmament. It simply declares neutralize—and much more.

The CONOPS call for the DRC and Rwanda to work through an operational sequence involving preparation, operations, evaluation and stabilization. It envisioned neutralization of the FDLR within three months—with an Ad Hoc Verification Mechanism monitoring implementation. That isn’t diplomatic poetry but an operational order. And it produces a gigantic problem for Tshisekedi’s latest FDLR performance.

Non-negotiable neutralization

The Washington Agreement subsequently fused the CONOPS into the peace architecture. It requires: “An irreversible and verifiable end to state support for FDLR and associated armed groups.” And: “A commitment to identify, assess, locate, and neutralize” the FDLR in accordance with the October 31, 2024 CONOPS.

They signed a text with words which are not decorative. Irreversible. Verifiable. Identify. Assess. Locate. Neutralize. There isn’t much room here for diplomatic origami. Kinshasa can’t fold neutralization into negotiation—turn state support into political engagement, and expect the international community to appreciate the craftsmanship. The agreement projected the FDLR as a security architecture—not simply as a collection of men who might one evening decide that they have had enough of being genocidal rebels.

The CONOPS precisely refers to the FDLR and its “splinter groups”—necessitates information on those splinter groups, and sets the unprejudiced defeat of the FDLR “and its supporters.” That phrase— “splinter groups”—is disturbing to the current DR Congo narrative. It is troubling because it means the draftsmen of Washington understood something very significant: You can’t neutralize an armed network by neutralizing only the label.

Kinshasa is very irritated by the “sprinter groups”. This is precisely why the conspicuous absence of associated formations such as Nyatura from the recent Kinshasa–FDLR arrangement matters. The eastern Congo armed-group ecosystem has never been a collection of tidy boxes. Commanders migrate as names change. Alliances shift as splinters emerge. Armed groups cooperate, fragment and reassemble and find combatants move between formations.

That is exactly why the CONOPS purposely speaks about splinter groups, supporters and information-sharin, rather than imagining that the FDLR can be dealt with simply by collecting rifles from a symbolic few men wearing fake FDLR insignia. So where are the associated groups? Where is CMC Nyatura FDP/Domi of Jean Claude Habyarimana Mbitse? Where is CMC Nyatura Jean Marie/ABAZUNGU also known as Coalition des Mouvements Congolais? This is a group under SS Jean Marie, Nyamuganya Gatsimbanyi and SS Dunia Sauri.

Where are the FDLR-linked networks like CMC Nyatura/Binza and Nyatura GAV Masisi? Minister Floribert Anzuluni must know where their commanders are. CONOPS is required to locate the logistical channels, the weapons and the intelligence files. Where are the FARDC/FDLR relationships, the political patrons and the map of the ecosystem? The answer can’t be: “We have a protocol.” They know a protocol isn’t a map, and signature isn’t neutralization. A ceremony isn’t disarmament and a press release is surely not verification.

For Kinshasa’ the most embarrassing part of the Washington Agreement is the mention of “state support”. The agreement does something all the more politically inconvenient. CONOPS doesn’t merely call for the FDLR to stop fighting, but requires an “irreversible and verifiable end to state support” for the FDLR and associated armed groups, including the prohibition of material, logistical and financial support.

That, in itself— changes the whole question, because the issue is no longer simply: Does the FDLR exist? Who has been supporting it? It is stated in the CONOPS. And, has that support actually stopped? The answer is No. A government can’t wash years of confirmed military cooperation through a quick photograph of FDLR representatives signing a surrender document.

If state support existed, it would have to end. In case it has ended, verify it. That is exactly what irreversible and verifiable means. It is problematic to imagine two more troublesome adjectives for a government used to the diplomatic fog of eastern Congo.

The CONOPS didn’t trust political declarations alone. It established an Ad Hoc Verification Mechanism to monitor implementation. And the Washington architecture subsequently institutionalized verification through the Joint Security Coordination Mechanism (JSCM). This is where Tshisekedi’s trick encounters its greatest obstacle.

The FDLR can issue a protocol—and Kinshasa can happily celebrate it. However, the verification mechanism gets to ask: Show us. Where are the fighters, commanders, weapons and the camps? We need to know what happened to the splinter groups and if DRC’s state support stopped. It remains important to ask: Are FARDC units still operating with FDLR-associated elements? If it has stopped, can the results be independently verified?

That is why the International Contact Group for the Great Lakes (ICG’s) statement of August 13, 2026 is so important. It didn’t declare victory—but just told Kinshasa to produce an “operational plan and a realistic timeline” for effective FDLR neutralization in accordance with the Washington Agreements and the CONOPS.

And formerly, ICG delivered the judgement that should be framed on every diplomatic wall in Kinshasa: “Any colocation or operational collaboration with elements of the FDLR is fundamentally at odds with the commitments made in the Washington Accords.” In other words: However nice the protocol—here and now, comply with the agreement.

Against the laundering strategy

Conceivably the most unnoticed provision of the CONOPS is its insistence on “Effective influence operations.” This isn’t propaganda for the sake of it, but part of the operational strategy. The CONOPS appeals for awareness-raising and for encouraging the population to disassociate from the FDLR. That reveals an important understanding: That is a reminder: FDLR isn’t merely a military formation—but an ideological and social network.

For that reason, neutralization requires more than gathering weapons. It calls for separating the organization from the population. It requires exposing its ideology, destroying its recruitment base and breaking its logistical networks. Delegitimizing FDLR’s armed project is an effective way of protecting civilians who refuse to collaborate.

That is why Kinshasa’s present-day diplomatic move is so perverse. The CONOPS calls for isolating the FDLR from the population. Yet, Kinshasa seems to be helping insulate the group from accountability. The CONOPS articulates: separate the population from the FDLR. So far, Kinshasa’s diplomatic theatre declares: separate the FDLR from its past. That is laundering and not implementation.

This is where the manipulation of international diplomacy becomes mostly perilous. The danger isn’t that the United Nations accepts an FDLR disarmament initiative as presented by Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner. The risk is allowing that initiative to be treated as though it accomplishes Washington. Surely, it doesn’t. The Washington Agreement declares, neutralize. It doesn’t say: “If the FDLR voluntarily signs a protocol, the DRC has complied.”

It says associated armed groups—and states, state support must end irreversibly and verifiably. And it explicitly incorporates CONOPS. The 13 August ICG statement appears to have accurately recognized this ploy. It acknowledges the FDLR protocol but straightaway demands the operational plan and timeline and insists on implementation in accordance with Washington and CONOPS. The message is unambiguous: The FDLR’s document isn’t the DRC’s compliance certificate.

Tshisekedi’s actual problem

The most revealing feature of Kinshasa’s maneuver is that it changes the question. We are facing an odd diplomatic transformation. When Washington asks: How will you neutralize the FDLR? Kinshasa replies: Here is what the FDLR wants. The organization which is supposed to be neutralized becomes the one whose wishes are being transmitted to the UN Security Council.

Imagine when the armed genocidal group becomes an interlocutor—and its protocol turns into news and its announcements become diplomatic material. Results are clear: Its representatives acquire political visibility, and the Kinshasa government that is supposed to dismantle the network becomes its messenger. Interestingly, the FDLR doesn’t need a seat at the UN. It has Kinshasa to carry its paperwork.

The irony is almost too perfect. If the Kinshasa–FDLR protocol genuinely constitutes neutralization, then Tshisekedi should be delighted to submit it to the Washington verification mechanism. Let the JSCM, MONUSCO, the Ad Hoc Verification Mechanism, the United States and Rwanda examine it. They should let the evidence speak.

But if Kinshasa as an alternative seeks to craft a parallel diplomatic reality in which the FDLR protocol becomes the main event, while the CONOPS requirements disappear into mere footnotes—then the suspicion becomes inescapable: Kinshasa isn’t implementing Washington. It is killing it, by trying to renegotiate Washington without declaring that it is renegotiating it. That is the diplomatic equivalent of tearing up a contract and insisting that the paper confetti constitutes implementation.

One country, Burundi, is watching and worried. This development also changes the calculation for Gitega, with its ambiguous military relationships with armed groups in the DRC. Burundi has comprehensively invested in its military partnership with Kinshasa. But if Washington is moving toward systematic verification of FDLR neutralization and the cessation of Kinshasa support—then Bujumbura must appreciate that the old regional security marketplace is closing.

The question will increasingly become: Who are the partners in fighting? Who supplies them with logistics or shares intelligence? Who protects whom—and who permits whom to operate? And who benefits financially? Burundi should recalibrate before somebody else recalibrates it for them.

The CONOPS is fundamental

There is a crucial point that should now be hammered into international diplomacy: The neutralization of the FDLR and its associated armed groups isn’t negotiable through nomenclature. The CONOPS isn’t asking Kinshasa to choose between neutralization and dialogue. It establishes neutralization as the objective. Dialogue, DDR, repatriation and reintegration belong to the subsequent architecture.

The Washington Agreement made the obligation even stronger by requiring an irreversible and verifiable end to state support and the identification, assessment, location and neutralization of the FDLR in accordance with CONOPS. That is why the wording matters. Neutralizing doesn’t mean rebranding. Splinter groups don’t mean to pretend they don’t exist. State support doesn’t mean replacing military support with diplomatic sponsorship. Verification doesn’t mean just accepting the government’s press release. And effective influence operations certainly don’t mean giving the armed organization a diplomatic microphone.

No more diplomatic abracadabra

The Great Lakes has suffered enough from diplomatic fairy-tales. The FDLR can’t disappear because its name is omitted. Neither can Nyatura vanish because a protocol doesn’t mention it. State support doesn’t disappear because governments stop talking about it. Genocidal ideology can’t evaporate since diplomats use the phrase DDR.

The Washington Accords are here and now the test. The treaty can’t disappear because Kinshasa finds FDLR’s document more convenient. Implementation of CONOPS is essential to the durable peace in our region. Locate the FDLR and its splinters. Identify its supporters including FARDC. Neutralize it as you separate it from the Congolese population. Use effective influence operations to prevent recruitment and intimidation—and verify every single stage. Then proceed to demobilization, repatriation and reintegration.

That is the logical and operational sequence. Not the other way around. The great current diplomatic trick by Kinshasa is to begin at the end. Take the FDLR’s imaginary surrender. Call it DDR. Skip over neutralization and ignore the deadly splinter groups. Skip over associated armed groups and pay no attention to state support. Skip over verification and ask the world to applaud.

Fortunately, the ICG’s 13 August statement finally stopped applauding on cue. The language requests diplomats to do something even more far-reaching: read the CONOPS. Because once they do, they will realize that the document leaves remarkably little room for the FDLR to negotiate its own fake disappearance. And even less room for Kinshasa to negotiate the disappearance of the agreement that was supposed to make it disappear.

Washington didn’t authorize Tshisekedi to rewrite CONOPS. It asked him to implement it. And the difference between those two, is the dissimilarity between peace and another Great Lakes diplomatic magical show.

The Skill of Redefining Compliance

The principal problem in the Congo peace process is no longer simply whether Kinshasa is complying with the Washington Accords. Kinshasa is attempting something more sophisticated—and potentially more dangerous: redefining what compliance means. That distinction is crucial.

The Washington framework—read together with the October 31, 2024 CONOPS, isn’t vague about the FDLR. The CONOPS isn’t an antique nor a diplomatic wallpaper. The document is the operational skeleton of the bargain.

Its language is operational, not ornamental: identify, assess, locate and neutralize; address the FDLR and its splinter groups and supporters; end state support “irreversibly and verifiably”; and conduct “effective influence operations” to encourage populations to disassociate themselves from the organization. The framework also provides verification mechanisms precisely because declarations by the parties outside the framework can’t be substituted for evidence.

Nevertheless, Kinshasa now appears to be presenting an FDLR-authored disarmament protocol as though it were the answer to an obligation that was never defined in those terms. That is the sleight of hand. Kinshasa isn’t just failing to implement Washington; it is struggling to redefine its implementation.

The difference is deep. If neutralization of FDLR becomes the same as voluntary self-disarmament, if associated armed groups fade because they are absent from a protocol, if Kinshasa’s state support turns out to be undetectable because nobody formally admits it, and if verification is replaced by diplomatic felicitations, then an international peace agreement can be hollowed out without ever being formally repudiated.

The danger is a clear form of diplomatic gaslighting—when non-compliance is presented as compliance, substitution as implementation, and procedural drama as functional progress. The international community must therefore battle the temptation to reward proclamations just because they contain the language of peace.

The appropriate response is just simple: Show the operational plan, the timeline, locations and the weapons. Demonstrate the undoing of the networks and the verification. Or else, the world shall become an audience to an extraordinary diplomatic illusion in which the organization that was supposed to be neutralized becomes the author of the document supposedly proving its neutralization.

The Washington Accords needs implementation and not reinterpretation. Which is Kinshasa’s greatest trouble. The problem is that; Washington is not ambiguous but inconveniently clear.