As the warm evening light fades over the lake separating Rwanda and Congo, Emmanuel Mkunzurwanda smiles. After a decade in refugee camps and fighting in Congo's jungles, he is finally going home.
He did not come to the Democratic Republic of Congo to fight. He came as a 9-year-old child refugee, along with the hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutus who fled to their vast neighbour after the 1994 genocide.
"I spent some time in the camps and then I joined the rebels. There was nothing else for me to do," he said, wearing shorts, T-shirt and old flip-flops - his only possessions.
Known as the FDLR, the rebels were members of the former Rwandan army and the notorious Hutu militias, or Interahamwe, which took part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, slaughtering 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Ten years on, according to United Nations (UN) estimates there are still some 10,000 Rwandan rebels in eastern Congo, and most analysts agree there will be no peace in the region until they are disarmed, leave or die.
The problem, analysts say, is that the status quo seems to suit both Rwanda, Congo and the rebel leaders themselves.
Rwanda invaded Congo in 1996 and 1998 saying it was justified because of the risk the rebels continued to pose to its national security. It maintains the right to do so again if the UN or Congo's government does not disarm them.
Sceptics say the rebels are no longer a real military threat to Rwanda but offer the Kigali government an excuse to maintain a strong military and economic presence in a resource-rich and volatile region.
"I would ask why they could not finish off the Interahamwe when they were there (in eastern Congo) for several years with 20,000 soldiers?" said Henri Boschoff, an analyst for the Johannesburg-based Institute for Security Studies.
An incursion by about 200 rebels in April was soundly repulsed by the Rwandan army, who killed up to 16 fighters, and UN workers in eastern Congo say hundreds of Hutu rebels were killed during a similar raid at the turn of the year.
"With the rebels still in Congo, Rwanda has a convenient threat. The ideal situation would be for the DRC to act aggressively against them so Rwanda has no basis," he said.
While the rebels are notorious for their pillaging and raping in Congolese villages, the attitude of the government in Kinshasa towards them has been somewhat ambiguous.
Under Laurent Kabila the government used the rebels, arming and sending them to the frontline as the backbone of their soldiers fighting against Rwandans and Rwandan-backed rebels.
Peace deals signed in 2002 between Rwanda and Joseph Kabila, Laurent's son and Congo's president, called for all Rwandan soldiers to be withdrawn in return for Kinshasa disarming and repatriating the Hutu rebels.
In April this year, the Congolese army launched several operations against the Rwandan rebels, but they soon halted when it ran out of ammunition and had a more serious uprising by Rwandan-backed rebels to contend with.
The UN is keen to see Kabila implement his promise of using some of the 13,000 reinforcements that he sent to the east in tackling the problem of the Rwandan rebels.
There is speculation that the army and the rebels are still collaborating, most recently in fighting that followed the seizure of the town of Bukavu by renegade army officers in June.
A report by UN arms experts released in July said there appeared to have been minimal involvement of militias in Bukavu.
It accused the government of arming the rebels right up until October last year and the experts said they were concerned Kinshasa and its allies "might again reactivate such units if another serious military confrontation occurs".
The rebel officials say that by launching attacks they are trying to put pressure on Kigali to begin negotiations. But deserters from rebel ranks say most of their brothers in arms have no desire to fight.
"Those that took part in the genocide prefer to stay - they just want war. Those of us that were too young (to take part) ... want to come home, but we are forced to fight," said Mkunzurwanda who fled his own unit.
United Nations demobilisation teams say they often hear similar stories. They believe there is a hardcore of 5-15 percent of the 10,000 rebels left who have no reason to return and will fight to the end in Congo.
"These people will have to face justice. Their hands are so bloody there will be no deal, but they do not make the cut for (the war crimes tribunal in) Arusha," Peter Swarbrick, head of the UN's disarmament and repatriation programme, told Reuters.
The UN says some 10,800 Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundians have returned home since the programme began in 2003 - some 3,642 of these were combatants repatriated by the programme.
Swarbrick says the disarmament and repatriation programme is frustrated by a lack of collaboration at ground level and a complicated network of local alliances fostered by the rebels, despite their attacks on civilians.
"There is a strict system of stopping people from leaving. They kill those that try ... while dependents are held back as hostages. They are one of the most potent blocking forces."
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