section_path: History/Continued conflicts (2008–2018)
section_name: Continued conflicts (2008–2018)
paragraph_text: Continued conflicts (2008–2018)
  
  Laurent Nkunda, a member of Rally for Congolese Democracy–Goma, defected along with troops loyal to him and formed the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), which began an armed rebellion against the government. In March 2009, after a deal between the DRC and Rwanda, Rwandan troops entered the DRC and arrested Nkunda and were allowed to pursue FDLR militants. The CNDP signed a peace treaty with the government in which it agreed to become a political party and to have its soldiers integrated into the national army in exchange for the release of its imprisoned members. In 2012 Bosco Ntaganda, the leader of the CNDP, and troops loyal to him, mutinied and briefly captured the provincial capital of Goma in November 2012.
  
  Neighboring countries have been accused of arming rebel groups and using them as proxies to gain control of the resource-rich country. In March 2013, the United Nations Security Council authorized the United Nations Force Intervention Brigade to neutralize armed groups. In 2013, the Mai-Mai created by Laurent Kabila briefly invaded the provincial capital of Lubumbashi and 400,000 people are displaced in the province as of 2013. On and off fighting in the Ituri conflict occurred between the Nationalist and Integrationist Front and the Union of Congolese Patriots. In the northeast, Joseph Kony 's Lord's Resistance Army moved from their original bases in Uganda and South Sudan to DR Congo in 2005 and set up camps in the Garamba National Park.
  
  In 2015, major protests broke out across the country and protesters demanded that Kabila step down as president. On 27 November 2016 Congolese foreign minister Raymond Tshibanda told the press no elections would be held in 2016: "it has been decided that the voter registration operation will end on July 31, 2017, and that election will take place in April 2018." Protests broke out in the country on 20 December when Kabila's term in office ended. Across the country, dozens of protesters were killed and hundreds were arrested.
  
  Human Rights Watch said in 2017 that Kabila recruited former 23 March Movement fighters to put down country-wide protests over his refusal to step down from office at the end of his term. "M23 fighters patrolled the streets of Congo's main cities, firing on or arresting protesters or anyone else deemed to be a threat to the president," they said. Fierce fighting has erupted in Masisi between government forces and a powerful local warlord, General Delta. The United Nations mission in the DRC is its largest and most expensive peacekeeping effort, but it shut down five UN bases near Masisi in 2017, after the U.S. led a push to cut costs.