In January 2009, the CNDP split and Nkunda was arrested by the Rwanda government, and its splinter faction, led by Bosco Ntaganda, was planned to be integrated into the national army.

Since 1998, General Laurent Nkunda had been a senior officer in the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (Goma faction) rebel group.

[2] This expansion was at least partially accomplished because Nkunda began incorporating all manner of men with unclear backgrounds into the brigades under his control, including former Rwandan soldiers, members of former militias who had been demobilized and had no skills outside of war, and others simply attracted to his populist Tutsi rhetoric.

With his new mixage battalions, Nkunda was able to control large areas of Masisi and Rutshuru and expand north and east toward the border with Uganda.

Newly formed national brigades were ordered to establish territorial control, which Nkunda took to mean fighting the Hutu Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) descended from the groups that carried out the Rwandan genocide.

[2] In late March 2007, Numbi left Goma in what the International Crisis Group sees as an attempt to distance himself from a disaster in the making, as accusations mounted that the CNDP was in effect setting up a small kingdom in Masisi.

[9] In early January 2009, Bosco Ntaganda, a commander in the CNDP and former chief of military operations of the Union of Congolese Patriots, declared that he was taking leadership from Nkunda.

[13] On March 23, 2009, the CNDP signed a peace treaty with the government, in which it agreed to become a political party in exchange for the release of its imprisoned members.