Crisis in Congo | Conflict Demands a Regional Approach

The neglected conflict in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) made it into the New York Times yesterday over a failed attempt by UN peacekeepers to evacuate roughly 50 UN aid workers from the village of Rutshuru, just north of the regional capital Goma.  Fighting in Eastern DRC has steadily intensified over the past few weeks, ignited by Congolese rebel forces loyal to renegade Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda.  The disordered Congolese forces are in retreat and UN peacekeepers have been pushed to the front lines.  More recently, General Nkunda explained himself and called for a cease-fire.  The intensity with which the situation in Congo has deteriorated is shocking, but not entirely surprising.  Analysts working on the Great Lakes region of Africa have been advocating for more concerted efforts to stabilize the region since the declared end of the Second Congo War in 2003.  The Council on Foreign relations recently published a report by Anthony Gambino, Congo: Securing Peace, Sustaining Progress, urging the United States to leverage diplomatic power in the region.  This past September, the Africa Policy Forum at CSIS published a piece by Decky Kipuka Kabongi, evaluating the factors that were most likely to contribute to resurgence in violence. Over 5 million Congolese have died as a result of suffering produced by the conflict. Civilians have endured violence not only from the rebel forces, but also from the corrupt and undisciplined Congolese army.  Hundreds of thousands have fled to Goma and the humanitarian situation is urgent. The most concerning element of the latest round of conflict, beyond the humanitarian disaster already underway, are rising ethnic tensions and regional participation in the fighting.  Ethnic tensions are nothing new to the region, and relate directly to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and conflict in Burundi. During the 1994 genocide, Nkunda fought alongside Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) to end the killing of the Tutsi minority and take control of the Rwandan government.  As the Tutsi force claimed victory, over 2 million Hutu and militiamen implicated in the genocide fled into Eastern Congo.  The First and Second Congo Wars are marked by a continuation of ethnic-based violence between Hutu and Tutsi rebel forces, fueled by the exploitation of natural resources.  Nkunda and his rebel forces claim to protect the Tutsi minority in Congo, and receive covert support from Rwanda to do so.  Congolese forces have claimed Rwandan tanks and ground forces have been meddling in the fighting and blame has been publically placed on Rwandan Tutsi by Congolese refugees.  The government of Rwanda has denied any participation in recent events, but has claimed Congolese forces have fired across the shared-border into Rwanda. Angola has also played a regional role in the conflict in the past, and would come in on the side of the Congolese forces if provoked by regional interests.  MONUC, the largest UN peacekeeping force deployed, has been able to do very little to protect the civilian populations from the fighting.  According to Alan Doss, the UN Special Representative for the Secretary General, the 17,000-strong force is stretched thin across a country a quarter the size of the United States.  The Security Council has yet to authorize the use of additional troops and the MONUC Commander recently resigned because of the constraints placed on the UN force.    The conflict in Eastern DRC has gone on long enough, yet the will to put fourth the resources, leverage, and support necessary to implement a regional peacebuilding approach to deal with what is clearly a regional conflict has not been a priority.  Under these circumstances, is it really possible to convince any side to back-down?  If a massacre were to take place, who would be there to stop it? Flikr photo by cyclopsr used under a Creative Commons license.