Analysis: The DRC's deep-rooted conflict
Tuesday, 04 Nov 2008 12:12
Democratic Republic of Congo has a bloody past
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Abandoned by their government, hundreds of thousands are fleeing the rebel advance in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The situation in North Kivu province is bleak. All that stands between the one million inhabitants of its capital, Goma, and the rebels are around 850 UN peacekeepers.
Goma has reason to be afraid. Reports that General Laurent Nkunda's forces have burned and looted camps for internally displaced persons underline the risk of a major humanitarian catastrophe many fear is about to occur.
Latest estimates from the UN put the number of Congolese who have abandoned the homes in fear of their lives over the one million mark.
Diplomats including foreign secretary David Miliband and US envoy Jendayi Frazer have rushed to Kinshasa in the hope they will persuade Joseph Kabila, the current president, to accept Gen Nkunda's demands.
But the uncompromising Mr Kabila is not expected to back down. He would look weak doing so with the threat of force against Goma hanging over him; and, tragically for those whose lives are now in danger, the tangled roots of this conflict run deep.
One million refugees: it's almost as many as the 880,000 who died in the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
Just as the fall of the Berlin wall and September 11th signified key turning points in western history, so this brutal crime remains the defining event of the region's tangled politics.
There are two tribes on the DRC-Rwanda border, the Tutsis and the Hutus. In 1994 a radical Hutu government instigated the genocide against its moderate members and Tutsis.
After the regime collapsed a militia of diehard supporters fled into the DRC. Since then Gen Nkunda – a Congolese Tutsi – has emerged as the leader of a group seeking to protect his ethnic group against reprisal attacks.
The result is ongoing ethnic tensions – and the current standoff outside Goma.
Many believe a regional power struggle is behind the crisis. They are the same people who say Gen Nkunda is a puppet of the Rwandan Tutsis.
The level of intervention by Rwanda's military in eastern DRC in the past backs up their claim. And a look at the five-year conflict which raged in the region at the turn of the century makes it undeniable.
The fact the five-year conflict beginning in 1997 is often referred to as the 'African world war' because of the way it sucked in other players like Angola, Zimbabwe and Chad sums up the problem for itself.
Rwanda and Uganda provided assistance for dissidents who rose up against General Mobutu in 1996 – and then again in 1998 when the rebel leader they backed, the current president's father, was not deemed satisfactory.
Troops from Angola, Chad, Namibia, Sudan and Zimbabwe intervened to support his regime and frontlines stabilised in 1999. It was in the wake of this conflict that the current UN peacekeeping force, Monuc, was deployed.
They were too late to save the estimated four million people who died as a result of the conflict, however. The Rwandan genocide was followed by a catastrophe four times as bad; this is why current warnings about the impending humanitarian crisis are sparking such concern.
Nothing has changed since then. Militias continue to use child soldiers. Ethnic tensions are heightened, and reinforced, by an ongoing cycle of revenge attacks. And, worst of all, the exploitation of the country's natural resources continues to fund the armed groups at the heart of the problem.
The argument against international companies continuing to use these resources is made forcefully by campaign group Global Witness.
In North Kivu, where the current troubles are located, gold, tin ore and coltan – used in mobile phones – are plentiful.
Fighting for control of the mines is common and often brutal. It reflects a growing trend, Global Witness' Patrick Alley says, in that the international community cannot understand the concept of a 'conflict resource'.
He says armed groups are now able to "plug themselves into a globalised market for lootable resources" driven by both the west and east. Only decisive action from international policymakers can solve the problem, he says. They should "act now to take the profit out of armed conflict."
Whatever the future may hold, the present situation in DRC reflects deep-seated tensions. The citizens of DRC are no strangers to war and many millions have died in the region in the last 20 years. It's a complex, confusing, depressingly labyrinthine situation which makes it all but impossible to explain to a refugee child why they are in such peril. As the rebels pause their advance outside the gates of Goma, the question now is how many more must die.
Alex Stevenson