With U.N. Role in Question, D.R. Congo Once Again at Precipice of War (by Lauren Gelfand)

A recent World Politics Review item...

From the air, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo looks like paradise on earth, a palette of rich, red earth, rolling green hills, and crystal-blue lakes, under a panoramic sky that seems to stretch on forever.

But on the ground, the grim reality of one of the world's most-volatile and -perennially-ignored regions shocks, with its morass of frightened civilians, bellicose and well-armed fighters, and an intractable conflict that threatens to boil over again into war. If that occurs, it will boost an already-tragically-bloody decade's death toll, estimated at more than four million people, vastly higher.

This is the Great Lakes region in east Africa, where in 1994 ethnic hatred spurred a genocide in Rwanda that claimed the lives of more than 800,000 people, slaughtered at the knife-blades and hands of their neighbors.

The current quagmire in eastern Congo, a lasting vestige of the five years of civil war nominally brought to a close in 2003, is partially rooted in Rwanda's bloody legacy, pitting Hutu against Tutsi for control of a resource-rich and magnificient territory.

But like everything else in this vast country formerly known as Zaire, the reality is much more complex than the simple drawing of lines in the sand between foes.

Among the complications: the apparently partisan role being played by the world's largest and most-expensive U.N. peacekeeping operation, which is now going beyond keeping peace.

Add in growing U.S. frustration at having to foot the peacekeeping bill, even as it continues its drive for an equally expensive and enormous operation in western Sudan; a humanitarian crisis of immense proportions; untapped riches of oil, diamonds, and timber; and a threatened mountain-gorilla population, and you have a recipe for almost-certain disaster.

Or just another day in a country one-quarter the size of the United States and home to more than 56 million people.

Long-simmering tensions in the east re-emerged in the wake of DRC's internationally managed and financed presidential elections last year, a massive effort costing tens of millions of dollars that officially placed Joseph Kabila in the presidential palace.

The younger Kabila's election came nearly a decade after his slain father, Laurent, spearheaded his own rag-tag rebellion to depose aging billionaire despot Mobutu Sese Seko, and followed back-to-back civil wars that ranged across a country bordered by Sudan and Rwanda.

The trouble in the east stems from a concerted and disciplined drive on behalf of the Tutsi population in the region led by Gen. Laurent Nkunda, a 40-year-old devout Pentecostal Christian.

Nkunda in the early 1990s bore arms alongside current Rwanda President Paul Kagame, and is rumored to still take orders -- along with arms and munitions -- from Kigali-based businessmen. He was among those who followed Laurent Kabila into Kinshasa to depose Mobutu, earning his general's stripes for those efforts.

But in the confusing aftermath that has repeatedly erupted into war, Nkunda has cemented allegiances with the men who follow him, estimated at some 3,000-4,000 well-armed and disciplined fighters.

Even after the civil war was declared over in 2003, it was Nkunda's men who seized the town of Bukavu in 2004, [it was] they who repeatedly fought with both the DRC army and Rwandan Hutu rebels, and [it was] they who were indicted for war crimes in 2005 with an international arrest warrant that has until now remained unserved.

But after the elections in 2006, under heavy pressure by the 17,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force known as MONUC, Nkunda agreed in principle to integrate his forces into mixed brigades, and eventually into the rebuilding DRC army.

This, as Joe Bavier, an international correspondent based in Kinshasa, says, was a really bad idea, and is at the root of the current crisis.

"The idea was to keep them in North Kivu, have them defeat the FDLR [Rwandan rebels] and then become regular army. Which of course resulted in a huge mess, which of course no one really condemned because, of course, their eyes were busy elsewhere trying to resolve other post-election conflicts," Bavier told World Politics Review from Kinshasa.

"This meant [that] there were tense brigades composed of guys who hated each other, with no oversight to stop Nkunda's guys on their own campaign against Hutu peasants. They emptied entire villages, driving 200,000 people from their homes. And instead of integrating, he stepped up his own recruiting, to ensure that he'd have more of his own adherents in the army, bringing his total to more than five brigades [some 3,500 followers]."

By August of this year, the mixed brigades were no more, broken up and pitted against one another on the front lines of a battle that sent another 170,000 civilians scurrying, displaced along ethnic lines and targeted for murder and rape to such a degree that women aged 3 to 75 have been treated for brutal and violent sexual assault, according to a recent report from Amnesty International.

In the meantime, the army has sent in thousands of troops and ammunition, with logistical support being provided by MONUC. Somehow, Nkunda and his loyalists have managed to keep resupplying themselves, despite an arms embargo.

"The real risk is what everyone expects to happen: a major, military offensive in areas under control such as [the town of] Masisi, where you have a high concentration of internally displaced Tutsis," said Bavier, who has reported from West and Central Africa for several years, and who recently returned from the country's North Kivu province.

"Should that government offensive produce too many civilian casualties, there is a possibility of an intervention from Rwanda. Which would create a nightmare scenario of another war, basically. The potential is very much there for another war."

Even this weekend there were clashes between Nkunda's men and Congolese soldiers, the worst fighting [that] embattled North Kivu has seen in weeks.

Trading heavy machine-gun and mortar fire along the Chandago ridge near the Rwandan border, the fighting provoked a still-unknown number of casualties.

Such clashes prompted Kabila last month to give the go-ahead for the army to attack Nkunda's positions without provocation, a decision that has been delayed by intensive lobbying efforts from U.N., U.S., and European officials in the area.

In trying to stave off a war that could have implications that resonate far beyond the Great Lakes region, the international mediators convinced Rwanda and DRC to commit to a Nov. 11 deal wherein they will join forces to disarm the Rwandan Hutu rebels operating on Congolese soil, so as to reduce tensions between the neighbors.

The deal, bringing military action under the oversight of MONUC, would disarm the rebels and also help lead to the arrests of those indicted on war-crimes charges for their role in the Rwandan genocide.

Ostensibly in place not only to prevent another war, but also to help heal the schisms from the last three civil conflicts, the blue-helmeted force has found itself in the middle of the fighting -- and, more often than not, on the side of the government forces.

[...]

The head of the U.N. mission, longtime U.S. diplomat William Swing, has refused to meet with Nkunda: a slight that has prevented any laying of groundwork for a negotiated settlement. The octogenarian former ambassador has made it abundantly clear to U.N. headquarters in New York that it is "his mission, his way," according to knowledgeable DRC watchers.

Swing also passed on to the U.N. a request from Kabila that the MONUC troops carry out joint operations with the army in the east against Nkunda's forces, rather than provide only logistical support as has been their custom. A resounding "no" greeted the request at U.N. headquarters, which came even as President Kabila was preparing a visit to Washington [in order] to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush in late October.

The meeting in the Oval Office was a carefully orchestrated photo opportunity by a president who has repeatedly vowed that another Rwanda would not happen on his watch.

Congratulating Kabila for the success of the elections, Bush also acknowledged the problems in eastern DRC and pledged assistance.

"We talked about the eastern part of his country," Bush said in comments from Washington reported by the Associated Press. "And he shared with me his strategy to make sure that the government's reach extends throughout the entire country, and that there is stability throughout the country."

The Bush administration has renewed its commitment to resolving the DRC problem in recent weeks, with Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer initiating direct contact with Nkunda and urging him to disarm some of his troops as a sign of good faith. U.S. involvement in the weekend negotiations in Nairobi are also a sign of boosted diplomatic engagement, particularly with respect to Rwanda, a close regional ally of the Bush administration.

"Any effort by the U.S. to settle the situation in Congo has to take into account Rwanda, because Rwanda is ultimately a major ally, a much-closer ally than the Congolese," said Bavier, noting that Washington is considering Kigali as the new home of its central military command post for Africa.

"The goal, as the U.S. sees it, is to get rid of Nkunda, so that the army can work on the [Congo-based Rwandan rebels], which is Rwanda's big problem."

Also preying heavily on the U.S. consciousness is the fledgling joint U.N.-AU mission in Sudan's western Darfur region, where the conflict has been termed a genocide and figures much more prominently in the global consciousness than DRC.

Responsible for one-quarter of the cost of the U.N. peacekeeping missions, the United States is trying to keep its costs in check in DRC, in light of the high price tag attached to an eventual operation in Darfur -- even if the U.S. financial outlays for both of the African missions are a drop in the bucket compared to its daily billion-dollar expenditures for the war in Iraq.

That need is part of the reason that Swing is due to be replaced -- possibly in time to meet the Dec. 1 deadline imposed on the Kabila government for its rebel disarmament plan. Set to assume the helm of MONUC is veteran Welsh diplomat Alan Doss, whose steely-eyed, velvet-gloved management of U.N. peacekeeping operations has helped settle a measure of controlled calm over West Africa following the ruinous, interrelated conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ivory Coast.

But even those thorny and intractable wars, which ranged over more than a decade and left hundreds of thousands dead, maimed, and brutalized, are outmatched by DRC, whose population alone is double that of the three West-African neighbors, combined.

The scale of Congo's humanitarian crisis alone gives pause: a death toll in the last decade of more than four million; currently 370,000 in the east displaced, with over a million people forced out of their homes in the last two years; and an epidemic of rape that is estimated to have victimized seven of every 10 women in the area.

According to Medecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), three in four of the rape cases [that] its specialists deal with worldwide are in eastern DRC, with gang rapes a regular occurrence, sexual slavery commonplace, and most rapes accompanied by "barbaric" acts of sexual assault with knives, clubs, or guns.

One women's-rights activist told the Guardian newspaper that in the villages that line the road from the provincial capital, Goma, to the main city, Bukavu, not one of the women has been spared from rape.

"Some of them were captured and taken into the forest for months, even two years. When they are released, some are in such bad condition that they die," Immaculee Birhaheka told the British daily.

Also worrisome are the sprawling tented camps that are housing upwards of 30,000 people each, which represents a sea change in how internally displaced people have been absorbed by populations.

In the past, explained Aya Shneerson, the head of the Goma sub-office for the World Food Program, the eastern farming villages have been able to house and feed those fleeing violence and mayhem. Now, the displaced population is so large, and encompasses so many different groups with different allegiances, that the camps are the only way to keep people relatively safe.

"People are tired, and fed up and getting very anxious and irritated, which one can understand, and camp situations, which are never easy and are easily manipulated, create very difficult environments," Shneerson told WPR by telephone from Goma. "It's a huge challenge to reach everybody, hard to pass all of the dividing lines and the combat lines, but that is our mandate, so no matter how challenging, we operate everywhere, and everywhere we see it is a very serious problem."

The situation is so bad that armed police officers are sent to protect food distribution sites, which last week resulted in a fatal shooting of a six-year-old child, after refugees protested against food distributions.

Another 11 civilians, as well as four police officers, were wounded when police opened fire on refugees in a town north of Goma, the provincial capital.

The difficulties in reaching all the population are compounded by the camps themselves, vectors both for violence and for disease. With the cholera season in full swing, extra care has to be taken both in the distribution of food and in the maintenance of people's ever-smaller spaces to live, cook, and wash.

"The population in this area is about 90 percent farmers, dependent on what they grow and very, very poor, with some people living on less than 30 cents per day," added Shneerson. "So [every time that] they need to go from one place to another, they lose their coping mechanisms. It's deceiving how lush and green it is here, because you would think that makes it easier. But really, we are moving backwards, not forward."

Lauren Gelfand is a freelance journalist and commentator with a special interest in African issues.