Over the
last so many months, the international community has been grappling
with the crisis in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Human rights groups and the United Nations “Panel of Experts” have
presented the problem as one of a Tutsi-led rebel group, M23, wreaking
havoc in that country. The mass media sings this chorus. The UN
“experts” claim that M23 are a proxy of the government of Rwanda. In a
second leaked report, the UN panel has added Uganda among the sponsors
of M23.
Anyone following the news would easily be tempted to think that if M23 were crushed today, DRC would become a stable country. Yet M23 is not the only militia rebelling against Kinshasa. There are over 20 rebel movements against the government of President Joseph Kabila. These misrepresentations may have played to the political advantage of the governing elites in Kinshasa and their allies elsewhere. However, they undermine an internal search for an enduring solution to the problems of the country.
M23 and
the myriad militias and rebel groups are not a cause but a consequence
of the crisis of the state in DRC even though they tend to accentuate
it. The real cause is the deeper malaise that has eaten the social
fabric of the Congolese state. This is largely manifested in the
inability of the state to exercise effective control over its vast
territory. The absence of even rudimentary infrastructure for
administrative and security functions over most of the country is what
has prompted the emergence of ethnic-based militias. In fact, these
militias fill the vacuum of an absentee state by providing basic
administration and security even though imperfectly.
It may be
politically convenient for elites in Kinshasa to bury their heads in
the sand and blame their country’s woes on meddlesome neighbors. It is
also appealing for human rights groups and mass media to present the
problem of Congo as one of external interference. But seeking external
scapegoats is not a formula for success. For those interested in
helping Congo out of its crisis, the first objective should be to help
Kinshasa build a functional state; a state that can perform basic tasks
like ensuring law and order and the protection of individual life and
property. In this endeavor, Congo would need the help of Uganda, Rwanda
and its other neighbours.
Without
rebuilding the capabilities of the Congolese state, there is very
little diplomatic engineering and political blame-game that can stop
widespread atrocities against innocent civilians. Indeed, the main cause
of atrocities in most of Congo is the lack of discipline among the
armed forces. This is partly because the army in Congo is a collection
of many militias. The central government often negotiates a truce with a
militia controlling a given territory and integrates them into its
army. But such agreements (as the one with the M23) have proved tenuous
because Kinshasa often fails to keep its part of the bargain. And in
mineral rich regions, the militias may do better retaining territorial
control than ceding power to Kinshasa. Thus, these alliances keep
changing, thereby causing uncertainty and violence.
The
mistake of international actors involved in Congo has been to choose a
side and support an entrenched yet morally indefensible position i.e.
treating the government as innocent and the rebels as murderous. M23
occupies a small territory that is not even one hundredth of the
territory of that large country. A casual observer may be misled to
think that most of DRC is stable and that atrocities are happening only
in the country’s eastern region. Yet across the entire nation of Congo,
atrocities abound –and life reechoes the words of Thomas Hobbes as
being miserable, nasty, brutish and short.
The
Congolese army is a poorly trained, poorly paid and undisciplined. It
lives off robbing, pillaging, terrorising and raping its own citizens.
This partly explains why ethnic militias are preferred by local
communities for, they to provide security where the national army
promotes insecurity. When Kampala deployed its army in the eastern DRC
town of Dungu in 2008, Congolese citizens were happy to have Ugandan
troops protect them against their own army. In spite of this local need,
the political representatives in Kinshasa were denouncing UPDF
presence in the area. This is a clear sign that politicians, even when
elected, may possess and even pursue interests at odds with the needs
and demands of their own constituents. That is why the focus on M23 as
the cause of atrocities is unwise and unhelpful.
To
resolve the problems of Congo needs a much more skilled politician – a
leader who will understand that the problems of his country are largely
domestically generated and the solution is not human rights advocacy.
He will have to examine the internal sources of tension and place the
search for internal political accommodation above the need to please
poorly informed, albeit genuinely motivated outsiders. In doing this,
that leader will need to draw lessons from Rwanda, Uganda, Mozambique
and South Africa.
After the
1994 genocide in Rwanda, Paul Kagame recognised that healing the
country’s wounds; stabilising its political dispensation and seeking
social reconciliation would require working with individuals and groups
with whom he disagreed. This meant accommodating individuals accused of
complicity in the genocide but whose political collaboration was
necessary to achieve a modicum of political accommodation. This is also
the approach employed by Nelson Mandela in South Africa in 1994. He
avoided seeking to prosecute people for the crimes of apartheid but
instead involve them in a process of political reconciliation. Uganda
and Mozambique have implemented similar variants of this strategy to
achieve political consolidation and stability.
Of course
Kabila has tried it before with success. And the times when he did the
above and signed agreements with his adversaries, Kabila brought
considerable peace and stability to his country. Denouncing M23 and
other militias as terrorists and criminals when his army is not strong
enough to defend the institutional integrity of the state is not a
formula for success. It may win him sympathy and support from many
outsiders with an eye on his country’s minerals or an axe to grind with
Rwanda or Uganda. But it will not give him a durable solution for his
country.
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