FDLR Post Taken

Radio Okapi is reporting that the Rwandan army seized Munzenze, an important FDLR base located near Mabenga, in Virungu National Park, on Saturday. They also captured or killed several FDLR soldiers in the region. Other FDLR surrendered to MONUC.



[Map Credit: Radio Okapi]

Local Conflicts Need Greater international Attention

Columbia University professor Severine Autesserre said in a presentation at the Wilson Center on Thursday that the international community had failed to give sufficient attention to local sources of the conflicts in the DR Congo. By focusing on the national and regional levels of the war, international mediators have excluded the critical dynamic of local conflicts and their potential for reigniting larger conflicts.

These local conflicts are essential to understanding the region, as most of the violence since 2003 has taken place at the local level, disconnected from the national and regional sources of the violence. These conflicts revolve around land and power, and often the result of power struggles between contenders for traditional chieftainships or local administrative posts. They also concern access to local mining sites.

Autesserre contrasted the situation in Congo with the situation in Kenya after the flawed electoral process there last year, where the outbreak of violence prompted numerous actors to fund local mediation efforts between opposing ethnic groups in neighborhoods troubled by violence. She suggested there might be several reasons international mediators have ignored the local roots of the DRC's conflicts: 1) they see the Congo as a post-conflict situation; 2) they may believe that a certain level of violence is normal for the region; 3) they tend to have a professional myopia to low-level conflicts, in favor of "larger" issues; 4) they put all of their effort into holding elections, which they credited with being able to resolve more problems than they are in fact capable of solving.

Although I agree with Autesserre that local-level conflicts are a vitally important element of the region's dynamics and must be addressed, I remain skeptical of her thesis that resolving these conflicts is the key to bringing peace to the region. Conflict is not the same as war. Conflict is inherent in the human condition, and we do not have to resolve all the conflicts in eastern Congo to achieve peace. Rather, we need to create--or nurture, or simply impose--an environment in which these conflicts are managed, even if imperfectly, through peaceful means. That can only come about if there is one dominant actor in place with a legitimate monopoly on the use of force--a state, in other words, in full control of its territory. That is why I believe, following Anthony Gambino, that the priority in the short term is to strengthen MONUC so that it can function as the de facto state in eastern DRC, while at the same time working on the long-term project of reforming the government and rebuilding a competent, law-abiding military.

Massacres, Sexual Abuse, and Ebola

OCHA, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, reports that the LRA has massacred 189 people in northeast Congo over the past three days: 40 in Faradje district, 89 around Doruma and 60 in the Gurba area. The LRA is fleeing a Uganda-led offensive aimed at eliminating Joseph Kony, the LRA's enigmatic leader. (It is not clear if these numbers include the 45 reportedly hacked to death in a church in Doruma.) This means that the LRA are spread over an extensive region in northeast Congo, as this google earth screen grab shows. OCHA's report is here. Details: The LRA are said to currently occupy seven villages near Doruma. During their assault on Faradje, the LRA kidnapped approximately 20 children and burned 120 homes. They then fled toward Nagoro and Aba. The entire population of Faradje, some 30,000 people, is said to have fled to Tadu and Kpodo. MONUC condemned the massacre, and transported a company of Congolese soldiers to the town.

Meanwhile, MSF reports that 11 people have died in a recent outbreak of Ebola in Mweka, in Kasai Occidental and said another 24 are feared infected. It is the first Ebola outbreak in Africa since February and the fourth in DR Congo since 1976. Update: This report says 92 are feared infected.

And MONUC says it is investigating allegations of sexual abuse of minors by its peacekeeping troops posted in the Kivus.

Other than that, how was your Christmas?

Stars to the Rescue

Ben Affleck has launched an emergency appeal for humanitarian relief in eastern DRC under the auspices of the UNHCR. Called Gimme Shelter, the appeal features an MTV-like video of refugees in North Kivu accompanied by Gimme Shelter, the Mick Jagger song. The campaign hopes to raise money for emergency assistance kits that contain sleeping bags, thermal blankets, mosquito nets, and so on.

It is not clear to me that UNHCR lacks the funds to pay for basic humanitarian supplies in eastern Congo. But the larger objection, as so often in these cases, is that focusing on the humanitarian side of the problem is a case of treating the symptom, rather than the disease. It's a palliative rather than a cure.

Mia Farrow also visited the Congo recently, in an effort to draw attention to the violence there, especially the raping of women. Here is an excerpt of her interview on BBC Radio.

It's a shame that neither Farrow nor Affleck are using their star power to call for an EU force to intervene in the DRC. Celebrities seem reluctant to call for political solutions as opposed to humanitarian ones. At the moment, however, an EU force seems to me to be the one possibility that could have an immediate impact on the ground. (Surely Carla Bruni would take a call from Mick Jagger . . .)

Was MONUC Involved?

Uganda's Daily Monitor says that support for operation Lightining Thunder came from all sides--including MONUC: "Monuc forces pledged medical, food and other logistics for the foot soldiers of the United Front against Kony and his commanders."

Another excellent article by a Ugandan newspaper, by the way.

Ex-US Official: Congo Can Trade Its Way out of War

Herman Cohen, a former assistant secretary of state for Africa under George Bush (41), proposes in today's New York Times that incoming president Obama appoint a special negotiator to develop an economic common market encompassing Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The agreement would allow the free movement of people and trade, and give Rwandan businesses continued access to Congolese minerals and forests, in return for payment of royalties and taxes to the Congolese government. Cohen says that for most Rwandan businesses, those payments would be offset by increased revenues.

People familiar with the history of American ex-officials selling their influence in the region are right to be wary of Cohen, who has worked as a lobbyist on behalf of such charming fellows as Laurent Kabila, Omar Bongo, Robert Mugabe, and even Charles Taylor. But the idea isn't entirely meretricious. Essentially, it offers the various combatants the opportunity to engage in a formal, regulated economy in return for putting down their arms. The immediate problem, of course, is that at the moment there's no power in place capable of pacifying opposing forces and regulating the economy. No one's going to give up their guns without a guarantee that the other sides have too. The other problem is that you don't necessarily want to reward the guys who have taken up arms by entrenching their economic gains.

I have for some years now urged that an amplified Monuc take on direct responsibility for the mining operations in eastern Congo. There are a limited number of highly productive mines and a limited number of airfields and roads in the region. Control these, and you eliminate the militias' source of income. You also eliminate the main reason everyone's at each other's throat. But I've never had the means and the expertise to fully develop this idea, and whenever I've suggested it to Monuc representatives they've always been unresponsive.

MONUC: We're Doing All We Can

With European leaders like Nicholas Sarkozy suggesting that Monuc's forces, properly supplemented, are enough to bring peace to eastern Congo, Monuc yesterday published a press release saying that more than 90 percent of its troops are deployed in the east.

Of the 17,421 peacekeepers constituting its total strength, 6,139 are stationed in insecurity-plagued North Kivu province, or 8 out of a total of 17 battalions. Between 800 and 1,000 troops are deployed in Goma, the provincial capital.

3,513 peacekeepers are deployed in South Kivu, while another 3,769 are operational in Ituri, one of the most volatile regions. The remainder of the Force is scattered across the western part of the DRC, including the Congolese capital, Kinshasa.

MONUC Force Commander, General Babacar Gaye, said that the peacekeepers provide "anchoring points" where people in difficulty can gather to ask for assitance. But he acknowledged that the size of the terrain can make the force seem inadequate to the challenge of protecting everybody.

DR Congo's Economy in Free Fall

The Central Bank announced on Friday that the DR Congo's economy shrunk by 2.7 percent from July thru October this year, and revised the anticipated annual growth rate downward from 11 percent to 5.9 percent.

The decline is largely due to the slump in international commodity prices. Copper has fallen by 75 percent from its high , diamonds have fallen by 40 percent, and cobalt is now worth only a fifth of what it was worth earlier this year.

Victor Kasongo, the DRC's deputy minister of mines, says that he expects a 30 to 40 percent decline in the production of copper in 2009, to 365,000 tons. Cobalt production will be cut in half, to 32,000 tons.

The impacts of this decline are visible everywhere. Forty-five of 75 copper and cobalt facilities in Katanga have shut down this year. Big firms like Katanga mining and Anvil Mining have shuttered their operations.

Katanga's minister of mines Barthélemy Mumba Gama says that the closure has set about a chain reaction, with restaurants, stores, and even the airport almost completely empty. "People are starting to sell their household goods, develop small, subsistence gardens, and the number of beggars has shot up," said Gama.

The same is true in Kasai Orientale, where MIBA, the giant state-run diamond company, has also closed down, having simply run out of cash. The firm has been mismanaged for ages. It's been used as a cash cow to pay for the war in the east, its infrastructure has never been maintained and is now obsolete and inefficient, payments on its loans are overdue, and bankers were simply unwilling to front it any more cash.

The downturn has MONUC worried. It reports that 52 of the 56 companies operating in Katanga have slowed down their operations, with the prospect of shuttering them entirely. MONUC is organizing "an in depth evaluation of the situation, its impact on the security of the population and on the peaceful coexistence of the communities in the province."