Clinton Advocates The Right Things In Congo

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo--particularly her stop in Goma--was a tremendous step toward bringing an end to the violence that keeps that nation on its knees. Not only did her presence draw renewed attention to the epidemic of sexual violence that has victimized hundreds of thousands of Congolese women, children, and even men, but the very specific steps she advocated are exactly the ones I believe need to be taken to bring peace to the DRC. What's more, she pledged specific actions (and money) from the U.S. to move the process along.

During her tour of Magunga Camp, where 18,000 displaced people live in crowded temporary housing after being uprooted by the fighting that continues in the eastern provinces, Clinton pledged $17 million in American aid to help fight the gang rape and sexual mutilation that have destroyed so many lives in the region. At least $10 million will go toward training and equipping doctors to treat the victims of attacks. Some funds will also be used for prevention.

"We believe there should be no impunity for the sexual and gender-based violence committed by so many — that there must be arrests and prosecutions and punishment," she said during a press conference.

Clinton said that the U.S. supports military efforts to pacify insurgents who continue to victimize the population in order to control valuable mineral resources in the region. While acknowledging that civilians suffer from military action, Clinton was very clear in her advocacy of firm action against the perpetrators. Not unsurprisingly, she stopped short of offering U.S. troops to support the effort. She did, however, urge the United Nations to intensify its efforts to defeat the FDLR and other militias.

The Secretary of State pulled no punches when it came to the Congolese army, either. She bluntly said that Congolese soldiers and commanders need to be held accountable for their abuses of civilians as well. Congolese forces have repeatedly been reported to have raped and brutalized villagers in an effort to extort money and supplies from them. Clinton laid much of the blame for that at the feet of the government:

"We believe that a disciplined, paid army is a more effective fighting force. We believe that more can be done to protect civilians while you are trying to kill and capture insurgents."

Clinton also said the U.S. will send a team of legal, financial, and other experts to come up with specific recommendations for overcoming Congo's problems with corruption. She said Congolese President Joseph Kabila accepted that offer during their meeting in Goma.

I found it particularly refreshing that Clinton's remarks went far beyond the usual hand wringing and finger pointing that characterize so much of the rhetoric surrounding the situation in the DRC. She identified the problem (conflict-driven sexual violence), pinpointed its cause (the fight over control of the Congo's mineral wealth), and offered specific, deliverable actions that will help solve it. Are the simple steps she advocated a silver bullet? No, but that's exactly why they stand a chance to make a difference.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo.

New Congo Accords

A milestone on the road to peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been reached with the signing of an agreement this week beween the Congolese government and the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP). Signatories to the agreement also included other armed groups in North and South Kivu.

Among the major provisions of the pact is one that compels the CNDP to become a political party in the DRC and give up use of its armed force as a policy tool. It had been previously announced that CNDP fighters were to be integrated into the Congolese army, the FARDC. Both these solutions have been used previously by Kabila's government with other armed groups, particularly during the election of 2006. The result was a coalition government and an army noted for its lack of direction and discipline. Still, hope springs eternal.

The agreement also calls for the DRC government to grant amnesty to former rebel fighters who joined the CNDP after 2003. Hundreds of CNDP soliders who have been captured are to be released.

Fighting last fall between the government and the rebels, then led by renegade General Laurent Nkunda, displaced hundreds of thousands in the eastern DRC. Nkunda was arrested in Rwanda earlier this year and the CNDP came under new military leadership. Nkunda is currently under house arrest in Rwanda but no announcement has been made about his possible extraditiion to Congo, which has charged him with war crimes.

International and regional cooperation minister Raymond Tshibanda signed the agreement for the Congolese government, while new CNDP chief Desire Kamanzi signed for the rebels, at a ceremony in the city of Goma. Goma was nearly captured by the CNDP during last fall's campaign. Also present were Nigeria's former president Olusegun Obasanjo, who in recent months acted as a mediator between the two sides, and Alan Doss, head of the UN mission to the DRC.

While the peace agreement was being signed, fighting continues in the Kivus between the FARDC and the FDLR, the Hutu group that was the supposed object of CNDP operations. Since the Rwandan army withdrew from the DRC, FDLR units have returned to areas they previously controlled in an effort to win them back with the same tactics of terror rape, pillage, and murder of civilians they've used for years.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo.

Chicago Reader Calls For Self-Defense

My reader in Chicago raises a question I hear frequently when speaking to various groups about attacks on non-combatants in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It's one that's often posed whenever civlians are preyed upon by thugs:

I can't understand why the people of the DRC don't fight back. Sure, the soldiers are well-armed, but from what I've read, the "militias" are untrained or minimally trained, very small, maybe 1,000 strong, and travel in "battallions" of 10-20 men, making them significantly outnumbered by their victims. I have a hard time believing that an entire refugee camp couldn't make homemade weapons, such as spears, to at least deter attacks. Soldiers might have second thoughts about raiding a village if they knew they would be resisted by a large number of angry people. My understanding is that flight and evasion are the only methods of self-defense employed by the people. I heard on NPR that the DRC may be the only place in the world where more fighting would actually be an improvement.

Here is my response:

You may have seen this story by now, but there was recently a report from Bangadi, a village where raiders from the Lords Resistance Army was chased away by citizen action much like you describe.

The tale is both encouraging and frightening. On the one hand, of course, we cheer on the underdogs who rose up to protect themselves against some truly vicious criminals, taking the law into their own hands in a part of the world where protection by the lawful authorities is non-existent. The flip side is that self-protection often leads to vigilantism or worse. Many of the "Mai-Mai" militias that are often identified as rebels actually began as self-protection forces but eventually morphed into criminal gangs. When there is no rule of law, violence often begets violence and nobody wins.

The Congolese army (FARDC) hasn't been an effective peace keeping force, which is the main reason 17,000 UN troops are in the country. But one of the great mysteries of the current situation in the eastern provinces is why UN forces often seem so reluctant (or unable) to intervene when civilians are threatened by armed groups. There have been numerous reported instances when civilian massacres occurred practically within sight of UN encampments but the blue helmets failed to act. There is no question that they are stretched thin, operating in difficult terrain, etc., but their performance record is dismal nonetheless.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo.

Congo, Rwanda, Uganda: Speculation & Opinion

How can three countries with such a history of cross-border conflict suddenly become fast friends? I'm not necessarily objecting to the easing of tensions and growing rapprochement between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, and Uganda--just about any move with the potential to bring peace to Congo is a good thing in my book--but I do have some questions about why it's happening. Like the journalist that I am, I seldom take pronouncements by public officials at face value. And like the chess player that I also am, I try to look a few moves ahead.

Antagonism between the three countries is the historical norm, so the recent change in the tenor of their relationship is puzzling. Uganda and Rwanda both invaded Congo twice in the last 15 years or so. They both directly participated in the overthrow of two of the last three governments, including that of Laurent Kabila, father of current DRC President Joseph Kabila. Why, then, would Kabila invite his two belligerent neighbors to send their armies into the DRC? I've offered some thoughts previously, but now I'd like to add another layer to my guesswork.

First, a little background about the two most recent military actions that prompt my speculation.

In mid-December, The Ugandans joined with the FARDC (the Congolese army) and the South Sudanese in an abortive attempt to kill or capture Joseph Kony, whose rebel group, the Lords Resistance Army, has been carrying on its fight against Yoweri Museveni's government for the last several years from bases in Congo. The operation, which was mounted with logistical and strategic backing from U.S. military advisers, proved to be a debacle, with 900 Congolese civilians murdered, thousands more raped and kidnapped, and 85,000 driven from their homes by Kony's gangsters in retribution. A handful of LRA officers have been captured and a few dozen soldiers killed, but the operation has been a grand failure otherwise.

The Ugandans promised to leave Congolese soil by the end of February, then didn't. The latest announcement calls for a departure by the end of this month, even though Kony remains at large and his troops, though scattered, continue to terrorize the population.

In the meantime, Kabila met with Museveni to discuss improved relations between the two countries. Not revealed in the public announcements was any decision about how oil reserves on the border between the two countries are going to be divided. Oil has long been a bone of contention between the two nations. When I was in the region researching Heart of Diamonds in 2007, shots were fired over the development of those reserves.

The second part of the mystery was Kabila's highly unpopular invitation to Paul Kagame to send Rwandan troops into North Kivu in pursuit of the FDLR, the Hutu Interahamwe rebels who have terrorized the region since fleeing there after the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Strangely enough, the only significant accomplishment of that joint operation was the arrest of Tutsi rebel warlord Laurent Nkunda, who was detained as he traveled in Rwanda not long after it started. His troops, the CNDP, are being integrated into the Congolese army under the command of indicted war criminal Bosco Ntaganda.

The FDLR? They scattered into the same hills where they have operated with impunity for over a decade. The Rwandan army went home to enjoy their victory parade (unlike the Ugandans), but the FDLR returned and started raping and murdering civilians they accuse of co-operating with the Rwandans.

So what has been accomplished? For the civilians, not much. They are still hugely at risk in the conflict zones. Uganda strengthened its influence in the northern DRC while Rwanda did the same in the Kivus. The DRC got rid of Laurent Nkunda and co-opted the CNDP, at least on paper.

Joseph Kabila may have gained something else, though, and this is where my speculative instinct takes over. The next DRC Presidential election is to be held in 2011. My guess? Kabila is building personal ties with Uganda and Rwanda to back his candidacy when the time comes. In a truly dark scenario, he also my be laying the groundwork for their military intervention in the event that his re-election attempt fails.

As disturbing as such a scenario may be, let me add another layer. Kabila's budding alliances with Uganda and Rwanda also open him to support from their biggest backer, the United States. The potential has already been seen in the American support for the Ugandan operation, with intelligence, strategic advice, communications gear, and a reported $1 million in fuel supplied by the U.S. While American involvement in the Rwandan campaign hasn't been revealed, there is no secret about the U.S. use of Rwanda as a military staging area for humanitarian relief efforts (so far) for Darfur. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to see an expansion of U.S. military involvement in the DRC.

Now let me offend more than a few people.

Putting aside the pros and cons of Joseph Kabila's past and future performance as President and the possible influence these alliances might have on his re-election, it is conceivable that this may be the path to peace in the eastern DRC. It's obvious the Congolese army isn't capable of bringing calm to the region; the United Nations has proven to be much less than effective for numerous reasons; and other help from outside, particularly the EU and AU, just isn't going to happen. If six million dead aren't enough to bring the rest of the world to Congo's aid, what is?

In other words, a regional solution backed by the United States might be the only viable alternative. The motives of ALL the players would be suspect, but the results might be worth it. IF peace can be brought to the country, the Congo's economic and social development can take place. IF that happens with full transparency, truly competitive bidding, and carefully monitored performance contracts, the DRC can fully profit from its natural wealth and begin to achieve its full potential.

A stretch? Certainly, but it may be the only pragmatic solution.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo.