Chaos in Congo

Democratic Republic of Congo: Conflict between rebel forces and government troops leaves thousands dead and makes nearly 250,000 refugees.

THE Great Lakes region of Africa is once again on the brink of war. In the last week of October, the forces of the rebel warlord, Laurent Nkunda, breaking a short-lived truce, routed government troops in eastern Congo. General Nkundas forces were at the gates of the city of Goma at the end of the month.

The resulting chaos, for which both the government troops and the rebels are responsible, left in its wake more than 250,000 refugees. Some humanitarian agencies put the figure at two million. Thousands of people have already died in the fighting. A report from the conflict zone said that the rebels were using corpses to put up roadblocks. Women and children have been the worst hit. Horrific instances of looting and rape have been documented. Hunger stalks the land.

The presence of United Nations peacekeepers on the ground proved ineffectual. The international community is of the opinion that the U.N. is in need of a clearer mandate in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The U.N. has estimated that 100,000 refugees are beyond the reach of humanitarian agencies. On November 20, the U.N. Security Council belatedly took a decision to send 3,000 more troops in addition to the 17,000 peacekeepers on the ground. Indian and Pakistani troops are among the biggest contingents.

No details have been given about the countries that are willing to dispatch troops to the volatile region, but the U.N. has indicated that the force assembled will be one with more offensive capability. The United States and European countries, already bogged down in Afghanistan and in other parts of the world, have so far been reluctant to send troops to the region. Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has been named as the U.N.s special envoy to Congo. In the second week of November, he flew to eastern Congo to meet with Nkunda. He also held talks with Congolese President Joseph Kabila.

Nkunda has spoken out against the increase of U.N. military presence in eastern Congo. He has warned that such a move would result in an escalation in the fighting. Nkunda is known to have close ties with Paul Kagame, President of neighbouring Rwanda. According to U.N. reports, Rwandan troops were fighting alongside Nkundas Tutsi militia. U.N. observers have also said that artillery fire from Rwandan forces into Congo helped the Tutsi militias advance.

Nkunda was Kagames comrade-in-arms to reinstate Tutsi domination in Rwanda. The majority Hutus there have not yet come to terms with the changed realities on the ground. Remnants of the defeated Rwandan army, dominated by Hutus, had fled across the border to Congo. Hutus and Tutsis have been living across the border for generations now. But the aftermath of the civil wars in Rwanda and Burundi have polarised the communities in Congo too. Both the ethnic groups formed their own militias in the chaos that followed the collapse of the old regime.

The Hutu militia, strengthened by the influx of their compatriots from Rwanda, stick to the sectarian agenda responsible for the deaths of more than a million people in the Rwandan genocide of the early 1990s. Hutu militias, such as the Mai-Mai inside Congo, have sided with the central government of Kabila.

The ethnic Congolese Tutsi militia led by Nkundas National Congress for the Defence of the People gets support from the Rwandan government. Nkunda has claimed that his latest military assault was a preventive measure to stop Hutu insurgents in Congo from destabilising the government in Rwanda.

The Congolese and Rwandan Presidents met in Nairobi after the crisis in eastern Congo erupted. Kagame said that he would do his best to restore normalcy in the region. The U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Jendayi Frazer, also visited Kigali, the Rwandan capital, to persuade Kagame to lend a helping hand to stabilise the situation in Congo. Rwanda is one of the closest political and military allies of the U.S. on the African continent.

In the third week of November, Nkundas forces started withdrawing from the areas they captured. The media-friendly warlord is ambivalent about his goals. He says negotiations are the only way to stop the conflict but at the same time reiterates that the government of Kabila is corrupt and ineffectual and deserves to be overthrown.

In early November, he threatened to march all the way to the capital, Kinshasa, and topple the government. Though most commentators characterised the threat as fanciful, it was a Tutsi-led invasion force that toppled the government of Mobutu Sese Seko and installed Laurent Kabila, the father of the current President, in power in 1997.

Nkunda has so far refused to recognise Joseph Kabila as the legitimate President of the Republic despite his electoral victory two years ago. International observers certified that the elections of 2006 were generally free and fair. Kabila won in a run-off. Nkunda now wants to muzzle his way to power by using military force. Despite persistent demands, Kabila has refused to enter into direct talks with the rebel warlord. A face-to-face meeting will only give political credibility to Nkundas cause.

In 2004, Nkunda fought a bloody battle to capture the town of Bukavu in the east. An international warrant for war crimes was issued against him. But President Kabila, in a bid to heal old wounds, has tried to close the book on that civil war. He has said that the warrant has expired.

In the third week of November, Rose Kabuye, a close aide of Kagame, was arrested while on an official trip with the President to Germany. The German authorities were acting on a French arrest warrant. Kabuye has been accused of complicity in the shooting down of the plane carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi in April 1994. That incident triggered the holocaust in Rwanda. Its impact is still being felt in eastern Congo where the Tutsi and Hutu militias are carrying out a proxy war.

Nkunda, like Kabuye, is surely on a wanted list somewhere. There are reports that his militia is forcibly inducting child soldiers.

Kabila has other options despite the dismal performance of his army in eastern Congo. His political and military allies Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia have indicated that their armies would step in again if the Tutsi militia does not lift its siege and revert to a ceasefire. There are reports that the Angolan and Zimbabwean troops are already deployed inside Congo. The influential Southern African Development Community (SADC), of which Congo is a member, has given its strong backing to the beleaguered government in Kinshasa.

In the last round of bloodletting, which began in 1998 and lasted for over six years, more than six million people were killed. That round of fighting, which has been described as the First World War of Africa, drew outside powers to the region. It was the intervention of forces from Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia which prevented the DRC from disintegrating and its riches falling into the hands of warlords. Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda had sided with the rebels. Rwanda and Uganda later fell out during the mad scramble for the control of the mineral riches of the country.

Eastern Congo still continues to be coveted by outside forces. The area contains huge deposits of precious minerals such as cassiterite (tin ore) and coltan. As much as 10 per cent of the global copper reserves are in Congo. Gold and diamond are plentiful. The region is also a very fertile one endowed with rich volcanic soil. Some Indian and Pakistani peacekeepers in Congo have been caught indulging in gold smuggling. A spokesman for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group has said that Nkunda is backed by Rwandan businessmen so that they can continue to exploit the mines of North Kivu.

There is already a competition on between the West and China for access to the vast and varied mineral wealth of the country. One of the aims of the rebel Tutsi leader is to control the wealth of eastern Congo. With this in view he is trying to cosy up to the West.

Nkunda recently lashed out against China, accusing it of monopolising the resources in the region. His spokesman demanded a renegotiation of the contracts signed with China. China has secured a strong foothold in Congo, and Africa in general, by initially helping out in infrastructural development. It has given Congo $8 billion for infrastructure development.

Jendayi Frazer, during her recent talks with Kabila, also reportedly raised the issue of mining contracts being awarded to China. The Congolese government had renegotiated many important contracts and given them to Chinese companies, which offered more favourable terms. Western companies have been exploiting Congo without giving anything worthwhile in return.

The U.N. has named international corporations such as Anglo American, Standard Chartered, De Beers and a hundred other companies as responsible for fanning the war in Congo. Rich countries have also started targeting Africa for food security. The government of Madagascar recently signed a deal with a South Korean company whereby half of its arable land has been given on long lease. The food produced on the land will be exclusively for the Korean market.

The DRC continues to be the most resource-rich country in the world, despite more than a century of exploitation by the West. It was King Leopold of Belgium who first decreed that the vast territory, which the European powers had ceded to his country at the end of the 19th century, was his personal property. November 2008 marks the 100th anniversary of Congos conversion to a Belgian colony. This happened after the world came to know of the terrible exploitation the king and his officials had resorted to.

Congolese working in plantations and mines toiled hard so that the king could line his pockets. The punishment meted out to the natives in those days for not meeting the tough production quotas was to witness the hands of their children being cut off.

There has been no respite for the Congolese people even after colonial rule ended. The colonialists manipulated the transfer of power in such a way that Congo has had very few years of peace and prosperity.

The Cold War was the pretext which the West used to retain its grip on the mineral resources of the country. In the process, it allowed a kleptocrat, Mobutu Sese Seko, to run the country into the ground. At the end of his rule in the mid-1990s, the country did not have a single functioning road or railroad connecting the capital to the vast hinterland. Even the steam boats, which used to ply up and down the mighty Congo river, had ceased operations.