Congo-Kinshasa: UN Wants to Make War in Congo?
By Jean-Paul Kimonyo, 18 January 2013
Analysis
The UN in the DRC is stabilizing the predatory Congolese state and part of
the failure of the stabilization strategy is due to the insecurity stemming
from conflicts between communities revolving around land, citizenship,
control of space and the externalization of neighbouring instability
The sequence of events makes the immediate causes prompting the M23
rebellion quite clear. It all really started in February 2012 with the
flawed attempt by some Western countries to have Bosco Ntaganda arrested as
a condition for the recognition of Kabila as president after the messy and,
deemed by many, fraudulent November 2011 elections.[1]
With this political backing, instead of just moving Ntaganda out of the
picture, the Congolese army, the FARDC, used that opportunity to mount an
assault against most of ex-CNDP commanders in South Kivu in the last week of
March 2012 - prompting the first defections that would lead to the creation
of the M23 - before doing the same in North Kivu ten days later. Their
objective: make the ex-CNDP commanders lose their influence in the
Kivu-region by deploying them outside the Kivu region, a move that would
have left Rwandophone communities vulnerable to attacks notably from the
genocidal Rwandan rebel forces, the FDLR.
DEFFECTIVE NARRATIVES?
A group of non-state actors, institutions and advocacy specialists with deep
seated hostility towards Rwanda, have been able to orient the conversation
about the crisis by creating a narrative blaming Rwanda for the creation of
the M23 and for ultimate responsibility in the conflict and successfully
selling it to sympathetic journalists.
The Congolese government, whose responsibility in the crisis was exonerated
by the narrative, draped itself in this unexpectedly boosted legitimacy and
refused to listen to its grumbling citizens evocating foreign interference
leading to renewed military confrontation and more hardships for hundreds of
thousands of people.
The damage caused by this narrative is by no means over yet. By ignoring the
real causes of the conflict, the breakdown of the 23 March 2009 precarious,
and yes, imperfect peace deal with far from perfect ex-CNDP partners and by
advocating for militarized solutions, the international community is
exposing eastern Congo and the wider region to even more violence and
hardships with no sight of where this could end up.
Undermining the Kampala negotiations process between the M23 and the
government, militaristic calls for the MONUSCO soldiers 'to do what there
are supposed to' trying to supersede the more arbitral approach of the
regional neutral force are just a new stage in the process which in the
first place led up to the renewed violent stalemate in eastern Congo. Why
then do so many people believe in this M23/Rwanda narrative and what does it
conceal?
CONGO'S DANGEROUS TALES
Surprisingly prescient, Severine Austesserre a Columbia University Congo
researcher explains in February 2012, before the outbreak of the crisis, the
dire consequences of 'Dangerous Tales' in Congo and the luring power of
these simplified narratives.[2] A narrative is a story that people create to
make sense of their lives and environments.
It helps shape the way we perceive the world and thus orients how we act
upon our environment. Narratives have frames that shape what counts as a
problem and what does not, they authorize specific practices and policies
while precluding others. Over time, the narrative and the practices they
authorize come to be taken as natural, granted, and the only conceivable
ones.
Posing a well-meaning disposition from those promoting central narratives
she identifies in Congo in spite of their detrimental, unintended,
consequences, Austessere explains that simple narratives serve many in that
country. Media outlets need to find a story that their audience can easily
understand and remember and that fits in a few pages. Desk officers and
advisors at headquarters in foreign and defence ministries, face a similar
challenge for internal bureaucratic reasons.
Aid organizations and advocacy agencies use the simplified narrative to
raise funds for their programs or to mobilize followers. Fundraising and
advocacy efforts succeed best when they put forward a simple narrative, and
the story is most likely to resonate with its target audience if it includes
well-defined 'good' and 'evil' individuals, or clear-cut perpetrators and
victims. In the case of the oversized UN peace mission in Congo, with 17,000
personnel and costing annually 1.4 billion, I would add that it also needs
to justify its existence.
The Columbia University researcher asserts that the need to find a simple
narrative is all the more important in the case of the Congo given that
policy makers and the general public usually perceive the conflict there as
extremely complex and intractable. Simple narratives help greatly: they
identify salient issues, dictate urgent action, and help determine who is
worth supporting and who should be challenged.
Austessere's article didn't refer to the 'Rwanda-creator-of-the-M23'
narrative but her argument is nonetheless very useful to understand its
popularity. Transposing her conceptual framework to the M23 crisis, I would
say that this framework helps explain why so many people and institutions
are conveniently buying into this narrative. But where I would differ is
when assuming the neutrality or goodwill of those at the fore formulating
this M23/Rwanda dangerous tale as if they choose almost randomly the 'good'
and the 'villain'.
When Steve Hege, former coordinator of the UN Group of Experts, the chief
accuser of Rwanda for the Congo's crisis, warmly writes in a 2009 personal
article that the FDL must be viewed in light of the regional history of
armed rebellions formed by refugees and/or political exiles who have
eventually taken power back from undemocratic regimes' [3], it is rather
difficult to believe in his neutrality.
Justification of Hege's expression of empathy towards the FDLR in spite of
the horrendous crimes they are continuing to commit against the Congolese
population and the role of its core leadership in the 1994 genocide in
Rwanda is hard to grasp.
In May 2008, a few months before Hege's article, Chris McGreal, journalist
at the UK based Guardian, reported from an FDLR camp a fourteen-year-old
combatant telling him that he must kill 'as many Tutsi as possible', merely
repeating what he had been taught. [4] Because of this, usually people do
not empathize with the FDLR as much as they resent Rwanda. Hege's
anti-Rwanda bias can maybe also be explained by his closeness to some
retrograde Christian NGOs which supported the former Rwandan regime and
after the genocide ended up on the wrong side of history.
Human Rights Watch is another prominent promoter of the M23/Rwanda
narrative. Believing in Human Rights Watch's impartiality, would not only be
naïve but also almost out of place considering the long 'Human Rights
Watch's show-no-mercy approach to Rwanda' [5]. It thus recently came as no
surprise to learn that the organization paid for witnesses to accuse Rwanda
of helping M23, euphemistically calling it 'travel costs.'[6]
The smoke screen put up by these politicized non state actors on the crisis
conveniently conceals what many Congolese call 'the absurdity of the
situation in Congo' where the international community keeps spending
billions and ends up sowing the seeds of confusion and of more violence by
siding with a predatory regime. Here again, some more detached researchers,
untied to Congo's 'Dangerous Tales' help by shedding some light in this
murky situation.[7]
STABILIZING PREDATION
A widely -and wrongly in the case of least developed countries - held
assumption in the international community is that in post-conflict
situations peace-building and democratization are virtually synonymous;
creating the conditions for the one does so for both, the two processes will
be reciprocal and mutually supportive.[8] On that basis, international
actors assumed that the landmark 2006 first democratic elections in Congo
ending ten years of conflict would produce a stakeholder in building a
comprehensive peace throughout the country and particularly in the East.
As a consequence, the role of the UN peace-keeping mission MONUC, the main
vehicle for the international engagement in the Congo peace process, had to
change. The urgency of a modified role for the UN mission became more
salient when, by end of 2006, president Kabila started muttering that the
MONUC should begin to redraw.
The price for the continued presence of the huge UN mission was to change
course and transform itself from a peacekeeping mission to a stabilization
one, entailing an unconditional support to president Kabila government. The
concept of stabilization relates to the pursuit by powerful international
actors of a security imperative for peace-building purposes by supporting a
particular political order militarily if deemed necessary. The concept
emerged from post 9/11 Western interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq to
address weak governance, endemic instability and violent conflict in these
countries.
The problem is that since 2006 the Congo state never reformed its ways and
remained largely predatory, behaving like the warring faction it used to be,
especially in eastern Congo as demonstrated by the latest crisis.
'In the absence of meaningful reform, stabilization has been implemented in
a political environment in which governance is structured around similar
power dynamics to those which existed at the peak of the Congolese conflict.
These dynamics are defined by a lack of accountable leadership at both local
and national level, and the extreme centralization of formal power in
Kinshasa.(...) [T]he problems of social and political exclusion are at the
core of the Congo's instability and continue to inflame tensions at the
local level, particularly over land and ethnicity.'[9]
The international community stabilization policy in Congo started in 2008
but became more prominent in 2010 when the UN mission 'was relabelled
MONUSCO [United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo], which through its emphasis on stabilization, aligned
the UN even more closely and compromisingly with the Congolese state.'[10]
The stabilization policy operationalized through the International Security
and Stabilization Support Strategy (ISSSS) with five objectives: to improve
security by among others strengthening the Congolese army, to support the
political process, strengthening state authority, facilitate return,
reintegration and recovery and lastly combat sexual violence. Overall, the
stabilization strategy was supposed to tackle the causes of the conflict
through improved governance and its area of focus was the East of the
country.
THE IMPACT OF STABILISATION
Only three years later, in 2011 the security in eastern Congo had worsened
where the stabilization activities were focused. Regarding the strengthening
of the authority of the state, only one component - the building of
strategic roads and infrastructure - was deemed making good progress but
without leading to improved security or deployment of functional civil
servants in newly opened up areas. A former UN stabilization officer
questioned MONUSCO's mandate and expressed the very likelihood that, rather
than contributing to reinforce the capacity of the state, the UN has acted
as a substitute for the state.
The return, reintegration and economic recovery component of the
stabilization strategy - central to the M23 demand for the return of the
Tutsi Congolese refugees - has been a resounding failure. Few of the
country's 1.7 million internally displaced people and the hundreds of
thousands of Congolese refugees in Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania have
returned.
Where refugees have returned, it has been outside the formal process and has
aggravated tensions between communities. Regarding economic recovery, the
DRC was ranked 187th, last in the world in the 2011 Human Development Index
while in 2008 it was 10th from the bottom.
'The persistence of weak and venal state institutions is most visible in the
security sector, where the Congolese army (FARDC), is largely unpaid and
poorly trained. (...) Keeping alive the spirit of Mobutu whereby soldiers
were not paid and live off the population, the FARDC is often the single
greatest threat to the Congolese and routinely terrorizes, extorting
protection money, looting villages, raping and killing civilians.'[11]
Part of the failure of the stabilization strategy in Congo is due the
insecurity stemming from conflicts between communities revolving around
land, citizenship and control of space and the externalization of
neighbouring instability in particular by the FDLR. But the continuing
absence of a functioning state largely caused by a lack of political will or
capacity to reign in patrimonial and predatory practices by powerful elites
is the main hindrance to change in Congo.
International partners to Congo have all along uncritically associated
themselves with the Congolese state regardless of the nature of its actions.
The recurring leverage instrument used by president Kabila has been
threatening to have the first UN mission, the MONUC and then MONUSCO
withdrawn. But other developments have also contributed to the weakening of
the international community sway.
'[T]he West combined diplomatic leverage was further weakened by Kabila's
deepening economic ties with China and other non-traditional donors willing
to build much needed infrastructure in Congo in return for natural
resources, without good governance conditions.'[12] In face of President
Kabila's growing intransigence, many Western partners, avoiding the risk of
being side-lined in the granting of lucrative mining contracts, have chosen
to withdraw into technical assistance - including MONUSCO- while continuing
conferring legitimacy to the state by association.
A number of Western countries have reoriented their efforts in the security
sector reform as if in the Congolese context you could reform the army and
the police while the state remained the same. Indeed, this investment in the
FARDC motivated some Western countries to encourage the FARDC to attack
their ex-CNDP colleagues in April 2012.
The messy and, deemed by many, fraudulent 2011 presidential elections have
weakened president Kabila's bargaining position vis-à-vis some Western
countries. In exchange for the recognition of his victory, one of the things
they requested of him was to arrest Bosco Ntaganda. These countries should
have known better.
In the already tense situation between the FARDC and the ex-CNDP, this was
license given to president Kabila to move against rivals in the Kivu region,
thus reigniting the not so latent conflict between the Rwandophones and
their competitors at local, regional and national levels. And as usual when
the Congolese state is at war with a Rwandophone organization, chances are
that it would eventually seek the assistance of the FDLR, ipso facto raising
the regional dimension of the conflict.
With negotiations between the Congolese government and the M23 having
difficulty to hold ground in Kampala, aggressive noises made by the MONUSCO
threatening to military engage the M23 does not help to find a solution to
the conflict; it once again plays into president Kabila's hands for more
adventurous moves. The new dynamic brought about by the formation of the
forthcoming regional neutral force should give the UN the opportunity to
redress the fundamental mistake it made by unconditionally siding with the
FARDC in this conflict when it is in reality a warring faction part.
Rwandophone communities in Congo have seldom been well served by their
representatives, to put it mildly. But the recurrence of conflicts involving
these communities since 1993, regardless of the identity or behaviour of
those claiming to be representing them, points out to the need of finding a
lasting solution by unequivocally recognizing their full citizen rights, a
secure space where to live and prosper in North Kivu alongside their
neighbours while eradicating the constant threat of the FDLR. Up to now, the
Congolese state has been unwilling and incapable of providing that.
ENDNOTES:
[1] Jason Sterns, 'Adieu, Bosco?', blog Congo Siasa, 30 March 2012.
http://congosiasa.blogspot.com/2012_03_01_archive.html
[2] Severine Austesserre, 'Dangerous Tales: Dominant Narratives on the Congo
and Their Unintended Consequences', African Affairs, February 2012.
[3] Steve Hege, 'Understanding the FDLR in DR Congo: Key facts on
Disarmament and Repatriation of Rwandan rebels', Peace Appeal Foundation,
February, 24, 2009.
[4] 'We have to kill Tutsis wherever they are', Chris McGreal, The Guardian
16 may 2008.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/16/congo.rwanda?INTCMP=SRCH
[5] Gearald Caplan, '17 years later: What is the truth?' Pambazuka News, 19
october 2011
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/77258
[6] 'Droit de reponse de Human Rights Watch'. Liberation, 23th December
2012.
http://www.liberation.fr/monde/2012/12/23/droit-de-reponse-de-human-rights-w
atch_869753
[7] The section regarding the stabilization process in Congo is largely
inspired by Emily Paddon and Guillaume Lacaille, 'Stabilizing the Congo',
Forced Migration Policy Briefing 8, Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford
Department of International Development, University of Oxford, December
2011.
[8] Peter Brunell, 'The Coherence of Democratic Peace-Building', United
Nations University, Research Paper No. 2006/147, November 2006.
[9] 'Stabilizing the Congo'.
[10] Ibid.
[11]Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
- Jean-Paul KIMONYO can be contacted at: jpkimonyo_at_gmail.com and Twitter:
_at_jpkimonyo
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Received on Fri Jan 18 2013 - 15:02:03 EST
