Along with the horrendous battles for freedom in Ukraine, and for Israel's security and survival in Gaza, Africans wreak destruction on themselves. (This opening paragraph is a conscious context setting paragraph repeated from last time.) A worsening internecine irruption of deadly venom consumes Sudan. Likewise, Ethiopians are still fighting among themselves, and contributing to one of the continent's worst famines. The eastern region of the so-called Democratic Republic of Congo is afire with as many as 200 militant groups competing for territory, power, and resource wealth. Other conflicts threaten stability and peace in the Central African Republic and in Mozambique; three military-ruled nations in the Sahel are consumed with Islamist uprisings; and students are trying to overthrow the monarchy in tiny Eswatini. But there is a little good news from Senegal.
On Thursday, I wrote about the calamity in Sudan. Today, I turn to the Congo. In that vast heart of Africa, by far the continent's second largest physical jurisdiction, About 7 million people have been displaced by war. Goma, one of its easternmost cities, is in danger of falling to rebels. About 135,000 Congolese fled the onrushing M23 rebel advance west of Goma last week. These new refugees joined 500,000 others who were huddling in temporary camps near the beleaguered city.
Congo
It is hardly better in the Congo than in Sudan. Within the two North and South Kivu Provinces, and Ituri Province, that face onto Lakes Kivu and Albert there is gold, coltan, cobalt, and diamonds. Coltan and cobalt go into cell telephones, potential wealth that drives a proliferation of artisanal mining — Africans scrambling under indifferent conditions to unearth these precious minerals. The same goes for gold, panned, and rinsed crudely with cyanide. The quest for financial reward stimulates extreme risk-taking by barefoot scramblers. And then the rebel groups try to take the spoils away from the miners and sell them forward.
Of the nearly 120 rebel movements of various sizes and shapes that attack each other and the weak Congolese army in the Kivus and Ituri, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and the M23 Group stand out. The first allies itself to the Islamic State in the Maghreb (a branch of ISIS) and proclaims its loyalty to jihadist Islam despite the absence of serious Muslim practices or awareness in the Kivus or Ituri. The ADF raids Uganda (where it began decades ago) and otherwise harasses farmers and villagers in the northern Congolese region that contains the continent's only real jungle. Last week, the ADF killed two dozen villagers in the latest of its forays in the backlands of North Kivu, near Ituri.
M23 has been much more effective in gaining hegemony and cash, especially in and around Goma -- the now surrounded largest town in the interlacustrine region. Its attacks on local villagers and townspeople have already displaced 2.5 million Congolese across North Kivu Province. Throughout the area, according to the UN, 100,000 houses, 1,325 schools, 267 health facilities, and large swaths of agricultural land have been damaged or destroyed, "leaving an estimated two million people – nearly 60 per cent of them children – in need of assistance." Natural disasters, including unexpected flooding, has also devastated the region and marginalized farming livelihoods. Now that M23 is at the gates of Goma, it has compelled more displacement and suffering; millions are endangered.
M23 is reliably supported by and a front for President Paul Kagame's autocratic regime in nearby Rwanda. Through M 23, Kagame gains mineral riches (Rwanda now exports cobalt and coltan only found in the Congo), GDP revenues, and a de facto extension into the nearby Congo of his own dominance of the region. Additionally, the Tutsi-led M23 reduces anti-Kagame, anti-Rwandan ambitions within the ranks of the displaced Hutu who lived in Rwanda before the genocide and now try to refurbish their fortunes in the nearby Congo. Kagame claims that the Congo shelters the FDLR, a Hutu militia whose leaders participated in the horrific 1994 genocide of minority Tutsi in Rwanda, and then escaped and regrouped in the nearby Congo.
Western governments and leaders in the Congo have urged Kagame to back off, and cease supporting M23. But Kagame has very different regional ambitions; he hopes that he can begin to give political direction to the entire Congo via M23 and to siphon the riches of the region to Kigali. He also seeks to control the destiny of the Congo, just as he did in the very late 1990s when he helped Laurent Kabila and a mixed collection of Congolese oust Mobutu Sese Seko, a long-time dictator who had favored the Hutu after Kagame overcame the genocidaires in 1994.
Last week, with M23 gaining ascendance, the UN accused M23 of "indiscriminate" bombing. Washington demanded that Rwanda cease fighting withe M23. Congo President Felix Tshisekedi publicly accused Kagame and Rwanda of creating and supporting M23 in order to "destabilize" the Congo. Kagame claimed in response that instability in the eastern Congo was a national security threat to Rwanda.
The defenders of Goma are weak: Congo's official army, mostly demoralized and prey to corruption; a motley collection of local militias and private European military contractors employing former French Foreign Legionaires; troops from Burundi; a recently arrived contingent of soldiers from South Africa; and -- in a desultory fashion -- at least a proportion of the 16,300 UN peacekeepers who for more than two decades have attempted to stabilize the eastern Congo.
Washington has a major role to play in this theatre of conflict. Constrained by the battles in Ukraine and Gaza, however, it struggles to exert itself in yet another zone of war. Even so, last week in the UN Security Council the deputy US representative harshly criticized both M23 and Kagame. "The United States firmly supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the DRC and lasting peace for all Congolese people. Rwanda and the DRC must walk back from the brink of war,” said Robert Wood for the U. S. Acting on his forthright initiative and heavy criticism of Rwanda's sponsorship of M23, the Security Council also voted to impose sanctions on it. The Security Council’s DRC sanctions committee imposed an arms embargo, a travel ban, and sanctions on a number of "abusive individuals" belonging to the M23, and also on leaders of the ADF and two other smaller armed insurgent groups.
For thirteen years, the UN has attempted to bring peace to the eastern Congo. Its Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Monusco) has been tasked with keeping the peace in the eastern Congo. At least, officially, that is what Monusco has mostly not been doing. At one point comprising more than 17,000 armed peacekeepers from African and Asian nations, Monusco has largely sat on its hands, fearing the kind of combat that might have prevented the rise of M23 (a largely recent phenomenon), the recrudescence of the ADF, and the popping up of other rebel assemblages. Monusco is on its way out, too, at the direct request of Tshisekedi. When it disappears by the middle of the year, the Congo will be once again consumed by crisis unless Kagame is somehow persuaded by the West and the African Union to wind M23 down. Then the usually hapless Congolese army can focus on disarming the ADF and other insurgencies and pacifying both Kivu provinces.
With millions of eastern Congolese at risk of death and displacement, world order through U.S., African Union, and UN endeavors needs to deal harshly and immediately with Rwanda to restore a measure of security to North Kivu and its endangered people.
This post is getting too long. I'll have to deal with Ethiopia and Senegal next time, and possibly South Africa.
.
20 minutes on phone or zoom....omg, RIDICULOUS .... frankly the arrogance and hubris of foreign service officers is appalling,
This is very well done, Professor ... you had the space to go into Congo in great and illuminating detail....But I was especially taken by the visit of the US Ambassador to DRC, Lucy Tamlyn, to North Kivu ... and got a great video of her arrival !!
https://daandelman.substack.com/p/twtw-the-world-this-week-episode-405
(she declined to talk with me, sadly!)