Congo Peace On Verge Of Collapse: Now Would Be A Good Time, Ralph

Ruberwa, and all the former RCD-Goma officials who form part of the transitional government, announced their withdrawal although a few officials later recanted and agreed to continue their participation. This marks the first time since this remarkable amalgam of former enemies agreed to work together that one party has walked away and it may spell doom for the experiment. Ruberwa says his decision is based at least in part on a recent event in northeastern DRC. Flash back to May 2004, when a power-struggle in eastern DRC threatened to ignite an African tinderbox. One commander in the new military, another former rebel, concluded that the national army was discriminating against a particular ethnic group and he marched his troops into the eastern town of Bukavu and seized command, right under the watchful but unresponsive eyes of United Nations forces. Brigadier-General Laurent Nkunda had complained that the Banyamulenge, an offshoot of the Tutsi ethnic group, were being tortured or killed by members of the national army and he swore to plunge the country into another bloody war to prevent any further victims. In the end, he withdrew from Bukavu and eastern DRC settled back into what passes in this wild region for relative peace: a few random killings or rapes here and there, a couple of villages torched. The U.N. investigated and declared Nkunda’s accusations against the army to be groundless. But there is some evidence to suggest the U.N. is wrong about this and there has continued to be suspicion of an ethnic nightmare bubbling just below the surface. Last week, it bubbled over and now Nkunda is threatening again. Hutu rebels, believed to be remnants of a group of killers who fled Rwanda in 1994 after that country’s horrific genocide, have been hiding in the jungles of DRC for a decade. They were very active during the DRC civil war (1997-2002) but with the coming of the fragile peace, they withdrew into the jungle and emerge only occasionally to commit acts of rape and murder. Then, last week, came a mass killing of more than 160 Tutsis along with a large number of wounded. A Hutu group has claimed responsibility, as has often been the case in several similar incidents over the past year. The killers, members of the Burundi-based National Liberation Forces (FNL, after their French name) have been labeled a ‘terrorist group’ by the leaders of DRC, Burundi and Rwanda as well as five other neighbouring nations. However, both Burundi and Rwanda say that a coalition of anti-Tutsi militias from all three countries was involved in the massacre. These victims had fled violence in DRC in June and had sought refuge in Burundi, expecting to find relative safety. Ironically, the killings took place in a U.N. camp where the Tutsis had sought protection. As so often in the past, the security blanket of the U.N. is a chimera. Ruberwa indicates that this massacre in Burundi is final evidence that the peace process has “broken down”, in his words. Like Nkunda, he accuses the government of complicity by alleging that DRC’s central government provides backing for the Hutu group who claimed responsibility. Rwanda and Burundi have been making rumbling noises for several months about possible intervention in DRC if the Congolese government fails to corral these troublesome Hutus. Like Nkunda and Ruberwa, the two nations point their fingers at Kinshasa for failing to end the violence. Observers in the region know this is partly posturing since it is widely understood that the Congolese have insufficient resources to stem the violence. It is generally agreed also that the three nations acting together might help remedy the situation, but so far there have been no steps in that direction. The animosity between the Tutsis and Hutus is historic although the past two decades has seen tremendous violence, reaching a peak with Rwanda’s experience in 1994. The Hutus form the majority in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa but should violence erupt again, it must be assumed that this time will be different. It will spill across the borders and involve, as a minimum, DRC, Burundi and Rwanda. And one significant change since 1994 is that the government of Rwanda is primarily Tutsi. Rwanda has a substantial military and during the past 10 years they have shown themselves to have no trepidations about entering DRC at will. It may also prove to be of great significance that Ruberwa, and his RCD-Goma, have close ties to Rwanda. We may soon be witnessing another example of the U.N. and the rest of the world standing by idly while ethnic violence consumes Africa. We saw the U.N. express moral indignation over the genocide that occurred in Rwanda in 1994 while they busied themselves with interminable academic arguments about whether it was actually ‘genocide’. The reason for the arguments, of course, is that a declaration of ‘genocide’ commits the U.N. to specific action; in 1994, the members of the Security Council accepted the veto of the United States and denied that 800,000 people being slaughtered because of their ethnicity was genocide. So the U.N. stayed away, their only contribution being to count the bodies and to issue a weak ‘mea culpa’ years after the fact. During the DRC civil war, Rwanda invaded twice (1996 and 1998). Rwandan president Paul Kagame, a Washington protégé, claimed the invasions were justified due to the high risks posed to Rwanda’s national security by rebels fighting in DRC against the Congolese government. According to critics, the rebels in DRC offer no threat to Rwanda but the Kigali government uses their presence as an excuse to keep a strong military presence in this resource-rich and very volatile region. Kagame continues to maintain the right to invade again if either the U.N. or the DRC government fails to disarm the rebels that are still littering the jungles of eastern DRC. Ruberwa’s departure from the transitional government might be just the spark Kigali is seeking. Even if not a threat to Rwanda, the rebels continue to cause significant damage within DRC. They are notorious for raping and pillaging in Congolese villages but the government has been ambiguous about trying to stop them. When the peace agreements were signed in 2002 to end the civil war, one agreement called for the withdrawal of all Rwandan soldiers from DRC in exchange for Kinshasa disarming and repatriating the rebels, Hutus, to Rwanda where Kigali’s courts and prisons could deal with them. In accordance with the agreements, Kinshasa did mount several offensives against the Rwandan rebels in April 2004 but had to suspend operations when they ran out of ammunition. For the rebels, this is a no-win situation. Most of them have been branded criminals by Rwanda and face prison or execution if they return home. If they stay in DRC, they face the possibility that the Congolese army will come looking for them. It is likely in either case that they are doomed and they have nothing to lose by fighting to the end. The one thing that does not instill fear or concern in them is the United Nations. Like most Africans, they are used to weak-kneed responses from the U.N. along with volumes of rhetoric. In a twist the U.N. would rather forget, it knows that part of the problem in DRC is the U.N. itself, even though it does not overtly say as much.. A panel convened by the U.N. and sent to DRC to look into illegal arms trading concluded that Rwanda gave “both direct and indirect support” to dissident soldiers, like Nkunda who captured Bukavu at the end of May 2004. In that incident, there were many civilian deaths and DRC was pushed, once again, to the edge of war. Even though the report condemns Rwanda’s meddling, it also acknowledges that as the citizens of Bukavu were raped, brutalized, robbed, and/or killed, 600 U.N. troops stationed right in the town did nothing to intervene. Further, the massing of weapons had been known to U.N. officials for months prior to May 2004 but nothing was done to attempt a disarmament or to put some sort of protection in place. The U.N. Security Council invoked a ban on military and financial assistance for all armed groups in eastern DRC in July 2003 but it wasn’t until July 2004 that a panel of ‘experts’ was finally sent to the region, and then only as fact-finders. The U.N. failed to place any extra of the several thousand troops it has in DRC near the troubled region; it failed to place soldiers at the border with Rwanda nor to patrol Lake Kivu (which forms part of the border), even though they knew from ample evidence that Rwanda was arming the Bukavu dissidents. Worst, when the U.N. troops finally decided they had better do something about the dissidents, they were careless (some say deliberately so) and allowed them to escape in the middle of the night. Local U.N. forces were given direct orders from their headquarters that they were not to intervene; the U.N. decided this was an internal matter for the Congolese. So as the U.N. troops watched the dissident soldiers rape and murder and thoroughly loot this city of 600,000 people, their spokesperson, Fred Eckhard, is quoted as saying: “It’s for the parties [the Congolese] to sort out. When war breaks out, the role of peacekeeper ends.” The U.N. mission (known as MONUC) in DRC has had its mandate renewed until the end of September while the Security Council considers what, if anything, to do next. Secretary General Kofi Annan, whose own hands are blood-stained from a failure to act in Rwanda in 1994, is urging a stronger force with a more proactive mandate. But it is up to the Security Council to decide the next step. The United States foots around a third of the budget for MONUC and they have thus far been reluctant to consider greater involvement. It was this same reluctance which caused Washington to veto a declaration in 1994 that would have labeled the events in Rwanda as genocide. That veto prevented any useful intervention, and more than 800,000 people were hacked to death with machetes. It is not that the U.N., or its Security Council, is unwilling to commit funds and troops to Africa; but the priorities appear out of kilter. Sierra Leone, for example, has about 15,000 U.N. soldiers maintaining peace while there are slightly less than 10,000 in DRC, mainly observing. Sierra Leone is one-twentieth the size of DRC. The withdrawal of RCD-Goma, if it is permanent, from the transitional government team may very well be the spark that sets the jungle ablaze again. Rhetoric from Burundi and Rwanda suggests a new war in DRC might very well be in the cards. It seem likely they would welcome the opportunity to revisit the resource-rich corner of Congo they so cheerfully pillaged during DRC’s civil war. On a recent African odyssey, Canada’s own Minister of Finance, Ralph Goodale, spoke about how Canada can lend a hand for Africans to create African solutions for African problems. Now would be a good time, Ralph.