Congo: New Peacekeeping Patrols and Persistent Insecurity
Video Transcript:
United Nations peacekeepers and, in particular, a new offensive-oriented brigade involving Tanzanian, South African and later Malawian troops are stepping up patrols in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Clashes with the Rwanda-supported M23 rebel group in Congo's North Kivu province have reportedly resulted in dozens of rebel casualties. Accusations have also been heard from Rwanda that Congolese and U.N. forces have interacted with ethnic Hutu and other ethnic militias. The continued presence of Hutu militia informs part of Rwanda's intervention and support of proxy militia in the Congo.
The presence of multiple armed groups has been the reality of the eastern Congo certainly since the mid-1990s, though the central African country had not always been fraught with such insecurity. The regime of Mobutu Sese Seko had, for much of its rule beginning in 1965, been able to impose a sense of national order. A part of Mobutu's success lay in promoting his country as a bulwark against communist expansion in central and southern Africa. Mobutu was supported by American and French governments with weaponry, peacekeepers, political support and political indifference to the excesses and corruption of Mobutu's domestic rule. Mobutu utilized Congo's vast natural resources, such as diamonds, gold, copper and cobalt, to buy and sustain diverse political coalitions, keeping the country effectively whole.
The end of the Cold War meant the Congo -- known under Mobutu's rule as Zaire -- was no longer as needed. Political indifference remained, but what support the country received to maintain its national integrity was drawn down. Subnational regional political ambitions reemerged and the central government collapsed in 1997 in the face of a rebellion led by Laurent Kabila, who had the backing of Rwanda and Uganda.
National strife in the Congo, coming also in the context of the Rwandan genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed while the world was accused of standing by, informed the U.N. peacekeeping intervention. Now the largest U.N. peacekeeping operation in the world, 17,000 peacekeepers patrol the Congo, concentrating their activities in the eastern half, where insecurity is most pronounced.
The U.N. peacekeeping force has not brought an end to the presence of armed groups in the Congo, but the operation has contributed to a sense of national stabilization. Armed groups persist, but rebel activities are limited to small geographic boundaries of the country. The capital Kinshasa and the government, now led by Joseph Kabila -- Laurent's son, who succeeded his father when the latter was assassinated in 2001 -- are no longer threatened.
However the national stabilization, the lingering subnational, regional security concerns face no imminent conclusion. The ethnic Hutu rebel presence in North Kivu means Rwanda retains an imperative to intervene in the Congo to ensure that this band of fighters cannot threaten its government. The distant Congo government combined with the presence of lucrative and weakly secured extractive industries in eastern Congo provide an additional motivation for Kigali and its proxies to intervene and occupy the border area.
Efforts to improve security in the Congo are being made, but in a country of vast and difficult geography combined with historic grudges, ambitions and resources to help achieve aims of subnational autonomy, the Congo will remain challenged to impose singular order.
