Things You Never Knew About the D.R. Congo

The expression "You are driving me around the bend" originates here in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the 18th century, explorer Lord Stanley ventured up the Congo river in search of the source of the Nile, but when he reached the point of the river now known as Stanley Falls (and the site of modern day Kisangani) he found himself literally going ‘round the bend’, as the river took a sharp turn south, confirming to a disappointed Stanley that this could not be the source that he was seeking.

It is perhaps fitting that today Stanley Falls (a fairly disappointing blip in the river, and hardly a ‘falls’, by the way) are overlooked by the Eastern Brigade Headquarters of MONUC, the UN peacekeeping force in D.R. Congo and the largest peacekeeping deployment in the world. Their presence and inability to secure a peace in the east are a source of huge frustration and disappointment for the international community, the Congolese people, and – perhaps most of all - MONUC staff themselves. After eight years of deployment there has been no solution to the challenges in DRC, and North Kivu is on fire again.

Since the relative success of the 2006 election in which the Congolese people chose the first democratically elected government since DRC’s independence, MONUC has faced severe criticism for the human rights abuses and humanitarian crises that continue to plague the country. While it is true that MONUC has made mistakes, the diatribes of critics tend to vastly oversimplify the world that MONUC is operating in.

The real situation in the DRC looks something like this:

• Half a dozen armed internal and foreign armed groups with divergent allegiances and political -- or personal -- priorities;
• A weak and under-resourced Congolese military (the FARDC), who are themselves responsible for a huge number of human rights abuses, and are sharpening ethnic tensions. (Not “ancient ethnic hatreds,” as many like to say, but tensions driven by modern politics and economics.); and
• The high stakes that come with big egos, corruption, and fierce competition for control of DR Congo’s vast natural resource wealth.

In the east alone you can add to that list the unstable and occasionally hostile neighboring states of the Central African Republic, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi; the physically vast, hilly, densely forested terrain with few reliable roads; 800,000 internally displaced people; and…

Well, I could go on, but these are just the basic challenges that MONUC troops and staff are facing every day. In this context, MONUC has been asked to:

• provide stability and security,
• protect civilians,
• train and support the nascent and frequently dangerous FARDC,
• promote good governance,
• monitor human rights abuses,
• provide support to humanitarian and development activities, and
• engage in high-level political discussions at national and regional levels to address the root causes of this conflict.

MONUC is far from perfect, but under overwhelmingly difficult circumstances it is unequivocally true that the accumulation of small MONUC victories has made a clear and positive difference in the lives of the Congolese people.

Mobile UN bases and night patrols by peacekeepers are helping to maintain security and stability in dozens of locations all over the east. Aid workers and human rights monitors continue to have some access to many populations in need. The bandit ‘Rasta’ group - known for particularly brutal rapes and kidnappings – have been chased from their bases in South Kivu by a series of MONUC military sweeps. And the armed group led by dissident General Laurent Nkunda was prevented from advancing on Goma (the capital of North Kivu) due in large part due to the deterrent effect of MONUC deployments.

It is easy to get frustrated when great efforts produce imperfect and incomplete results, and there is much that is incomplete in the Congo. But events move quickly here, priorities change and fires erupt, and the critics need to give the peacekeepers the political space, and the resources to shift gears and meet unexpected challenges. The solutions may be elusive, but it is very clear that in the absence of MONUC, the tangible progress made in DRC could go the way of the Congo river, and very quickly go south.

-- Erin Weir is currently in the D.R. Congo assessing MONUC's ability to protect civilians from ongoing violence.