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Seizing This Moment of Hope: Priorities for Security

Four Priorities for Security

Security is the most pressing humanitarian issue in the DRC. Effective humanitarian response is not limited by skill or capacity or even funding as much as it is limited by war and the threat of violence. In some areas, displacement has increased in 2006 over previous years; return and resettlement are thwarted because of renewed or ongoing fighting; and relief agencies are unable to reach those in need of assistance. In others, however, death rates have gone down as humanitarian access increases, fewer people are displaced as peacekeepers deter attacks, and more people return home as militias disarm.

These improvements are largely the result of robust peacekeeping through MONUC, the UN mission to the DRC. First deployed in 1999 as a relatively weak observer force,the UN Security Council strengthened the mission considerably in 2003 in response to looming genocide in Ituri, and again in 2004 to protect the political process, the elections in particular. With 17,500 troops and an annual budget of just over $1 billion, MONUC is the largest UN peacekeeping mission in the world. Even so, MONUC has never been adequately funded, considering the size of the country, the lack of infrastructure, and the complexity of the problems. Other missions, such as in Liberia and Sierra Leone, had a similar number of troops, but covereda far smaller area. As a result, despite the large price tag, MONUC has been remarkably cost-effective: with a number of troops small relative to the task at hand, MONUC is bringing peace to many parts of the eastern DRC, securing roads so that aid agencies can help displaced people in remote areas, and providing the security guarantees necessary for IDPs and refugees to return home.

Serious challenges remain, however, and require immediate attention.

The FARDC—the new Congolese national army—is the biggest threat to the security of the population. Troops directly attack villages suspected of supporting rebel groups, killing, wounding, and displacing civilians. They are also responsible for countless acts of individual abuse: looting crops, food, and household goods; forcing people to work for them as porters and cooks; and rape. They are underpaid and ill-trained, abandoned by their commanders to live off the backs of the population. The FARDC thus creates enemies of the people they are supposed to protect, prompting local militias to retaliate and increasing support for rebel groups.

The FARDC is in fact the product of an integration process mandated by the 2003 peace agreement, whereby government troops and rebel groups were supposed to merge into a new national force. Preliminary results were encouraging. The First Integrated Brigade, for example, received training by Belgian contingents and performed well in Ituri upon deployment, proud of its status and conscious of its new role. Collaboration with MONUC has also produced good results, with FARDC abuses kept to a minimum and peace maintained in areas patrolled jointly. Overall, however, integration has failed: additional brigades were created in name only to meet political deadlines, training was poor, and troops remain undisciplined and unprofessional.

Civilians also come under attack from local militias and rebel groups, to support themselves or in retaliation for perceived support of their enemies. Despite a reduction in the operating areas of these groups over the past few years, there is still a range of militias that operates in the eastern DRC, with the potential to expand once again if MONUC and the FARDC cannot provide permanent security. Rebels include as many as 10,000 militia members still operating in Ituri under local insurgencies such as the MRC (the Mouvement Révolutionnaire Congolais); Mai-Mai groups, which are fragmented, traditional local defense forces; and those affi liated with Congolese rebel general Laurent Nkunda, closely allied with Rwanda and to whom the 81st and 83rd brigades of the Congolese national army are closely aligned. Foreign armed groups include the ADF/NALU, which is ostensibly fi ghting against the Ugandan government, but 60% of its troops are Congolese nationals; and about 7,500 members of the FDLR (the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda), remnants of the Rwandan Hutu forces responsible for the 1994 genocide, fighting against the Tutsiled government since being pushed into the Congo that year. The notorious Lord’s Resistance Army from Uganda is allegedly hiding in the far northeast of the DRC, but has not yet been involved in any fighting there.

The ongoing virulence of armed groups stands in opposition to a heavily funded effort in disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR), designed to draw combatants out of the fighting and give them the means to return to civilian life. Some estimate that up to 40% of ex-combatants return to fighting, however. While many cite weak reintegration activities as the cause, it would seem impossible for even the best projects promoting farming and fishing to compete with the benefits that armed groups can offer in money and security or with the threat of death made against those who refuse to join.

In its operations against local and foreign armed groups, MONUC provides training and logistical support for FARDC troops, extending sometimes to transport and basic food supplies. Paradoxically, joint operations between the FARDC and MONUC have become the most signifi cant cause of displacement in the eastern DRC since January 2006. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes following their offensives against the ADF/NALU, the FDLR, and the MRC. These offensives have had heavy humanitarian consequences but limited strategic impact: the ADF/NALU had been largely dormant but is now remobilized, the FDLR has not been affected, and the MRC has retaken its stronghold in Ituri three times from the FARDC.

MONUC and the FARDC have chosen to reduce the threat from armed groups by military means, yet neither has the capacity required to defeat these groups militarily. The foreign armed groups in particular pose a threat, not because of their strength, but because Rwanda and Uganda can use their presence as an excuse to interfere in the DRC in the name of self-defense. For example, Rwanda can use the presence of the FDLR in the DRC as an indicator of the threat that continues to exist, 12 years after the genocide, not only against it as a state but also against Tutsi in general, and Congolese Tutsis in particular. Thus, Rwanda feels justified in supporting local armed groups, like that of Laurent Nkunda, who pledge toprotect the Tutsi.

MONUC has come under pressure from the U.S., its largest donor, to pursue a military strategy against foreign armed groups, in particular to deny Rwanda and Uganda the excuse they seek to continue the destabilization of the DRC. However, the UN Security Council, of which the U.S. is a leading member, has not given MONUC the resources it needs to implement the strategy. In fact, while MONUC’s funding is now largely assured until July 2007, there may be substantial pressure to reduce its budget drastically after that—a step that could prove to be very costly if the foundations are not laid for a smooth transfer of power to responsible, disciplined Congolese institutions. The abundant natural resources found in the eastern DRC are the main cause of the conflict. Armed groups, including the FARDC, fight to control resource concessions such as forests and mines, as well as border crossings to get resources out and weapons in. They also must maintain, through targeted attacks, a delicate balance of instability: just enough to prevent thegovernment from extending its authority to regulate and tax, but not so much that open warfare stops resource extraction.

On July 31, 2006, the United Nations Security Council extended for a year an embargo on the illegal transfer of natural resources from the DRC, as well as an embargo on the transfer of all weapons to the DRC, except those to be used by the FARDC and MONUC. The UN first imposed such an embargo on the DRC in 2003, recognizing the way natural resources and weapons were fueling the conflict there. Unfortunately, neither MONUC nor the Congolese government has the capacity to monitor or enforce the embargo.

In the initial resolution establishing the embargo, the Security Council specifically called on Rwanda and Uganda to play a positive role in ending confl ict in the DRC. In subsequent reports on the transfer of weapons and natural resources, Rwanda and Uganda were cited as complicit. As weapons continue to pour into the eastern DRC, it is clear that neither country is taking steps to enforce the embargo. While the governments of Rwanda and Uganda may no longer be involved directly in these activities, they are responsible for what occurs in the territory they control.

Unfortunately, the U.S. and the United Kingdom, the strongest allies of Rwanda and Uganda, are not publicly pressing them to enforce the embargo nor offering any assistance to do so. Unwillingness to hold the two countries accountable may spring from guilt over the 1994 genocide for the former, and the unwillingness to tarnish the designation of the latter as an African success story. Nevertheless, the U.S. at least has the means to do so: its budget for 2007 contains $94 million for Rwanda and $233 million for Uganda.

The U.S. has in fact engaged Rwanda and Uganda over the DRC, but through its facilitation of the Tripartite Plus Commission. The Commission provides a forum for Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi to maintain contact with the DRC on security issues, preventing cross-border incursions and sharing information on troop movements. The direction of the Commission moving forward, however, is not clear, and a new mechanism may be needed to monitor and enforce the embargo.

Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the Congolese state to manage and regulate resource extraction in an open and fair manner, and increasing its capacity to do so is a long-range goal. At the moment, however, decreasing the toll of displacement, disease, and death on civilians in the eastern DRC requires choking off access to markets for the natural resources and weapons fueling the conflict.

Four Priorities for Security

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