Congo
Murder, muddle and panic
Nov 6th 2008 | KINSHASA
From The Economist print edition
As chaos and massacres overwhelm north-eastern Congo, diplomats and peacekeepers are struggling to get a grip
“THE situation is catastrophic,” says a Red Cross man. “There’s no other word.” Tens of thousands of terrified civilians are jamming the roads of Congo’s North Kivu province in a frantic southbound exodus in the hope of self-preservation (see map). General Laurent Nkunda’s mainly Tutsi rebels are poised to grab the eastern city of Goma after capturing most of the smaller towns in the area. Reports of massacres on the night of November 5th in Kiwanja, a small town north of Goma, have increased the panic. An officer in General Nkunda’s force said that his men had “neutralised” men in civilian clothes there who, he said, covertly belonged to the so-called Mai-Mai militias; they, along with the Congolese army and others, have been fighting the Tutsi rebels. A local clergyman said at least 180 civilians had been killed during the night.
The UN’s mission to Congo, known by the acronym MONUC, which has 17,000 peacekeepers across the country, including 6,000-odd in North Kivu, has been unable to cope. Diplomacy, hitherto fruitless, is intensifying. European diplomats, led by the foreign ministers of Britain and France, David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner, have visited regional capitals, calling for talks and troop reinforcements. The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, was set to host a summit on November 7th in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, bringing together the presidents of Congo and Rwanda, Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagame respectively, who have been sponsoring some of the rival rebel armies. Nigeria’s former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, has been tapped as a mediator; he immediately called for MONUC to be beefed up. The French government suggested that a robust European force of 400 to 1,500 soldiers be dispatched urgently to protect the humanitarian missions that are struggling to give relief to hundreds of thousands of hapless and hungry civilians. So far the European Union has been loth to give the go-ahead.
In the past two years, some 850,000 people have fled their homes due to fighting between the rebels, Congo’s army and assorted militias. Though General Nkunda launched his latest offensive in August, his 4,000 or so battle-hardened fighters have been lording it over the area for four years, claiming to champion the rights of eastern Congo’s Tutsi minority. But the root of the problem goes back to the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994. If a wider regional peace is to be achieved, an accommodation between the surviving former victims and their exiled persecutors must be arranged.
After the genocidal Hutu militias were chased out of Rwanda, they fled to Congo, called themselves the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), and have marauded in North Kivu ever since. Successive weak regimes in Kinshasa, Congo’s distant capital, have used them as a tool, first against a Rwandan intervention that helped spark a wider conflict from 1998 to 2003. Congo’s President Kabila is now using them as proxies against General Nkunda’s National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP). Mr Kabila’s failure to rid eastern Congo of the Hutu génocidaires has nourished General Nkunda’s own brand of Tutsi extremism. Mr Kabila has also winked at local militias, including the Mai-Mai, who have been fighting General Nkunda’s men too.
Neighbouring Rwanda is also culpable. Its government has repeatedly endorsed various demands of the general, who refuses to register his group as a political movement in Congo, eschewing the UN-sponsored elections there two years ago. Instead, Rwanda’s President Kagame has pursued a contradictory policy, telling Mr Kabila to squash the Hutu rebels of the FDLR but refusing to meet the FDLR’s demands to have a legal stake in Rwanda’s politics. If Mr Kagame let it do so, many of the FDLR fighters, especially those who did not play known roles in the genocide, would probably go home.
Western governments have been in a muddle. They have economic and historic interests in the region; they feel bad about letting atrocities take place in the past; and they have their own protégés whom they sponsor and fail to denounce when they behave badly. As a result, the governments of Congo and Rwanda have been on a collision course. Outsiders have also failed to turn Congo’s lousy army—a hodgepodge of Mr Kabila’s loyalists, former rebels and militias—into a disciplined fighting force capable of nailing the Hutus’ FDLR.
Congo’s President Kabila may have to meet General Nkunda’s demand for direct negotiation, simply because the Tutsi rebels are militarily dominant; indeed, Mr Nkunda has threatened to “march on Kinshasa” unless Mr Kabila meets his basic demand to clobber the Hutu rebels of the FDLR. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council will again be asked to strengthen MONUC’s mandate so that it can suppress all illegal armed groups in the area, should talks fail again. The most immediate requirement is for Messrs Kabila and Kagame to sit down together and talk.
http://www.economist.com/world/midea...ry_id=12573363
Murder, muddle and panic
Nov 6th 2008 | KINSHASA
From The Economist print edition
As chaos and massacres overwhelm north-eastern Congo, diplomats and peacekeepers are struggling to get a grip
“THE situation is catastrophic,” says a Red Cross man. “There’s no other word.” Tens of thousands of terrified civilians are jamming the roads of Congo’s North Kivu province in a frantic southbound exodus in the hope of self-preservation (see map). General Laurent Nkunda’s mainly Tutsi rebels are poised to grab the eastern city of Goma after capturing most of the smaller towns in the area. Reports of massacres on the night of November 5th in Kiwanja, a small town north of Goma, have increased the panic. An officer in General Nkunda’s force said that his men had “neutralised” men in civilian clothes there who, he said, covertly belonged to the so-called Mai-Mai militias; they, along with the Congolese army and others, have been fighting the Tutsi rebels. A local clergyman said at least 180 civilians had been killed during the night.
The UN’s mission to Congo, known by the acronym MONUC, which has 17,000 peacekeepers across the country, including 6,000-odd in North Kivu, has been unable to cope. Diplomacy, hitherto fruitless, is intensifying. European diplomats, led by the foreign ministers of Britain and France, David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner, have visited regional capitals, calling for talks and troop reinforcements. The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, was set to host a summit on November 7th in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, bringing together the presidents of Congo and Rwanda, Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagame respectively, who have been sponsoring some of the rival rebel armies. Nigeria’s former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, has been tapped as a mediator; he immediately called for MONUC to be beefed up. The French government suggested that a robust European force of 400 to 1,500 soldiers be dispatched urgently to protect the humanitarian missions that are struggling to give relief to hundreds of thousands of hapless and hungry civilians. So far the European Union has been loth to give the go-ahead.
In the past two years, some 850,000 people have fled their homes due to fighting between the rebels, Congo’s army and assorted militias. Though General Nkunda launched his latest offensive in August, his 4,000 or so battle-hardened fighters have been lording it over the area for four years, claiming to champion the rights of eastern Congo’s Tutsi minority. But the root of the problem goes back to the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994. If a wider regional peace is to be achieved, an accommodation between the surviving former victims and their exiled persecutors must be arranged.
After the genocidal Hutu militias were chased out of Rwanda, they fled to Congo, called themselves the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), and have marauded in North Kivu ever since. Successive weak regimes in Kinshasa, Congo’s distant capital, have used them as a tool, first against a Rwandan intervention that helped spark a wider conflict from 1998 to 2003. Congo’s President Kabila is now using them as proxies against General Nkunda’s National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP). Mr Kabila’s failure to rid eastern Congo of the Hutu génocidaires has nourished General Nkunda’s own brand of Tutsi extremism. Mr Kabila has also winked at local militias, including the Mai-Mai, who have been fighting General Nkunda’s men too.
Neighbouring Rwanda is also culpable. Its government has repeatedly endorsed various demands of the general, who refuses to register his group as a political movement in Congo, eschewing the UN-sponsored elections there two years ago. Instead, Rwanda’s President Kagame has pursued a contradictory policy, telling Mr Kabila to squash the Hutu rebels of the FDLR but refusing to meet the FDLR’s demands to have a legal stake in Rwanda’s politics. If Mr Kagame let it do so, many of the FDLR fighters, especially those who did not play known roles in the genocide, would probably go home.
Western governments have been in a muddle. They have economic and historic interests in the region; they feel bad about letting atrocities take place in the past; and they have their own protégés whom they sponsor and fail to denounce when they behave badly. As a result, the governments of Congo and Rwanda have been on a collision course. Outsiders have also failed to turn Congo’s lousy army—a hodgepodge of Mr Kabila’s loyalists, former rebels and militias—into a disciplined fighting force capable of nailing the Hutus’ FDLR.
Congo’s President Kabila may have to meet General Nkunda’s demand for direct negotiation, simply because the Tutsi rebels are militarily dominant; indeed, Mr Nkunda has threatened to “march on Kinshasa” unless Mr Kabila meets his basic demand to clobber the Hutu rebels of the FDLR. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council will again be asked to strengthen MONUC’s mandate so that it can suppress all illegal armed groups in the area, should talks fail again. The most immediate requirement is for Messrs Kabila and Kagame to sit down together and talk.
http://www.economist.com/world/midea...ry_id=12573363
There is too much of tribal rivalries.
Suppress one group and out pops the other.
There appears to be no solution!
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