Tag: Brigade

Last Thursday, the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved the deployment of about 3,100 peacekeepers in the restive eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The peacekeepers, according to a report, have received orders “to carry out targeted offensive operations and attempt to neutralise armed groups.” The approval anticipates that the intervention force or offensive brigade will be stationed in the North Kivu province in the eastern part of the country where government forces have so far unsuccessfully tried to pacify a rebel group there called the March 23 Movement or M23. The war in the region between the army and rebels has led to the displacement of over a million people, while an additional 300,000 in the southeastern province of Katanga have also been displaced.

The DRC has for long been a seething cauldron of rebellion, chaos and death. Barely a few months after independence, Joseph Mobutu, then a colonel, exploited the power struggle between President Joseph Kasavubu and Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and helped it to degenerate irretrievably. The ensuing crisis created room for foreign intervention and eventually led to the death of Lumumba at the hands of a coalition of Belgian, American and Moise Tshombe-led Katangan separatists. After a long, brutal and exploitative rule, Mobutu was overthrown during the First Congo War (1996-1998) by a rebel coalition led by the late President Laurent-Desire Kabila. He was helped in no small measures by Ugandan and Rwandan forces.

By 2001, however, Laurent Kabila was assassinated, but not before the misunderstanding with his backers, particularly Rwanda, had degenerated in 1998 into the Second Congo War (1998-2003). He was succeeded by his son, Joseph. This latter war cost an estimated five million or more lives, reportedly the deadliest conflict in the world since World War II, and millions more displaced. It sucked in nine African nations and more than 20 armed groups. For a country of more than 75 million people and an untapped natural resource endowment estimated at some $24 trillion, it is no wonder that the struggle for the country’s rich mineral resources is partly responsible for its instability.

One of the factors that triggered the Second Congo War was the struggle between Hutu and Tutsi armed groups who made themselves available for proxy battles between Kinshasha and Kigali. The eastern part of DRC, particularly North and South Kivu, is destabilised by the Banyamulenge, who are ethnic Tutsis. The Tutsi-led Rwandan government has always found it convenient to support the Banyamulenge armed group, the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie (RCD), against Kinshasha, especially in view of the activities of the defeated and weakened Hutu-led Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). The Hutu militias threaten Rwanda with cross-border raids. Apart from the restiveness of Kasai-Oriental Province, particularly the Ituri region, there is also the uncontrollable Mai Mai rebel group created by Laurent Kabila in northern Katanga.

In effect the DRC is unsettled by a combination of economic, ethnic, domestic and international political factors, though the country is predominantly Christian. Until these factors are resolved, it is hard to see how the UN’s offensive brigade can pacify the eastern part of the DRC. It must not be forgotten that many peace deals had been signed and had collapsed under the weight of ethnic tensions and foreign intervention and meddlesomeness. It is recalled that the very first peacekeeping operation Nigeria was involved in was in the Congo. Incredulously, Chad, a smaller country than Nigeria, has shown keener interest in the DRC, had even once sent troops to intervene there, not for peacekeeping but as combatants, and had also shown interest and intervened in Central African Republic (CAR). Nigeria is perhaps too preoccupied with its own troubles to attempt to match South Africa in CAR, and Chad in both CAR and DRC.

If the UN hopes to make any headway in the DRC labyrinth, it must actively go beyond the February 2013 peace deal signed in Ethiopia by 10 or 11 countries (Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Congo, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, South Africa, South Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania) to bring peace to the DRC. A brigade may prove unable to resolve the long-running Congo crisis where peace deals are routinely broken because of greed and deep-seated domestic and foreign mistrust. The country’s potential wealth and ethnic pastiche are simply too explosive a mix to respond quickly or easily to a brigade of offensive peacekeepers.