The international community
needs to recognize a simple, albeit brutal fact: The Democratic Republic of the
Congo does not exist. All of the peacekeeping missions, special envoys,
interagency processes, and diplomatic initiatives that are predicated on the
Congo myth — the notion that one sovereign power is present in this vast
country — are doomed to fail. It is time to stop pretending otherwise.
Much of Congo’s
intractability stems from a vast territory that is sparsely populated but
packed with natural resources. A mostly landlocked expanse at the heart of
Africa, Congo comprises 67 million people from more than 200 ethnic groups. The
country is bordered by nine others — among them some of the continent’s weakest
states.
A local Kiswahili
saying holds, Congo is a big country — you will eat it until you tire away! And
indeed, for centuries, this is precisely what Congo’s colonial occupiers, its
neighbors, and even some of its people have done: eaten away at Congo’s vast
mineral wealth with little concern for the coherency of the country left
behind. Congo has none of the things that make a nation-state:
interconnectedness, a government that is able to exert authority consistently
in territory beyond the capital, a shared culture that promotes national unity,
or a common language. Instead, Congo has become a collection of peoples,
groups, interests, and pillagers who coexist at best.
A century of brutal
colonialism
Congo today is a
product of its troubled history: a century of brutal colonialism, 30 years of
Cold War meddling and misrule under U.S. ally Mobutu Sese Seko, and more than a
decade of war following his ouster in 1997. That conflict, which embroiled much
of southern Africa, brought rebel leader Laurent Kabila, a one-time
revolutionary colleague of Che Guevara, to power. Kabila was assassinated just
a few short years later, leaving his son, Joseph Kabila, in office in Kinshasa,
Congo’s ostensible capital.
The younger Kabila
inherited a broken infrastructure and a tenuous national identity shaped on
repression and patronage rather than governance and the supply of basic
services. Despite winning internationally sponsored elections in 2006, he still
struggles to rule over a territory one quarter of the size of the United
States, where a nebulous sense of Congolese identity — based on French, music,
and a shared oppressive history — has not translated into allegiance to the
Congolese state. Innumerable secessionist attempts, including those instigated
by his father, have turned Congo into ungovernable fiefdoms tenuously linked to
the center. Kabila has few tools at his disposal. There is little in the way of
a disciplined army and police force; they are more used to living off than
serving the population. Like
Mobutu before him, Kabila is dependent on patronage to remain in power and on
revenue from aid flows and mining taxes.
The Congolese
government’s inability to control its territory
Economically, the
various outlying parts of Congo are better integrated with their neighbours
than with the rest of the country. For instance, it is hard for anyone sitting
in Lubumbashi, the capital of mineral-rich Katanga province in the far
southeast, to see Kinshasa as ruling. It is a two-day journey from Lubumbashi
to South Africa’s Johannesburg; the trip from Katanga to Kinshasa — of similar
distance — is seldom attempted, even contemplated. With more in common with its
southern Anglophone neighbors than with Kinshasa, no wonder one Zambian
minister privately refers to Katanga as Zambia’s 10th province. Congo’s
neighbors have learned to ignore its sovereignty.
The Congolese
government’s inability to control its territory has resulted in one of the
world’s longest and most violent wars. About 4 million people died between 2000
and 2004 — and that was merely one episode of the ongoing conflict. War has led
to the predation of the various armies on the civilian populations, the
destruction of what were the country’s transport and agrarian systems, and the
collapse of any semblance of public health. Internationally, Congo has gained
notoriety for the tremendous violence suffered by its civilians and the
widespread use of rape as a method of coercion.
The many combatants
in today’s Congo have little incentive to form a united country; they benefit
from the violent chaos that ensures that so many can pick at the country’s
resources. The international community does not have the will or the resources
to construct a functional Congo. Nor do neighbors want one Congo, as many find
it easier to deal with a plethora of ungoverned parts over which they can exert
influence. Rwanda, Angola, and Uganda, for example, have all intervened to
protect their security interests over the past decades.
The Kivu provinces are
not the only restive areas.
To clean up the
mess, the Central African country has been home to one of the world’s largest
peacekeeping operations. More than 18,400 United Nations peacekeeping troops
and observers are stationed in Congo at an annual cost of $1.24 billion. Yet
recent events demonstrate just how impossible their task has become. Early this
year, Rwandan troops entered eastern Congo’s two Kivu provinces with Kinshasa’s
permission to flush out rebel Hutu militias left over from the Rwandan genocide
a decade ago. Despite achieving some military success, reprisals by the Hutu
militias left more than 100 civilians dead.
The Kivu provinces
are not the only restive areas. Trouble has flared sporadically in the
Bas-Congo, Ituri, Katanga, and Kasai provinces of sub-Saharan Africa’s largest
state. At January 2008′s peace talks, the government categorized one of the
largest rebel groups, the CNDP, as just one of two dozen armed militias not
under government control. Nationwide elections in 2006, on which the
international community spent more than a billion dollars, did little to mend
Congo’s many divisions.
Given the immense
human tragedy, it is time to ask if provinces such as the Kivus and Katanga
(which are themselves the size of other African countries) can ever be improved
as long as they fall under a fictional Congolese state. Although African states
recognize the borders on paper, Congo’s neighbors have often acted as if no
such lines exist. The international community is the only remaining player
devoting large amounts of resources to the idea of one Congo — with dismal
returns.
The very concept of a
Congolese state has outlived its usefulness.
A solution to
Congo’s troubles is possible with a reimagined approach. The West could start
by making development and order its first priority in the Congolese territory,
rather than focusing on the promotion of the Congolese state. This simple
distinction immediately casts the Congolese problem in a whole new light. It
would mean, for instance, that foreign governments and aid agencies would deal
with whomever exerted control on the ground rather than continuing to pretend
that Kinshasa is ruling and running the country. Such an approach might bring
into the picture a confusing array of governors, traditional leaders, warlords,
and others rather than the usual panoply of ministers. But that would finally
be a reflection of who is actually running Congo.
Instead of
continuing to spend billions of dollars on putting Congo together, the
international community could regionally address actual security and political
problems. For instance, troubles in eastern Congo have as much to do with
continuing Rwandan insecurity than with what the government in Kinshasa is (or
is not capable of) doing. A more realistic foreign policy toward eastern Congo
would assign a high priority to Rwandan security interests, given that many
derive from the wake of the 1994 genocide. Get this right and there might
actually be a chance to reduce the violence that has haunted the Kivus. It
would also incentivize the Rwandans to see Congo as a natural partner in trade
and development rather than a security problem to be managed unilaterally.
Joint Congolese-Rwandan operations early this year are a step in this
direction.
Congo is rightly
notorious for being one of the most pathological instances of the European
division of Africa. Perhaps as a result, Western powers have shied away from
anything other than reflexively trying to get Congo to work within the
boundaries that the king of Belgium helped establish in 1885. Setting aside the
scope of human tragedy, there are real reasons that getting things right in
Congo matters now more than ever. The country is the region’s vortex; when it
has failed in the past, its neighbors have often gone down with it.
The very concept of
a Congolese state has outlived its usefulness. For an international community
that has far too long made wishful thinking the enemy of pragmatism, acting on
reality rather than diplomatic theory would be a good start.
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*By Jeffrey Herbst and Greg
Mills
foreignpolicy.com
