Each of the two million displaced civilians in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has a gut-wrenching story. In my five trips to eastern Congo since July 2007, the political dynamics have shifted dramatically, but the atrocities, displacement, and resulting humanitarian catastrophe are a painful reminder of a simple truth: ending the Congolese army’s predatory behavior is a perquisite to lasting stability in the country.

The Congolese army is by no means the only bad actor in this conflict. A host of other domestic and foreign armed groups share responsibility for the grim catalog of horrors routinely visited upon Congolese civilians. Yet militias and foreign rebel groups operate so freely in eastern Congo precisely because the state is unable to secure its own territory. And for all of the international effort that has gone into stabilizing the country – years of diplomacy, a large U.N. peacekeeping presence, and hundreds of millions of dollars in development and humanitarian funding – efforts to reform and professionalize the Congolese armed forces have received remarkably little attention from key donors. Until the international community adopts a sustained and comprehensive approach to overhaul the Congolese army, the cycle of violence and displacement will continue.

BACKGROUND

The 1994 genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda, on Congo’s eastern border, was the catalyst for a wider regional war that has never been fully resolved. When the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front rebel movement (headed by current Rwandan President Paul Kagame) toppled the Hutu-led genocidal government and ended the genocide in July 1994, the Rwandan army and allied militias fled, along with more than one million Hutus, into what was then Zaire. Inside the hastily erected refugee camps, the genocidaires reconstituted themselves as a rebel movement (later called the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR) and launched cross-border attacks against Rwanda.

The Rwandan government invaded Congo in 1996 to forcibly close the refugee camps, eliminate the rebel threat, and install a friendly regime in the Congolese capital Kinshasa led by a former Congolese rebel named Laurent Kabila. Relations between Kabila and Kagame quickly soured, and in 1998 Rwanda invaded again. The conflict, dubbed “Africa’s World War” by observers, pitted at least seven national armies and scores of armed groups against each other and, deplorably, Congolese civilians. Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Chad sent troops to support Kabila’s government for either geopolitical reasons or the promise of economic reward. On the other side, Uganda and Rwanda deployed forces and backed local proxies to secure a political and economic foothold in the East. 

Despite a formal end to the war in 2003 and largely credible national elections in 2005, eastern Congo is still the epicenter of one of the world’s most brutal conflicts. The crisis is extraordinarily complex and plays out on multiple, interlocking levels. Local tensions over land and citizenship rights (particularly of Congolese of Rwandan origin) are frequently exploited by local and national politicians to advance their own political agendas. Congolese rebel groups, often with support from meddlesome neighboring countries, jockey for territory in the East’s lush forests and rolling hills. Foreign rebel groups, including the FDLR and the Lord’s Resistance Army from northern Uganda, also find refuge there, taking advantage of the state’s weakness and corrupt political class. 

The fuel that keeps the conflict burning, and a reason why atrocities and forced displacement continue at such an appalling rate, is the aforementioned natural wealth that lies beneath Congo’s soil. The illegal trade and taxation of minerals – in particular tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold – netted armed groups an estimated $150 million dollars in 2008.

To secure access to the most lucrative mines, Congolese militias, the FDLR, and the Congolese army use an array of terror tactics to forcibly displace civilians from those areas. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used her visit to eastern Congo earlier this year to focus the world’s attention on the systematic rape and sexual assault of hundreds of thousands of Congolese women. A staggering 5.4 million Congolese have died since 1998, making this the deadliest conflict since World War II. While many have died violently, most are victims of the lethal cocktail of malnourishment, disease, and lack of basic health services that accompany displacement in war.

The U.N. peacekeeping force deployed to Congo, called MONUC, has a strong mandate to protect civilians and with more than 22,000 military and civilian personnel is the largest and, at an annual cost of more than $1.1 billion, the most expensive U.N. mission in the world. Yet while MONUC has helped advance some of the international community’s goals in Congo (most notably a credible election in a logistically daunting environment), civilians in the East remain the targets of violence. Given these extraordinarily high costs, perhaps it is time the international community reconsidered its strategy.

ANALYSIS

The U.N. Security Council has tasked MONUC to support the Congolese army in joint operations, such as the ongoing Kimia 2 offensive against the FDLR. Yet the Congolese army’s incompetence and cruelty toward civilians puts the U.N. in a difficult bind: What should MONUC do in a situation when the army itself is the most direct threat to the civilian population? 

Until the Congolese army is a source of security for the population and, with support from the international community, can evict foreign armed groups, Africa’s third largest country will continue to be a ward of the international community. The necessary reform, however, is no simple task. 

The disarray of the Congolese army results from a history of mismanagement by Belgian colonialists and then former President Mobuto Sese Seko. Training ranges from poor to non-existent. Command structures overlap and contradict one another. Salaries are either meager or stolen by corrupt officials and army officers. Troops travel into battle zones with their families in tow (a phenomenon I have witnessed nowhere else). And units are frequently cobbled together from former rebel forces and militias with little cohesion or loyalty to the state.

Kimia 2 is a near perfect case study in the danger of haphazard military integration. In January 2009, the Rwandan government, facing pressure from donors over its support for a Congolese rebel group called the National Congress for Defense of People (CNDP), removed CNDP’s leader, a warlord named Laurent Nkunda, and helped broker a deal to integrate CNDP fighters into the Congolese army. The newly integrated brigades would then lead an offensive in eastern Congo against Rwanda’s enemy, the FDLR. 

Integration took place quickly and without proper vetting, which allowed human rights violators to swap one uniform for another. Bosco Ntaganda, a former CNDP commander wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, is now commanding Congolese forces on the front lines of Kimia 2, with predictable results. Many units have not been paid for months and have taken to looting local populations for food and other supplies, worsening an appalling humanitarian situation. Eight hundred thousand people have fled their homes this year – the highest number of newly displaced in any African conflict.

Major donors and other key external actors like the World Bank have all identified security sector reform as a top priority in Congo, but no one has yet demonstrated the leadership to drive a coordinated, sustained effort to train and professionalize the army. Security sector reform must occur in tandem with an international effort to legitimize the minerals trade. The Congolese government must work with MONUC to establish state control over the mining areas. International electronics companies – the most significant end-users – should lead efforts to trace, audit, and certify their supply chains, while at the same time supporting efforts to reform the trade in Congo and improve the livelihoods of communities dependent on Congo’s minerals. 

The U.S. and its allies have learned valuable lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan about what it takes to train an effective security force. American leadership on a multilateral initiative to do the same for Congo would go a long way toward helping two million forcibly displaced civilians in eastern Congo return to their homes with confidence that their army will keep them safe rather than do them harm.

Colin Thomas-Jensen is a Policy Advisor to the Enough project, where he helps guide Enough’s analysis and policy recommendations to end genocide and crimes against humanity.

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