Free, fair, and transparent democratic elections are no longer strangers to Africa. Indeed, they have become a regular occurrence. But the presidential and parliamentary elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the end of November will likely be Africa’s most daunting electoral challenge so far. If the vote comes off successfully, democrats and democratic norms will receive a boost in every corner of the continent.

Geography alone in this vast and poorly connected country constitutes a formidable obstacle to conducting an election according to internationally recognized standards. The DRC is the size of Western Europe. Much of it is covered in thick jungle. The country is also criss-crossed by its eponymous river and various other waterways. The DRC’s poor communications and transportation infrastructure makes it virtually impossible for most Congolese, government officials, and election observers to circulate freely.

Political problems compound the geographical impediments. The DRC has no tradition of democratic governance. The last election, in 2006, was marred by an opposition boycott and chaotic procedures. Perhaps the only reason that the international community declared itself relatively satisfied with the conduct of the poll was that international donors had generously contributed close to $500 million to organize the vote.

The DRC’s history since the withdrawal some half-a-century ago of Belgium, the former colonial master, complicates matters even more. The decades-long kleptocracy of the late president, Mobutu Sese Seko, virtually bankrupted this resource-rich country, eventually spurring an insurgency that brought Laurent-Désiré Kabila to power. After his bodyguards assassinated him in 2001, his son, Joseph Kabila, became president, a job that he is seeking to retain in the forthcoming election.

Amid the chaos of Mobutu’s downfall, a catastrophic regional war drawing in forces from Angola, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe erupted, fueled by competition for access to minerals, causing the death or displacement of millions – indeed, slaughter on a scale unseen since World War II. The war also eradicated what little control the central government was capable of exercising in large parts of the country. Armed militias sprang up all over central and eastern DRC, and today wield absolute power across large swathes of territory, exploiting the extractive industries for funding.

With a weak central government facing brutal guerrilla forces, many rural Congolese are forced to survive in a dangerous and cruel environment. Corruption makes their lives even more precarious. Transparency International’s most recent corruption perceptions index ranks the DRC 164th out of 178 countries. The latest Amnesty International report on the DRC details a litany of mass rapes and extrajudicial killings. And the Mo Ibrahim Foundation governance index for 2011 puts the DRC in 50th place among African countries, three from the bottom.

It is facile to blame the current situation on colonial plunder and post-colonial corruption. Joseph Kabila has made only token efforts to rein in corruption, perhaps because his hold on the presidency depends to a large degree on the financial largesse and patronage at his disposal to maintain allies and buy off rivals.

Indeed, Kabila has had ten years, and seemingly endless supplies of goodwill and funds from international donors, to turn the tide on the DRC’s poverty, graft, and mismanagement. Cash-strapped Western governments, which are putting up close to $750 million for the coming election, would do well to ask if they can continue to justify subsidizing a country where such little progress has been made towards better governance and respect for human rights.

On the one hand, the European Union and the United States despair at the myriad economic and political failures of the post-Mobutu DRC. On the other hand, they see Kabila as perhaps the only political figure who can prevent his unruly country from descending into chaos again.

That ambivalence might explain the shrugged shoulders at news that DRC electoral registers had allegedly become swollen with hundreds of thousands of fake names. It might explain the exasperated sighs at recent news of yet more mass rapes, perpetrated with seeming impunity by armed militias in South Kivu, on the country’s eastern fringe.

Yet if Western leaders are serious about spreading democratic values, they cannot afford to take a defeatist approach to the DRC. If the coming elections are conducted in a free, fair, and transparent manner, the West should help the DRC’s elected leader to fulfill a legitimate mandate freely given by the Congolese people.

But if the election is fraudulent and unjust, then the international community should consider imposing targeted sanctions against the DRC. One measure at the EU’s disposal is to suspend the DRC from the provisions of the Cotonou agreement, which governs the conditions for development assistance.

The EU has always been reluctant to impose rigorous human-rights conditionality on third-country recipients of its financial aid. But such a move could be highly effective in improving conditions in the DRC – and very popular among European voters tired of seeing their tax money go to waste.

The DRC’s future is, at least in theory, in the hands of the long-suffering Congolese people. We can only hope that they are allowed to express their preferences in an environment free of fraud, violence, and intimidation – all the more so because the conduct of the DRC election (and the world’s response to it) will have a profound influence elsewhere in Africa. Investing so much time and effort on an election will mean nothing if the West is unprepared to follow up on the result, whatever it may be – and with whatever steps are required.

It’s a long way from the marble halls of Congress to the ailing mining towns of eastern Congo, but the residents of Nyabibwe and Nzibira know exactly what’s to blame for their economic woes.

The “Loi Obama” or Obama Law — as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform act of 2010 has become known in the region — includes an obscure provision that requires public companies to indicate what measures they are taking to ensure that minerals in their supply chain don’t benefit warlords in conflict-ravaged Congo. The provision came about in no small part because of the work of high-profile advocacy groups like the Enough Project and Global Witness, which have been working for an end to what they call “conflict minerals.”

Unfortunately, the Dodd-Frank law has had unintended and devastating consequences, as I saw firsthand on a trip to eastern Congo this summer. The law has brought about a de facto embargo on the minerals mined in the region, including tin, tungsten and the tantalum that is essential for making cellphones.

The smelting companies that used to buy from eastern Congo have stopped. No one wants to be tarred with financing African warlords — especially the glamorous high-tech firms like Apple and Intel that are often the ultimate buyers of these minerals. It’s easier to sidestep Congo than to sort out the complexities of Congolese politics — especially when minerals are readily available from other, safer countries.

For locals, however, the law has been a catastrophe. In South Kivu Province, I heard from scores of artisanal miners and small-scale purchasers, who used to make a few dollars a day digging ore out of mountainsides with hand tools. Paltry as it may seem, this income was a lifeline for people in a region that was devastated by 32 years of misrule under the kleptocracy of Mobutu Sese Seko (when the country was known as Zaire) and that is now just beginning to emerge from over a decade of brutal war and internal strife.

The pastor at one church told me that women were giving birth at home because they couldn’t afford the $20 or so for the maternity clinic. Children are dropping out of school because parents can’t pay the fees. Remote mining towns are virtually cut off from the outside world because the planes that once provisioned them no longer land. Most worrying, a crop disease periodically decimates the region’s staple, cassava. Villagers who relied on their mining income to buy food when harvests failed are beginning to go hungry.

Meanwhile, the law is benefiting some of the very people it was meant to single out. The chief beneficiary is Gen. Bosco Ntaganda, who is nicknamed The Terminator and is sought by the International Criminal Court. Ostensibly a member of the Congolese Army, he is in fact a freelance killer with his own ethnic Tutsi militia, which provides “security” to traders smuggling minerals across the border to neighboring Rwanda.

All this might be a price worth paying if the law were having its intended effect of economically asphyxiating the warlords who turned eastern Congo into the deadliest conflict zone since World War II. As Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat for whom the act is partly named, memorably put it, “The purpose is to cut off funding to people who kill people.”

But by the time President Obama signed the law last summer, the conflict had moved into a different phase. Most of the militias that wreaked havoc between 2003 and 2008 have since been incorporated into the Congolese Army. The two or three of any significance that remain get their money from kidnapping and extortion, not from controlling mining sites or transport routes. The law has not stopped their depredations.

The people of eastern Congo agree that it would be beneficial to bring greater clarity and transparency to the mineral trade. A variety of local and international initiatives to do so were under way when the embargo hit. Those efforts may now become a casualty of the Dodd-Frank law.

The Chinese have recently opened a trading post in North Kivu; they make cellphones as well, and don’t feel the need to participate in transparency schemes the way Western companies do. And because they know they’re the only market in town, they are buying at a steep discount.

Rarely do local miners, high-level traders, mining companies and civil society leaders agree on an issue. But in eastern Congo, they were unanimous in condemning Dodd-Frank. The Rev. Didier de Failly, a Belgian priest who has lived in Congo for 45 years, insistently warned Western advocacy groups of the dangers posed by their campaign. He told them it was no defense for them to claim that they weren’t proposing an embargo, since what they were doing would inevitably lead to one.

But once the advocacy groups succeeded in framing the debate as a contest between themselves and greedy corporate interests, no one bothered to solicit the opinion of local Congolese.  As the leader of a civil-society group, Eric Kajemba, asked me, more in confusion than in anger, “If the advocacy groups aren’t speaking for the people of eastern Congo, whom are they speaking for?”

En 2010, Mike Hoffman, fondateur de l’association Vivere et infatigable militant de l’aide aux plus faibles, m’a approché me demandant de lui signer une lettre de soutien à l’action de justice qu’il mène avec une ONG congolaise.

Il me rappela que la République démocratique du Congo, cinq fois la France, comptant 450 ethnies aux deux cents dialectes, a vu sa population frappée depuis quinze ans par l’un des conflits les plus meurtriers, faisant 5 millions de morts et laissant un peuple victime de centaines de milliers de crimes de guerre impunis.

Il évoqua surtout les «Chambres Foraines», tribunaux itinérants dans les zones les plus reculées du pays, nées de l’initiative d’avocats épris de justice, qui incitent les tribunaux à faire cas des plaintes que des femmes et des hommes osent déposer.

Vaudois et prudent, je restai réticent à cautionner une justice dont j’ignorais tout. J’ajoutais, plus téméraire, qu’il me faudrait observer l’activité de ces Chambres Foraines de mes yeux.

Il me prit au mot et m’invita à assister au procès de soldats accusés de meurtres, viols collectifs et de séquestrations, dans un village retiré du Sud-Kivu. Je ne pouvais pas dire non et pris mon billet d’avion.

A mon arrivée, tout était source de dépaysement dans cette Afrique subsaharienne aussi étrangère qu’une lointaine planète.

Après quelques kilomètres seulement effectués dans une jeep improbable, je constatai qu’ici, la nuit n’arrête pas l’activité des villageois. Au gré des virages, sur la piste éclairée de nos phares, les gens bavardent, marchandent ou pleurent sur leur sort, dans le noir. J’ai mesuré l’ampleur de leur dénuement avant même d’arriver dans un foyer de femmes violées (tenu par deux femmes ayant créé la Fédération des femmes pour le développement (FFD), où, accueilli en chants et en danses, je passai ma première nuit africaine.

Le lendemain, Me Sami, animateur de l’ONG locale que soutient Vivere, donne le départ du convoi qui va rendre justice à 330 km de là. En tête de cette «caravane du droit», le véhicule du magistrat, suivi du camion où quinze soldats assurent la sécurité, outre le maintien sous bonne garde des accusés. La jeep des avocats appelés à plaider ces causes ferme la marche.

Durant huit heures, défile un monde où l’eau et l’électricité sont plus rares que l’or des mines qui jalonnent notre route. Mines trop petites pour les sociétés internationales et laissées à l’usage des villageois qui échangent pépites contre poules.

Puis, sur les hauts plateaux du territoire de Fizi, monde merveilleux de «la Forêt des grands singes», eux-mêmes décimés par la guerre et remplacés par des rebelles en armes qui ne savent plus à qui ils sont alliés ou non, trop occupés à piller et terroriser les villages voisins, pour se nourrir. Dans cette forêt, mes hôtes, si courageux, donnèrent des signes de peur, confessant que leurs épouses avaient tenté de les dissuader de mener ce trek judiciaire.

Nous arrivons enfin à Minemb­we, petit village des hauts plateaux, poste stratégique que quinze ans de guerre ont transformé en théâtre d’exactions souvent commises par des soldats, comme ceux menottés dans le camion.

Le président du tribunal fait installer ce qui sera, durant trois jours, le décor des procès que je suis venu observer, décor qui tient en deux tables couvertes du drapeau national, six chaises en plastique et deux bancs, l’un pour les accusés, l’autre pour les avocats, le tout dans un champ à l’ombre d’un arbre.

Décidément, tout me faisait redouter la manière dont la justice va être rendue.

Puis arrivent des dizaines et des centaines de villageois, informés par le seul bouche-à-oreille de la tenue d’un procès contre des soldats aujourd’hui accusés, hier encore seigneurs des lieux. Des jeunes, des vieux, des hommes, des femmes, hutus, tutsis, ou autres, témoins silencieux de la justice. Ils voient pour la première fois, le panache des avocats dans leur robe noire.

Je portai un regard ému sur mes confrères. Ils étaient fébriles à l’entame de ces procès, comme mes confrères lausannois. Ici ils acceptent ce combat judiciaire dans un milieu hostile tenté de faire taire la justice.

Puis, la Cour, solennelle, s’installe et le procès s’ouvre. Tout me devient familier: l’autorité naturelle du président, interrogeant patiemment les accusés. Les propos fuyants de ceux-ci, dont chaque mot semble pesé.

Il ne me fallut donc que quelques minutes, pour être assuré que la justice que l’on voulait rendre sur les hauts plateaux du territoire de Fizi, devant ce public incrédule, était empreinte de la même sincérité qui habite nos présidents de tribunaux d’arrondissement vaudois, nos juges de paix. Ni plus ni moins parfaite. Ma mission était terminée. Je signerai la lettre de soutien demandée par Vivere.

Mais il y avait plus. A l’issue de ces procès, à l’occasion desquels les peines infligées furent compatibles avec celles qui auraient été rendues chez nous, j’ai perçu la signification profonde que toute société donne ou doit donner à sa justice et à son système judiciaire.

Une société humaine ne peut souffrir l’impunité, parce qu’il faut, moralement, que le coupable soit sanctionné, mais surtout que les victimes et ceux qui les entourent, à Minembwe, à Lausanne ou à Nuremberg, sachent qu’une sanction est véritablement encourue lorsqu’un crime est commis.

Seule la confiance que chacun porte en sa justice incite la majorité d’entre nous à faire le choix de l’harmonie et de la tranquillité sociale. J’étais parti en Afrique, drapé de mon statut d’observateur d’une justice congolaise que j’imaginais au mieux balbutiante. Je reviens riche d’une leçon de justice que m’ont donnée ces juges, ces avocats, ces hommes et ces femmes pour qui les droits de l’homme ont un sens et qui refusent de céder au désespoir, souvent au péril de leur vie. Ils méritent notre admiration, notre solidarité et notre soutien.

Today, millions of people on another continent are observing the 50th anniversary of an event few Americans remember, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. A slight, goateed man with black, half-framed glasses, the 35-year-old Lumumba was the first democratically chosen leader of the vast country, nearly as large as the United States east of the Mississippi, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This treasure house of natural resources had been a colony of Belgium, which for decades had made no plans for independence. But after clashes with Congolese nationalists, the Belgians hastily arranged the first national election in 1960, and in June of that year King Baudouin arrived to formally give the territory its freedom.

“It is now up to you, gentlemen,” he arrogantly told Congolese dignitaries, “to show that you are worthy of our confidence.”

The Belgians, and their European and American fellow investors, expected to continue collecting profits from Congo’s factories, plantations and lucrative mines, which produced diamonds, gold, uranium, copper and more. But they had not planned on Lumumba.

A dramatic, angry speech he gave in reply to Baudouin brought Congolese legislators to their feet cheering, left the king startled and frowning and caught the world’s attention. Lumumba spoke forcefully of the violence and humiliations of colonialism, from the ruthless theft of African land to the way that French-speaking colonists talked to Africans as adults do to children, using the familiar “tu” instead of the formal “vous.” Political independence was not enough, he said; Africans had to also benefit from the great wealth in their soil.

With no experience of self-rule and an empty treasury, his huge country was soon in turmoil. After failing to get aid from the United States, Lumumba declared he would turn to the Soviet Union. Thousands of Belgian officials who lingered on did their best to sabotage things: their code word for Lumumba in military radio transmissions was “Satan.” Shortly after he took office as prime minister, the C.I.A., with White House approval, ordered his assassination and dispatched an undercover agent with poison.

The would-be poisoners could not get close enough to Lumumba to do the job, so instead the United States and Belgium covertly funneled cash and aid to rival politicians who seized power and arrested the prime minister. Fearful of revolt by Lumumba’s supporters if he died in their hands, the new Congolese leaders ordered him flown to the copper-rich Katanga region in the country’s south, whose secession Belgium had just helped orchestrate. There, on Jan. 17, 1961, after being beaten and tortured, he was shot. It was a chilling moment that set off street demonstrations in many countries.

As a college student traveling through Africa on summer break, I was in Léopoldville (today’s Kinshasa), Congo’s capital, for a few days some six months after Lumumba’s murder. There was an air of tension and gloom in the city, jeeps full of soldiers were on patrol, and the streets quickly emptied at night. Above all, I remember the triumphant, macho satisfaction with which two young American Embassy officials — much later identified as C.I.A. men — talked with me over drinks about the death of someone they regarded not as an elected leader but as an upstart enemy of the United States.

Some weeks before his death, Lumumba had briefly escaped from house arrest and, with a small group of supporters, tried to flee to the eastern Congo, where a counter-government of his sympathizers had formed. The travelers had to traverse the Sankuru River, after which friendly territory began. Lumumba and several companions crossed the river in a dugout canoe to commandeer a ferry to go back and fetch the rest of the group, including his wife and son.

But by the time they returned to the other bank, government troops pursuing them had arrived. According to one survivor, Lumumba’s famous eloquence almost persuaded the soldiers to let them go. Events like this are often burnished in retrospect, but however the encounter happened, Lumumba seems to have risked his life to try to rescue the others, and the episode has found its way into film and fiction.

His legend has only become deeper because there is painful newsreel footage of him in captivity, soon after this moment, bound tightly with rope and trying to retain his dignity while being roughed up by his guards.

Patrice Lumumba had only a few short months in office and we have no way of knowing what would have happened had he lived. Would he have stuck to his ideals or, like too many African independence leaders, abandoned them for the temptations of wealth and power? In any event, leading his nation to the full economic autonomy he dreamed of would have been an almost impossible task. The Western governments and corporations arrayed against him were too powerful, and the resources in his control too weak: at independence his new country had fewer than three dozen university graduates among a black population of more than 15 million, and only three of some 5,000 senior positions in the civil service were filled by Congolese.

A half-century later, we should surely look back on the death of Lumumba with shame, for we helped install the men who deposed and killed him. In the scholarly journal Intelligence and National Security, Stephen R. Weissman, a former staff director of the House Subcommittee on Africa, recently pointed out that Lumumba’s violent end foreshadowed today’s American practice of “extraordinary rendition.” The Congolese politicians who planned Lumumba’s murder checked all their major moves with their Belgian and American backers, and the local C.I.A. station chief made no objection when they told him they were going to turn Lumumba over — render him, in today’s parlance — to the breakaway government of Katanga, which, everyone knew, could be counted on to kill him.

Still more fateful was what was to come. Four years later, one of Lumumba’s captors, an army officer named Joseph Mobutu, again with enthusiastic American support, staged a coup and began a disastrous, 32-year dictatorship. Just as geopolitics and a thirst for oil have today brought us unsavory allies like Saudi Arabia, so the cold war and a similar lust for natural resources did then. Mobutu was showered with more than $1 billion in American aid and enthusiastically welcomed to the White House by a succession of presidents; George H. W. Bush called him “one of our most valued friends.”

This valued friend bled his country dry, amassed a fortune estimated at $4 billion, jetted the world by rented Concorde and bought himself an array of grand villas in Europe and multiple palaces and a yacht at home. He let public services shrivel to nothing and roads and railways be swallowed by the rain forest. By 1997, when he was overthrown and died, his country was in a state of wreckage from which it has not yet recovered.

Since that time the fatal combination of enormous natural riches and the dysfunctional government Mobutu left has ignited a long, multisided war that has killed huge numbers of Congolese or forced them from their homes. Many factors cause a war, of course, especially one as bewilderingly complex as this one. But when visiting eastern Congo some months ago, I could not help but think that one thread leading to the human suffering I saw begins with the assassination of Lumumba.

We will never know the full death toll of the current conflict, but many believe it to be in the millions. Some of that blood is on our hands. Both ordering the murders of apparent enemies and then embracing their enemies as “valued friends” come with profound, long-term consequences — a lesson worth pondering on this anniversary.

Ask many Americans to name the bloodiest war since World War II and chances are that most would not know the answer. If you told them it was in Africa, they might guess Rwanda or the ongoing conflict in Sudan. They’d be wrong.

By far, the deadliest conflict was in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1998 to 2003. Eight African nations participated in the fighting on Congolese soil, many hoping to seize control of its vast mineral wealth. Some 4 million Congolese died during the conflict and nearly another 1 million have died in the lawless aftermath from starvation, conflict and preventable disease. Tens of thousands of children were forced to become soldiers, and as many as two out of three women were victimized by rape and other forms of sexual violence.

This is still happening today.

Perhaps the lack of attention toward these atrocities explains the disconnect in Washington between the compassion felt for the people of eastern Congo and the nominal advancement of specific policies to bring sustainable change to the region. Fortunately, that began to change this summer with passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, which required reporting the origin of potential conflict minerals from Congo. I hope that the incoming Congress will continue the bipartisan movement for sustainable peace and prosperity in that region.

Much remains to be done to help the Congolese people secure their region for the long term. In a defiant response to circumstances beyond their control, the resourceful and resilient Congolese people have flourished and begun to rebuild the foundation for effective government. This potential was evident in the national elections held four years ago and in the relative stability that has followed.

The potential can also be seen through local organizations such as Synergy of Women for Sexual Violence Victims in North Kivu. I am amazed how Synergy – despite regular threats – works to end gender-based violence and to provide survivors with critical support. This is just one of the many effective community-based solutions that bring about substantive change.

Through extensive time spent in Congo and my work with the Eastern Congo Initiative, I can attest to the authenticity of progress. But I can also speak to its fragility. Supporting Congolese efforts to move beyond their nation’s violent past and ultimately stabilize civil society requires strong leadership and a more holistic approach from the United States.

To secure the peace, we must continue to support local leaders and trust their ability to manage their own destiny. At the same time, we cannot refuse to recognize that the reinforcing cycle of poverty and corruption still rules and that many crimes are still committed with impunity. We need to also acknowledge that achieving stability within Congo’s borders requires understanding the dynamics outside those borders and throughout the Great Lakes region.

This isn’t just altruism. The United States has security, economic and diplomatic interests in a peaceful and stable Congo. That is why the Eastern Congo Initiative has developed a set of recommendations for U.S. policymakers that can lead to a mutually beneficial improvement in the lives of the Congolese people. The four most significant recommendations happen to be the easiest to implement, with several already mandated by existing legislation.

First, it is imperative that the United States maintain the State Department office of special adviser for the Great Lakes region with a new appointment and open a renewed political dialogue.

Second, Washington must effectively implement the provisions in the Dodd-Frank Act designed to strengthen enforcement sanctions related to conflict minerals. Only in an equitable and transparent business environment can Congo’s mineral wealth pay for Congo’s future.

Third, the United States and the international community must continue to provide technical assistance and ensure the appropriate environment for the elections scheduled for 2011. Fair national, regional and local elections, in which the outcomes are accepted by the people, are vital for reestablishing confidence in civic institutions.

Finally, we must support Congo’s efforts to deploy administrative and judicial reforms to root out political interference, stop corruption and foster the rule of law. Sealing the security vacuum with something other than militias will place the Congolese people in control of their destiny.

Following bipartisan leadership in the United States, the world can ensure that Congo never again experiences the violence and exploitation that defined much of its past two decades.

Synergy’s creator, Justine Masika Bihamba, began helping women after rebels broke into her house and sexually assaulted her daughter. Her family is under constant threat because of her efforts. When asked why she stays, she says, “I have to do my work.”

For the same reason, to help realize a vibrant Congo with abundant opportunities for economic and social development, we can’t leave either.

Que ce soit la publication du dernier rapport de l’ONU ou les viols de guerres qui s’y déroulent, l’actualité de ces derniers jours nous rappelle la situation dramatique de la République démocratique du Congo (RDC). Celle-ci n’a rien de neuf. La RDC continue, discrètement mais sûrement, à être rongée par le conflit alors que l’ONU (avec la Monusco) y a toujours son plus gros contingent militaire et que la guerre est officiellement finie depuis 2002. Parmi les causes de la persistence du conflit, il y a évidemment des enjeux stratégico-économiques comme les ressources naturelles. Mais il y a surtout la cohésion et l’identité nationale de ce pays fragile. Entre l’actualité pressante, l’efficacité questionnable des Nations unies et les élections de 2011 à venir, comment penser utilement et à long terme la construction politique du pays ?

La RDC est dans le haut du classement Failed States Index des Etats en échec, dits “faillis”. Le constat est identique depuis au moins dix ans dans la majorité des classements des Think-tanks, ONG ou organisations internationales. Pour de nombreux observateurs, les ressources naturelles sont au cœur de cette situation. Qu’en est-il réellement ?

Les ressources jouent un rôle très particulier dans les conflits. Celui-ci semble d’autant plus fort lorsque l’on connaît les richesses minières du pays et leurs enjeux stratégico-économiques. Cet “eldorado minier” possède effectivement la moitié des réserves mondiales de cobalt (métal hautement prisé en aéronautique), il est l’un des quatre plus gros producteurs de diamants bruts au monde, et est également très riche en cuivre, en zinc, en étain, en or, en coltan-cassitérite et en uranium.

A l’époque coloniale, les ressources naturelles ont tout d’abord servi à alimenter les conflits car les ressources naturelles étaient la finalité principale de l’oppression et de l’exploitation. Puis il y eut la période de la guerre froide. Protégé par l’affrontement des grands blocs, Mobutu put tranquillement piller le pays et se servir des ressources naturelles pour s’enrichir et conforter son pouvoir. Le résultat fut un régime dictatorial mêlant délitement et désorganisation totale de l’Etat et de l’économie ainsi que la création d’une forte instabilité interne. La fin de son régime se termina d’ailleurs par un conflit. D’un côté les ressources naturelles ont été un enjeu capital motivant les intérêts des grands blocs et permettant la domination et la pression. Avec la fin de la guerre froide et la fin de Mobutu, les années 1990 ont laissé un vide. Ce vide politique et économique a été propice au développement de la prédation et à l’aboutissement de la désorganisation totale du pays menant à la chute de ce dernier. L’absence des pressions liées à la guerre froide et au pouvoir politique central s’est mêlée au manque de structure étatique.

En 1998 commença une nouvelle ère marquée par une guerre meurtrière. L’économie, par le biais des ressources naturelles, s’est infiltrée partout avec une facilité déconcertante. Les trafics de ressources naturelles ont augmenté, se caractérisant par l’afflux de groupes mafieux, de groupes armés et des groupes rebelles, ce qui fut une source d’instabilité et contribua à alimenter la présence et la violence de ces groupes. A cela s’ajoute de nombreuses entreprises minières du monde entier qui, défendant leurs intérêts, deviennent des acteurs politiques indirects. Les ressources naturelles exacerbent toujours les tensions de la région. Le contrôle de l’exploitation, de la gestion et de la commercialisation des ressources naturelles est donc un enjeu capital pour la stabilité du pays.

UN PROBLÈME POLITIQUE, SOCIAL ET HUMAIN

Néanmoins, c’est une erreur de voir dans les ressources naturelles la clé des conflits. D’autres facteurs s’y mêlent : l’histoire, la géographie, les cultures, les ethnies, les personnes et leurs ambitions, le contexte politique international, la situation économique mondiale, les acteurs transnationaux, la finance internationale, la situation des pays voisins… Les ressources naturelles ne sont finalement qu’un outil du conflit. Le problème est avant tout politique, social et humain ; pour résoudre les conflits, il ne faut donc pas s’arrêter à la question des ressources naturelles.

Mal comprendre les raisons des conflits conduit à mal penser l’avenir. La régénérescence du Congo se trouve notamment dans un paramètre rarement soulevé car justement difficilement mesurable et saisissable. Il s’agit de l’énergie et du sens que le pays et ses citoyens se donnent à eux-mêmes, on peut parler ici du sens profond, historique, sociologique et humain de sa situation. C’est là que se joue le cœur politique de la vie d’un Etat. Pour Ernest Renan, “une nation est une âme, un principe spirituel “.

Un pays doit avoir un sens, plus précisément il doit trouver la raison de son “vivre-ensemble”. Un Etat est une construction. Quoique puissent croire les promoteurs des solutions “prêt-à-porter” de démocratisation, de peace-building ou nation-building, la construction d’un Etat et la résolution de ses conflits internes et externes sont des processus irréguliers et chaotiques qui se construisent avec les caprices des hommes et du temps. Le colonialisme, l’exploitation abusive des ressources, les trafics ou les régimes autoritaires qu’ont pu connaître la RDC sont autant de composantes que l’on peut considérer comme négatives dans l’absolu. Les critiquer pour mieux construire le futur peut être utile, toutefois la recherche de boucs émissaires est une erreur de méthode et de fond. Ces événements, au départ extrinsèques, se sont transformés et ont été réinterprétés puis réintégrés dans le temps pour faire ce qu’est le pays et ce qu’il sera, pour faire sa réalité. Un pays n’est pas uniforme, bien au contraire, il se fait de mélanges et de superpositions.

Ne considérons pas comme inutile toutes les initiatives de reconstruction, d’aide, de transformation de conflits et de développement initiées par l’ONU, la Banque mondiale, des Etats ou des ONG. Mais comprenons leur aspect relatif et insuffisant ; elles peuvent au plus être considérées comme supplétives.

Que faire ? Premièrement, la RDC doit trouver un sens à sa reconstruction pour elle-même et par elle-même. Le pays doit se créer autant que s’approprier sa “chose” politique, c’est-à-dire : sa raison d’être, son orientation, sa structure et son mode de légitimation. Et ne nous trompons pas, ces processus sont longs et irréguliers. Cet enjeu est plus que politique, il est humain et social. Seul les congolais peuvent l’entreprendre. Une fois cette voie engagée, les contributions de l’ONU, de la communauté internationale et les aides extérieures auront bien plus de sens. Deuxièmement, la régulation et le contrôle de certains facteurs qui participent au conflit, à l’exemple des ressources naturelles, sont capitaux. Si les puissances occidentales ou d’autres souhaitent réellement une amélioration de la situation, elles doivent s’imposer une discipline forte de régulation de l’exploitation des ressources, même si cela est plus facile à dire qu’à faire. Enfin, les Nations unies doivent cesser de se voiler la face sur leurs interventions ; les actions autant que les méthodes onusiennes doivent être questionnées en profondeur pour leur redonner de l’efficacité et de la crédibilité. Cela vaut tout autant pour la Banque mondiale avec ses projets sans fin et sa bureaucratie pesante, qui en font un interlocuteur peu convaincant au yeux des congolais.

There is no amount of training that can prepare you for the moment when you are in the field and a news report detailing the gang rape of nearly 200 women and four baby boys crosses your desk. Rwandan FDLR rebels and local Mai Mai militia besieged the town of Luvungi in North Kivu, along the eastern border of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The UN estimates that 154 civilians were assaulted over four days earlier this month, and says the entire town was in effect taken hostage.

This part of the DRC is no stranger to violence, having witnessed some kind of conflict since the pre-independence struggles between the Belgians and Germans. Today various armed groups, counting many foreigners in their ranks, terrorise local communities and have contributed to one of the highest concentrations of displaced persons in the world.

So it is easy to ignore the significance of the numbers in question here: 154 – the equivalent of about two double-decker busloads. And yet there has been little coverage of the event outside the humanitarian press. Here in Kinshasa the limited press corps appears to rely on reports from overseas about events on the other side of what is, admittedly, a vast country. It is impossible to get to Luvungi from Kinshasa by road; in some ways it feels as if the news also finds it easier to travel to Nairobi, Johannesburg, Paris or London before it comes here. I have to wonder if the sheer distances involved coupled with so many years of start-stop peace have somehow disengaged the people of Kinshasa from the realities of life on the other side of their country.

Similarly, I find myself wondering whose fault it was that this happened. Luvungi is less than 20 miles from a UN compound: how could this happen so near to a Monusco – the UN Stabilisation Mission – base? How could it happen when Monusco is by many measures the largest UN presence in the world? What does this failure mean for the viability of the mission, and its plan to exit the country in less than two years? It is now being reported that a UN envoy has said troops could not have prevented the attacks because they did not know it was happening, and that the UN has called an emergency session of the Security Council to discuss how to respond to the violence. It is clear that the UN has a lot to answer for – particularly to the women who have been assaulted, and indeed to the DRC and the global community that supports its work – and needs to address the systematic failures that allowed such a horrifying event to take place under their watch.

Nonetheless, it is important to resist a kneejerk reaction and focus only on the failures of the UN. Certainly, the UN mission to the DRC has been beset by serious problems ranging from peacekeepers engaged in smuggling and child prostitution to general impotence in the face of what, on paper, should be an easy opponent to overcome. The current mission is set to withdraw next year, and while this would satisfy the development community’s obsession with exit strategies, the seizing of Luvungi raises serious questions about the capability of the DRC government to provide even the most basic security to its citizens, not to mention its ability to deal with myriad rebel groups.

It is important to recall that the failures of the peacekeeping mission occur within a broader historical, social and political context. This isn’t some abstract outpouring of violence in a faraway land. It is the evolution of a conflict that has been ignored and allowed to fester over decades with little interest until fairly recently. It is the culmination of national and foreign policy interests that place accumulation of wealth and geostrategic partnerships over the creation of a stable government. This is the ugly face of a brutal capitalism that has for many years privileged the extraction of substantial mineral wealth over the security of the people. The UN failed, yes, but only because it operated within a context in which failure guaranteed more gain for the few at the cost of the unfortunate many.

Our final instinct should be to wonder what can be done. It is imperative that we do not succumb to the overwhelming sense of impotence that is engendered by such acts of cruelty. Even as world leaders apparently lose sight of their moral obligation to reiterate their concern and commitment to preventing the recurrence of similar events, it is critical for ordinary citizens to remain engaged with the issues – and continue to pressure governments and civil society actors to keep the security of the people of the DRC on the agenda at national and international level.

What does the financial reform package recently signed into law in the US have to do with preventing mass rape in Africa? Quite a lot, it seems, but one has to search deeply within the 2,300-page document to find Section 1502, which focuses on “conflict minerals”. Conflict minerals help finance fighting and sexual violence on an unprecedented scale in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The US Congress and President Obama have shown great leadership by including this amendment in the final law. It is now time for Europe’s leaders to step up to the plate, as a sign of universal resolve to protect the most vulnerable.

More than 200,000 rapes have been reported since war began in the Democratic Republic of the Congo more than a decade ago. The eastern part of the country has been labelled the rape capital of the world. Control of Congo’s natural resources and minerals has always been contested, and these vast riches have fuelled the country’s conflicts. They have helped enrich militant groups, who have employed sexual violence as a tactic of war. One such resource, coltan, is so widely used in mobile phones that it has been said that we are all carrying a piece of the Congo in our pockets. But conflict minerals cannot be allowed to continue fuelling conflict and the consequent sexual violence. Although it is complicated to track conflict minerals, this cannot become an excuse for not trying. After all, neither American nor European consumers want their MP3 players and mobile phones to be funding gang rape in Africa.

The newly adopted US financial reform law stipulates that any company doing business that involves minerals must disclose annually whether conflict materials originating in the DRC or an adjoining country were used in the process. This applies not only to electronics companies, but to all publicly traded US firms that use gold, cassiterite, tungsten or coltan in their products. Companies are required to exercise due diligence on the source and chain of custody of these materials, and measures to ensure oversight shall include an independent audit of the report.

Within 180 days, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and USAID chief Rajiv Shah have to submit to the US Congress a strategy to address the linkages between human rights abuses, armed groups, mining of conflict minerals and commercial products. This strategy is expected to include a plan to promote peace and security in the DRC as well as adjoining countries. It is also expected to comprise efforts to develop stronger governance and economic institutions that can facilitate and improve transparency in the cross-border trade involving the natural resources of the DRC. In this way, these resources can finally be used for the betterment of the people of Congo.

Furthermore, Clinton is expected, in accordance with the recommendation of the UN group of experts on the DRC, to submit a “conflict minerals map” to Congress. This map must clearly show mineral-rich zones, trade routes and areas under the control of armed groups in the DRC and adjoining countries, and will be made public. This is a very important initiative, which I welcome as the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict. It indicates a firm resolve and commitment to tackle the causes of the conflict at its roots.

Clinton must report back to Congress before Christmas. In the meantime, I urge European legislators and governments to follow the lead of the Obama administration and the US Congress and work to pass a comprehensive package pertaining to the trade in conflict minerals.

This issue touches us all directly in terms of our daily lives and conveniences, and as such there is no place to hide from our collective responsibility. And neither is there any time to lose, when the lives of so many are at stake, and the bodies of women and girls continue to be used as fodder in a war fuelled by mineral resources.

Today the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is remembering the 50th anniversary of its independence from brutal Belgian rule. But its people have little reason to celebrate, despite the grandiose festivities organised by the Kabila regime.

Eastern Congo remains deeply insecure, with the internal displacement of hundreds of thousands of citizens; the vast majority of Congolese are illiterate and deprived of healthcare; and the historic 2006 elections (the first since 1960) notwithstanding, democratic space is shrinking, not widening.

As in other African countries that obtained their political freedom from white domination, Congolese people dreamed of prosperity and dignity through hard work, of internal peace and good relations with the outside world. To quote Congo’s first prime minister Patrice Lumumba:

“We are going to show the world what the black man can do when he works in freedom, and we are going to make of Congo the centre of the sun’s radiance for all of Africa … We are going to keep watch over the lands of our country so that they truly profit her children.”

Fulfilling these aspirations was never going to be easy, even with competent, committed rulers. Unfortunately, the structural factors working against emancipation (no self-governing experience, institutionalised violence, etc) were compounded by two massive, interrelated problems: the almost total impunity enjoyed by Congolese regimes, and the west’s support for tyrants in exchange for access to Congo’s fabulous natural resources.

An American-Belgian plot assassinated the “dangerously autonomous” Lumumba, leading to a neocolonial restoration under the Mobutu dictatorship, which allowed western companies to feast on the formidable copper, cobalt and uranium reserves.

Meanwhile, the state withered away as social services and infrastructure were neglected and soldiers remained unpaid for years; statistics show that in the mid-90s, 75% of the budget went to “presidential private expenses”.

In the wake of the Rwandan genocide’s regional spillover, Mobutu’s time was up. The US-led international community gave a green light for a Rwandan-Ugandan invasion, with Laurent Kabila as its Congolese face.

Following regime change in May 1997, the west allowed Mobutu to die in peace and urged Kabila’s government to promote “national reconciliation”, conveniently refraining from prosecuting those who plundered the nation for decades.

Any hopes of a fresh start for central Africa were soon dashed when the former rebel-chiefs of Uganda, Rwanda and Congo fell out, triggering the bloodiest conflict since the second world war. Ten African states battled each other as well as dozens of militias on Congolese territory, causing the deaths of anywhere between 3 and 6 million civilians. Though the west was shocked by these atrocities, supposedly respectable multinationals made a fortune out of buying rare minerals from predatory governmental armies and rebels.

A peace agreement was negotiated under the aegis of South Africa and Belgium, leading to elections which returned Joseph Kabila (who had succeeded his father) to the presidency in 2006. Though this was significant progress compared with the years of all-out war, the western and regional partners of Congo again granted its leaders total impunity for the killing and systematic looting of natural resources that had occurred in the past decade.

Despite charges by the international criminal court against a handful of local pseudo-generals in Ituri region, their (inter)national backers in Kinshasa, Kampala and further afield are left alone. More than 95% of crimes against humanity committed since 1996 have gone unpunished.

As so often in Congolese history, in the name of stability, justice has simply been de-prioritised by the international community.

Opponents of this myopic choice were called pessimists because “Congo needs to move on”. Human rights icon Floribert Chebeya warned that while power is being concentrated by a clique of military hardliners and businessmen around Kabila, security remains absolutely abysmal, with thousands of women being raped annually in Eastern DRC. In today’s Congo, such criticism is unacceptable: on 2 June, Chebeya was assassinated.

Brussels, Washington and London still regard Congo as a “fragile democracy” and money continues to flow to Kinshasa. Never mind that there is no opposition worthy of the name; that the state does not control large swathes of the territory but allows its army to misbehave; and that critics are systematically intimidated or killed. Business must go on.

Congo’s 50th anniversary is an excellent opportunity for countries like Belgium, the US and Britain (the DFID pumped about £100m into DRC in 2009) to accept their devastating historical responsibility, rethink their assumptions about governance and security, and change their policy fundamentally.

It is high time the west replaced its 50-year-old illusion of prioritising ‘political stability’ with justice and accountability that has an emphasis on human rights and grassroots state-building. The root cause of Congo’s intractable crisis is the interplay of top-down authoritarianism, external manipulation and absolute impunity for those who violently exploit its people and resources: continued support for the “stabilising-factor Kabila” while accepting his failure to address atrocities by his security services implies repeating the disasters of the past.

Supporting the faith-based clinics, community-run schools and human rights organisations fighting for human dignity at the micro-level might not guarantee success either, but offers a far better chance of ending the “perennial” Congolese chaos in the next decade.

Paternalist, western-made designs have failed to improve living conditions, just like Kinshasa-centred patronage and authoritarian rule by Mobutu and the Kabila dynasty. So why not finally empower the Congolese themselves to make their own choices as they struggle to build a more just, more citizen-friendly state from the bottom up?

Alors que le ministre des affaires étrangères français, Bernard Kouchner, entreprend une tournée africaine qui l’amènera au Rwanda et en République démocratique du Congo (RDC), la situation à la frontière de ces pays ne cesse d’être volatile. Longtemps à couteaux tirés, ces deux pays se sont rapprochés en 2009, à la suite des pressions de la communauté internationale. Ce rapprochement s’est traduit par l’arrestation d’un des principaux seigneurs de guerre de la région, Laurent Nkunda, ex-leader du mouvement rebelle tutsi, le Congrès national pour la défense du peuple (CNDP), l’intégration de ses troupes dans l’armée congolaise et la traque contre la milice des Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR), sinistres héritiers du génocide rwandais de 1994, installés depuis en RDC. Cette traque a pris la forme d’opérations militaires : après une multitude d’accords inappliqués, l’usage de la force marquait un changement majeur de stratégie vis-à-vis des groupes armés.

Paradoxalement, la nouvelle donne entre Kigali et Kinshasa n’a pas produit les effets escomptés. La mise hors jeu de Laurent Nkunda ne s’est pas traduite par sa comparution devant la justice mais par son remplacement, à la tête du CNDP, par un autre soldat de fortune recherché par la Cour pénale internationale pour crimes de guerre, Bosco Ntaganda. Les opérations militaires n’ont pas permis de neutraliser les FDLR et ont eu un coût humain élevé pour les populations civiles, prises entre deux feux et victimes d’exactions de la part de l’armée comme de celle des milices rebelles. Le CNDP utilise son intégration dans les troupes congolaises aux fins d’étendre sa zone de contrôle, occuper davantage de sites miniers et organiser le retour de populations tutsies dans des territoires de l’est de la RDC qu’il juge être siens.

Ce bilan ne surprend pas, l’insincérité étant partie intégrante des processus de paix. Mais il reflète un problème plus profond : la compétition pour le foncier et les ressources minières, causes structurelles de l’instabilité dans cette région frontalière, n’est toujours pas prise en compte dans la stratégie de paix. Celle-ci continue de se développer dans deux directions : la lutte contre les FDLR et la réforme du secteur de la sécurité. La première implique, pour être efficace, d’être internationale et de frapper les réseaux financiers soutenant ce mouvement depuis l’Europe, l’Amérique et l’Extrême-Orient. La seconde est une œuvre de long, voire très long, terme qui suppose des budgets et une expertise considérables ainsi qu’une volonté politique de fer pour éradiquer la corruption dans les services de sécurité. Or les efforts déployés dans ces deux domaines sont loin d’être à la hauteur des besoins.

Engluée dans des dilemmes sécuritaires, l’actuelle stratégie de paix néglige les causes profondes de la violence : la compétition pour le foncier, sur fond de surpeuplement (le Rwanda et le Burundi ont dépassé les 300 habitants au kilomètre carré et l’Est congolais atteindra bientôt cette densité), et la lutte pour le contrôle des ressources minières, qui sont à cette région ce que le pétrole est à l’Arabie saoudite. Malgré l’accumulation d’études et de rapports, le commerce illicite des minerais continue d’alimenter les caisses des seigneurs de guerre, et le problème de l’accès à la terre reste considéré comme un sujet bon pour les spécialistes en développement mais néfaste pour les négociations de paix.

Il faut espérer que cela change vite, et l’occasion d’intégrer les problématiques de développement dans les négociations de paix est à portée de main : la conférence internationale sur la coopération économique dans la région des Grands Lacs, prévue cette année à l’initiative de la France, devra prendre ces deux sujets à bras-le-corps ; sinon elle sera pour la paix en RDC ce que la conférence de Copenhague a été pour l’environnement : un rendez-vous manqué de plus.

I was just raped.

Not just, as in recently, though sometimes it feels like yesterday, but just as in only. I was only raped, not mutilated. I did not have a bottle or stick or gun shoved into my vagina, twisted to inflict maximum injury. Though damaged, I did not have my breasts lopped off, nor did I lose a limb. I was left intact, though far from whole.

I did not feel lucky 4 1/2 years ago, when I was raped, but I do feel lucky today as I read about the unfathomable violence that is being unleashed against women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

I struggle to understand how the word “rape” can describe what happened to me and be used to describe what is happening to them. My mind skitters in a thousand directions when I try to force myself to think about it. Is it shameful to think that I share something with these women? Is it wrong to think that I don’t?

I do not believe that being raped gives me any moral authority on the subject. I don’t pretend to know what other women experience or how they cope or fail to cope. I only know that following my rape, I suffered from depression, a profound need to be alone, denial, guilt and a distorted desire to prove that I was, in fact, worthless. I suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome, triggered by, among other things, airports, eye doctors and, well, almost anything that brought on a sense of helplessness.

Therapy, family, friends, faith, time, distance, medical care and more have helped bring me back from the brink of despair. I am a strong person in my own right, but I am certain that I could not have pushed through without that support. What chance, then, do the girls and women of Congo have, lacking many of these resources?

Despite international attention, including visits from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.N. officials, and a recent “60 Minutes” report, Congo remains the most dangerous place on Earth for girls and women. Hundreds of thousands of women and girls are victims of unimaginably horrific gender-based violence. In just the first six months of 2009, the United Nations reported close to 7,000 victims of sexual violence in Congo, a number that is significantly underrepresentative. It does not include, for example, the women who do not live to tell their tales of assault, or those who are too ill, too ashamed or too afraid to come forward.

In some cases, women and girls, butchered from the inside out, suffer from traumatic gynecologic fistula. This means that they have been raped so violently, sometimes by as many as 10 men, that the tissue between the vagina and the bladder and/or rectum is torn, causing them, among other things, to live in a constant state of filth from their own feces and urine. They reek of it. And then they are ostracized.

I know what it is like to feel dirty after a rape. I cannot imagine what it is like to have these agonizing psychological scars so physically, publicly manifested, reinforcing the darkest feelings of self-loathing triggered by the rape itself.

The United Nations’ latest report on Congo, published this week, paints a devastating picture of complicity among the Congolese Army, rebel groups and neighboring forces in Burundi, Uganda and Tanzania. It examines the role that foreign governments and international businesses, including a Nevada-based company, play in perpetuating the violence, much of it driven by greed for gold and conflict minerals, minerals that are used in cellphones, DVD players and video games.

Trying to decipher all of it is overwhelming, but that is no excuse for inaction. There is nothing morally complicated about mass rape. Congo is a world away, but its gold ends up around our necks, its minerals in our pockets. We are contributing, knowingly or unwittingly, to the misery of its people.

Two bills before Congress would help to make the conflict-minerals market more transparent and thereby undercut the funding of the groups who are destroying Congolese women. They are H.R. 4128, introduced by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), and S.891, introduced by Sens. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.).

Write your representative and senators and demand that they push for passage. Educate yourself and others about conflict minerals; learn which businesses are involved. (Lists of electronic industry leaders can be found at http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org.)

Start a letter campaign, demand conflict-free products, contribute to the training of Congolese counselors. Sponsor a woman who suffers from traumatic fistula, and cover the cost of an operation to repair the damage (on average, $450, a pittance for many Americans). Two organizations that provide these operations, and crucial supporting services, are Heal Africa and the Panzi Hospital.

Being raped was for me, as it is for so many women, an intensely private agony, something I’ve discussed with very few people. My privacy, however, is a luxury I can no longer afford. Do something, anything, because to do nothing in the face of this evil cannot be an option.

In 1995, after the Rwandan genocide, western leaders discussed plans for an armed force for Africa’s Great Lakes region to suppress the remnant of the extremist Hutu movement that had fled across the border into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I asked a British military planner how many men it might need. About half a million was his reply.

He had studied the vast landscape, the size of France; thick forest, huge mountains, no roads or boundaries, only a few airstrips and little idea of how many people lived there or who they were. It is perfect guerrilla country; a few thousand fighters with nothing to lose can move unimpeded throughout the area, living off the land and recruiting as they go.

And they also found they could generate exceedingly profitable businesses using forced labour to mine the gold, coltan, diamonds and tin that lie beneath this land and find buyers in neighbouring capitals such as Kampala and Kigali. Instead of dwindling, the surviving perpetrators of the genocide formed themselves into the FDLR, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, and have grown in strength and numbers. The Rwandan army crossed the border in pursuit and tried to set up a proxy army to suppress them, but its leader, Laurent Nkunda, is now facing charges at the International Criminal Court (ICC). And it was never clear whether the Rwandan leadership wanted the FDLR completely eliminated. As long as it lived under their threat, it could claim sympathy and aid from western governments.

The west’s strategy for Congo through the United Nations was to establish a central government in Kinshasa that they could recognise and supply with aid, so they spent $500m on an election. That gave legitimacy to Joseph Kabila. His opponent, Jean-Pierre Bemba, was sent to the ICC. Had Kabila lost, no doubt he would be in the ICC. The UN assisted in attempts to construct and train a Congolese army to deal with the “rebels” in the east. But the officers stole the payrolls and found more profit in resource extraction than fighting, the units lacked discipline and coherence and soon the national army was behaving towards civilians as badly or worse than the FDLR and the other militias that have sprung up in the region. The UN has found it increasingly difficult to work with the army it trained.

So it was left to a weak UN force with a strong mandate but without the capacity to fulfil it to try to bring peace to the region. Its headquarters in Kinshasa, the capital – almost as far away from this war as London is from Moscow – has little idea what is happening on the ground. After nine years its troops just try to stay out of harm’s way. There have been signs that elements of the UN force are going local and also taking to trading minerals and abusing local people. Its attempt at using a strike force, Guatemalan Special Forces, against the Lord’s Resistance Army, the rebel movement that had wandered into the area from Northern Uganda, ended in disaster with nine of them killed. It no longer has an effective sharp end.

Bringing peace and development to eastern Congo will require a force 10 or 20 times the size of the present one which could take over and hold the area until all armed movements have been eliminated – or better – talked into a new peace process. (That means persuading Kabila to accept some power-sharing. That maybe difficult too.)

This is politically remote but in the meantime the UN could at least enforce the ban on mineral purchases, the supply of weapons and the flow of money to and from the warlords from their allies in the rest of the world. That would not end the war but it would at least reduce the ability of the combatants to wage it.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The joint Congo (DRC)-Rwanda military push against the Rwandan Hutu rebels has ended with scant results. Fifteen years after the Rwanda genocide and the establishment of those rebels in the eastern Congo, they have not yet been disarmed and remain a source of extreme violence against civilians. While they are militarily too weak to destabilise Rwanda, their 6,000 or more combatants, including a number of génocidaires, still present a major political challenge for consolidation of peace in the Great Lakes region. They must be disarmed and demobilised if the eastern Congo is to be stabilised.

That requires a new comprehensive strategy involving national, regional and international actors, with a clear division of labour and better coordination, so as to take advantage of the recent improvement of relations between the Congo and Rwanda, put an end to the enormous civilian suffering and restore state authority in the Congo’s eastern provinces. Its prominent components include:

• civilian protection by responsible Congolese security forces and the UN peacekeeping mission (MONUC);
• a reformed disarmament and demobilisation program involving psychological operations and informational campaigns as well as options for return or resettlement (including in third countries);
• Rwanda’s development of a list of FDLR génocidaires in eastern Congo and their subsequent isolation by sophisticated psychological operations, accompanied by talks with commanders not involved in the 1994 genocide;
• in due course, limited military actions by Congolese army units specifically trained to weaken the command and control structure of the rebels in coordination with Rwandan forces;
• legal initiatives in third countries to block propaganda and support from FDLR leaders outside the DRC;
• consolidation of Rwanda-Congo relations; and
• dividends to the people of the Great Lakes region through economic and social development.

Among the dozens of armed groups operating in the Kivus at the beginning of 2009, two had the highest military capabilities and caused the most civilian suffering: the Rwandan Hutus grouped under the Front démocratique pour la liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) and receiving some support from elements of the Congolese army, and Laurent Nkunda’s Tutsi-dominated Congrès national du peuple (CNDP), benefiting from Rwanda’s clandestine support. However, Nkunda’s personal ambition had alienated his Rwandan backers, while the total collapse of the Congolese army in front of the CNDP insurgency forced President Joseph Kabila to cut a deal with Paul Kagame, his counterpart in Kigali.

Their agreement was a significant shift of alliances in the region. In exchange for the removal of Nkunda by Kigali, Kinshasa agreed to a joint military operation against the FDLR on Congolese territory and to give key positions in the political and security institutions of the Kivus to CNDP representatives, while keeping MONUC out of the planning and implementation.

Operation “Umoja Wetu” (Our Unity) got under way on 20 January 2009. Three columns of the Rwandan army moved through North Kivu, seeking to root the rebel militia out of its main strongholds. Simultaneously the Congolese army deployed in the villages freed from FDLR control and set about to integrate combatants from the CNDP and other armed groups into its ranks. The FDLR avoided direct confrontations and dispersed in the Kivu forests. After 35 days, the results of the operation were much more modest than officially celebrated. The FDLR was only marginally and temporarily weakened in North Kivu and remained intact in South Kivu. Less than 500 FDLR combatants surrendered to MONUC to be demobilised in the first three months of 2009. Barely a month after the end of the operation, the rebels had regrouped and started to retaliate against civilians they believed had collaborated with “Umoja Wetu”.

Congo, Rwanda and MONUC have launched many initiatives for FDLR disarmament since 2002. On 9 November 2007, Kinshasa and Kigali started the Nairobi Communiqué Process, a framework for new bilateral collaboration backed by the international community that was to take care of the FDLR once and for all. But lack of goodwill and active collaboration as well as the resilience of the FDLR’s chain of command proved that traditional approaches to disarmament – whether forced or voluntary – and unilateral attempts by Congo to negotiate with the rebels could not succeed. Another lesson that should have been learned was that military action, psychological operations and informational campaigns aimed at drawing away the rebel rank and file are unlikely to produce good results unless the FDLR’s command and control structures can first be rendered ineffective, and all efforts are carefully coordinated and sequenced.

Since the Congolese national army and MONUC lack the capacity and political will to carry out an effective military operation to dismantle the FDLR chain of command, continuation of Congo-Rwanda military collaboration is also essential. The immediate priority is not a new military offensive, however – each military failure increases the suffering of ordinary Congolese. A new offensive – “Kimia II” – conducted by the Congolese national army and MONUC is currently underway. Far from disrupting the FDLR, it has failed to prevent FDLR retaliation against civilians and should be suspended. Containing, not overwhelming, the rebels and protecting civilians should be the priority, while additional resources are sought and coordination between willing partners is forged for a new kind of disarmament attempt.

A comprehensive strategy has to be developed, involving the Congo government, Rwanda, MONUC and the other international facilitators that joined in Nairobi declaration, including the African Union, the U.S. and the EU. Their political and operational inputs should be coordinated in a new FDLR disarmament mechanism that should plan both military measures and informational campaigns, as well as prepare the ground for judicial processes in the countries where FDLR political leaders have sought refuge and from which they spread the propaganda that is an important part of the hold they maintain over ordinary fighters. Without such additional efforts and new international momentum, the population of the Kivu will continue to bear the brunt of the FDLR’s presence and of the failed attempts to disarm them, and the fragile Congolese state will remain at risk.

Leer artículo completo (PDF). Disponible en Crisis Group.

Just over a year ago, in answering whether sexual violence in conflict was an issue that the U.N. Security Council should take on, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice proclaimed, “I am proud that, today, we respond to that lingering question with a resounding ‘yes!’ ” With this statement, and with the cooperation of other power brokers at the table, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1820, which finally recognized sexual violence as a widely used strategy of warfare and cleared the path for the council to respond to it worldwide.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is to report to the Security Council today on implementation of Resolution 1820. What will we learn? A year after adopting the resolution, Congo remains the worst place on the planet to be a woman. Over 12 years, in a regional economic war for resources, hundreds of thousands of women and girls have been raped and tortured, their bodies destroyed by unimaginable acts. The Security Council’s implementation of Resolution 1820 in Congo — the very place that inspired it — has been an utter failure.

Rape as a weapon of war has increased in eastern Congo since June 2008. In January, military operations were launched in North Kivu with the supposed goal of arresting the rebel leader Laurent Nkunda and neutralizing his National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) troops as well as the FDLR, the former Rwandan Hutu genocidaires. Even now, with Resolution 1820 in place, no one considers the women. Anneke Van Woudenberg of Human Rights Watch, just back from the front lines in both North and South Kivu, told me Monday that in nearly all the health centers, hospitals and rape counseling centers she visited, rape cases had doubled or tripled since January.

Rapes continue to be committed with near complete impunity. While the number of criminal prosecutions has risen marginally, only low-ranking soldiers are being prosecuted. Not a single commander or officer above the rank of major has been held responsible in all of Congo. Rapes by the national army are increasing, too. MONUC, the U.N. peacekeeping mission, is not only allowing perpetrators to go unpunished but is also providing logistical support to them for their movements in the field. A blacklist of war criminals and rapists who were commanders in current operations was shown to the Security Council, which gave it to President Laurent Kabila. Despite incriminating evidence, none of the commanders was removed. Resolution 1820 was supposed to make the United Nations more sensitive to the issue of sexual violence. How is it possible that in the past year, the United Nations became complicit in supporting rapists as commanders in its operations?

The U.N. spin on operations in the Congo is upbeat. The secretary general lauded their success in a March 8 commentary in the International Herald Tribune. Successful for whom? Chantal, a 3-year-old who was raped so brutally by militia soldiers that she died on the way to the hospital? All her sisters were raped, too.

Resolution 1820 must be enforced with seriousness by the Security Council and the secretary general. Arrests need to be made immediately of known rapists and war criminals at the highest levels. The United Nations must stop supporting military actions, because they are doomed in Congo. And the root economic causes of the war need to be addressed with the leaders of countries in Africa’s Great Lakes region who commit violence to reap benefits from Congo’s minerals, as well as their Western corporate partners. They, too, are liable for these atrocities.

President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice should send a very clear message to the world. It is within U.S. power, as a member of the Security Council, to push for measures to end impunity and to carve out an enduring peace through careful diplomacy for the people of Congo.

A few days ago, I sat in a dark shack with 30 survivors of rape. These women had fled their villages after being brutally terrorized and had randomly found each other. They banded together to form a grass-roots group called I Will Not Kill Myself Today. The women of eastern Congo are enduring their 12th year of sexual terrorism. The girl children born of rape are now being raped. What will it take for the United Nations to finally do something meaningful to stop the violence? The women are waiting.

“Chu-ku-du, chu-ku-du, chu-ku-du” goes the wooden scooter as it bumps along the lava-covered streets of this central African city. It’s a strange-looking contraption, like a handmade toy for grown-ups: two rubber-covered wheels connected by a board, with a steering handle atop an upside-down fork.

Even the oldest people can’t remember when and how the onomatopoeically named chukudu first appeared in this part of North Kivu, an area of eastern Congo between the north shore of Lake Kivu and the heart of the Virunga National Park. But it is to Goma what the bicycle is to Amsterdam and the horse-drawn carriage to New York’s Central Park.

Despite its odd appearance, a chukudu goes amazingly fast and can carry heavy loads; an owner can earn up to $10 a day — a huge amount for the Congolese — transporting a variety of goods. And more than that, it can help liberate the women of this region from some of the backbreaking work they face every day. Imagine if the chukudu and international aid organizations worked together to help move Congolese women along the road toward embracing their rights.

The regular traffic on the eastern Congo’s pothole-strewn thoroughfares is generally a trickle of women and girls in colorful dresses walking along the side of the road, each one carrying some unbelievable cargo on her head — charcoal, maize, perhaps the family’s laundry — as well as a child tied to her back, or water in a 20-liter container hanging from a strap around her forehead. Men pass by riding bicycles or donkeys or on foot, but they rarely carry anything more than their own personal items and perhaps a transistor radio or a notebook. The division of labor is clear.

But if a household owns a chukudu, a “maman” (Congolese for woman or lady) can ask “papa” to transport a load. She will still be multitasking 24/7, and he will still be mostly idle. But at least one heavy weight will be lifted, literally, from her shoulders. Moreover, if men share the burden of transporting loads for a family’s use, that means that women and girls won’t have to make as many cargo trips. And that means that they’ll be safer, because crime — especially rape — is rampant on Congolese roads. In addition, a man with a chukudu is a potential money-earner. And to top it all off, the chukudu is environmentally friendly: Wooden scooters don’t pollute.

The same can’t be said for the kings of the road here: the slow convoys of white armored cars, trucks and bulldozers of the United Nations peacekeeping mission that spew clouds of exhaust and routinely clog traffic wherever they go.

Yet circumstances in North Kivu are anything but routine: The region’s main claim to tragic fame is an ongoing many-sided civil war, partly the sequel to the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda. Until recently, the war involved rebel Tutsi groups, rebel Hutu groups, regular Congolese army and a few other motley armed bands. The Tutsi rebels disbanded in January, and many of them joined the regular Congolese army they had previously been fighting. Around the same time, the Rwandan army entered Congolese territory at the invitation of Congolese President Joseph Kabila. Together these armies, which had fought two wars against each other in the 1990s, began an offensive against the Hutu rebels, many of whom are said to be former “genocidaires.”

In late February, the departure of some of the Rwandans was celebrated by a joint military parade in Goma, where civilians have an uneasy relationship with foreign militaries that have contributed to the conflict and chaos here. But there has been no clear information about how many troops have left and how many remain, and how long they will stay.

Meanwhile, the United Nations deployment of peacekeepers here is the largest it has ever stationed anywhere in the world. Of the more than 17,000 personnel of the operation known by its French acronym MONUC, about 6,000 are in the province of North Kivu. MONUC’s mandate was renewed and reinforced last December; importantly, its first and foremost task is “to protect the civilian population.” And this is a monumental job: The current conflict has forced an estimated 1 million people or more to flee their homes in North Kivu and seek shelter in displaced persons’ camps, with other families, or in neighboring Uganda.

MONUC is the first to admit that it can’t protect so many civilians at risk. Last October, when 150 people were massacred in the town of Kiwanja, MONUC — stationed little more than a mile away — knew nothing about the incident. MONUC soldiers have interpreters only during working hours and only on weekdays, not necessarily the timetable when atrocities occur. Moreover, not all MONUC deployments are identical, nor do they operate under the same regulations: When armed men attacked a convoy of the International Rescue Committee last October, a contingent of MONUC soldiers of one nationality simply abandoned our team. The convoy was later rescued by a peacekeeping unit from India.

The humanitarian intervention in North Kivu is also huge: Ten U.N. agencies and more than 60 international non-governmental organizations operate here, providing shelter, food, safe water and latrines and such basic amenities as blankets, soap and pots and pans. They seek to improve access to schools and health care for displaced civilians, offering catch-up programs for children who missed school because of the war, and medical and psychosocial care for girls and women who have been raped.

When the armed groups move their troops, forcing the populace into flight, and when humanitarian groups try to help the displaced by bringing them vital support, it makes for a lot of comings and goings on the roads around here.

Which brings us back to the chukudus. Those funny-looking but sturdy machines can carry hundreds of pounds of goods balanced on the central running board. This may mean several bags of cement or cases of bottled drinks, dozens of heads of cabbage strung together like bowling balls, or numerous sacks full of charcoal. The chukudu must be pushed uphill, but Goma, the destination of most of the merchandise, is at the bottom of a hill. Heading down, the chukudu acts like a skateboard, and the chukudista just has to maintain his balance, using a piece of tire pressed against the back wheel as a brake. When the scooter is empty, he rests his knee on a pad made from the sole of a flip-flop and pushes with the other leg.

Four years ago, in an effort to boost East Congolese pride and promote this very sui-generis vehicle, MONUC and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights organized a 5-km chukudu race to celebrate International Human Rights Day. Two hundred competitors, divided into juniors and seniors, took part. The winners each received a brand-new bicycle; the runners-up won prizes tailored to local needs: goats or metal sheet-roofing.

There was a minor revolt in the chukudista ranks in 2007, when the then-mayor of Goma wanted to ban the vehicles from the center of town. But that mayor is gone, and the chukudus are still here. And according to the Web site of the Padri Bianchi, an order of Italian monks who work in Goma, a Congolese nun by the name of Deodata is teaching the chukudistas basic arithmetic and how to read. “Now they are learning to raise their heads, and soon they will be demanding their rights,” the Web site, Missionari d’Africa, quotes the nun as saying, somewhat defiantly.

Of course, a wooden scooter can do only so much to stop criminal behavior, change social habits, promote human rights, advance literacy and liberate the women of Congo. But every wooden wheel does its little bit.

La situación de los derechos humanos sigue mostrando un panorama desolador en buena parte de los estados del planeta. Ello supone un incumplimiento grave de la Declaración Universal de la ONU de 1948. Que el tema sea muy conocido no lo transforma en menos grave. Pero buena parte de las democracias liberales también presentan incumplimientos concretos en la protección de dichos derechos. De los últimos informes independientes pueden presentarse los casos de RD Congo y España como ejemplos de ambos tipos de incumplimiento.

La realidad actual del Congo es dramática. Y como casi todo lo que se refiere al continente africano su presencia en los medios de comunicación es mucho menor que lo que sugiere la gravedad de los hechos. Ni las instituciones del Estado ni las de carácter internacional han logrado controlar los enfrentamientos entre grupos armados. El ejército parece estar sumido en el caos, especialmente en el este del país. Hasta el punto de que el Gobierno se apoya en milicias que se enfrentan militarmente al Congreso Nacional para la Defensa del Pueblo (CNDP) de Laurent Nkunda, el cual se presenta como protector de la comunidad tutsi frente a las Fuerzas Democráticas de Liberación de Ruanda (FDLR), de composición hutu. Así, el genocidio ruandés de 1994 resuena hoy en el Congo oriental. La población civil se halla a merced de unos grupos armados que se disputan la hegemonía y el control de recursos naturales. El mandato teórico de la ONU es claro: ordena a las fuerzas de mantenimiento de la paz que usen todo medio necesario para proteger a la población civil y a las organizaciones humanitarias. Pero ni esto ni el teórico e incumplido embargo de armas establecido hace unos años impiden la desprotección de la población. Las cifras del conflicto son atroces: cinco millones de muertos en la última década; existencia de entre 3.000 y 7.000 niños soldados; más de un millón de desplazados sólo en el este; multitud (no cuantificada) de casos de violencia sexual a mujeres y niñas…

El Congo actual ejemplifica la necesidad de contar con unas instituciones internacionales que garanticen la seguridad personal y un mínimo de derechos a la población. Y hay bastantes más casos en el mundo de impunidad total ante violaciones de derechos (véase el Informe 2008 de Amnistía Internacional).

Los países desarrollados no se enfrentan a situaciones de este dramatismo. Sin embargo, la práctica de los derechos humanos resulta claramente mejorable también en el mundo de las democracias. En el ámbito internacional se firman documentos, pero son los estados quienes deben ponerlos en práctica. Y es en el paso de la retórica gubernamental a la acción cuando se comprueban los agujeros en la calidad de los liderazgos democráticos.

En relación con el caso español, es obvio que se ha avanzado en los últimos años, pero son varias las organizaciones internacionales que vienen denunciando casos continuados de tortura, denegaciones de asilo decididas sin condiciones procesales adecuadas, o falta de tutela efectiva de derechos en relación con personas inmigrantes. En diciembre del 2008 el Gobierno español aprobó un plan de derechos humanos. Es un documento que incluye hasta 172 medidas. Un objetivo es la lucha contra la xenofobia y el racismo. Es un paso en la buena dirección, pero habrá que ver cómo se traduce en la práctica para que, por ejemplo, los interrogatorios de los detenidos sean más transparentes o que no se repitan casos como el de los vuelos secretos o el de deportaciones sin garantías. También para que cesen las prácticas de tortura cuya existencia vienen denunciando desde hace años diversas organizaciones humanitarias, y para que no escape a una protección eficaz la violencia contra mujeres inmigrantes. Si una denuncia puede convertirse en un expediente de expulsión es obvio que se desincentiva que se produzcan. Y siguen dándose islas de impunidad al no existir investigaciones independientes. La mera presentación de un informe anual en el Parlamento corre el riesgo de convertirse en un ritual retórico más. Un punto clave para el éxito del plan es que se establezcan evaluaciones externas. Si se quiere que haya un avance significativo en la protección de los derechos humanos, la evaluación debe ser externa e independiente de las administraciones. Las evaluaciones internas o mixtas siempre despiertan un halo de sospecha al ser las instituciones del Estado a la vez juez y parte.

En el ámbito de las democracias se deben refinar los mecanismos de información y de control de la situación de los derechos humanos, con participación de organizaciones de la sociedad civil. En el ámbito internacional, los dirigentes de las principales potencias mundiales son hoy moral y políticamente responsables de que no se esté avanzando hacia una reforma de las instituciones internacionales que sea capaz de garantizar la seguridad y una protección de los derechos humanos. Se precisa un liderazgo político que galvanice un multilateralismo con incidencia práctica en los asuntos mundiales. Este debiera ser un punto fundamental en la agenda exterior de la nueva Administración norteamericana con apoyo de la UE. La geoestrategia relacionada con los derechos humanos también debiera plantearse hoy en términos globales.

Durante muchos siglos, la empresa colonial fue transparente: un país, aprovechándose de su fuerza, invadía a otro más débil, se apoderaba de él y lo saqueaba. Nadie ponía en cuestión semejante estado de cosas porque se trataba de algo que se venía practicando desde la noche de los tiempos y todos, colonizadores y colonizados, aceptaban o se resignaban a esta cruda realidad como a una fatalidad inevitable, consustancial a la historia.

El descubrimiento y conquista de América por los europeos introduce una importante variante. Por primera vez y por razones religiosas el colonizador se interroga a sí mismo sobre la justicia de la empresa colonizadora y, en acalorados debates de juristas y teólogos, se arma de razones, humanas y divinas, para justificar sus conquistas. Desde entonces, sin dejar de ser lo que fue siempre, es decir, un acto de fuerza y de rapiña, la colonización se atribuye a sí misma una misión evangelizadora y civilizadora: desanimalizar a quienes viven en estado feral y humanizarlos gracias al cristianismo y a la cultura occidental que aquél inspira. Para que este objetivo tenga algún viso de realidad es imprescindible establecer como un hecho indiscutible, científico, que el colonizado carece de los conocimientos y luces indispensables para juzgar por sí mismo lo que más le conviene, pues se trata de un ser desvalido y primario cuyos intereses y conveniencias son mejor percibidos por la potencia que a partir de ahora ejercerá sobre él la tutela colonial, una forma de autoridad benévola.

Sin embargo, en el siglo XIX, las empresas coloniales europeas en el África y el Asia olvidan casi este prurito de justificación religiosa y moral e invaden y ocupan territorios, que empiezan a explotar de inmediato, sin otra explicación que la necesidad de proveerse de materias primas, ampliar sus mercados o contrarrestar el crecimiento y poderío de los imperios rivales. Cuando Hitler, en Mi lucha, explica que en el programa del Partido Nacional Socialista figura en lugar prominente la adquisición, por las buenas o las malas, de colonias para instalar los excedentes demográficos del pueblo alemán, no hace más que poner sobre papel lo que casi todas las grandes potencias europeas habían venido haciendo, cierto que sin decirlo con tanta claridad, desde el siglo XV.

La excepción era la pequeña Bélgica, país más bien reciente y, ay, sin colonias. Esta condición entristecía y desmoralizaba a su soberano, Leopoldo II, cuya energía, ambiciones y sobresaliente inteligencia desbordaban por los cuatro costados las fronteras del diminuto reino que le había asignado la Providencia. Entonces, él, sin amilanarse, se dio maña para conseguir mediante la astucia, la paciencia, la intriga y la diplomacia lo que los grandes países colonizadores habían logrado a través de los ejércitos y la matanza. Por increíble que parezca, Leopoldo II convirtió a Bélgica en una gran potencia colonial sin disparar un solo tiro.

Para ello, primero, en un trabajo diligente y genial que le tomó muchos años, se fraguó una imagen de monarca humanitario, altruista, condolido por la suerte de los salvajes y paganos de este mundo, que sedujo a la opinión pública de Europa y de los Estados Unidos. Invirtiendo en ello el dinero de su reino y el suyo propio, fundó asociaciones benéficas y centros para combatir la esclavitud que hacía estragos en el África Occidental, costeó el viaje de misioneros a esas regiones bárbaras, impulsó investigaciones, estudios y publicaciones sobre las condiciones de vida de las tribus africanas que todavía practicaban el canibalismo y eran diezmadas por los traficantes árabes que, partiendo de la isla de Zanzíbar, practicaban la trata, y peroró sin tregua, en orquestadas manifestaciones públicas, exigiendo a las grandes potencias que intervinieran para poner fin a aquella lacra indigna que era el comercio de carne humana en los mares del mundo.

La campaña dio el resultado que esperaba. En febrero de 1885, catorce naciones reunidas en Berlín, y encabezadas por Gran Bretaña, Francia, Alemania y los Estados Unidos, le regalaron a Leopoldo II, a través de la Asociación que él había creado para ello, todo el Congo, un inmenso territorio de más de un millón de millas cuadradas, es decir unas 80 veces el tamaño de Bélgica, para que “abriera ese territorio al comercio, aboliera la esclavitud y cristianizara a los salvajes”. No había un solo africano presente en aquel Congreso y no hay un solo indicio de que alguien en Europa o Estados Unidos -político, periodista o intelectual- se preguntara siquiera si era aceptable que la suerte de ese inmenso país fuera decidida de este modo, por 14 naciones advenedizas, sin que un solo congolés hubiera sido siquiera consultado al respecto.

Seguro de lo que iba a ocurrir en el Congreso de Berlín, Leopoldo II ya se había adelantado, desde un año antes, a operar en el territorio que de la noche a la mañana lo convirtió en el amo de un formidable imperio. Para ello había contratado al célebre explorador galés-norteamericano Henry Morton Stanley, el primer europeo en recorrer los varios miles de kilómetros del río Congo, desde sus nacientes, en el África Oriental, hasta su desembocadura en el Atlántico. En una expedición que es una mezcla de grotesca pantomima cínica y proeza etnológica y geográfica, entre 1884 y 1885, los expedicionarios enviados por Leopoldo II recorrieron buena parte del Alto y Medio Congo repartiendo cuentecillas de vidrios de colores y retazos de tela en 450 aldeas y villorrios africanos y haciendo “firmar” contratos -los llamaban “tratados”- en los que los caciques y jefes indígenas, que no tenían idea de lo que firmaban, cedían la propiedad de sus tierras a la Asociación Internacional del Congo, se comprometían a dar hombres para que trabajaran en las obras públicas que aquella institución emprendiera -caminos, depósitos, puentes, embarcaderos-, cargadores para transportar los bultos y materiales, a proveerla de brazos para la recolección del caucho y a alimentar a los peones, funcionarios y soldados y policías que vinieran a instalarse en sus dominios. De manera que cuando las grandes potencias le entregaron el Congo, Leopoldo II ya tenía en sus manos 450 “tratados” en los que los congoleses legitimaban mediante sus firmas aquella donación y le entregaban sus vidas y haciendas.

A diferencia de otras colonizaciones, en que los invadidos resistieron de alguna forma al colonizador y le infligieron algunos daños, en el Congo prácticamente no hubo resistencia. Los congoleses no tuvieron tiempo ni posibilidades de resistir a un sistema que cayó sobre ellos -una miríada de culturas y pueblos desconectados entre sí- como una malla inflexible en la que perdieron, desde el principio, toda libertad de iniciativa y movimiento, y en el que fueron sometidos a una explotación inicua, las 24 horas del día, hasta su extinción. Los castigos, para los recolectores que no entregaban el mínimo exigido de látex, eran brutales. Iban desde los chicotazos hasta las mutilaciones de manos y pies -a las mujeres y a los niños primero, y luego a los propios trabajadores- hasta el exterminio de aldeas enteras, cuando se producían fugas masivas o aquellas comunidades no cumplían con la obligación de alimentar a sus verdugos como éstos esperaban. Hace un año que leo testimonios diversos -de misioneros, viajeros, aventureros o de los propios colonos- sobre estos años del Congo y todavía no me cabe en la cabeza que fuera posible una monstruosidad tan atroz, un genocidio en cámara lenta semejante, sin que el mundo llamado civilizado se diera por enterado. Cuando aparecen las primeras denuncias en Europa, por boca de pastores bautistas norteamericanos, hay una incredulidad general. Y los plumíferos alquilados por Leopoldo II actúan de inmediato en la prensa hundiendo en la ignominia a aquellos denunciantes y llevándolos ante los tribunales por calumnias.

Durante un cuarto de siglo por lo menos el Congo fue desangrado, esquilmado y destruido en una de las operaciones más crueles que recuerde la historia, un horror sólo comparable al Holocausto. Pero, a diferencia de lo ocurrido con el exterminio de seis millones de judíos por el delirio racista y homicida de Hitler, ninguna sanción moral comparable a la que pesa sobre los nazis ha recaído sobre Leopoldo II y sus crímenes, al que muchos europeos, no sólo belgas, todavía recuerdan con nostalgia, como un estadista que, venciendo las limitaciones que la historia y la geografía impuso a su país, hizo de Bélgica por unos años un país imperial. La verdad es que detrás de la behetría y las violencias en que se debate todavía ese desdichado país se delinea la mortífera sombra de ese emperador que conquistó el Congo sin disparar un solo tiro y consiguió en menos de 20 años aniquilar a por lo menos 10 millones de sus súbditos africanos.

THE conflict in eastern Congo over the past 12 years has been as much a surrogate war between Congo and neighboring Rwanda as an internal ethnic insurgency, as a United Nations report underscored last week. The only way to end a war that has caused five million deaths and forced millions to flee their homes in Congo’s two eastern provinces is to address the conflict’s international dimensions. The role of Rwanda — which borders the provinces and which denied the accusations in the United Nations report over the weekend — is of prime importance.

The international community has worked hard to resolve the conflicts among the various parties: the sovereign states of Rwanda and Congo as well as the assorted militias and private armies that are sponsored by these two governments and by opportunistic local warlords. But despite the deployment of 17,000 United Nations peacekeepers, and many efforts at mediation with constructive American support, the situation appears intractable.

The failure of international diplomacy is related to the economic roots of the problem, which began with the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Until the economic conundrum is addressed, there is little prospect for a solution.

The genocidal war between the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi in Rwanda spilled into Congo, and the eastern part of that vast country has been unstable ever since. When Tutsi rebel forces took power in Rwanda in June 1994, more than a million Hutu fled to Congo, where they settled into refugee camps on the Rwandan border.

After two years of cross-border raids from the refugee camps by exiled Hutu soldiers who had participated in the genocide, the Rwandan Army attacked and destroyed the camps, with the quiet but unambiguous approval of the United States in the absence of another solution to the violence. Most of the Hutu refugees returned to Rwanda, but about 100,000 of them, along with the exiled Hutu soldiers, moved westward as a disciplined group into Congo’s interior.

The Rwandan Army pursued the escaping Hutu and caught up with them near the city of Kisangani at the headwaters of the Congo River. The refugees were massacred, but the former Hutu soldiers escaped to neighboring countries.

The move against the refugee camps was the first step in a well-planned action by Rwanda in 1996 and 1997 to overwhelm the weak Congolese Army and, with the help of the Congolese opposition, overthrow the 30-year dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko. With logistical support from Uganda and Angola, the military action succeeded in less than three months. A new government in Congo was installed under President Laurent Kabila, an exile handpicked by the Rwandans.

And from 1996 to today, the Tutsi-led Rwandan government has been in effective control of Congo’s eastern provinces of North and South Kivu. This control has been maintained through intermittent military occupation and the presence of Congolese militias financed and trained by the Rwandan Army.

During these 12 years of Rwandan control, the mineral-rich provinces have been economically integrated into Rwanda. During this time, Congo’s governments have been preoccupied with internal and external wars elsewhere, and have been unable to combat foreign control of the eastern provinces, a thousand miles from the capital, Kinshasa.

But two years ago, Congo held multiparty elections that were judged to be transparent and credible by international observers. For the first time in a decade, there was hope for stability. President Joseph Kabila (the son of Laurent Kabila, who was assassinated in 2001) turned his attention to trying to gain control of the eastern provinces.

Unfortunately, this has led to increased conflict and suffering. The main source of the current violence is an insurgent force of ethnic Congolese Tutsi commanded by Laurent Nkunda, a former general in the Congolese Army. He claims to be fighting to defend the Tutsi community from discrimination and from the former Rwandan Hutu fighters who have returned from neighboring countries and now operate in the forested hills of eastern Congo.

General Nkunda’s military operations, however, are aimed mainly against the Congolese Army’s efforts to restore Congo’s sovereignty over its eastern provinces. His force is well armed and financed by the Rwandan government. The armed Hutu presence in the provinces provides the Rwandan government with a pretext to justify its interference there.

Having controlled the Kivu provinces for 12 years, Rwanda will not relinquish access to resources that constitute a significant percentage of its gross national product. At the same time, Congo’s government is within its rights to take control of the resources there for the benefit of the Congolese people. This economic conflict must be taken into account.

This provides an opportunity for the incoming Obama administration. Acts of war and military occupation aside, there is a natural economic synergy between eastern Congo and the nations of East Africa, including Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda. The normal flow of trade from eastern Congo is to Indian Ocean ports rather than the Atlantic Ocean, which is more than a thousand miles away.

After his inauguration, Barack Obama should appoint a special negotiator who would propose a framework for an economic common market encompassing Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. This agreement would allow the free movement of people and trade. It would give Rwandan businesses continued access to Congolese minerals and forests. The products made from those raw materials would continue to be exported through Rwanda. The big change would be the payment of royalties and taxes to the Congolese government. For most Rwandan businesses, those payments would be offset by increased revenues.

In addition, the free movement of people would empty the refugee camps and would allow the densely populated countries of Rwanda and Burundi to supply needed labor to Congo and Tanzania.

If such a common market could be negotiated, Rwanda and Congo would no longer need to finance and arm militias to wage war over the natural resources in Congo’s eastern provinces. Without government backing, the fighting groups would either dissolve on their own or be integrated into legitimate armed forces.

If undertaken with enough will and persistence, an American-led mediation to create a common market in East Africa could end the war and transform the region.

In 2001, I was in a bar in Kigoma, on the Tanzanian side of Lake Tanganyika. As I sipped my beer, I could hear the clipped tones of a South African speaking into a radio transceiver. He was ordering supplies for the United Nations peacekeeping mission known as Monuc, then operating out of Kalemie on the lake’s Congolese side. At the time, Monuc’s blue berets were just about managing to keep a lid on things in eastern Congo, but already the strain was showing.

Earlier that year Congolese president Laurent Kabila was shot by his bodyguard. He was replaced by his son Joseph, largely as a result of pressure brought to bear by Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwe was one of a number of nations then taking part in the second Congo war (1998-2003). It was allying itself, along with Angola, Namibia, Chad and Sudan, with the Kabilas. On the other side, though sometimes fighting each other, were Uganda and Rwanda.

All sides in this many-phased conflict, which has claimed more than five million lives during the past decade, have been engaged in extraction of Congo’s rich mineral deposits. These have been a cause of bloodshed in the region right back to the 1960s, following Belgium’s messy exit from its former colony. These riches are one reason why regional collaborations to end the conflict have so far failed; another is the historical effects of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Since the official end of the second Congo war, fighting has been concentrated in the eastern region – the Congolese borders of Uganda, Rwanda and Sudan – with mainly Rwandan proxies fighting a circumstantial alliance of the Congolese army and Hutus. The most recent focus is on the territorial ambitions of “General” Nkunda, a Rwandan-backed warlord accused of massacring 150 civilians in Kivu last month.

Last week Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, wrote to European leaders asking the EU to intervene in Congo. The recent collapse of the Congolese army in the eastern region has caused hundreds of thousands of people to be displaced and an eruption of mass killings and rapes. The letter was an admission that Monuc had failed, having too few troops to deal with a conflict that could potentially again spread over an area as large as the EU itself.

The UN has authorised more troops, but they will not be deployed for at least four months. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who met Ban yesterday in New York, has proposed four options to EU leaders: sending a rapid response “battle group” of 1,500 troops; dispatching within several months a 3,000-strong mission; simply reinforcing Monuc with forces from European countries; or achieving a concrete objective, such as securing the all-important Goma airport and other sites.

The second proposal has already been rejected by France. On Friday, Nicolas Sarkozy said African forces should reinforce Monuc. He also questioned whether an increase in the number of troops was the answer. Britain, too, is adamant the EU should not get involved, and Germany is not keen. These big EU players cite practical or tactical reasons, but underneath the shilly-shallying is a collective failure of moral leadership. The long-term lack of proper response to the scale of this fluid, deadly conflict is part of the same narrative that saw western governments fail to respond to genocide in Rwanda. It is eminently possible that a tragedy of a larger scale could now take place.

Ordinary Africans are already suffering on a scale that dwarfs casualties from terrorist outrages and conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. In particular, the harrowing reports of mass rape in the Congo demand a response – a military one. There are good political as well as human rights reasons why stopping mass rape should be the platform for this intervention. Women are the “glue” in central African society. They are the carers, the food providers. If many in several generations of women are damaged, injured or killed, the chances of a return to civil society are extremely slim.

In the immediate term, pressure should be put on the Rwandan leadership itself to rein in Nkunda; in the short term, Monuc should be supplemented by a large EU force; in the longer term, as eastern Congo seems ungovernable from Kinshasa, I see no option but the creation of a buffer state on the western shores of Lakes Kivu and Tanganyika. This could be achieved by regional forces with Monuc-EU backup.

Geopolitically, the Great Lakes region is a hornet’s nest – but unless someone puts smoke in that nest, the world could soon be living with a greater shame than the Rwandan genocide.

The HEAL Africa hospital has a feeling of newness that is rare for this part of Africa, mainly because its previous facility was destroyed by lava from Mount Nyiragongo in 2002. One building holds people with bullet wounds — shot through the pelvis, the thigh, the jaw. Another ward contains women recovering from fistula repair surgery — the quiet victims of extreme sexual violence who tend to avoid your eyes.

In another room, families whose children have congenital defects such as clubfoot and cleft lip are gathered. A surgeon at the hospital introduced my group, “These are visitors from Obama country!” Everyone applauded.

Expectations for the president-elect are high not just in America. And eastern Congo will be an early foreign policy test for the administration — its suffering not only engages our conscience, it is the most urgent expression of a difficult question: What does America do with failed states and regions?

After generations of mismanagement, the vastness of eastern Congo has become a vacuum of sovereignty. And the chaos has attracted some very bad elements — Rwandan genocidaires, Lord’s Resistance Army terrorists, militias of every ideology and description.

The Congolese government — corrupt, inefficient and based in the faraway capital of Kinshasa — is in no condition to exercise effective control. Its army often goes unpaid, turning whole units into armed gangs of looters. One Congolese commander in Goma reported that during recent fighting, he could count on the loyalty of only 50 out of several hundred men.

So the government tries to cling to sovereignty by cooperating with militia groups. Its forces are often based within a few kilometers of FDLR units (a genocidal Hutu group) or Mai-Mai militias (local defense forces also capable of atrocities). It is like a mayor turning to the mob for reinforcements. Adding insanity to incapacity, elements of the Congolese army have fired on U.N. forces (MONUC). And some government officials have incited riots in Goma against the peacekeepers, attempting to pin their own failures on a scapegoat.

The strategy of the main rebel group — the CNDP, led by Laurent Nkunda — is designed to exploit this weakness. In areas they conquer, the rebels establish civil administration, appointing mayors and judges and promising security. Some tribal leaders have switched sides to accept CNDP authority — motivated by fear but also by a desire for stability. Even Hutus have joined Nkunda’s Tutsi-led militia — where they get regular pay and become part of a working institution.

But this is the peace of Hobbes’s “Leviathan.” The CNDP is perfectly capable of atrocities — though its leaders are smart enough to calibrate their violence to avoid much international criticism. Especially in newly conquered areas, there have been rapes, disappearances and massacres. The CNDP has a vision of order — but that vision does not include human rights.

Another attempt to fill the vacuum of sovereignty in eastern Congo has come from international institutions. The United Nations, in its various expressions, supervises the disarmament of willing militias, runs an airline and a number of radio stations, and attempts to enforce laws against war crimes — acting in many ways as a substitute for the state. And U.N. peacekeepers are the only reason that Nkunda has not taken Goma.

All this activity is justified under an ambitious legal framework — the international “responsibility to protect” civilians when a government fails in this duty. But while the United Nations is willing, its instruments are weak. U.N. forces are organized to keep an existing peace, not enforce a nonexistent one. The U.N. force has about 5,500 personnel in North Kivu, a region the size of Maryland. There is no unified command structure — 26 nations sit around the military planning table. Before an attack helicopter is used, a form must be filled out and sent to Kinshasa for approval. “We can’t fight a war like that,” says one MONUC official.

In situations such as this one, President Obama‘s options will be flawed. He can try to make use of regional organizations such as the African Union — but its capabilities and will are limited. He can seek to strengthen international responses — but institutions such as the United Nations are engineered for inertia. Or he can build a coalition of the willing that is capable of intervening directly. Some might dismiss this as discredited “Bushism.” But sometimes there is no alternative — except watching the slaughter proceed.

This is the dilemma of eastern Congo — which is also a challenge for Obama country.

The setting of this city is all contrast and drama — nestled along a vast, placid lake but dominated by a volcano that steams by day and glows faint and red on a clear evening. A city living in the shadow of sudden violence.

Driving north from Goma, one passes through wide lava fields — black, broken and sharp to the feet. About seven miles along the rutted road, the uniforms of the soldiers change, from the solid green of the FARDC (the Congolese military) to the camouflage of the CNDP (the rebel forces led by Laurent Nkunda). For civilians, the colors of the uniforms often matter little — all the groups are capable of pillage and rape.

Less than a mile from the front, a left turn brings you into the Kibati I camp — more than 6,000 men, women and children displaced by nearby fighting. The camps channel the problems of Congo like a storm drain after a flash food — skin diseases, worms, diarrhea and respiratory ailments. A teenage girl wears a heavy coat against her malarial chills. An 8-year-old boy named Glory smiles for the camera, even though his body is hot with fever.

When the various armies move, whole towns flee, causing spikes in sexual violence and acute malnutrition. And this individual suffering gathers into shocking statistics. Perhaps 4 million deaths related to war over the past decade. Or maybe it is 5 million. We know that the events are approaching a holocaust scale when the margin of error is measured in millions.

The fighting of late October and early November demonstrated every aspect of the challenge. The United Nations peacekeeping force (MONUC) had planned to use a cease-fire to insert itself between the combatants. The Congolese army violated the cease-fire almost immediately to attack the CNDP. In the ensuing fighting, Congolese forces were routed and fled down the road to Goma, killing their compatriots and looting as they ran through town and beyond. Some units of the Congolese army fired on the peacekeepers themselves. The U.N. military response was largely confused and ineffective, leading to the loss of the strategic town of Rutshuru, which the peacekeeping force had pledged to defend. In the conquered village of Kiwanja, the triumphant rebels answered resistance with a door-to-door massacre of more than 50 people — the killing done with machetes and clubs.

Goma held. But the CNDP is now consolidating its gains, which could easily be expanded during future fighting. Nkunda, the CNDP’s Tutsi rebel leader — alternately described here as “charismatic,” “populist,” “ruthless” and “murderous” — is on the ascendant. And he has little reason to negotiate a political settlement while he can dream of controlling the whole region, or even overthrowing the increasingly fragile Congolese government of President Joseph Kabila.

Security in eastern Congo is the prerequisite for political progress. Nkunda will continue to push until someone effectively pushes back. The Congolese army is incapable of defeating him. While the U.N. peacekeeping force is the reason that Goma was not taken, it does not have the political will and the capabilities to contain Nkunda. It lacks rapid-reaction forces and night-fighting capabilities.

This leaves one alternative — a capable, hard-hitting European military force, supported by the United States, which would stabilize the situation, give the peacekeeping force some breathing room and put a limit on Nkunda’s ambitions. But Britain and Germany, to their shame, have opposed this kind of “bridging force.” (It is particularly obscene that Germany, of all nations, should lose its outrage at mass violence.)

Such an intervention could help a variety of confidence-building efforts to move forward. Direct negotiations between Kabila and Rwandan President Paul Kagame might lessen Tutsi and Hutu tensions in eastern Congo and result in a more serious military effort against the FDLR, a brutal rebel group founded by the Hutu authors of Rwanda’s genocide. And Kabila could try to include a humbled Nkunda in future political arrangements — if the young, insecure president is capable of such magnanimity.

These steps appear necessary — and unlikely. Few seem to care sufficiently about Congolese suffering on a distant lake, beneath the cloud and fire of Mount Nyiragongo.

But the Congolese themselves provide hope. On the black lava fields — where a rabbit would not burrow and nettles would not grow — people are constructing fences of pumice and homes of reed and rock. It is human beings who choose to build even on foundations of disaster.

En la ciudad de Boma, capital de este inmenso país cuando se llamaba el Estado Libre del Congo y era propiedad privada del Rey de los Belgas, Leopoldo II, el señor Placide-Clement Mananga está entregado a luchar a favor de la civilización y contra la barbarie. Ésta, para él, no tiene la cara atroz de las violaciones, las matanzas, las epidemias y el hambre que adopta en otras regiones de su país, sino la del olvido. Monsieur Placide estuvo cuatro años de joven en un seminario católico, preparándose para ser cura. Pero el régimen de vida era muy severo y desistió. Tal vez en aquel periodo de ayunos, privaciones, oraciones y estricta disciplina contrajo el amor por los tiempos idos e intuyó que un país que se rinde a la amnesia histórica se queda tan sin defensas para enfrentar los problemas como esos campesinos de las alturas congolesas que, cuando bajan al llano, se hallan indefensos ante los mosquitos. El amor de Monsieur Placide por la historia no es arqueológico, está cargado de preocupación por el presente. “Conociendo nuestro pasado”, dice, “entenderemos mejor por qué anda el Congo como anda y será más fácil atacar el mal en sus raíces”.

Es un hombre suave, muy delgado, servicial, tímido, de maneras elegantes. Tiene un puestecillo menor en la Alcaldía y desde hace tiempo recolecta todos los papeles viejos, documentos, revistas, recortes de periódicos, cartas, que tienen que ver con Boma. Junto a su escritorio, apilados en el suelo, están esos materiales que serán algún día el embrión del Archivo Histórico del lugar. Paso un largo rato, distraído del calor pegajoso y las moscas indolentes, examinando legajos, silabarios y catecismos de la época colonial, manuales de buena conducta para señoritas, partidas de defunción, ordenanzas donde se clasifica a los indígenas por razas, etnias y domicilio, carteles con las prohibiciones que se colgaban en el barrio de los colonos y en el de los nativos en esos años en que desembarcaron aquí los europeos, con el fin, según el acuerdo de Berlín de 1885, de acabar con la trata de esclavos y civilizar al país usando el comercio libre para abrirlo al mundo y hacerlo prosperar. Nada de eso hicieron. Cuando, en 1960, el Congo se independizó, no había un solo profesional congoleño y la esclavitud, aunque encubierta, todavía existe. El comercio jamás fue libre, sino un monopolio de la potencia colonial, que, antes de irse, exprimió sin misericordia sus recursos y sus gentes.

Monsieur Placide es un libro de historia viviente y recorrer Boma con él es ver transformarse este pueblo pobre, abandonado y triste, en la activa y variopinta aldea de sus orígenes, cuando, a fines del siglo XIX, los despistados belgas encargaron a constructores alemanes la edificación de estas casas cuadradas, de dos pisos, de madera de pino traída de Europa y de planchas metálicas, que debían convertirlas en hornos a la hora del sol. Todavía están aquí, ruinosas pero en pie, con sus pilotes de piedra, sus largas terrazas, barandas y ventanas enrejadas y sus techos cónicos, formadas en hilera frente al río. Allí está también la primera iglesia, la del Espíritu Santo, diminuta y sofocante, toda de fierro. Pero el cementerio colonial, llamado “de los pioneros”, ha desaparecido bajo la maleza, aunque, de pronto, asoma entre la verdura, llena de barro, la lápida descolorida de un misionero de Lieja, un topógrafo de Amberes o un agente comercial de Bruselas. La mansión del Gobernador General, rodeada de frondosos y centenarios baobabs, luce molduras donde, desdibujada, se divisa todavía la efigie de la Reina de Bélgica. El panorama del gran río africano, ancho, ocre, espumoso, salpicado de islas, que ha recorrido ya medio continente antes de llegar hasta aquí y avanza hacia el Atlántico, ancho, poderoso, silente, escoltado por bandadas de pájaros, es deslumbrante.

En el primer piso de esta casa que parece a punto de deshacerse como una momia milenaria, Monsieur Placide nos conduce a una habitación desnuda, en la que hay sólo dos mesitas, con dos mujeres sentadas ante ellas. No sin cierto orgullo, nos dice: “Ésta es la Biblioteca de Boma”. Nos presenta a la bibliotecaria y su ayudante. Pero ¿y los libros? No hay uno solo. Nos explican que están guardados en cajas, en distintos depósitos, pero que, algún día, se construirán estantes y los libros serán traídos aquí y esta habitación se llenará de lectores. Entretanto, la bibliotecaria y su asistente vienen puntualmente a sus puestos de trabajo, donde pasan las ocho horas reglamentarias. Tienen un sueldo, sin duda, tan fantasmal como los libros que administran.

No es ésta mi primera experiencia con los trabajos imaginarios del Congo. La Biblioteca de Boma no es una excepción. Se trata también de una epidemia, pero, a diferencia del cólera o el paludismo, benéfica. Dos días atrás, en Matadi, a 130 kilómetros río arriba, visité la Estación del Ferrocarril construido por Stanley, sólido e imponente edificio amarillo donde una gran placa anuncia que de aquí partió el primer tren hacia Kinshasa (que entonces se llamaba Leopoldville) el 9 de agosto de 1877. El local está muy activo. Un destacamento policial cuida las instalaciones y hay un jefe de estación a quien diviso en su oficina, con una gorrita y un guardapolvo que deben ser del uniforme. En las oficinas conté hasta una veintena de personas, hombres y mujeres, sentados en escritorios, abriendo y cerrando cajones, ordenando estantes. Había, incluso, empleados atendiendo en las boleterías. Unos pizarrones indicaban las horas de salida de los trenes y las estaciones en que hacía escala el que iba rumbo a Kinshasa. Pero, el último tren que partió de aquí lo hizo hace ya muchos años (nadie quiso o supo decirme cuándo). Todos vivían una ficción, ni más ni menos que los personajes de la novela de Juan Carlos Onetti, El astillero. Van a trabajar a diario, llenan formularios, tarjetas, actualizan los informes, descansan los domingos.

Unos días después, en otro pueblo colonial del Bajo Congo, Mbanza Ngungu, me encuentro con idéntico espectáculo. Allí, la estación es, en verdad, un enorme taller de reparaciones y un depósito de vagones y locomotoras fuera de servicio. El lugar está lleno de operarios, vigilantes, empleados que ocupan todas las instalaciones y circulan de un lado a otro. Se diría que se hallan atosigados de trabajo. Pero, los vagones han sido desguazados hace tiempo y las locomotoras son unos esqueletos herrumbrosos sin ruedas ni timones. Este tráfago es una pura representación, una pantomima en la que participa toda la comunidad.

Poco a poco descubro que el Congo entero está atiborrado de ficciones semejantes. Sin ir más lejos, el Aeropuerto Internacional de Kinshasa tiene toda un ala, cuyas compañías han desaparecido, y sin embargo los empleados siguen yendo a ocupar sus puestos, mañana y tarde, como antaño.

¿De qué se trata? De un ejercicio colectivo de magia simpatética, parecido al de esos pueblos primitivos que, según cuenta Frazer en La Rama Dorada, zapatean contra la tierra imitando la caída de las gotas de la lluvia a fin de que así, contagiado, el cielo descargue sus aguas sobre la tierra sedienta. Pero, no hay nada primitivo sino una conducta altamente civilizada en este recurso a la ficción con que millares de congoleños siguen yendo a trabajar, aunque sepan perfectamente que esos trabajos ya no existen. Ellos hacen lo que pueden hacer. No está en sus manos resucitar las locomotoras destruidas, ni comprar libros para la biblioteca, ni sobornar a las compañías desertoras para que retornen. Pero, seguir yendo a sus puestos, contra todo realismo, es una manifestación de esperanza, una manera de resistir la desesperación, de proclamar a los cuatros vientos que hay un futuro, que la vida -el trabajo- volverá a renacer y que el desgraciado país que es el suyo resucitará de sus cenizas, como un Ave Fénix. Cuando aquello empiece a ocurrir, ellos estarán allí, en la primera fila, dando la batalla de la recuperación. Y, entonces, sin duda, recibirán otra vez esos salarios que hace tiempo se esfumaron de sus vidas, al igual que la paz, la seguridad, el sustento y la alegría. Cuando la realidad se vuelve irresistible, la ficción es un refugio. Por eso existe la literatura, esa escapatoria de los tristes, los nostálgicos y los soñadores. Los congoleños no la leen, la viven.

While world leaders gathered here to unleash soothing words on the financial tsunami swamping their economies, the daring “responsibility to protect” doctrine adopted by U.N. members three years ago was being buried in the killing fields of eastern Congo.

For the sake of your bank account, hope that the international community can protect dollars, euros and yen more successfully than it protects the lives and safety of people who happen to live in failed or rogue states.

In three years, “never again” has become “sorry about that.” Humanitarian intervention — proudly proclaimed as a universal mission by Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and other Third Way leaders and eventually adopted at the 2005 U.N. summit — has fallen into serious disrepair.

The slaughter, looting and forced removal of defenseless Congolese civilians around the city of Goma this month — even though they were theoretically under the protection of 17,000 U.N. peacekeepers — are grim testimony to the consequences of making righteous-sounding promises without thinking enough about the means to carry them out. The money men and women of the Group of 20 should take note.

So should the incoming Obama administration, which will have to fashion a new basis for the use of force abroad for a Democratic Party that has been divided by that issue since the Vietnam War.

The responsibility of the world’s nations to act together to protect citizens against massive human rights abuses by their own governments was shaped by Clinton, Blair and Kofi Annan out of the sickening failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and the successful military campaigns in Bosnia and Kosovo later in the decade.

Humanitarian intervention provided Democrats with a unifying, and comfortable, middle ground from which to support military action abroad. Even U.S. cities, including Barack Obama‘s own Chicago, have adopted resolutions demanding that the responsibility to protect — known to its advocates as R2P — be made a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy.

But wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have stretched thin the military capabilities of the United States and its allies and made public opinion much more negative about intervention abroad in any guise.

Reams of pious words have been written or uttered, including by Obama, about the need to do something to halt the brutal ethnic conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan. But the failure of the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and other regional organizations to intervene effectively there and now in eastern Congo may be the final nail in the coffin of R2P.

The civilians around Goma have been effectively abandoned by Congo’s dysfunctional national army, which more often victimizes them than protects them. They are caught between this feckless force and the far more efficient, better-armed and absolutely ruthless rebel movement led by Laurent Nkunda, who declared on BBC television last week that he intends to overthrow President Joseph Kabila.

Nkunda’s bid to go from regional warlord to national leader is covertly backed by neighboring Rwanda. Kabila has the support of Angola, which may have already secretly provided troops to the Congolese army. This conflict could erupt into an international crisis about the time that Obama is being sworn into office.

If it does, there will be plenty of blame to go around. Alan Doss, the adept U.N. special representative in eastern Congo, asked the Security Council on Oct. 3 for an increase of 3,000 troops. The blue-helmet force also needs relief from crippling rules of engagement that prevent it from defending civilians. But there has been no response by the council to Doss’s plea.

“What is happening in Goma is very damaging for the responsibility to protect. It could be a turning point,” says Bernard Kouchner, France’s foreign minister and one of the doctrine’s founders through his own humanitarian work. “We are witnessing the consequences of the arrival of nationalism on a continental level.”

That is, African governments accept humanitarian disasters rather than give foreign-led forces the support or freedom to carry out massive rescue operations. Kouchner, visiting Washington last week, also cited Zimbabwe as a tragic case in point.

He does find one ray of hope — the election of Obama, who has a direct family connection to Africa and promises a fresh start in U.S. foreign policy. “This could change everything,” Kouchner said, “and not only for Africa. You Americans have just held a world election. President Obama should not wait to show what that means.”

PIEDRA DE TOQUE. Congo, el país que recorrió el explorador británico, padeció la colonización más inhumana. Hoy, millones de personas viven allí una pesadilla cotidiana rodeados de ruina, miseria y tristeza.

El Museo se encuentra en el Monte Ngaliema, una comuna de la capital congolesa, en un terreno de las Fuerzas Armadas, y desde lo alto de esta elevación se divisa -un espectáculo soberbio- el gran río africano en todo su esplendor, con las dos capitales -Kinshasa y Brazzaville- contemplándose la una a la otra desde las dos orillas.

Allí, en el mismo terraplén erizado de frondosos mangos, palmeras y flamboyanes, se oculta bajo la verdura y las ramas una gran estatua ecuestre del Rey de los Belgas, Leopoldo II, de luengas barbas rastrilladas y envuelto en una voluminosa capa que semeja un hábito. El jinete parece contemplar con nostalgia el paraíso que fue suyo -se lo regalaron en 1885 las grandes potencias-, que convirtió en un infierno y que al fin, por su codicia y crueldad, perdió. La estatua, idéntica a la que se luce en una plaza de Bruselas, estaba antes en el centro de Kinshasa, pero cuando el dictador Mobutu lanzó su campaña de “africanización” del Congo (al que rebautizó Zaire), fue traída a este discreto refugio donde sólo la ven los escasos visitantes del museo.

Su conservador, Monsieur Zola (“Como Emile Zola”, me precisa, cuando se presenta) me muestra la colección casi a oscuras, porque la ciudad sufre uno de sus frecuentes cortes de luz. No importa: la penumbra da una dimensión misteriosa y fantasmal, de apariciones, a estas máscaras, estatuillas, tambores, instrumentos musicales, fetiches, urnas funerarias, lanzas, tejidos y adornos de una gran variedad de grupos étnicos africanos. La colección es notable pero éste es el local menos aparente para exhibirla, porque es estrecho y los objetos se amontonan y estorban unos a otros. Además, las termitas van corroyéndolos, pues son de madera y Monsieur Zola carece de presupuesto para protegerlos. Me dice que estantes enteros han desaparecido ya en las mandíbulas de esos insectos voraces.

En el exterior, nos muestra una barca de metal aherrumbrado y agujereado en la que navegó por el río Congo el primer europeo, el explorador Stanley, fundador de esta ciudad, a la que puso el nombre de Leopoldville, en 1881. La ruina que vemos no es la famosa Lady Alice, la barca de madera, desarmable en cinco partes, que Stanley acarreó desde Zanzíbar en 1876 a hombros de cargadores y en la que descendió el río Congo desde Kindu hasta aquí (más de 3.000 kilómetros de recorrido), y que quedó abandonada en las cercanías de Matadi, en los Montes Cristal, cuando el explorador y lo que quedaba de su cuerpo expedicionario diezmado por las pestes, el hambre y las lanzas de las aldeas que pillaba, se encontraron con las siete cataratas que les impidieron seguir navegando y continuaron rumbo al Atlántico a pie.

Un momento después, Monsieur Zola nos señala al propio Stanley, mutilado y derribado por los suelos. La estatua, de bronce verdoso descolorido, es enorme, debe tener unos tres metros de altura. Ha sido cercenada a la altura de los tobillos, y las botas, los pies y la base arrojados a unos pasos de la averiada figura. Stanley aparece en una postura lastimosa e incómoda, con un brazo levantado que, se diría, implora la clemencia del cielo. O, tal vez, lanza una imprecación contra su mala suerte y la humillante situación en que se encuentra. Tenía mal carácter y cuando estallaba en explosiones de rabia se volvía cruel, como sabían los nativos a los que baleó y despanzurró, quemando sus aldeas y pasando a cuchillo a sus habitantes cuando se negaban a suministrarle provisiones o braceros para esas expediciones (homéricas, hay que decirlo) en las que, en condiciones indecibles, recorrió arriba y abajo todo el África Central. Ahora, petrificado y tendido en este basural, parece totalmente inofensivo y digno de lástima, tanto que rápidas lagartijas de ojos vivísimos se pasean alegremente por su cuerpo y anidan en sus entrañas.

Entre todos los grandes exploradores británicos del siglo XIX, Stanley es el que más se parece a los héroes de la novela picaresca. Su biografía es casi imposible de establecer por la miríada de fabulaciones con que la disfrazó. Durante buena parte de su vida se hizo pasar por estadounidense pero era británico, pues había nacido, en 1841, en el pueblecito galés de Denbigh, de madre soltera y padre alcohólico. Pasó su infancia en un hospicio y, de adolescente, se las arregló para llegar a Nueva Orleáns, donde un hombre de negocios, Henry Hope Stanley, le tomó cariño y lo ayudó. Adoptó entonces el nombre de Stanley, pues el suyo era John Rowlands. Luchó en ambos bandos en la guerra civil norteamericana y luego hizo carrera de periodista cubriendo las contiendas de 1860 entre los indios y los pioneros que extendían la frontera del Oeste. Gracias a esas crónicas lo contrató The New York Herald, que lo envió de corresponsal con una fuerza expedicionaria inglesa desplegada en Abisinia, donde consiguió muchas primicias para su periódico.

Pero su fama vino con su expedición de 1871-1872 en busca de otro famoso explorador, el médico y misionero Dr. Livingstone, que andaba desaparecido por el África Oriental desde hacía cinco años. Stanley lo encontró, en noviembre de 1871, en el pequeño asentamiento de Ujiji, a orillas del lago Tanganika, y se dirigió a él con la pregunta que se volvería mítica: “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?”. Estuvieron cuatro meses juntos, pero Livingstone se negó a regresar a Inglaterra y falleció en África, de 60 años, a orillas del lago Bengwelu. Stanley, que se hizo rico y célebre con esta proeza, realizó otra todavía mayor en 1874, cruzando todo el Congo hasta la desembocadura del río de este nombre en el Atlántico. Entonces, Leopoldo II lo contrató y el galés se convirtió en un instrumento neurálgico de las ambiciones coloniales del soberano belga. Lo ayudó a sentar las bases del Estado Libre Asociado del Congo, construyendo caminos, tendiendo los rieles del ferrocarril entre Boma y Kinshasa y firmando “contratos” con los jefes y caciques de las tribus de orillas del gran río en los que éstos cedían sus tierras al “rey civilizador” y se comprometían a darle hombres para que trabajaran en las obras públicas así como en la extracción del caucho, las pieles y el marfil. Entre todos los sistemas coloniales montados por Europa en el África, el del Congo fue el más inhumano: el primer genocidio del siglo XX.

Curiosamente, ni en Kinshasa, ni en las localidades del Bajo Congo -Matadi, Boma y Mbanza Ngungu-, ni en el extremo oriental del país, la región de los Kivu, escuché palabras de rencor contra Stanley. Por el contrario, en muchos sitios me hablaron de él con simpatía, como de una gloria nacional. En Matadi, un funcionario de una (imaginaria) oficina de turismo me llevó a ver, en las afueras de la ciudad, en un codo del río, el lugar donde estuvo la choza donde vivió Stanley y el primer embarcadero que construyó. En Boma, todos los lugareños señalan al forastero cómo llegar al gigantesco baobab, de cientos de años de existencia según la voz popular, en el que el explorador excavó un refugio, que fue su casa y que todavía se puede visitar. Salvo a una persona -era un intelectual- tampoco escuché en los 15 días que pasé allá a ningún congolés despotricar contra los años coloniales y responsabilizarlos de las miserias y padecimientos que sufre el país. ¿Generosidad y grandeza de espíritu? Tal vez, o, acaso, un presente tan terrible que ha borrado de la memoria colectiva las atrocidades del pasado.

La colina donde está el museo de Monsieur Zola es bellísima. Repleta de árboles, por donde uno mira se encuentra con un paisaje que quita el habla. Y, sin embargo, ni siquiera este paraje se libra de ese aire de ruina, decadencia y letargo que se advierte por doquier, en las calles y arrabales de Kinshasa, en la deforestada campiña que baja hacia el Atlántico, en las antiguas localidades que fundaron los primeros colonos a orillas del Bajo Congo, o, en el otro confín del inmenso país, en el oriente de los grandes lagos, donde las guerras intestinas, las epidemias, las invasiones, los saqueos y violaciones, hacen vivir a millones de personas una pesadilla cotidiana. Como si una de esas maldiciones apocalípticas de la Biblia hubiera caído sobre el Congo cubriéndolo de ruina, pobreza, tristeza y aislamiento.

A unas pocas decenas de metros del museo, el gran anfiteatro que se construyó durante la dictadura de Mobutu y en el que alguna vez hubo conciertos y espectáculos está abandonado, comido por la humedad, y la vegetación asoma entre las hendiduras de lo que fueron sus graderíos. En el parque que lo rodea hubo un zoológico. Ahora las jaulas están vacías y la casa de Mobutu, pillada, desvencijada y convertida en un cascarón por una multitud enloquecida de furor. Unas horas después veo otro de los palacetes del tirano, construido a orillas del río, que ha sufrido una suerte parecida. Pero no sólo las casas del megalómano sátrapa están así. Todo Kinshasa, todo el Congo da la impresión de haber sido víctima de un cataclismo. Las notas de color y alegría las ponen los vestidos de las mujeres, amarillos, azules, verdes, floreados, las sombrillas de colores con que se protegen del sol y la airosa manera del caminar de las muchachas que llevan bultos y canastas en las cabezas. Van como deslizándose sobre las pistas arenosas, la cabeza en alto, erguidas, y hay en su andar, en su soltura y su elegancia, una bocanada de vida entre tanta ruina, miseria y desperdicios.

The Guardian headline on Monday was clear as mud. It read “Stop killing in Congo or else, leaders warned”. Everything was left hanging. Which leaders? Warned by whom? Or else what? The story was that western spokesmen had warned various African leaders, albeit via the press, that they would be “held to account, or else” if they did not do what they were told. This clearly implied military intervention and there were briefings to that effect, though only a few hundred soldiers were mentioned.

The threats were from the new prophet of Blairite interventionism – David Miliband, the foreign secretary – and his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner. On a media-drenched trip to Congo, both were in full megaphone mode. “The world is watching,” they cried, as they peered into the impenetrable jungle. They then went out on a limb and called for “an end to violence”.

Miliband’s boss, Gordon Brown, was on a visit to the Gulf to publicise the poverty-stricken state of the former imperial powers. Yet he, too, stopped begging for a moment and intoned: “We must not allow Congo to become another Rwanda.”

How does he propose to do that? The two countries whose history and military capacity most qualify them for “not allowing Congo” are Britain and the US. Both are fighting bitter and extravagant wars to enforce their diktat on the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The cost to British and American taxpayers of Iraq and Afghanistan is higher than the entire public sector cost of the various banking rescues, at least on the $3 trillion guesstimate of the American economist Joseph Stiglitz. The idea that London or Washington – under whatever leadership – will send armies to Africa, to “or else” its leaders, is ludicrous. The 17,000 UN troops have been hopelessly overstretched.

Still we talk. It would not occur to a Russian leader or a Chinese, Indian, Brazilian or Turk to use the phrase “We must not allow Congo …”. They would never tell Africans to behave “or else”. They might do something, such as build a dam or sell a weapon, but they do not presume to hector. They know it is counter-productive.

Yet such is the language of men bred in the bone to rule the world. There is no drop of humility in their veins. Imperial might oozes from the walls of Miliband’s office overlooking St James’s Park, as from the grey walls of the Pentagon.

These men are rightly convinced of the superiority of their politics over that of Africa or Asia. But they are also convinced of their right to impose it on the rest of the world, as their forefathers were convinced of the superiority of their race, religion and soldiering ability. The imperialism gene remains potent. Only the modalities have changed.

In Asia, British ministers are seeking to impose their will on Muslim countries that are no threat to the British people, for all the mendacities of the “war on terror”. In Africa, to the relief of their generals, they are merely doing what Kipling derided as “killing Kruger with their mouths”. The spectacle is no more edifying.

Britain has talked the talk over Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, Zimbabwe and Congo. When the Foreign Office describes any state of affairs as “unacceptable”, the one sure thing is that it will soon be accepted. On the subject of Zimbabwe, Brown told his 2007 party conference “the message to anyone facing persecution is that we shall not rest”. He then rested. His intervention made it less, not more, likely that South Africa would force Mugabe to stand down. No 10 may have felt better for its macho talk; I doubt if Zimbabweans did.

The one African country where Britain has walked the walk is tiny Sierra Leone, still cited as a jewel of liberal interventionism. This is despite it remaining one of Africa’s poorest states, dependent on UK aid and military presence. All this means is that London can still run a decent African colony provided it has a population the size of the West Midlands.

The bluff of this interventionism is total, and cruel to the victims of the atrocities being perpetrated in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The west knows it will not deploy armies to Congo to enforce its threats, which are the more patronising as a result. African warlords know it too. They have other priorities than massaging the moral comfort zone of British ministers.

Congo will not find peace through western armies, and perhaps not through African ones, which have been trying for decades. By all accounts, the endemic conflict of Rwandan Tutsis and Hutus did not stop with the massacres of 1994, it merely moved elsewhere, fuelled by that curse of central Africa – its mineral wealth.

The rebel leader in Kivu, the Tutsi Laurent Nkunda, is said to be backed by the Rwandan government in a campaign to suppress the exiled Hutus who perpetrated the Rwanda massacres and allegedly are inclined to repeat them. Nkunda is playing the familiar ethnic-secessionist card, like rebel leaders in Sudan and elsewhere, with human beings as fodder. There is nothing new here.

The wars of the Congo basin are estimated to have cost 5 million lives in just 10 years, probably the greatest slaughter since the second world war. The world can do little about this. The gunboat diplomacy so familiar in Africa in the age of empire has become gunboat oratory. The political scientist John Gray rightly describes intervention in Africa as “a combination of post-imperial nostalgia with crackpot geopolitics”.

Interventionists always ask their critics what they would “do instead”. It is as if doing something stupid and counter-productive, or even just threatening it, must be better than doing nothing. This cannot be so. The new regime in Washington seems certain to pull back from the belligerent hubris of the Bush-Blair years. Explaining America’s refusal to intervene after the Burma hurricane, its defence secretary, Robert Gates, appealed to “a greater sensitivity all over the world to violating a country’s sovereignty”. Yet he was about to bomb Pakistan.

Congo’s people cry out for world aid. Everything should be done to get food and shelter to those in need. No effort to that end is enough. But such help should be under the old Red Cross rubric, that it should never wear uniform or travel under the shadow of a gun. This used to be the NGO creed of French foreign minister Kouchner.

We know that all aid has strategic import. It can harm as well as help. But charity is best when politically blind. It is born of humility and bravery, not of empty bravado.

Talk of sending British forces to the eastern Congo is a diplomatic fantasy – and one that could quickly turn into a nightmare. Even if well-prepared, well-equipped troops were available (which is not the case given Britain’s other involvements), a deployment would be neither sensible nor responsible without major commitments by other EU countries. As the French presidency has discovered, there is zero appetite across Europe for more African adventurism of this kind. Given the history, that is no surprise.

The highly public weekend effort by Britain’s David Miliband, France’s Bernard Kouchner, the US state department’s Jendayi Frazer, and the EU’s Louis Michel to bang regional heads together is also unlikely to amount to very much in the longer term – except, perhaps, increased resentment at western hectoring. As monitoring organisations such as the independent Enough Project point out, Congo needs the world’s “sustained attention”, not political ambulance chasing.

“The immediate crisis should not distract the world from a larger truth: peace in the Congo, and indeed the Great Lakes region, requires a comprehensive strategy, robust diplomatic engagement, and a strong, capable peacekeeping force … Intermittent and inconsistent crisis management must be replaced by a broader effort to deal with the drivers of endemic insecurity and atrocities,” the Enough Project said.

The failure of the US and the former colonial powers to stay closely engaged since the 2006 election is a key reason why sporadic attempts to end Congo’s epic tragedy continue to fail. Congo is in the headlines now. But that won’t last – and neither will current levels of diplomatic activity.

An emergency summit meeting of regional states in Kenya, if it happens this week, promises no solution as long as a principal protagonist, the rebel Tutsi leader, Laurent Nkunda, remains outside the tent. The main Rwandan Hutu militia, the Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which includes some of the leaders of the 1994 genocide, also stands at one remove – but is central to halting recurring violence.

The best hope of progress rests, as it did before this year’s truce broke down in August, with persuading Rwanda’s leadership to halt its support, direct or indirect, for Nkunda; and obtaining a similar change of heart by President Joseph Kabila and the Congolese army in respect of the FDLR and Mai Mai militias.

But neither camp can be expected to back off for more than a few months unless root causes are addressed. When the next explosion comes, chances are the world will again be caught looking the other way – and Kouchner will again be left asking: “Why? Why?”

It is easy to point the finger of blame, harder to find ways through the morass. The UN security council put too much faith in the 2006 polls and gave too little thought to nation-building. The UN’s peacekeeping force was unable to stop the rebel advance – understandable, perhaps, given that war-fighting is not its job. But it also failed to protect tens of thousands of fleeing civilians, which was its bounden duty.

More to the point, given that lasting solutions are home-grown, neither the Congolese nor the Rwandan governments have faithfully pursued pre-existing road maps on disarmament, integration (or “mixage”), transitional justice, resource-sharing, and institution building in North Kivu. According to the International Crisis Group, addressing these issues at the “epicentre” of the crisis is the only way of breaking the cycle of violence and dispossession.

That may or may not happen. One immediate danger now, if Nkunda resumes his advance on Goma, is that the Congolese army will succeed in co-opting UN forces, thereby finally destroying their remaining credibility. One immediate priority, as Miliband and Kouchner said, is to deploy more of the 17,000 UN soldiers into North Kivu.

But the misleading idea that European or even American troops could be on the way – that somehow the cavalry will ride to the rescue – should be dispelled. The UN and the African Union are still 12,000 men short in Darfur nearly a year into that supposedly crucial “anti-genocide” operation. There are none to spare for Congo. And candidly, there is no real will to find or send them.

Much of my work has been on conflict in Africa, so the latest catastrophe in the Democratic Republic of Congo has unsurprisingly generated questions of the form “What now?” My buck-dodging answer is: “Don’t start from here.” We are where we are because of the persistent failure of the international community to face reality. Part of that reality is that the UN is ill-suited to a reactive mode of operations: reaction requires decisions and logistics that are usually stymied by a lack of consensus and resources. So what is the alternative to the reactive mode? It is to pre-empt these situations by changing the approach that has been adopted in post-conflict societies.

The international community has based its pre-emptive strategy on a naive faith in the restorative power of elections. The theory has been that elections usher in an accountable and legitimate government and so bring peace and prosperity. In Congo, elections were duly held on October 29 2006, costing the aid donors $500m. So confident was the international community in this model that the date set for the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers was October 30. Instead, the elections provoked a full-scale shoot-out between the forces of the defeated candidate, Bemba, and the victorious Kabila, while manifestly failing to resolve the problem of eastern Congo.

It is possible to hold elections anywhere: Congo, Afghanistan, even Iraq. But facing reality means recognising that post-conflict situations are structurally dangerous in a way that cannot be resolved by a quick political fix.

I find that in societies at very low levels of income, democracy does not appear to enhance the prospects of peace: I wish it did, but instead it seems to make them more dangerous. And in post-conflict situations elections appear both to increase and to shift the risks of a resurgence of conflict, sharply increasing them once the election is over. Presumably, as in Congo, the loser doesn’t accept the result, and the winner recognises the opportunity to be vindictive with impunity.

There is usually no quick fix, political or otherwise: only after at least a decade of serious engagement can we hope for change. Politics is insufficient: security and economic development need to be externally supported on a grand scale.

But politics does matter in a way that an election is inadequate to resolve. The Congolese election of 2006 was decided predominantly by how the regional power barons aligned with the two candidates. Kabila as the incumbent had a massive advantage and duly won.

The democratic politics that matter are not the process of how power is acquired, but the checks and balances that limit how it is used. The heart of the present problems in eastern Congo is the reluctance of the government to address both the genuine threat that Hutu extremists on its territory pose to Tutsis in Congo and Rwanda and the resource scramble that finances and motivates much of the violence.

Here is the core of the issue. In the typical post-conflict situation exemplified by Congo, there are three nightmare problems – insecurity, poverty and misgovernance – each with a different party responsible for dealing with it. Addressing insecurity requires external peacekeeping in large numbers for a long period. Alleviating poverty requires massive aid inflows delivered through innovative approaches that do not assume that the bureaucracy can rapidly be turned into Scandinavia. Curtailing misgovernance requires that the government accepts its finances should be subject to intense and continuous scrutiny. If any one of these three is not forthcoming, the other two are liable to fail. And so what is needed is recognition of mutual responsibilities: a post-conflict compact. How does Congo measure up on these three criteria?

The international community finds itself with the largest peacekeeping operation in the world. While more troops and better logistical support would surely have helped, it is not reasonable to lay the blame primarily upon inadequate external provision of security. The failings have been in the other two components.

Broadly based economic development is the only true exit strategy for peacekeeping. Its pillars are jobs and basic services. In all post-conflict settings the construction sector is the most promising opportunity for jobs growth: there is so much reconstruction to do. In Congo, this opportunity is amplified by the commodity booms. Yet in Congo a lot of the construction is being done by Chinese outfits, and while the Chinese deals of infrastructure for minerals have advantages, this vital opportunity for broad-based benefits has been missed. Basic services in Congo have been pitiful beyond belief: state bureaucracy is not the way to improve them. The challenge is to channel both government money and donor money into basic services in a coherent manner that does not rely on the ministries. What is needed is a massive contracting-out approach to health and education, using whatever agencies work: NGOs, churches, private firms, with performance monitored to the extent possible. Instead, donors and government share an attachment to the chimera of “building an effective state”. Where it is feasible that goal is commendable, but in Congo it is unrealistic.

But the heart of the failure has surely been insufficient demands on government: the international community has been frightened to infringe on sovereignty. The ghost of colonialism has condemned millions of Congolese citizens to a life that is nasty, brutish and short. A tougher stance would have been fully justified. If peacekeepers’ lives are to be placed on the line, and scarce aid money is to be diverted from other uses where it could save lives, then post-conflict governments must accept limits on their behaviour. If, 10 years ago, the UN had established a clear post-conflict contract setting out mutual responsibilities, Congo might now be different. But 10 years ago the UN lacked any forum in which such a compact could be forged. With help from the British government it now has the UN Peacebuilding Commission: we need to use it.

Lo que está ocurriendo desde hace años en la República Democrática del Congo es un perfecto ejemplo del puzle imposible que lo peor de la globalización ha traído consigo. Luchas étnicas, fuerzas armadas incomprensibles, fronteras inexistentes, antiguas potencias coloniales desaparecidas, nuevas potencias sin escrúpulos, riqueza inimaginable en el subsuelo, violencia sexual y una caprichosa geografía que rodea los Grandes Lagos; es decir, todos los ingredientes para el horror ante la pasividad de esta parte del mundo a la que pertenecemos, desde donde asistimos entre ignorantes y disimulados al infierno de la región de los Kivus.

Se trata de la comarca central del Oriente congoleño, a su vez fronteriza por el Este nada menos que con Uganda, Ruanda y Burundi. Un auténtico laboratorio de todos los desastres del mundo en tan solo un par de provincias. Si alguien se puede imaginar lo peor de lo peor del ser humano, que eche un vistazo a lo que acontece en el antiguo Congo belga.

Si analizamos por partes el conflicto debemos comenzar por el principio, o lo que es lo mismo, las minas de coltán. El mineral compuesto de columbita y tantalita es el elemento clave para la construcción de videoconsolas, teléfonos móviles y misiles de última generación. Curiosa coincidencia: el componente fundamental de la PSP de nuestros hijos y de las armas más sofisticadas de nuestros ejércitos proviene del mismo lugar del mundo. Se trata de un material superconductor que se encuentra por toneladas en el subsuelo de esa parte más oriental de la R. D. del Congo. Y aquí surge la primera sorpresa para los estudiosos del fenómeno, cuando se percibe que la explotación de los yacimientos de coltán está dirigida por industriales chinos e indios. De hecho, decenas de pequeñas avionetas parten a diario de las zonas mineras hacia países limítrofes desde donde posteriormente se envía a las plantas productoras. La organización, distribución y posterior comercialización del material se realiza por empresarios provenientes de China y de la India, donde se fabrican la mayoría de los mencionados productos industriales derivados del coltán. La extracción, obviamente, corre a cargo de los varones locales en jornadas laborales de auténtica explotación, insalubridad y carentes de derecho alguno.

El colmo del descontrol económico del tesoro lo escenifica el hecho de que la fronteriza Ruanda sea uno de los mayores exportadores mundiales del preciado material, cuando de su suelo no se extrae ni un solo kilo de este mineral.

En segundo término, y junto a las comarcas mineras, proliferan decenas de grupúsculos armados y ejércitos más o menos organizados que no sólo no contribuyen a aliviar el caos, sino que, al contrario, lo alimentan hasta límites de desastre histórico. Un breve repaso por las fuerzas más representativas pone los pelos de punta: Fuerzas Armadas de la República Democrática del Congo (FARDC), o lo que es lo mismo, el ejército regular del presidente Joseph Kabila, si no fuera porque apenas cobran regularmente sus salarios y porque saquean para subsistir en las zonas de despliegue como cualquier otra banda armada. Este ejército ha sido el gran proyecto pacificador de la comunidad internacional y a la vez uno de los más sonados fracasos.

A partir de ahí, el «collage» es imposible y a cada elemento más sangriento: las Fuerzas Democráticas de Liberación de Ruanda (FDLR), soldados hutus responsables del genocidio de mediados de los noventa que están bien vistos por el régimen congoleño porque, al fin y al cabo, debilitan a la Ruanda de donde provienen; las Fuerzas Nacionales para la Liberación de Burundi (FNL), también hutus extendidos por el Kivu Sur cuya obsesión es atacar a los tutsis congoleños (banyamulengues); el Consejo Nacional para la Defensa de los Pueblos (CNDP), ejército tutsi y disidente de las Fuerzas Armadas congoleñas, al mando del mítico y descontrolado general Nkunda cuyo soporte fundamental es el régimen ruandés y las Fuerzas Democráticas Aliadas de Uganda que luchan contra su propio gobierno pero en suelo congoleño.

A los anteriores hay que unir pequeñas organizaciones que operan a modo de bandas organizadas como el Frente de Resistencia Patriótica de Ituri, el Movimiento Revolucionario del Congo, los Interhamwe y los temibles Mai-Mai que comenzaron como grupos de autoprotección y se han diseminado en infinitos grupúsculos tribales al mando de sus respectivos señores de la guerra, que han terminado horrorizando a las ONG’s que aún aguantan en la zona.

Y falta el tercer elemento, una enorme y desconocida crisis humanitaria, que surge como consecuencia de los dos elementos anteriores: el coltán y las milicias. Y es que más de 700.000 personas suponen la impresionante masa de desplazados hacia ninguna parte en poco más de un año, lo que es, a su vez, un nefasto récord en la larga lista de desastres humanitarios.

Pero lo que más llama la atención, o debería hacerlo porque en verdad no provoca la más mínima reacción, es el empleo de la violencia sexual no como arma de guerra, sino ya como costumbre local sin más.
Según Médicos Sin Fronteras, la patología más habitual es la fístula grado 3 provocada en las mujeres y niñas violadas sistemáticamente durante días. Cuentan los voluntarios que en determinadas aldeas, donde ya no quedan hombres, los grupúsculos armados o las bandas organizadas vuelven una y otra vez, acampan durante días y se entretienen violando por orden a la misma mujer durante jornadas enteras. Así, en miles de casos contabilizados e irrecuperables por los daños causados en sus cuerpos. Como conclusión, se deduce que cerca del 80 por ciento de los casos de violencia sexual que se llevan a cabo en las distintas guerras del mundo se producen en el Congo.

El colmo de los colmos es el papel que determinados contingentes de cascos azules están desarrollando en territorio congoleño, cual es el caso de indios y pakistaníes. De hecho, esta misma semana conocimos la denuncia que desde Naciones Unidas se destapó contra un destacamento de soldados indios que bajo el mando de MONUC desató una oleada de crímenes sexuales en el Kivu Norte.

Esa es otra, porque con la que está cayendo en la región, ¿cómo se explica que más de la mitad de los cascos azules allí destacados sean asiáticos o uruguayos? Por cierto, nada en contra de estos suramericanos que rescataron en sus blindados al mismísimo embajador español, Miguel Fernández Palacios, cuando hace meses fue objetivo de un ataque con granadas contra las oficinas de la Embajada española en Kinshasha.
¿A partir de ahora, qué? ¿Continuaremos desde el mundo «rico» impasibles ante lo que allí está ocurriendo? ¿Cuál es el límite de aguante de la población centroafricana? ¿No estaremos disimulando a la vez que observamos con detenimiento cómo se desarrollan los acontecimientos en el mejor laboratorio del horror imaginable en el siglo XXI? ¿Podrá hacer frente el presidente Kabila a sus disidentes?

No se trata de ser pesimista, sino realista, aunque en este caso, y una vez más, sea lo mismo. El futuro de la región de los Grandes Lagos y del Oriente de la R. D. del Congo es terrorífico porque lo peor, más allá del propio horror, es que desde aquí lo ignoramos mientras lo usamos como laboratorio de pruebas.

Si alguien tiene alguna duda, que contacte con cualquiera de los legionarios españoles que durante el período electoral sirvieron en la capital del país, en una misión arriesgadísima y difícil que, muy a su pesar, pasó sin pena ni gloria; o con nuestras monjas, misioneros y voluntarios que, sin que nadie lo sepa, se dejan lo mejor de su vida allí mismo.

The roads here are awful, partly because of perennial disrepair and partly because of a 2002 volcanic eruption that covered large areas of Goma with black lava. Now the town is the site of a major peace conference, so a few potholes were filled with sand. One can only hope that whatever results from this meeting has a firmer base.

The conference opened Sunday and is scheduled to end next week. Some 1,300 people are attending. Congolese television showed the inaugural speeches, full of hope. It has been 16 months since the current conflict (the most recent of many) began in North Kivu. “The time for peace has come,” said the conference’s president.

To be sure, peace is desperately needed. Since September 2006, some 400,000 people from North Kivu have been displaced. They are in camps and host communities in Congo or in the neighboring countries of Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. Violence, especially against women and children, has made the region a frightfully dangerous place. I have encountered rape victims as old as 66 and as young as 14 months — many of them in need of surgical intervention.

In anticipation of the peace conference, both the government and its main adversary, the renegade Gen. Laurent Nkunda, announced unilateral cease-fires. But there are four warring factions here; the others are Rwandan Hutu rebels and jungle Mai-Mai militias. So there is no effective truce while the politicians talk peace.

As the badges for the peace conference were being distributed, the United Nations announced that in the past few days, Mai-Mai soldiers had fought Nkunda’s men, Nkunda’s troops had taken new territory from the government, and government soldiers had stopped the convoy of an international nongovernmental organization and confiscated its medical supplies. Another NGO convoy was robbed at gunpoint of money and four mobile phones after being halted by uniformed men in a territory controlled by government forces.

Meanwhile, in North Kivu, an ambush by Rwandan Hutu rebels killed two civilians and injured five. Members of my organization, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), have been robbed three times in the past two months. The day the conference began, all humanitarian aid vehicles were stopped because of a riot by people in the town of Rutshuru who were demanding more representation at the conference.

Rutshuru has protested in the past. In November the inhabitants threw rocks at a building of MONUC, the U.N. mission in Congo, and 27 soldiers were seriously wounded. Four IRC health clinics have been attacked and looted in the Rutshuru area. To maintain only a small stock of drugs and thus prevent the facilities from being targeted presents another inconvenience: Resupply trips must be more frequent.

In another town, for almost two months, the constant exchange of fire has delayed meetings with midwives, the community and the priest — meetings necessary to begin assistance for victims of sexual violence. The United Nations reports 13 security incidents targeting humanitarian organizations in the past six months.

Some humanitarian groups (including the IRC) came to Goma in 1994 to assist those fleeing the Rwandan genocide. Others came in 1996 when the war against dictator Mobutu Sese Seko started to take a toll on the civilian population, displacing hundreds of thousands.

North Kivu has not been completely peaceful since then, and this big conference — called by Congolese President Joseph Kabila after government troops failed to uproot the troops of the renegade Gen. Nkunda — may bring no respite. In December, the security situation was so uncertain that — in an unprecedented move — our colleagues from five international NGOs decided to go on a two-day strike to show local residents what it feels like when humanitarian aid is not there. The strike did little to change things.

We in the humanitarian aid groups fly big flags with our logos to identify ourselves, and we never take the escorts that MONUC offers. Rather, we rely heavily on community participation. And because North Kivu’s problems will not go away even if the shooting stops, we have made a long-term commitment: We’re trying to make aid feel more like a call from a family doctor who will always be there than a rushed emergency intervention by an ambulance.

The head of the U.N. refugee agency, Ant¿nio Guterres, recently said of Congo: “Nobody in the outside world feels threatened, and so the international community is not really paying attention.”

As “family doctors” to the Congolese in North Kivu, we, alas, agree.

John le Carré’s latest novel, The Mission Song, describes an MI6-backed plot to mount a coup in the eastern Great Lakes region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). An anonymous business syndicate, eyeing the mineral riches of North and South Kivu provinces, encourages rival militia leaders to join forces under the auspices of a sinister populist, Mwangaza the Enlightener.The fictitious plotters’ idea is to throw off the authority of the “fat cats” in the far-off capital of Kinshasa, weaken Rwandan influence, and set up some sort of autonomous, ostensibly democratic state. But ethnic and personal rivalries, spiced with incompetence and rank treachery, ultimately reduce the plan to chaos.

Direct comparisons between Le Carré’s story and current, real-world, North Kivu are problematic. But there are striking similarities. A charismatic rebel general, Laurent Nkunda, is fighting President Joseph Kabila’s government in Kinshasa. Supporters say he is the indigenous Tutsi population’s only defence against Hutu Interahamwe fighters spawned by the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Critics dismiss him as an opportunistic warlord.

Nkunda is opposed by an alliance of the Congolese army, the Rwandan FDLR and Patriotic Resistance militias, and local Mai Mai groups. After a ceasefire collapsed this autumn, detachments of the UN peacekeeping force, known by its French acronym, Monuc, have also backed up government forces around the provincial capital, Goma.

But to the dismay of the UN, the EU and aid agencies, Nkunda is not merely holding out. In the past week, he has decisively routed Kabila’s 20,000-strong army. The conflict, now lacking any obvious military or other solution, suddenly threatens to rekindle the civil war that in theory ended in 2003, and spark a new regional free-for-all for land, oil and minerals.

The chaos Le Carré conjured in North Kivu is now a cruel reality. António Guterres, the UN refugee agency chief, warned during a visit this week of an accelerating humanitarian catastrophe.

Forty thousand people have fled their homes in the Goma area in the past month and unknown numbers have died. More than 400,000 have been displaced in the past year; nearly a million overall are in need of assistance. Supposedly non-permanent UN refugee camps are already overcrowded, and are used for recruiting by both sides.

Both government and rebel forces are accused of the worst excesses against civilians. “Every time these belligerents fight each other, they have killed, raped and looted civilians,” said Anneke van Woudenberg of Human Rights Watch. And both sides are using child soldiers. “Hundreds of boys and girls continue to be sent to the front line by armed groups in North Kivu … Others are used for logistical tasks or as sex slaves,” a UN statement said. Meanwhile, diseases including cholera, meningitis and measles are taking a growing toll among the uprooted.

“We know how much you have suffered. Members of your families have been killed, your homes have been burned and you have lost your harvest,” Guterres told refugees near Goma. As UN officials reported it, a one-eyed woman replied: “I was not born with one eye. The rebels attacked us one night, tied us up and beat us. They gouged out my eye and raped me.”

As the crisis deepens, Monuc, with 4,500 of its 17,000 troops in North Kivu, is facing familiar criticism for failing to protect civilians. The related failure to disarm and deport Hutu militias in Kivu – a key rebel demand – and the collapse in May of a so-called “mixage” process to integrate Nkunda’s troops into the regular army have speeded the descent into darkness. More broadly, the crisis threatens the western-constructed edifice that finally produced democratic elections last year and security and economic reforms.

Regional analysts fear prolonged fighting in North Kivu could provoke another intervention by Rwanda’s Tutsi-led government and trigger a wider conflagration. So far that repeat nightmare has been avoided. But peacekeeping troops are needed in Darfur and Monuc’s security council mandate expires on December 31. The mission is costing an estimated $3m a day. By now, the international community had hoped the Congo would have calmed down. Instead it is boiling over.

The likelihood is the UN will stay. It will have no choice. But if the Congo is ever to be truly fixed, a brand new mission song may be needed.

Walungu – This village, surrounding a small Catholic church, is as far down the red dust road as you can go without entering territory controlled by the exiled perpetrators of Rwanda‘s genocide. The rebels often come in civilian clothes to trade in Walungu’s open-air market. At other times they raid the nearby farms for supplies and women. The region is known as “the quarter of rape.”

In the shadow of the church is a facility run by Women for Women, an organization that matches international sponsors to local women in need of help. Listening to one of those women, I heard the story of a suffering nation in a single life.

Lucianne is 24, dressed in a red top and red skirt. She speaks quietly while looking downward, her hands trembling. Her eyes are staring and empty; her lovely mouth never smiles.

In December of 2005, while her husband was away on business, Hutu soldiers broke into her home, tied her arms behind her back, did the same to her sister-in-law and dragged them into the bush. The two women were marched to their family farm, where Lucianne’s brother was also kidnapped. Other families were captured along the way.

“We were taken to a hill, and laid down for rape,” she told me. “They gave a flashlight to my brother to hold while they were raping us. When he tried to resist, they struck him with a gun in the face. . . . We were near a stream. When one of them was finished, they washed the blood off us before the next was raped.”

Afterward they were moved again. “I was unable to walk properly, and they were beating us along the way. The next morning we arrived” — here she breaks down, then quietly continues — “at the place where they killed my brother.” She was tied to a tree. Her sister-in-law and most of the other women were taken away to be murdered.

A rebel officer decided that Lucianne would be kept as a “wife.” “When I got in the house, I saw my younger sister,” Lucianne recalls. “I thought she had died. She told me she was pregnant and ill.

“When I cooked, if there was more or less salt, I was put in prison, which was a hole filled with water. Once I spent three days in prison with swollen legs.”

Eventually Lucianne was ordered to escort her sister to town so she could give birth. Lucianne was rescued by the wife of a government soldier, who got help for her sister at nearby Panzi Hospital– but her sister died soon after childbirth.

Lucianne remained for treatment at Panzi. She had contracted a sexually transmitted disease and was pregnant herself. When she tried to return home, her husband had abandoned her, and her family farm had been occupied by others.

After delivering her child, she tried working on a different farm, but the soldiers came again. “I wanted to hide myself, and they told me, ‘Why do you hide? You are Lucianne, and you have our baby.’ ” She recently saw two of her captors in the market. “Since that day I have never spent the night in the house, because of fear.”

Lucianne — who is young and lost and should be loved — now sleeps with her child in the cassava fields near Walungu to avoid being captured again.

At Panzi Hospital, which specializes in treating rape victims, there was a long line of women waiting for treatment on the day I visited. By one estimate, 27,000 women and girls were raped in eastern Congo in 2006. The hospital has seen victims as young as 3.

Denis Mukwege, the hospital’s medical director, explains that women are sometimes raped by six soldiers at a time and violated in front of their families to maximize the shame. “After the rape, sometimes they destroy their private parts,” he says, “introducing firewood and guns. . . . Most people who come back from the bush come back with fistula; they smell bad and leak in their private parts.” The excretory organs are no longer under control. “The idea is to destroy the entire community, so they can’t procreate anymore, for the race to disappear.”

“If they were shot by a gun,” says Mukwege, “you would call it genocide. This is a different kind of genocide, which destroys women physically and emotionally over the years.”

At the close of my interview with Lucianne, she finally looked up. “I beg you, my fathers and mothers, to help me get safety from these people.”

No words of comfort came to me.

BUKAVU, Rep. Dem. Congo — This is a town of stomach-jarring dirt streets, and fences topped with concertina wire, and charming lake vistas, and wandering goats, and burning trash, and cock crows, and soldiers with assault rifles, and banks of bougainvillea that reach two stories high. It is also a town with the world’s most brutal war just down the road.

At the center of Bukavu is a facility that houses and helps former child soldiers. One of the boys I met was 11. “They have killed,” explained one counselor, “and sometimes eaten the flesh of other people. . . . Sometimes a child is 6 years old when they start, and spends seven years in the army. They are trained to think that the civilian is nothing.”

The counselors attempt to gain the boys’ confidence, introduce them to sports to “discharge negative energy,” teach them respect for women, find out and encourage their aspirations, and eventually place them with relatives or foster parents. But the work is difficult. “They are traumatized,” says the counselor, “and you get traumatized as well.”

On the wall of the facility is a list of the militia groups from which the children have been rescued. Thirteen different groups are identified, with names that seem like random Scrabble tiles — MLC and UPC and FDLR. This is one reason that Americans have paid little attention to the war in Congo — it is complicated, and determining the good guys from the bad is not easy. But for nearly a decade, this war among abbreviations has displaced millions of civilians, destroyed Congo’s health and judicial systems, and produced war crimes beyond decent imagination.

Perhaps 4 million people have died in Congo from violence, hunger and preventable disease during the current conflict. Yet, unlike in Darfur, the cameras of the American media have seldom rolled.

However complex this war, there seems to be one ultimate cause. After the Rwandan genocide of 1994, many of the authors of those atrocities — Hutu soldiers and militia members — fled to eastern Congo behind a shield of French peacekeepers. These forces came to be known as the FDLR, which now counts between 6,000 and 10,000 troops, who are tightly organized, well funded by mining operations within Congo and as heartless as ever.

A Congolese children’s rights advocate estimates that thousands of FDLR troops are child soldiers. “All of their children are combatants,” he told me. And the FDLR’s ideology of mass murder is unchanged. Occupied villages are intimidated with mutilations and systematic rape — sexual violence so terrible the damage is sometimes beyond repair.

In the past, the governments of Congo and neighboring Rwanda have often been part of the problem — supporting one brutal militia or the other when it served their political purposes. But both nations seem to have tired of this game. This month, Congo and Rwanda signed a joint statement promising to oppose the warlords, with the goal of making eastern Congo a peaceful buffer zone instead of a source of instability.

Ending the war in Congo is likely to require both toughness and generosity. The Congolese military will need to step up pressure on the FDLR. United Nations peacekeepers in Congo are effectively securing urban areas where they operate. It would also be useful for the United Nations to secure Congo’s mines, which would deny resources to armed groups — a mission that is just beginning.

Military action, however, will need to be matched by political outreach, at least to some of the FDLR. The worst of the Rwandan genocidaires are some of the worst criminals of history. They must be captured, tried and punished, or justice has no meaning.

But the rest of the Rwandans in Congo should be treated differently. To persuade them to lay down their arms, they will need an offer of amnesty, help with resettlement and the hope of a better life back home — a genuine alternative to war.

America is deeply engaged in brokering a resolution to this conflict. But peace will also require resources. America will need to help train Congolese forces in protecting civilians and respecting human rights. We will need to help displaced men and women in Congo return home and rebuild their lives. Yet providing these resources is not a priority of the current budget in Washington.

And it probably will not be a priority until Americans focus on the lives and suffering of child soldiers and rape victims who live in a nation crowned with thorns.

OVERVIEW

On 6 December 2006, Joseph Kabila was sworn in as the first democratically elected president since Congolese independence, concluding a landmark electoral process largely devoid of major violence or gross irregularities. Democratic governance is now expected to support peacebuilding and reconstruction. The new government has weak and barely functioning institutions, however, and the international community, which has given decisive support to the peace process, must continue to help it overcome serious security and political challenges. Immediate agenda items include to set up promptly a new structure to coordinate aid efforts, renew the United Nations Mission (MONUC) with a strong mandate and increase efforts to improve security throughout the country.

The second-round challenger in the presidential election, Jean-Pierre Bemba, conceded defeat and has committed to lead the opposition in parliament once elected senator, although he did not accept the validity of the poll results. Kabila’s election, establishment of a newly elected parliament and implementation of the constitution adopted by referendum on 18 December 2005 bring an end to the transition born out of the 2002 Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in Pretoria. They provide the fundamental elements of the political dispensation promised to the Congolese people during the peace talks and open a new era for the country. With a reasonably clear popular mandate – 58 per cent in the run-off round – and a strong majority in parliament, Kabila controls roughly three fifths of both houses and is empowered to consolidate peace and stability in the country.

The peace process, however, is not complete. Its successes have to be consolidated and its achievements safeguarded. The situation in the East in particular remains extremely volatile, and little state authority exists in most of the opposition-dominated West. The defiant capital, Kinshasa, is permanently at risk of large-scale civil unrest. Kabila’s control of most state institutions also entails a risk. Indeed, political repression is already on the rise, with triumphant hawks demanding a review of some of the transition’s key legislative milestones. There are signs of opposition marginalisation in the national assembly and of former rebel forces being sidelined in the security services.

This briefing focuses on two significant and related pending decisions: the MONUC mandate renewal, which comes up in February, and the establishment of new international structures to support the peace process following dissolution of the Kinshasa-based International Committee for Supporting the Transition (CIAT). (A more comprehensive analysis, including a full overview of the transition’s achievements and the remaining peace process challenges, will be provided in a subsequent report.) Some donors indicate that they want to reduce MONUC to a pure security mission, charged only with supporting the Congolese army in the troubled East and providing technical assistance on human rights, demobilisation and civil affairs. This would strip away its important political capacity to act in a conflict prevention or conflict management mode.

The Kabila government and some donors also appear to want to replace CIAT with a purely technical structure concentrated on development and humanitarian assistance and to treat most aid matters on a purely bilateral basis. This would weaken the capacity of the international community to work collectively to support democratic practices and safeguard other peace process achievements.

Donors and others in the international community should pursue three policy priorities:

• Diplomatic and political coordination. The UN Security Council should mandate MONUC to consult with the new Congolese institutions and key countries (the Council’s five permanent members, Belgium, South Africa, Angola) to create a limited-membership international political forum. That forum should advise and support the government on national and regional conflict prevention and management and on protecting the achievements of the peace process. A larger group, which might include all donors, should be set up separately, dedicated to humanitarian and development assistance.
• Support to Congo’s emerging institutions. The Council should mandate MONUC to facilitate establishment of a joint commission on legal reform and state reconstruction, involving representatives of government, parliament and key major donors. It would support and advise key state institutions on implementation of the new constitution and the completion of legal reforms agreed upon at the Inter-Congolese dialogue (such as devolution of central government responsibilities to the newly created provinces, judicial reform and anti-corruption legislation). The joint commission on security sector reform (SSR) created during the transition should be renewed, with a clear mandate to support the implementation of an integrated and comprehensive strategy, including the key issue of vetting, donor coordination and payment and sustainment of the integrated national army (FARDC).
• Securing the country. MONUC’s troop level should be kept around 17,000 in 2007 and the draw-down of its brigades should begin only when there has been decisive progress in restoring state authority, particularly in Ituri, the Kivus and Katanga. MONUC’s plan to give short-term military training to the integrated brigades should be supported by donors, in connection with implementation of transitional justice measures in the security forces. Donors should insist in particular that the new government work with the EU mission and MONUC to carry out, through the joint commission on SSR, a system of vetting within the security forces, so as progressively to exclude those guilty of the most serious abuses during the war and the transition.

Leer artículo completo (PDF). Disponible también en Crisis Group.

In the conflict-ridden, resource-rich heart of Africa, the horse-trading has begun. Jean-Pierre Bemba, the wealthy businessman-turned-rebel, has lost the first presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo for more than 40 years, and is crying foul. He is already challenging the result in the Supreme Court. But everyone knows that it won’t be the law that settles the issue, but raw power politics. Bemba controls the youth on Kinshasa’s volatile streets, and swaths of the north and west of this vast African nation.

International time, effort and money have been spent building a fragile peace in Congo, which hosts the biggest UN peacekeeping force in the world. So the pressure will be on to strike a deal to soothe Bemba’s ruffled ego and neutralise his threat. But will it be peace at any price?

The complicating factor is this: Congo is the subject of one of the first investigations by the new International Criminal Court at The Hague, and Bemba is squarely in the frame. The ICC’s remit is to bring to justice perpetrators of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. If the court gets the chance to function as intended, tyrants and warmongers across the world should be looking nervously over their shoulders. Instead, ill-judged politicking threatens to strangle it in its infancy.

Bemba was known to us hacks in the East African press corps as le rebel chic. His taste for the good life in Brussels and fondness for chocolate cake was renowned. He cut a podgy, comical figure strutting about in army fatigues, inspecting his rag-tag army of boys from the Bush.

But there was nothing funny about his soldiers’ actions in Eastern Congo. Minority Rights Group International has presented evidence to the ICC of their campaign of terror against the forest-dwelling Bambuti pygmies. Among the crimes alleged are mass murder, rape and acts of cannibalism. Yet one senior UN diplomat has indicated privately that — for the sake of peace — the investigation into Bemba’s responsibility for his men’s conduct may be sidelined.

It isn’t just in Congo that trade-offs are being made. In neighbouring Uganda, President Museveni promised amnesty recently to Joseph Kony, the head of a rebel group — notorious for abducting children to become fighters or sex slaves — to end the long war. This dealt a blow to the ICC. When the tribunal issued its first arrest warrants last year, top of the wanted list was Kony.

Why should Britain care about dubious deal-making in Africa? At stake is a legal and moral principle that we all have an interest in defending — that of individual criminal responsibility.

On the national level, the idea is hardly startling. The police investigation into the peerages-for-loans scandal is a reminder that even the most the powerful man in Britain is not above the law. But at the international level, individual accountability has traditionally been much weaker. For centuries, leaders who prosecute wars were seen to be acting not as individuals but on behalf of the State, and so have been insulated from the legal consequences of their actions.

But this old order is under attack. From the Nuremberg trials through to the Pinochet case and the courtroom dramas of Milosevic and Saddam, a different standard is emerging. When war crimes and crimes against humanity are committed, it is individuals not states who are to be held responsible.

Sceptics point out that those who have stood trial so far have either been defeated in war or are retired and irrelevant. They insist there would be no chance of hauling powerful political figures in Washington and London before a court, to answer for their actions. So could a British prime minister, conceivably, be done for shady financial deals but never for crimes against humanity committed down the chain of command? Those who believe that better start looking more closely at the fallout from Iraq.

In the United States, there is growing distaste at American soldiers and military police being — rightly — punished for their abuses in Iraq, while politicians and officials who set the tone for a “human-rights-free” policy, which flouted international standards on prisoners of war and torture, get off scot-free.

The US has always refused to sign up to the jurisdiction of the ICC. But there are other ways — as the former Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld is discovering. Within days of resigning, he faced the threat of court proceedings in Germany, for his role in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Mr Rumsfeld may not be losing much sleep over the dim prospect of his incarceration in a German jail. But, for sure, he’ll have to pick his foreign vacation resorts with care in the future. Even in the friendliest nation, there may be a nasty surprise in store. Ask Pinochet.

And aside from the strong moral case, there are powerful practical arguments too. Impunity poisons the body politic. We see this daily, on our television screens, in Iraq, where rampaging militia are protected by powerful figures in the Baghdad Goverment.

So should it be deal or no deal for Bemba and Kony? No deal. It’s not worth the gamble. It’s not just morally right — but a necessity too. For the sake of a lasting peace, let the wheels of justice roll.

OVERVIEW:

Hours before the first-round results of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s presidential elections were to be announced in Kinshasa on 20 August 2006, violence erupted between troops loyal to Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba and those loyal to the incumbent, Joseph Kabila, providing dramatic proof of the fragility of the electoral process. Because both Kabila and Bemba will be tempted to use violence should they lose the second round, and the former in particular is very strong militarily, the Congolese government and the international community must move quickly to make secure the run-off as well as the provincial assembly elections on 29 October. Militias also threaten stability elsewhere in the country, notably in North Kivu and Ituri, but the capital is likely to be the most sensitive location again. A three-pronged strategy is required: improving security in Kinshasa, promoting a more responsible approach to the media and resolving some basic problems in the electoral process.

First, the thousands of troops in Kinshasa must be reined in, particularly the private guards of Kabila and Bemba, who are not part of the army’s regular command structure. Secondly, steps need to be taken to prevent hate speech and defamation in media outlets, which are often de facto allies of the candidates and have helped stoke violence in the capital. Lastly, weaknesses in the electoral process must be urgently corrected to make sure the run-off is fair. In the first round, lists of voters and polling stations were altered on the eve of elections, lessening the transparency of the process. Election monitors did not have the resources to deploy to remote areas, leaving thousands of polling stations without observers. Ballot collection was poorly planned, particularly in Kinshasa where any recount was nearly impossible.

The policy priorities are to:

• secure Kinshasa by obtaining Bemba and Kabila’s agreement to limit their personal guards, allow EUFOR (European Union Force) and MONUC (United Nations Organisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) observers access to their military installations and confine all other Congolese troops in the country to barracks during the second round; as well as by deploying more EUFOR troops to the capital from the reserve in Gabon, with clear authority to use force to prevent violence, and extending the EUFOR troop deployment to the end of the electoral cycle in January 2007;
• promote a climate of constructive criticism by strengthening the High Media Authority (HAM), having the ministry of justice attach judicial police to it so it can act quickly to suspend media guilty of hate speech and ensuring that state television and radio cover the political parties and candidates equally; and
• fix the electoral process by addressing the first-round weaknesses through timely publication of voter and polling centre lists, coordinating election monitor deployment and carefully planning collection and protection of ballots.

Leer artículo completo (PDF). Disponible también en Crisis Group.

Despite the presence of the world’s largest peacekeeping mission, the Democratic Republic of Congo remains in the grip of civil war. The reason is clear. A flood of small arms and light weapons undermines the 17,000 United Nations troops’ mandate to protect civilians.

In this country where war has raged since 1998, the results of the uncontrolled small arms trade have been brutish, but they have not been unique. Similar devastation from small arms occurs worldwide. Though the United Nations held a conference this summer to review efforts to control the trade, nothing was accomplished. To their shame, governments could not agree even on possible steps forward.

Suffering will continue until governments recognize the obvious — that the vast majority of illicitly traded arms begin as legally produced weapons. They must agree to control legal transfers of arms by adopting specific global guidelines to ensure that those who buy weapons use them in compliance with international law and human rights standards.

No such international agreement exists today, which is one reason imported weapons swamp countries like Congo, jeopardizing the genuine efforts of their people to find stability and build lasting peace.

Correction: The chart accompanying this article, about the proliferation of small arms, originally referred imprecisely to the value of countries’ arms exports. The figures are in millions of dollars, not dollars.

Laikipia, Kenya.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo will hold its first legitimate elections in four decades on Sunday. The United Nations peacekeeping mission there has played the role of electoral midwife, so if the vote is free and fair it will be among the global body’s greatest successes on the continent.

But in eastern Congo, many people will be unable to vote because the fighting that has killed millions in the past decade continues unabated, despite peace overtures by rebels in recent days. And in this, the United Nations is largely at fault. Not only has it failed to stop the killing, its troops have even been party to some of the violence against civilians whom they were to deployed to protect.

Consider a massacre that occurred on April 21 at a hamlet called Kazana in the Ituri district. I know something about what happened at Kazana because I was there.

The United Nations force, which was created in 1999 and is known by its initials in French as Monuc, decided this spring to conduct combined operations with the Congolese Army to dislodge recalcitrant militias in eastern areas before the election. My director, James Brabazon, and I accompanied them on assignment for Britain’s Channel 4, and we caught the events at Kazana on film.

Before the attack, the United Nations’ Pakistani and South African peacekeepers had been assured by the Congolese authorities that the town held only rebels and perhaps a few brainwashed camp followers. The international troops claim that they issued advance notice through radio broadcasts and leaflets dropped by planes. But Kazana’s survivors, whom we later interviewed, denied receiving any warnings.

As mortars fired by the United Nations troops began to fall on the village that morning, we could see families fleeing. A United Nations helicopter gunship circled overhead, but the pilot radioed down to peacekeeping ground troops that he would not fire because the only people he could see in Kazana appeared unarmed.

Nonetheless, the mortar barrage continued for seven hours. Blue-helmeted troops also pumped heavy machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades into the hamlet. When Congolese and United Nations troops advanced into the village, we followed. The platoon we were with was ambushed by militia fighters; the peacekeepers called in a mortar strike, and we saw our attackers flee or die.

But advancing among the well-tended gardens and thatched huts, we mostly observed signs of civilian life brutally interrupted, with pools of blood alongside half-cooked meals. And after the fighting stopped, as the peacekeepers stood idly by, Congolese troops set every house on fire. When I complained to the Congolese commander, he said, “I can’t control my soldiers.”

Nobody will ever know the true death toll. Survivors from the village later told me that at least 30 civilians were killed. One Monuc officer estimated that 25 people died — mainly by his own forces’ mortars. The Congolese Army put the tally at 34, insisting that all were “combatants.”

In the days after Kazana, we met thousands of elderly people, women and children from the surrounding area who were fleeing violence. Most were sleeping rough in the bush or in village churches. They were hungry and sick, and I was particularly struck by how most of them were shoeless, with feet bleeding from their grueling flight. Refugees told of rape and torture at the hands of Congolese troops. Monuc, which is supposed to oversee humanitarian relief for war victims, was nowhere to be found.

What happened in Kazana violates Monuc’s mandate, and this in a region where memories remain fresh of the United Nations’ utter failure to protect civilians during the genocide in neighboring Rwanda. But the United Nations officers in the field that day were carrying out clear orders: to support the Congolese troops in counterinsurgency efforts.

Unfortunately, Congo’s army is the worst abuser of human rights in the country today. The United Nations excuses its cooperation with this ragtag force of co-opted former militiamen by saying it wants to change their behavior by working with them rather than withholding aid.

This plan may look good on paper at United Nations headquarters, but it has often not worked on the ground. With 16,000 troops, this is the biggest United Nations force in the world, but it is spread very thinly in a nation half the size of Europe. Its troops have been involved in the child-prostitution scandals that have rocked the United Nations. And it is still struggling with the hangover of the disastrous American-led mission to Somalia in 1993, after which Western nations handed the task of most peacekeeping in Africa to Africans and other developing nations

As a result Monuc is an ill-equipped third-world army, with Vietnam-era American armor and Soviet aircraft. The United Nations seems not to see the paradox in having contingents from a military dictatorship (Pakistan) and conservative monarchies (Nepal and Morocco) charged with helping Congo become democratic.

The week after the massacre at Kazana we interviewed United Nations military and civilian officials in Ituri and told them what we had seen. They promised to investigate our reports on the ground and to “ask a lot of questions.” One official, however, told us that the violence being perpetrated against civilians across the region was a “temporary phenomenon” that would cease when security was restored. I wondered what outrage would have greeted this comment had it come from an American official, and had this been an American-led military operation.

After I wrote an account of the massacre at Kazana for The Observer of London last month, the United Nations announced it would look into the events. But if any investigation took place, it was a well-kept secret. Certainly United Nations investigators never asked to see the many hours of footage we took.

Sunday is supposed to be the dawn of a new era in Congo. But not for the people of Kazana. Houses have been razed, crops spoiled, a school that was to be a voting station was commandeered as a military headquarters, and many survivors lost their voter identification cards during the attack. What is happening in eastern Congo is not “temporary” violence; it is a continuing civilian catastrophe, and the United Nations deserves a share of the blame.

El África de hoy ve que sus grandes conflictos se aplacan; se democratiza; sus sociedades civiles emergen; sus mujeres participan cada vez más en la vida política; los derechos humanos se respetan en mayor medida. Una nueva generación, entregada al respeto del buen gobierno, tanto político como económico, toma en sus manos el destino de un continente que se estructura en torno a instituciones panafricanas renovadas.

Pero todavía quedan muchas cosas para hacer, sobre todo para fomentar el desarrollo económico de África y apoyar con mayor eficacia sus luchas contra las pandemias. La situación en el Cuerno de África -pienso en particular en Somalia- aún debe estabilizarse. Se tiene que poner término asimismo a la tragedia de Darfur, y con este objetivo la Unión Europea ha acogido en Bruselas, en el marco de una Conferencia, a la Unión Africana, las Naciones Unidas y Estados Unidos. Europa está decidida, más que nunca, a ayudar a los países africanos a enfrentarse a estos retos.

La estabilización de la República Democrática del Congo (RDC) ocupa un lugar particular. En efecto, mientras la RDC no haya reemprendido de modo sostenido el camino de la paz, de la estabilidad y del desarrollo, todos los progresos realizados y las esperanzas puestas en otras zonas de África corren el riesgo de verse amenazados, porque la RDC es claramente el corazón del continente africano. Su centralidad, sus dimensiones, sus riquezas hacen de ella un país clave. Durante demasiado tiempo, por desgracia, ha sido saqueado. Hoy es preciso luchar contra lo que no constituye una fatalidad y ofrecer las riquezas de la RDC al conjunto de su población. De este modo, el país podrá convertirse en una de las locomotoras del continente africano.

Por todas estas razones, Europa, cuya geografía e historia se encuentran íntimamente vinculadas a África, tiene un gran interés en que la RDC pueda por fin encontrar la paz y el desarrollo. ¿Y Europa se pone manos a la obra! Así, respondió de inmediato a la hora de enviar, en agosto de 2003, una fuerza militar a Bunia, en el este del país, para evitar el descarrilamiento del proceso de paz.

En la actualidad Europa dedica sumas considerables a este proceso. La Comisión Europea financia proyectos por un importe de 700 millones de euros, a los que hay que añadir las contribuciones significativas de los 25 Estados miembros.

Europa también va a contribuir a la democratización del país, financiando cerca del 80% del coste de las elecciones de próximo domingo. Europa aporta asimismo su contribución en el ámbito de la paz y de la seguridad, apoyando la nueva policía congoleña y ayudando a la reorganización del ejército, en particular para que los soldados reciban efectivamente su paga. Se trata de inversiones importantes a largo plazo.

Con este espíritu, y a petición de las Naciones Unidas, se ha solicitado a la Unión Europea, a principios de este año, que refuerce el contingente de las Naciones Unidas (MONUC), presente in situ, durante todo el período electoral. Se dispone ahora de una fuerza de aproximadamente 3.000 hombres, capaz de respaldar las fuerzas de las Naciones Unidas y de hacerse cargo de la situación en caso de necesidad. Estará presente en Kinshasa, en la región y en Europa en espera, por si fuera necesario intervenir.

Esta operación, que se inició oficialmente el 12 de junio, tiene un carácter fundamentalmente europeo. Dirigida por Alemania, está integrada por veinte países de la Unión Europea y de Turquía. Esta fuerza no tiene intención de ingerirse en los asuntos internos de la RDC. Simplemente tiene por objeto ofrecer una garantía complementaria para que las elecciones, tan esperadas por el pueblo congoleño, se desarrollen con total serenidad.

Estas elecciones serán históricas. Europa, junto con las Naciones Unidas, estará de nuevo presente en la cita, al lado de los congoleños. Les corresponde a ellos y a sus representantes demostrar su sentido de las responsabilidades, así como su voluntad de reconciliación, para que todos podamos tener éxito en el resultado final.

Resumen:

En la actualidad y durante los próximos meses, dos citas electorales concentran la atención internacional en la República Democrática del Congo (RDC). Pero a medio plazo, el esfuerzo internacional sigue centrado en fortalecer las todavía frágiles instituciones democráticas congoleñas y consolidar la paz. Naciones Unidas tiene, ciertamente, un papel clave en la estabilización de un país que ha sufrido una dura guerra, en la que han estado implicados todos los países vecinos, y que ha costado cerca de 3 millones de muertos.

La misión de la ONU en la República Democrática del Congo (MONUC) tiene que resolver buena parte de los dilemas actuales de la acción internacional de paz. MONUC es una operación de carácter dual: debe fortalecer la democracia en el conjunto de la RDC al tiempo que, sobre todo en el este del país, puede recurrir a la fuerza para detener y repatriar a los últimos responsables del genocidio tutsi en Ruanda.Aunque este doble carácter hubiera aconsejado concebir dos operaciones claramente definidas, el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU ha configurado a MONUC como una operación integrada.

En la práctica, la evidente dificultad de MONUC de resolver el problema de Ituri y los Kivus ha lastrado el proceso de transición en la RDC durante más de seis años. Por otro lado, ese foco de tensión tal vez hubiera podido haberse evitado si los Estados miembros de la ONU hubiesen seguido las recomendaciones preventivas que el Secretario General elaborara en 1996.

El futuro de la RDC depende en gran medida del esfuerzo internacional desplegado, con protagonismo de la UE, para reformar el sector de la seguridad –ejército y policía-, y de los todavía escasos esfuerzos emprendidos para fortalecer el poder judicial congoleño. No es concebible, sin embargo, una verdadera consolidación de la paz que devuelva la confianza a la población sin políticas de redistribución social de los fondos procedentes de los inmensos recursos naturales de la RDC.Pero este aspecto crucial de la acción de un Estado democrático que aspira a garantizar todos los derechos humanos no ha sido contemplado en el omnicomprensivo mandato de MONUC.

Leer artículo completo (PDF). Disponible también en FRIDE.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s strides toward peace could prove short-lived if the government and donors do not increase efforts to create a transparent and accountable government. State institutions such as parliament, courts, the army and the civil service remain weak and corrupt. The national elections scheduled for 30 July 2006 risk creating a large class of disenfranchised politicians and former warlords tempted to take advantage of state weakness and launch new insurgencies. Donors must initiate new programs in support of good governance that include more funding to strengthen state institutions (in particular parliament and the various auditing bodies), as well as apply more political pressure to make sure reforms are implemented.

The Congolese state has suffered from corruption since independence. The logic of the 2002 peace agreement, which established the current political transition, has brought problems of governance into sharp relief. Senior positions in the administration and state-run enterprises were shared between signatories, and state resources were siphoned off to fund election campaigns and private accounts. Between 60 and 80 per cent of customs revenues are estimated to be embezzled, a quarter of the national budget is not properly accounted for, and millions of dollars are misappropriated in the army and state-run companies. The mining sector is particularly prone to corruption, with valuable concessions granted with little legitimate benefit to the state.

These governance problems have an immediate impact on the humanitarian situation. Unpaid soldiers harass and intimidate civilians. Factions within the army and government continue to fight over mines and control of border crossings. The displaced civilians have almost no health services to fall back on, and 1,000 or more die daily as a result.

While international attention has concentrated on elections, the other elements of a stable democracy are weak or missing, including the necessary checks on executive power. Parliament is poorly funded and divided, mirroring the weakness of political parties. Parliamentary inquiries lack necessary resources and expertise to be effective. The judiciary is deeply politicised and inadequately funded. Not a single official has been tried during the transition for corruption. Presidential and legislative candidates should have – but have not – presented detailed plans for addressing corruption in customs, public finance and natural resources.

The incoming government will offer new opportunities for improving governance. The president, parliament and local governing bodies will be democratically elected and in theory accountable to their constituencies. Twenty-six provinces are to be created out of the current eleven, each with locally elected provincial assemblies, and to manage 40 per cent of national revenues raised on their territories. Three new high courts will replace the current Supreme Court. But without international support and funding, these institutions will remain largely a shell.

Donors have treated corruption as a technical problem and emphasised data management systems, training programs and laws. They have shied away from the more political aspects, such as strengthening parliament, courts and anti-corruption and auditing bodies. They finance more than half the national budget and should do more to press charges against corruption suspects, make sure the government complies with the mining code and hold multinational corporations accountable for violating national and international norms.

A complete overhaul of the approach to good governance is needed after the elections, with much greater focus on strengthening institutions, especially parliament and courts. The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper the new government is to publish later this year is already substantially prepared but it should be supplemented by more detail on anti-corruption initiatives and parliamentary capacity building. Major donors should then launch plans to promote governance over a five-year period and at the same time create a successor group to the International Committee for the Support of the Transition to coordinate their actions and their pressure on the incoming government to implement the promised reforms.

Leer artículo completo (PDF). Disponible también en Crisis Group.

A finales de este mes hay elecciones en la República Democrática de Congo. No son unas elecciones cualesquiera en un país cualquiera. Son las primeras elecciones democráticas después de 40 años de la dictadura de Mobutu (1965-1997), y de dos terribles guerras (1996-1997 y 1998-2003) que han dejado cerca de cuatro millones de muertos. Tampoco se trata de un país cualquiera. Con una superficie equivalente a toda Europa occidental, sus fronteras con nueve estados lo han convertido en una tierra de acogida de refugiados, algunos de los cuales han generado serios problemas a los congoleños. En particular, el conflicto ruandés de 1994 se extendió hacia el este de la República Democrática de Congo y ha constituido el origen de las dos guerras que terminaron en el 2003, dando paso a la transición política que se afianza ahora con las presente elecciones.

La República Democrática de Congo cuenta con 55 millones de habitantes pertenecientes a cerca de 300 etnias que hablan más de 200 lenguas. Es uno de los países más pobres de la Tierra: en la clasificación del PNUD del 2004 ocupa el puesto 168 de un total de 177 países. Pero ni la diversidad étnica ni la pobreza extrema han podido doblegar el trabajo de los congoleños por el desarrollo y la democracia.

Los congoleños hablan de transición. Nosotros preferimos hablar, en plural, de transiciones. Porque el país está en transición de la dictadura a la democracia; pero también de la guerra a la paz; de una invasión parcial a la soberanía sobre todo su territorio; del expolio de sus recursos naturales (los metales preciosos, el coltán, las maderas…) al control de sus fuentes de riqueza; de la dependencia militar de la ONU a un Estado policial y militarmente autónomo; de la pobreza extrema a un mínimo de vida digna para toda su población…

En todas estas transiciones está empeñada la República Democrática de Congo. Y encima en un momento en que la globalización está reduciendo la soberanía de los estados… pero que obliga a cualquier Estado pobre a tener voz propia en la comunidad internacional.

Las elecciones a finales de este mes constituyen una ocasión histórica irrepetible para consolidar la esperanza de los congoleños. Porque son las primeras elecciones después de la aprobación de una Constitución con la que los enemigos de la guerra (1998-2003) han pasado del enfrentamiento armado al pacto político. Pero ahora la voz la tendrá el pueblo, que va a poder juzgarles y renovar, o no, la confianza en ellos. Quizás el PPRD del presidente Joseph Kabila – hijo del asesinado Laurent Kabila, el congoleño que derrocó a Mobutu con la ayuda del ejército ruandés entre 1996 y 1997- podrá seguir gobernando. Probablemente el RCD pro ruandés del vicepresidente Azarias Ruberwa sufrirá una cierta pérdida de influencia por haber sido protagonista de masacres y saqueos en el este del país durante la guerra de 1998-2003 contra su antiguo aliado Laurent Kabila. Tal vez el MLC de Jean-Pierre Bemba, el señor de la guerra del Norte reconvertido en vicepresidente, podrá consolidarse en zonas diferentes de su feudo inicial. No está claro si finalmente va a participar el UDPS del imprevisible Etienne Tshisekedi. Los que conocemos un poco el país y lo amamos con desmesura tenemos nuestras preferencias. Pero ahora será el pueblo congoleño quien tenga la palabra: por primera vez y esperemos que por mucho tiempo.

El ejército español va a colaborar con la fuerza europea que entre julio y octubre ayudará al buen desarrollo de las dos vueltas de las elecciones. ¡Bravo! por esta nueva contribución a la paz. En España conocemos las dificultades de la transición iniciada en 1975; en Congo las transiciones son mucho más difíciles. Este gesto de solidaridad, y todos los que se nos puedan ocurrir… serán bienvenidos en aquel inmenso, pobre y bello país.

Countries in crisis and the wider international community must do much more to support women’s involvement in solving Africa’s deadliest conflicts. In Sudan, Congo and Uganda, an array of women’s organisations and leaders are doing remarkable work, under difficult circumstances, especially in community organisations and informal conflict resolution mechanisms. Still, women remain marginalised in formal peace processes and post-conflict governments. Donors and others in the international community all need to do much more to offer sustainable support rather than just rhetoric. It is not merely a question of fairness or equity: women make a difference in part because they often adopt a more inclusive approach toward security and address key social and economic issues that would otherwise be ignored. Peace agreements, post-conflict reconstruction and governance work better when women peace activists are involved.

Leer artículo completo (PDF). Disponible también en Crisis Group.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

As the Congo approaches its first free elections in 40 years, the stability of the country remains at risk, for three main reasons. First, one of the main former rebel groups, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), is unpopular and stands to lose most of its power at the polls: this has triggered a resurgence of violence in the east, which is likely to intensify before and after elections, as dissident RCD troops attack the newly integrated national army. Secondly, the vote has not been adequately prepared. With few safeguards in place against fraud, rigged polls could rapidly undermine stability after the elections and produce unrest in cities. Thirdly, the country’s long-time political opposition, Etienne Tshisekedi’s Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), will boycott the voting, unhappy with the other main parties’ unwillingness to negotiate with it. This is likely to cause unrest in the two Kasai provinces and Kinshasa, where Tshisekedi enjoys substantial support.

The east is the most immediate flashpoint. Elections will radically change the political landscape. The RCD, whose military wing once controlled over a third of the country, will likely go from being a major national player to a small, regional party. This probability is tightly linked with fighting in the east, where dissatisfied RCD elements remain a security hazard, particularly in the Kivus. In North Kivu, former RCD units have refused army integration. Led by Laurent Nkunda, they have repeatedly attacked other, integrated units, most recently causing the displacement of 50,000 to 70,000 civilians around Rutshuru. The fighting has taken on an ethnic tinge, as the dissidents are all Congolese Hutu and Tutsi. This has exacerbated tensions within the province, where these communities have long-standing land conflicts with other ethnic groups. Unless prompt action is taken to address these underlying political grievances and to arrest the armed dissidents, further fighting is inevitable.

The potential for electoral fraud is considerable. The ministry of justice has failed to push through laws designed to guarantee judicial independence. The courts that will need to investigate and adjudicate election disputes remain politicised. A draft law to regulate campaign finance has also been shelved. At the same time, former belligerents retain parallel chains of command in the security forces charged with securing elections and have not been reluctant to influence and intimidate voters. In Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, these forces have been used to harass political parties and disperse demonstrations. The national police are poorly trained, and the new army is weak, deeply politicised and mostly still not integrated.

The elections are likely to be postponed a sixth time, due to logistical and legislative delays, in which case they would be held after the 30 June 2006 deadline established by the peace deal. The new constitution adopted by referendum in December 2005 and promulgated in February 2006 stipulates that transitional institutions remain in place until elections are held, suggesting that such a further delay is legally possible. However, the UDPS would likely use the missed date to mobilise demonstrations in an attempt to upset the process, and other groupings that anticipate poor electoral results, like the RCD, might well join.

The question is political, not legal. It is important to complete the electoral process without further delay, or at most the minimal delay necessitated by technical requirements. Lengthy postponement to extend the privileges of political elites would not be acceptable. A realistic date by which to hold presidential and national assembly elections if they must be postponed again would be 12-13 August. Efforts should be made to maintain a dialogue with the dissatisfied elements, not to permit them a veto over the electoral process but in order to preserve the inclusiveness of that process to the greatest degree possible and to keep the peace after the elections.

Elections are a step in the right direction, but if not carried out properly they could trigger further unrest. If the population and leaders conclude change cannot come peacefully through the ballot box, they may well resort to violence to contest the results. The transitional authorities and the international community have the responsibility to ensure that these elections – the first with multiparty choices since 1965 – are a genuine milestone marking the end to the Congo’s long conflict.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the Transitional Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo:

1. Hold the first round of the presidential and national assembly elections no later than 12-13 August 2006 and complete the electoral cycle by holding local elections as quickly thereafter as possible.

2. Promptly provide a plan for the distribution of ballots and voting materials to avoid further delays in the electoral calendar and ensure free and fair elections.

3. Accept an independent body to help resolve quarrels between candidates during the electoral period, such as the “committee of the wise” proposed by the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), which would be composed of eminent officials from the region and act in close coordination with the electoral commission.

4. Commit to an early census after the elections and to redistribution of parliamentary seats in accordance with its results.

5. Deploy the presidential guard to cities only immediately before a presidential visit and withdraw it immediately thereafter so it cannot be used to influence the electoral process unduly, and withdraw it also from Kindu, Kisangani and Mbandaka, where it has committed numerous human rights violations.

6. Keep the army in its garrisons during the election period, except for border areas and places where militia seriously threaten the local population.

7. Give the High Authority of the Media sufficient resources to monitor and resolve disputes over media activity during the electoral process, including to open offices with sufficient and properly funded staff in all provinces.

8. Give the courts sufficient resources to monitor and resolve election disputes, including for the Supreme Court to send more judges to its provincial branch offices.

9. Discuss the report of the Lutundula commission on war-time contracts and publicise its findings widely.

10. Encourage the political parties to publicise their finances widely, including in the media.

11. Demonstrate commitment to implement the objective of the new constitution to achieve gender parity in national, provincial and local institutions by including all stakeholders, particularly women, in the electoral process, including by encouraging all parties to discuss gender issues in their platforms and otherwise acting to ensure significant representation of women in elected bodies.

12. Deal with the dissidents in North and South Kivu by both peaceful and military means:

(a) establish a land tenure commission and strengthen the land registry to prevent future disputes;

(b) discuss ethnic reconciliation openly in the east during the electoral campaign; and

(c) ensure that all army brigades are adequately fed and paid so they no longer present a security hazard and use the integrated brigades to arrest notorious trouble makers, such as Laurent Nkunda, in coordination with MONUC.

To political parties participating in the elections:

13. Agree to make every effort to nominate women for at least 20 per cent of the appointive positions in government, judicial and public administration bodies, including ministries, after the elections.

To the Members of the International Committee for Support of the Transition (CIAT):

14. Support creation of a body of eminent, independent personalities from the Central Africa region that can help resolve quarrels between parties during the electoral period, along the lines of the “committee of the wise” proposed by MONUC.

15. Visit Goma, Bukavu and Uvira to speak with local authorities about the growing unrest in the Kivus and support a genuine mechanism for local reconciliation.

16. Strengthen the judicial system by financing deployment of more judges to the Supreme Court’s provincial branch offices and provide them with adequate resources to process electoral disputes.

To the Independent Electoral Commission and Observers from Congolese Civil Society Groups and Foreign Missions:

17. Coordinate efforts so that observers are present at the largest possible number of polling stations.

To the United Nations Security Council, the Secretary-General and MONUC:

18. Devise a coherent strategy for dealing with the insurgents in North Kivu that:

(a) addresses the grievances of the local communities, in particular land tenure problems, and helps the local and national government set up a commission to explore more effective dispute settlement mechanisms;

(b) reinforces the legal system so it can impartially investigate human rights abuses and demarcates land holdings in the province; and

(c) prepares with the Congolese army an operation to arrest Laurent Nkunda, using integrated brigades and closely monitored to prevent abuse of civilians.

To Donors:

19. Consider creating a fund to support the campaigns of women candidates, including through training and financial assistance.

Leer artículo completo (PDF). También disponible en Crisis Group.

Genocide in Rwanda had been under way for 48 hours when 36-year-old Monique was told by a friend she would be killed. Monique fled, but her 12-year-old niece, Geraldine, was raped that night, and took years to die. “Aids is the second genocide,” says Monique, who lost 27 members of her close family in 1994. That doesn’t include her grandfather, who was murdered in 1963; her aunt, raped and murdered in 1973; and her father, attacked and interrogated in 1990, who later died from a heart attack. Monique’s family provides a gruesome snapshot of 30 years of cyclical bloodshed that paved the way for genocide.

What Monique says next, between sips of Diet Coke, is equally chilling: “It hasn’t yet stopped. After it finished in Rwanda, genocide continued in the Congo.” We are sitting next to a sparkling green lake, on the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. What is indisputable is that when the current Rwandan government ended the genocide, the perpetrators fled to Congo. The international community, which failed the Rwandan people so spectacularly, finally swung into action – only to unwittingly house and feed the genocidaires. These people, known as the Interahamwe, used UN camps to regroup. They’ve been raping and pillaging ever since, joined at different times by militias and armies from six neighbouring countries. The murder and mayhem is on a scale unseen anywhere else in the world today. Yet the world continually averts its eyes.

A staggering four million people have died since 1998 as a result of this war. That’s more fatalities than in Iraq, the Middle East, the Asian tsunami, Darfur and the Pakistani earthquake combined.

Why does nobody care about death in Congo? For a start it’s complicated. There are no obvious heroes and lots of villains. Second, it’s the vast scale. Although Congo has the same population as the UK – 60 million – it is spread over a country the size of western Europe. Thirdly, it’s Africa. People despair of the intractable nature of conflict and corruption, spurred by resource exploitation in the shape of blood diamonds, gold and other cursed riches.

Perversely, as a fragile peace process paves the way for the first elections in 60 years, violence in some parts of the country is increasing. This is because armed soldiers have been demobilised, with little incentive to behave. Worse, those staying in the army are given guns, only $0.30 per day, and carte blanche to terrorise the local population and live off it for survival. The single most important breakthrough necessary is an effective Congolese army, but Europeans don’t want their aid money spent on improving armies.

Despite tragedy everywhere, there is great optimism. Opinion polls show that a majority of Congolese people believe President Joseph Kabila will put his people’s needs before personal greed, and promote good governance. So do I. But the precedent set by many African leaders is not good. If he wins the elections he faces vast challenges. And, until recently, the country’s budget was the same as that of my London borough.

Far more worrying is the long term. War has destroyed the very foundations of Congolese society. Support networks have collapsed, replaced by suspicion and superstition. Desperate people flock to evangelical preachers promising deliverance. Inspired by the TV mass-marketing of their American evangelical cousins (Pat Robertson visited Congo in the mid-90s, allegedly prospecting for gold), congregations are told to blame their children when priests’ prayers fail. They have to blame someone, as priests routinely charge $1,000 per prayer. Previously unimaginable atrocities are being committed by parents against their children.

So where is the hope? The International Criminal Court is bringing its first case to trial – of crimes against humanity committed in Congo. The international community is finally recognising its blood-splattered past in the Great Lakes region and delivering resources needed for elections to take place. The British government recognises Congo’s desperate need, and by next year Britain will become the largest bilateral donor. Today, a debate takes place in Westminster on Congo, and MPs will demand further action.

No matter how incomprehensible the scale of catastrophe, Monique reminds me that individuals make a difference. It was an individual that saved her. You too can easily make a difference by not turning the other cheek on the world’s forgotten catastrophe. Genuine peace in Congo will help stabilise the whole of Africa, as well as our planet.

No issue is more important than security sector reform in determining the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s prospects for peace and development. Two particular challenges loom large: the security services must be able to maintain order during the national elections scheduled for April 2006 and reduce the country’s staggering mortality rate from the conflict – still well over 30,000 every month. On the military side, far more must be done to create an effective, unified army with a single chain of command, rather than simply demobilising militias and giving ex-combatants payout packages. International attention to police reform has been much less than that given to military restructuring: the limited efforts have had some important successes but suffer from a patchwork approach that largely neglects the countryside. Establishing a secure environment is not possible without a thorough security assessment that takes into account the country’s risks, needs, capabilities and financial means. A realistic plan is needed that defines the role of the security forces and reconciles their needs and means for a sustainable future.

Reform of the army is far behind schedule. Eighteen integrated brigades were supposed to be created before elections but only six have been deployed, some of which are as much a security hazard as a source of stability, since they are often unpaid and prey on the local population. The police are supposed to be responsible for election security but are no match for local militias in many parts of the country.

Security sector reform continues to be a neglected stepchild both financially and in terms of strategic planning. While donors have already contributed more than $2 billion to the Congo, including generous amounts for demobilisation of ex-combatants, only a small fraction has been dedicated to improving the status and management of the armed forces and the police. While it is understandable that many donors are reluctant to engage with what have often been unsavoury elements, these forces are critical for stability. The current incentive structure to encourage reform is seriously distorted. Fighters are offered allowances totalling $410 to leave the military but a salary of only $10 a month if they choose army service, and even this too often never gets to them. Coordination of international efforts is also inadequate, though the European Union’s police (EUPOL) and military (EUSEC) missions have begun to stimulate improvements.

The army remains weak and could again collapse quickly if faced with a serious threat. Although most former belligerents now form the transitional government and formally support the new army, they and their ex-soldiers sometimes ignore orders from the military hierarchy that they consider to be in conflict with the interests of their respective factions. Indeed, the reluctance to move forward with reform in many security structures is a deliberate strategy on the part of the leaders who fought the 1998-2002 war to preserve their ability to respond with force if the elections do not turn out to their satisfaction.

This report gives special attention to the European Union and its member states’ contributions on security sector reform as part of an ongoing examination of the EU’s growing global role in conflict prevention.

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Katanga province is one of the most violent yet neglected regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Most of its problems are the same as those that are systemic in the rest of the country but it needs urgent attention because it is both the heartland of national politics and the nation’s most mineral-rich province, a potential economic dynamo whose mines once produced 50 per cent to 80 per cent of the national budget. If the March 2006 elections are to be peaceful and have a chance to produce a stable, legitimate government, both foreign and domestic actors need to pay particular heed to the key province while doing more and doing it immediately to integrate the army, eliminate parallel chains of command and eradicate corruption. Waiting for the elections to put a new government in place before moving on those issues, as present international strategy implies, has it the wrong way around.

The home province of President Joseph Kabila and many other senior Kinshasa politicians is divided by three conflicts: tensions between southerners and northerners, between outsiders and natives, and between Mai-Mai militias and the national army.

The north-south competition has become pronounced since Laurent Kabila, a northerner and father of the current president, Joseph Kabila, seized power by overthrowing the Mobutu dictatorship in 1997. The south is one of the most mineral-rich areas of the continent, whose copper and cobalt deposits have prompted Katangan politicians – mainly northerners – to cultivate personal networks in the local security forces to protect their interests and threaten their rivals. These officials are resented by southerners, who feel excluded from the wealth of the province. This rivalry has triggered violence. In October 2004, for example, the army killed over 70 civilians while suppressing a rebellion by a ramshackle militia in the mining town of Kilwa. In May 2005, officials alleged a secession plot in Lubumbashi and arrested south Katangan politicians and military officers. Both operations appear to have been prompted by Kinshasa politicians eager to protect their mining interests and to squash opposition.

The election campaign has reignited conflict between native Katangans and immigrants from Kasai province. Under Belgian rule, many Luba from Kasai came to run the mining companies and state administration, creating tensions manipulated by politicians, who in 1992-1993 organised militias to ethnically cleanse the province. More than 5,000 Luba were killed. The Union of Congolese Nationalists and Federalists party (UNAFEC), which is run by some of the same figures who led the violence in the early 1990s, is using its youth gangs to intimidate its opposition, who are often Luba. Leaders of the party’s youth wing have called for “necklacing” opponents with burning tyres.

The violence in the remote areas of northern Katanga is tightly linked to actors in Kinshasa. During the war, Laurent Kabila created Mai-Mai militias in the region to stem the advance of Rwandan-backed rebels. These militias, bolstered by arms from officials in Kinshasa as recently as 2004, have not been integrated into the national army and are fighting each other and the army over poaching and taxation rights.

It is past time to address these problems. The government has primary responsibility for security in the province. It must take steps to integrate the Mai-Mai militias into the national army and arrest commanders guilty of war crimes. After exhausting all peaceful means, it should deploy integrated army brigades to Katanga to dismantle recalcitrant armed groups. The UN mission (MONUC) should play an important role in these operations. It has been efficient in dealing with similar militia in the Ituri district, where 14,000 combatants have been demobilised, and the Katanga militias are not as well armed or organised. However, the minimal reinforcement – an 800-strong battalion – authorised in late 2005 by the Security Council for the province is insufficient. The 2,590-strong brigade asked for by the Secretary-General is needed.

In Katanga, as elsewhere in the country, bad governance and impunity are closely linked to violence. Officials use parallel chains of command in the army and administration to protect their interests and embezzle state funds. The justice sector is too weak and politicised to curb these excesses. Current levels of corruption and abuse of power are themselves sources of instability that threaten the transition and could compromise elections, while discontented politicians are likely to take advantage of the weak state to stir up trouble and contest election results. Donors should take a firmer stance now on corruption and impunity. Their aid – over half the present national budget – gives leverage to impose stricter supervision of funds, like what is being attempted in Liberia. They should also give more support to Congolese institutions charged with good governance that are trying to curb corruption, such as courts and parliamentary commissions.

Leer artículo completo (PDF). Disponible en Crisis Group.