Buscador avanzado

In a street of Beni, DRC, a woman walks past a wall on which a graffiti reads “Monusco Dégage”, calling for the UN mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) to “go away”. December 2021. CRISIS GROUP / Nicolas Delaunay

M23, a previously dormant rebel group, which UN reports suggest is backed by Rwanda, is wreaking havoc in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Fighting has driven tens of thousands of people from their homes and could spiral into a wider regional proxy war.

M23 holds several towns and surrounds the provincial capital of Goma. In 2013, the group was beaten back by a ramped-up UN force but now appears well-armed and organised. It includes ex-Congolese soldiers, many of whom are Tutsis, an ethnic group spread across Africa’s Great Lakes, and profess to champion communal interests.

M23’s sudden re-emergence owes as much to tensions among Great Lakes states as it does to local dynamics.…  Seguir leyendo »

A man looks inside an overturned truck in the middle of National Road 27 in Ituri province in northeastern Congo on Sept. 16. On this road, vehicles travel in convoys escorted by police and soldiers because of recurring attacks by armed militias. (Alexis Huguet/AFP/Getty Images)

Since the start of 2019, more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in and around eastern Congo’s Beni region. These atrocities — which U.N. monitors have said may be war crimes — are the latest in periodic waves of massacres in the area since late 2014.

This violence followed the start of a large-scale Congolese army offensive against the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist rebel group originally from Uganda that has been active in Congo since 1995. As the Congolese army overran rebel camps and killed and captured dozens of combatants late last year, attacks on civilians rose in nearby areas.…  Seguir leyendo »

Last week, the Congolese Army defeated the rebel group, M23, with the help of United Nations forces and Tanzanian and South African troops.

Many observers seem to believe that this victory promises to bring an end to the intractable conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Yet foreign intervention to help President Joseph Kabila secure a military victory against his opponents is treating the symptom but not the disease that ails Congo.

The M23 is a manifestation of a deeper crisis. The Congolese government lacks the rudimentary security and administrative infrastructure to ensure law and order, let alone providing public goods and services like roads, schools, hospitals, electricity and water.…  Seguir leyendo »

En marzo pasado, la ONU dio un giro radical a su forma de entender las misiones de paz. Hacía un año que se había desencadenado una ola de violencia, otra más, en la región oriental de la República Democrática del Congo. La crisis humanitaria no dejaba de agravarse y la misión de las Naciones Unidas, la MONUSCO, se mostraba incapaz de proteger a la población civil. Fue entonces cuando el Consejo de Seguridad decidió crear la Brigada de Intervención con la finalidad de neutralizar y desarmar al movimiento 23 de Marzo (M23) y a otros grupos rebeldes acusados de violar el derecho internacional humanitario, de abusar de los derechos humanos y de causar un elevado número de refugiados.…  Seguir leyendo »

The escalation in recent days of eastern Congo's brutal war demonstrates that unless its root causes are addressed in a broader peace process, violence could intensify and Rwanda could be drawn more directly into the fray, regionalizing the war.

Over the past week, Congo's army has nearly militarily defeated the most powerful rebel group, the M23. Rwanda has threatened to strike Congo in retaliation for what it claims was shelling on its territory by Congo's army.

M23 may soon be a spent force militarily, but many other armed groups are still active and could replace it as major destabilizers of eastern Congo unless the root causes of the war are addressed.…  Seguir leyendo »

Early one eastern Congolese morning six months ago, Josephine was sleeping in her hut, dreaming about selling her crops. She heard people singing victory songs, thinking it was part of her dream, but gunshots jolted her awake. She could see in the light of dawn that the next village was on fire. She saw people fleeing toward her village, some being shot as they ran.

She quickly herded her four children into the tall grass, where others from her village were already hiding. They watched their village torched by the singing militia, known as Raia Mutumboki, a branch of which is allied to the M23, the latest rebel group to plunge the Congo into full-scale war.…  Seguir leyendo »

The Democratic Republic of Congo, which erupted in violence again earlier this month, ought to be one of the richest countries in the world. Its immense mineral reserves are currently valued by some estimates at more than $24 trillion and include 30 percent of the world’s diamond reserves; vast amounts of cobalt, copper and gold; and 70 percent of the world’s coltan, which is used in electronic devices. Yet the most recent edition of the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index ranked Congo last among the 187 countries and territories included in the survey.

Instead of prosperity, Congo’s mineral wealth has brought only an endless procession of unscrupulous rulers eager to exploit its riches, from King Leopold II of Belgium to Mobutu Sese Seko, who was allowed by the logic of the cold war to rule the same area as a private fief.…  Seguir leyendo »

Last week, a heavily armed rebel militia, M23, took control of the eastern Congolese city of Goma, the economic center and capital of the country’s North Kivu province. Unfortunately, to those of us who work in eastern Congo, the only surprise in this turn of events was how little attention it received.

Two years ago, almost to the day, I wrote in The Post about the bloodiest war since World War II and its continued toll on the Congolese people. From 1998 to 2003, eight African nations fought on Congolese soil, killing millions, forcing tens of thousands of children to become soldiers and, in some areas of Congo, subjecting as many as two of every three women to rape and other forms of sexual violence.…  Seguir leyendo »

Cities seized by rebels. Civilians fleeing from their homes. Murders, abductions, rapes, looting. Foreign forces backing insurgents and denying they are doing so. Rumors of other regional powers sending in military support. It sounds like a drama we have watched before.

Sadly, we have, over and over. Since 1994, when Rwandan Hutu refugees fled there, the provinces of North and South Kivu of the Democratic Republic of Congo have been in an uninterrupted state of armed conflict.

From 1998 to 2003, this enormous country was the scene of Africa’s first world war, with the armies of at least half a dozen countries blasting away at each other while their commanders filled their pockets.…  Seguir leyendo »

If humanitarian crises were listed by some sort of moral -- or editorial -- standards on the stock exchange, to help indicate which ones urgently require international news coverage and political action, shares of the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) would have commanded international news headlines and extensive press coverage over the past 12 years.

The U.N. has labeled the DRC, Africa's second largest country, as the "rape capital of the world" because of the pace and scope of the use of rape as a weapon of war by proxy militia gangs fighting for control of Congo's easily appropriable and highly valuable natural resources, destined for sale in Europe, Asia, Canada and the United States.…  Seguir leyendo »

Last Monday, when the eastern Congolese city of Goma once again fell into the hands of an armed group – this time the M23 movement – I had a clear sense of history repeating itself. The name may have changed, but the play and many of its leading characters remain the same – arguably the most brutal and tragic situation anywhere in the world during the last 20 years.

Reports suggest that the fall of Goma has been accompanied by the killing and wounding of scores of civilians – many of them children – during the fighting over the past few days.…  Seguir leyendo »

The situation in Congo keeps deteriorating even though its civil war has officially been over for years and the United Nations’ second-largest peacekeeping mission is based there. The international community has failed to help Congo achieve peace and security because it fundamentally misunderstands the causes of the violence.

Since the end of the country’s transition to peace in late 2006, living conditions in the country (formally the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire) have become the worst in the world, according to the most recent Index of Human Development.

Average life expectancy at birth is 48 years, and close to 80 percent of the population survives on less than $2 per day.…  Seguir leyendo »

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

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.…  Seguir leyendo »

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.…  Seguir leyendo »