The current conflict in the Congo with an invasion led by one General Nkunda, is just the most recent example of the continuing strife in that country, officially known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, since it became independent in 1960, in the wave of independence of African states that started with the transformation of the Gold Coast into Ghana in 1957. In the course of the period since then, the name The Congo has become a household synonym for political disaster and state failure, for reasons both of its own making, and not of its making. And though between 1965 and 1997 the country experienced a period of political stabilization under the rule of General Mobutu, this really meant a period of freedom from external intervention while the citizens of the country continued to be subordinated to harsh oppression under him.
Having undergone what has come to be called the Second Congo War, as contenders fought for power between 1998 and 2003, a brief respite under General, then President, Kabila, gave way to the repercussions in the country of the civil conflict in Rwanda. Kabila himself was incapable of controlling the various interventions in his country, involving pre-eminently Uganda and other east-southern African states, in which the extensive wealth of the country became bounty for whomsoever could prevail. The assassination of the General led to an inheritance of power by his son, the young and quite politically inexperienced Mr Joseph Kabila.
The present war, a spill-over from the ethnic conflict, and involving Hutu elements who have fled Rwanda, has brought a new regional dictator, General Nkunda, onto the scene, threatening to march from one end to the other, and take over Kinshasa, the capital of the Congo. This has led to renewed calls for the United Nations, first involved in the Congo in 1960, and then substantially again with the beginning of the 1998 war, to extend its military presence in the country. Though they have agreed, this situation has not pleased those who have to finance the organization’s military presence there. The Western powers-that-be in the United Nations consider themselves to be already over-involved in Africa, given the Darfur issue and the civil/military conflict in Somalia that has extended itself to Ethiopia’s involvement, and into the Indian Ocean.
In a sense it is not surprising that the Congo, a huge country the size of the whole of western Europe, should find itself in its present predicament. After brutal exploitation by the Belgians, the country, with no historically articulated systems of national cohesion, found itself, after brief demonstrations towards the end of the 1950s, independent with a minuscule number of trained public administrators or professional persons of any kind. The fear of its first President, Patrice Lumumba, by the Western powers at what was the height of the Cold War, led not only to the outbreak of conflict, as the province of Katanga, inspired by the Belgians sought to secede from the republic, but to general civil war. The presence of the United Nations at first did little to stabilize the situation, and is notable, from a UN point of view, only for the death of Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, as he was flying into the country.
The intervention of the United States, and its support for Joseph Mobutu, who had given himself the military rank of General, led to extensive US support for his regime. Though his long spell of rule, marked by massive corruption – more often referred to as kleptomania − led to a certain degree of peace throughout the country, the General did little by way of improving the social conditions of the people, and the United States was content to let him be, rather than see his removal lead to radical or pro-Soviet leadership of the country. It is not accidental in that regard, that Mobutu began to lose his grip on power soon after the disappearance of the socialist bloc and the Soviet Union itself, and that by 1997 he was out. With the civil wars raging in and around the country, the situation of increasing decline in human welfare has continued, marked particularly by extensive malnutrition and disease especially among the young, with the world turning a blind eye to a problem deemed to be too demanding in its requirements.
It goes almost without saying that if this were the status of an independent Congo, in a free Africa, in the 19th century, with neighbouring countries nibbling at its boundaries, dominating specific parts of its territory, and exploiting its resources (as the Belgians indeed did in that century), it is most probable that the Congo would have been dismembered during the 48 years in which it has existed as a de jure independent state, with absorption of its various parts, or the establishment of a series of smaller states set up and dominated by the country’s larger and more powerful neighbours.
Indeed even the relatively smaller Rwanda, with its Tutsi leadership under President Kagame, smarting from what it claims to be protection of the Hutu groups that created the great massacre of Tutsis in his country, feels it possible to hint of military threats to the integrity of the Congo giant, if the situation does not calm down. To some diplomats President Kagame seems to present two faces to the world at present, and some feel that the fate of General Nkunda really rests on the decisions that he is likely to make. It is certainly the general international orientation against blatant external intervention in situations that cannot be justified, along with the United Nations limited presence that keeps the Congo alive as a formally independent state.
Mention of the United Nations leads to the question of the role of regional institutions, and particularly the role of the African Union. Many will claim that this organization is not sufficiently supported by its members to give it the capability and vibrancy for effective action, and in large measure this seems to be the case. On the other hand it has to be recognized that the AU has been preoccupied, and indeed stretched by the situation in Darfur. And South Africa, deemed to be the southern and Indian Ocean African regional power, seems to have its hands full with trying to cope with Zimbabwe and its potential implosion.
This then leaves the UN, dominated by countries which are still coming to grips with what their national interests entail in this post-Cold War period, more especially in relation to how the UN’s commitment to the maintenance of international peace should be organized, particularly in the non-Western world; and how the practical commitments of the organization in that regard should be shared. The spectacle of the NATO powers carrying out their own invasion of Kosovo, and then the United States flouting of the UN’s authority in order to prosecute the Iraq war, has brought this issue into relief. As in the case of Haiti, so-called emerging powers like Brazil are tending to put their military feet forward in a limited way, but we can see, on the other hand, that though China is now playing a substantial role in investment in developing countries, including importantly, countries on the African continent, that country has not made up its mind that it wants to be involved in peace-maintenance in the traditional sense. Its attitude to the Darfur issue reflects this posture.
Former Secretary General Kofi Annan tried, in his last years at the UN to signal to the major powers the need for a new attitude to the issue of necessary UN intervention in civil conflicts which could not be easily handled by regional organizations. It is still does not appear to be the case that the major powers have taken his entreaties on board. Ad hoc diplomatic interventions, such as the kind taken on by Annan himself in the case of the difficulties in Kenya, have worked in a limited way. But the Congo situation has deteriorated too much for that approach to be successful. So in the meantime, the country’s future has to be subordinated to the contemporary weakness of both regional organizations and the UN itself.