Heading towards a new
international approach to
crises and conflict
management? The case
of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo
(DRC)
Gérard Gerold,
Associate
Researcher,
Fondation pour la recherche stratégique
Translation: Alexander Bramble
The threat of Islamist fighters taking control of
Bamako in December 2012, and the attack on
the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi by
members of al-Shabbaab on the 21st September 2013, seem to have accelerated the shift
in the evaluation of events and crises in Africa
and to have modified the international community’s previous approach, in place since the
beginning of the century, to conflict management and re-establishing peace in this part of
the world.
As a broad outline, the previously political,
institutional, and developmental approach has
given way to a military and security-related
attitude that scrutinises countries and regions
in terms of the risks they harbour and the
most effective responses. Multilateral and
multi-dimensional peacekeeping and statebuilding operations, launched in the euphoria
of the immediate aftermath of the end of the
Cold War, have been progressively replaced
by “regional stabilisation” operations that
draw more heavily on the objectives of fighting terrorism or armed groups than major
principles of law. The primary objective is now
to build security partnerships, most often
bilateral, which provide intelligence, operational support, and boots on the ground
where necessary, and, beyond that, forging
alliances to “contain” the terrorist threat.
From MONUC to MONUSCO; from
ambition to stabilisation
At the beginning of the century, the DRC was
the test site for an ambitious policy to resolve
conflicts and reconstruct a “failed State”,
through an operation conducted by the
United Nations – MONUC – on behalf of the
international community.
After more than fifteen years on the ground,
results that are constantly called into question
by the government, and repeated episodes of
military humiliation, this operation, which
became MONUSCO in June 2010, no longer
has many supporters in diplomatic missions
and in New York. It seems, in fact, to have
abandoned its political and institutional ambitions over the years, falling back on a security
mission in the east of the country, thus accepting the organisation by Congolese authorities of an irregular election in 2011, and
to have failed in its duty to protect populations and human-rights defenders. These criticisms are both the recognition of an ageing
mission that has difficulties in fulfilling its
mandate, and the result of a change of approach to the Congolese and regional crisis by
the international community, and particularly
by its western component, the United States,
France, and the United Kingdom.
The desire to establish democratic institutions
in the country and to institute new economic
governance has, it seems, given way to the
policy of “stabilisation”, which takes care
above all to avoid trouble along borders and
the emergence of lawless areas. The international community has given, at least until now,
the impression of contenting itself with maintaining the status quo and a few blows against
the “spoilers” 1, which provide the added advantage of being more mediatised than a long
and difficult effort to change the nature of
governance. In the region, the countries that
have stable regimes and credible armed forces
and intelligence services remain partners; the
1
Fifteen years of crisis management in the DRC
provide, with some nuances, a fairly good
example of the change that has occurred.
This term is generally used within international
bodies to categorise the politico-military groups at
odds with the governments of the day, and responsible for national or regional destabilisation.
Dakar International Forum on Peace and Security in Africa 47
DRC, which has none of the above, claims to
run the risk of gradually disappearing from the
top of the international agenda and seeing its
institutional and political reconstruction left
fallow.
The Addis-Ababa Agreement: the last,
short-lived, attempt at an overarching
solution
Presented at the start of 2013 as the reaffirmation of the international community’s
desire to find lasting solutions to the region’s
problems, and above all as the implementation of an overarching strategy, the Framework Agreement gave rise, notably following
the swift victory against the M-23 rebellion in
November 2013, to the hope of a definitive
resolution of the Congolese crisis through a
series of regional agreements and the commitment by the Congolese government to
conduct profound political and security reforms and to have a more transparent election process in 2015. Coupled with two followup mechanisms placed under the direction of
two leading figures, notably Mary Robinson,
UN Special Envoy to the Great Lakes region,
the Framework Agreement furthermore presented the novelty of directly involving regional actors in the resolution of the crisis.
Alas, over the past six months, the application
of the Agreement has broken down. The eternal problem of the disarmament of the FDLR 2
is dividing the signatories, national economic
interests and diverging strategic development
choices are fracturing regional organisations 3,
the political pressure that is vital to the implementation of the commitments undertaken
is no longer being applied, and Mary Robinson
finally abandoned the task to a successor who
set up base, along with the rest of his team,
far away from the field.
The UN Secretary General’s assessment in his
latest report to the Security Council 4 is irrevocable: the Framework Agreement is not being
applied, none of the structural reforms, on
standby in Kinshasa for many years, is being
seriously undertaken, and the armed groups
are far from having been neutralised. The
grave deterioration of the security situation in
the Beni region, which is currently unfolding,
further corroborates this damning diagnosis.
A new strategic approach that risks
reinforcing countries with strong armies
It very much seems that the political imperatives of regional stabilisation and the “war on
terrorism”, along with the worsening of the
threats in central Africa – al Shabbaab’s penetration into Uganda and Kenya, the expansion
of Boko Haram, and the appearance in the
Central African Republic of Islamist groups of
fighters – have got the better of the commitments undertaken in Addis-Ababa.
The United States is now above all concerned
with strengthening its partnerships with
Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya, whose armed
forces, intelligence services, and national police forces are the beneficiaries of ever more
substantial support. The United Nations is
feting the fact that some of these countries,
along with Burundi, have, in the framework of
AMISOM 5, committed themselves on the front
line of the extremely difficult fight against the
Somalian Islamists. Moreover, the UN, along
with the United States and European countries, is supporting the creation of the future
“East African Standby Force” whose formation
is provided for by the African Union in the
framework of its peace and security policy,
and of which the armed forces of these countries, along with those of Ethiopia, will constitute the backbone.
The indirect consequence of this policy focused on stabilisation, the political status quo,
and security priorities, is to contribute to the
2
The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of
Rwanda
4
3
5
ICGLR, EAC, SADC
th
See document S/2014/698 of the 25 September
2014
48 Dakar International Forum on Peace and Security in Africa
African Union Mission to Somalia
continuation, and sometimes to the reinforcement, of political regimes in the region
and in the DRC that have little democratic
legitimacy and which are regularly criticised
for their mode of governance. As such, the
rescue of the Kabila regime in November 2013
by the International Intervention Brigade was
not offset by any form of compensation in
terms of political openness or the acceleration
of reforms. On the contrary, the Congolese
government expelled the leading UN human
rights official, Scott Campbell.
The political agendas of the DRC and the three
other countries in the region6 are marked by
the important electoral deadlines. They could
be an opportunity for the international community to change its perspective on what constitutes stability in the Great Lakes region.
Questions to address at the Dakar Forum:
•
In light of the failure to implement the
Framework Agreement, what lessons can
be learned from the involvement of the
countries and organisations in the region?
Does joint management of regional crises
have its limits?
•
Are the magnification of crises of legitimacy of regimes in power and the preparation of new scenarios for violence not
by-products of stabilisation policies?
•
Faced with the next electoral deadlines in
the countries in the region, what position
should be adopted with regard to the authorities in situ without undermining the
credibility of international action to support the establishment of the rule of law?
•
How can an effective fight against terrorism be reconciled with the necessary
strengthening of democratic institutions in
the African countries in question?
6
Presidential elections are scheduled to take place
in June/July 2015 in Burundi, in July and December
2016 in the Congo and in the DRC, and finally in
Rwanda in August 2017
Dakar International Forum on Peace and Security in Africa 49