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Obama and the DRC |
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It’s been a while since I have written anything for the Seminal, but like the entirety of our writing team I have been reveling in Obama’s victory this past week.
However, during the intensity of the last few weeks of the election, and amid Americans’ (indeed, many non-Americans’) celebrations last week, the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) deteriorated dramatically. I wrote about the DRC’s history of violence last December, and noted that the northeastern part of the country, though tentatively peaceful, was in serious danger of devolving back into violence due to a rogue general named Laurent Nkunda. That threat of violence was realized in late August, when Nkunda began seizing territory in the northeastern Kivu provinces and surrounding the provincial capital, Goma — a city especially strategic for disseminating humanitarian aid. Since their advance began, Nkunda’s forces have been accused of killing hundreds of civilians in the area, prompting the UN to accuse the general late last week of war crimes. In addition, the advance has left the residents of Goma in crisis, as the NY Times explains:
Fighting like this has flared up several times in the past few days, threatening to plunge eastern Congo back into full-fledged war. In late October, just as the rebels were about to march into Goma, they declared a cease-fire. Since then, Western diplomats and top African officials have been meeting around the clock to solidify the cease-fire and find a more permanent solution.
On Friday, the presidents of seven African nations held a meeting in Nairobi and urged all parties to stop fighting and open corridors for aid workers. Many of the people displaced by the conflict are hungry and sick, and aid workers are now struggling to contain a cholera outbreak in the makeshift camps near Goma.
In 2005, Barack Obama successfully introduced a bill in Congress aimed at helping the DRC. This was an admirable undertaking for an ambitious young senator from Illinois, and it demonstrated Obama’s notable awareness and compassion toward a conflict scarcely known to the American public — one that was at the time heavily overshadowed by violence in Darfur.
Among other things, the resulting Democratic Republic of Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006 gave the Secretary of State the authority to withhold foreign aid money from countries believed to be destabilizing the country, as well as to withhold aid from the Congolese government should it act to undermine peace. It committed $52 million in foreign aid to the DRC and made it the official policy of the U.S. “to support efforts of the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), and other entities, as appropriate, to disarm, demobilize, and repatriate the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda and other illegally armed groups.”
I point this out because, while it is abundantly clear that addressing the DRC will not be at the top of Obama’s “to-do” list come January 20, he can nevertheless act to stem some of the current suffering in the DRC once he is President. His own bill gives him a legal basis to “hold accountable individuals, entities, and countries” working to undermine peace in the country which, very broadly interpreted, could include “individuals” like Robert Mugabe, corporate “entities” such as De Beers, and “countries” like China. Perhaps more realistically, the Act requires the U.S. to use its influence at the UN, which administers MONUC, to promote peace in the DRC, and specifically to help make available “personnel, communications, and military assets that improve the effectiveness of robust peacekeeping, mobility, and command and control capabilities of MONUC.”
In other words, should the new president turn his attention to the violence in the DRC, he would find he has given himself a useful vehicle for taking swift and meaningful action.
Moreover, his overwhelming victory last Tuesday has given him further justification for directing American resources to the DRC. As recently as the second presidential debate, when Obama was asked his position on using American combat forces where humanitarian, but not national security issues were at stake, Obama expressed a willingness to deploy troops to stop ethnic violence — a sentiment that clearly didn’t hurt his candidacy. I for one was deeply impressed by Obama’s quick and confident statement that “we may not always have national security issues at stake, but we have moral issues at stake.” To be sure, the U.S. has a moral stake in addressing the endless suffering of the Congolese.
My hope to see improved the U.S.’s record of intervening to prevent ethnic violence and humanitarian crises where we can easily do so is one of the many reasons I proudly voted and canvassed for Obama. It also falls into the long list of lower-profile campaign assurances and policy areas — admittedly overshadowed by crises of the economy, of energy, and of healthcare — that I hope Obama will not neglect once he becomes President.
There’s absolutely no reason to risk American soldiers’ lives if American security interests are not at stake. Africa’s seemingly endless problems are not ours.
No doubt you thought “intervening” in the former Yugoslavia to enable the creation of a narco-gangster state in Europe a noble endeavor.
%u201C…we may not always have national security issues at stake, but we have moral issues at stake.%u201D
Impressive? Not. Stale and generic, yes. BO continues to not impress me.
I think you are strongly underestimating the effort required to bring stability to DRC when you write “My hope to see improved the U.S.%u2019s record of intervening to prevent ethnic violence and humanitarian crises where we can easily do so”. The biggest UN operation in the world right now is MONUC, and it’s not even coming close to preventing conflict. A US operation strong enough to bring stability to DRC would be hugely costly and unrealistic in the current environment. And the odds are, they would make the conflict worse, just as US troops worsened the situation in Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Also, your vision of the DRC conflict appears overly black and white with Nkunda as the only bad guy. You say he has been accused of war crime even thought it is written in the second paragraph of the BBC article you quote that “The UN said investigators did not yet have a clear idea of what happened.”, meaning he was accused without any strong evidence. The situation in DRC is complex and you cannot just look at the situation in the past 2 months to understand it and assign blame. But one thing is sure, it won’t be solved by USA’s army.
Yes he can, because passing a bill to solve the DRC trouble while being only a senator in 1995, shows his ambition to end this matter supported by some and unseen by other leaders. He kept talking about fighting troublemakers and peace breaker repeatedly during his campaign and that didn%u2019t hurt him at all.
And know as the president of the USA, Barack Obama seats on the commander%u2019s seat and can push buttons that other US leaders did not or didn%u2019t want to push to stop crimes and sustain development in places like the DRC in Africa.
No American taxpayer%u2019s money or US soldiers are needed in the DRC but the 17.000 UN troops on the ground are all they need to end these crimes. But since there is not a clear mission for the Monuc (UN Mission in Congo), they are rather playing the game of refugees helpers instead of being the peacekeepers. They keeping the situation lasting for years by waiting for rebels to commit crimes than come to help civilians. Maybe that is the actual mission of Monuc in the DRC because wrong buttons has been pushed for long trying to keep the region under foreign control by destabilizing it.
Knowing how rich in natural resources the DRC is (Uranium, Gold, Diamond, Cobalt, Oil etc) and knowing that the key substance needed to build cell phones and notebook is coltan, that is found in the eastern of the RDC around the rebels battlefield, we can imagine how many powerful foreign companies will not support any peace nor a development in the DRC so they can keep sucking these resources illegally and making profit oft it despite dying civilians in these regions. Nor you and I care about what our phone are made of. Think of %u201CBlood diamond%u201D.
You%u2019ve heard about Genocide in Darfur but how many UN troops have you seen there? And how much attention did the media pay to that horrible situation? But have you ever wondered why any little spark of trouble in the DRC gain much interest in the world and why is the world largest UN so called peacekeeper troops with 17000 refugees keepers deployed in the DRC?
Due to repeated foreign supported troubles and corruption, Africa never had its peace of mind and time to invest in education and research to find ways to take advantage of its resources and create a strong economy on its own.
The USA has never seized the opportunity to bring its know-how to work with Africa and use its rich resources for the sake of African and American people.
Former American leaders showed more interest to Europe than to Africa, what is not surprising by knowing that the USA used not to treat is African American citizen with the same opportunity as their white fellow citizen. Maybe that%u2019s the Key of all these matters
Instead of the USA, now China recently signed a billion contracts with the DRC to build modern infrastructures, highways, hospitals, factories and modern cities in the DRC by using its resources in change. These contracts raised many voices in western countries, where these ideas where not supported at all.
Yes we can: President Obama has now the opportunity to show the USA that Africa can be a more better economical and tactical partner of the USA than only the miserable demanding continent they used to show on TV trying to pass you a brainwashing and keep you ignoring their dark businesses in Africa.
Its change time
Change has come to America
I am hopeful that Mr Obama will be an agent of peace for that part of Africa. However, I have alot of reservations with the choice of a Clinton as chief of foreign policy.
The genocide in Rwanda happened in 1994 under Bill Clinton. It’s worthy to note that the Clinton Government vetoed a UN esolution that would have sent peace keepers to keep the genocide from happening. It was under Bill Clinton that million of Rwandan refugees running from the volence, then in Rwanda, went in the Congo to seek refuge in UN Sponsored camps, in and around Goma. It was under Bill Clinton that Rwandan’s army attacked the Congo and the Hutus refugees, starting a war in the Great Lake region.
It was under Bill Clinton that the war in the Congo Claimed some estimated 5 million people. Bill clinton has never set foot in the Congo, eventhough he goes to the neighbouring Rwanda several times a year. Bill Clinton has even used American tax payers money to fund and train the Rwandeese army; and to set a amrican military base in Rwanda.
Bill Clinton has louded rwanda president Kagame as a proud example of leadership for Africa…
It is clear that Rwanda is supporting the war in the Congo. It is an opportunity for them to expand their influence in mineral rich region, right along their border. In addition to owning the disputed natural gaz resources from the Lake Kivu. Just look at the rebels… General Nkunda was a member of Kagame’s army, fighting along side with Kagame’s retired soldiers. One of Nkunda’s main claim is to fight the people responsible for the Genocide the commited 14 years ago in Rwanda!
Nkunda recruits soldiers in Rwanda and is supported by Rwandeese officer who have benefited from US sponsored military training… thanks to Bill Clinton.
No wonder they are so good at fighting, and so well organised and disciplined. It’s not a rebellion… It’s a real army, with high ranked and well trained officers.
” In a JCET program conducted by U.S. Special Forces, Rwandans studied camouflage techniques, small-unit movement, troop-leading procedures, soldier-team development, rappelling, mountaineering, marksmanship, weapon maintenance and day and night navigation.
” This is a quote from
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/36/445.html
I was hopping that a fresh leadership at the State department would look the situation in the great lacks region from a new perspective… Now, I am afraid that Hillary’s approach may be biaised in favor of Nkunda and his Kigalis supporter…
But I still HOPE Obama will make a difference…. I HOPE….
The situation in the Kongo is a very complex. Many can even trace it to Yoweri Musevenis’s rise to power in 86. He has been parised by the clinton administration as being the “beacon of leadership in Africa and praised the Bush administration as being a strong leader. His role in central Africa is far removed from the rosy picture depicted in the “media”. Since his rise the power there has been an explosion of instability in the central region.
(Sources: IRINnews)
- Museveni has been deeply involved in regional politics. He is accused of assisting the invasion of Rwanda by the then rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which was composed of Rwandan members of the Ugandan army, many of whom had helped Museveni himself gain power in 1986. Museveni helped the RPF take power in 1994 following the Rwandan genocide.
-In 1995, he severed diplomatic links with the Sudanese government in protest against its alleged support of the LRA. Sudan in turn accused Museveni of backing the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). Ties were renewed in 2002, when Uganda was allowed to send soldiers into southern Sudan to pursue LRA rebels. The SPLM/A has subsequently become part of the Sudanese government, easing tensions between the two countries.
- Museveni’s presidency has been marred by Uganda’s invasion - twice - of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the 1990s, first to oust long-term leader Mobutu Sese Seko, then to remove his successor and former ally, Laurent Kabila. Museveni defended the invasion by claiming Kabila had allowed a Ugandan rebel group, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), to attack Uganda from bases in the DRC.
- The DRC war also led to tensions between Uganda and former ally Rwanda; relations between Museveni and Rwandan President Paul Kagame - once a senior officer in the Ugandan army - have been decidedly frosty since the two countries’ armies clashed in Congolese city of Kisangani in 2000.
* If they were really conserned about the Hutu’s then why are they fighting each other, in a mineral rich area?*
* In more recent news, Laurent Nkundabatware is no longer at the head of his army, there seems to be a mutiny within his own army. Could this be the end who knows? LET’S HOPE SO!!!!!!