MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Collin Thomas-Jensen is a Policy Advisor to Enough. In an interview with Jerry Fowler, he discusses the current situation in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the vast contrast between its beauty and tragedy and response of the international community.
TRANSCRIPT:
JERRY FOWLER: My guest today is Colin Thomas-Jensen, he’s Policy Advisor to the Enough Project, and has just returned from a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Colin, welcome to the program.
COLIN THOMAS-JENSEN: Thanks for having me Jerry.
JERRY FOWLER: Colin, we haven’t talked about Congo for a while on this program, so to catch people up, they’ll recall that literally millions of people have perished since a conflict began in 1998, but there’s been a tenuous peace agreement, and a year ago there were elections to create a new government that offered hope of stability. But recently in “The Economist” the headline was “Political and Economic Progress Has Stalled While War Drums are Rumbling in the Country’s East.” How does that accord with what you saw?
COLIN THOMAS-JENSEN: As usual for “The Economist,” I think it’s fairly accurate as a broad strokes picture of what’s going on in the country. The elections did, as you said, offer a ray of hope after six years of devastating conflict that caused the death of over four million people and counting. But the post-election period has been marked really by a sense of inertia from the capital Kinshasa. The President-Elect, Joseph Kabila, won the majority of his support in the Eastern Congo, and that support was based on promises to bring security, to improve social services, and in the six months or seven months since he took control of the country, Eastern Congolese have seen very, very little progress on those fronts. And I was traveling in the east, and the overwhelming sentiment among people I spoke with was that Kabila had let them down. Kabila had failed in his effort to bring peace to the east. And that the situation brewing there now, which we could get into in a moment, is one that threatens to explode into just another catastrophic humanitarian emergency.
JERRY FOWLER: Before we delve into some of the details about what’s happening in the east, I guess there are a couple of kind of big picture items I wanted to ask you about. The first we’re talking about Eastern Congo and the capital of course, of Kinshasa, is in the west, and that’s where the government’s based. How much connection is there between the east and the west? It’s a huge country without a lot of infrastructure.
COLIN THOMAS-JENSEN: It is huge. It’s the third biggest country in Africa. It’s got three hundred kilometers of paved road in the whole country. There is a big disconnect, Kinshasa is, as you said, it’s far away from the east. Kinshasa politics are like any national politics, a lot of horse trading going on. However, the effects of the deals made in Kinshasa and the effects of the policies made in Kinshasa, go directly to how security is affected in the east. We actually entered Eastern Congo through Rwanda, which is one of the neighboring countries in the east. You see traveling from Rwanda to Congo the incredible difference between the infrastructure and services in Rwanda, and the sort of dilapidated towns and cities of Eastern Congo. The disconnect is certainly there between Kinshasa and the east, but the policies made at a national level have ripple effects that dribble down and ultimately impact the lives of people on the east. That’s why the hope that President Kabila working from Kinshasa, could change the situation. Those hopes have been dashed.
JERRY FOWLER: The other big picture question I wanted to ask you is to try to convey a sense-- and I realize it’s a huge country and you were in a part of it-- but convey a sense of what it looks like, what it feels like. I think most people have an image of Congo, to the extent that they have an image of Congo, is probably out of “Heart of Darkness,” it’s a big slow river with jungle up to the banks. What does it look like when you’re on the ground there?
COLIN THOMAS-JENSEN: Well, this was my first trip to Congo. I’ve been told by many friends before I went that the places I would be going to would be among the most beautiful places I would ever see, and I have to agree. The Eastern Congo is lush, rolling green hills, some pasture land, some subsistence agriculture, some dense rainforest. The principal, the main cities, the regional capitals of Bukavu, in South Kivu, and Goma, in North Kivu, are right on the lake, on Lake Kivu. South Kivu, Bukavu is built on four peninsulas that jut out into the lake. It makes for tremendous sunsets. Goma sits at the base of a volcano, which erupted a few years ago, and lava spread throughout the city. As you drive through Goma you can see where buildings have been buried by lava. We took a lot of motorcycle taxis around it and you’re bumping along essentially what’s been lava that’s been hammered into a gravel that make up the streets in Goma, and the volcano looms in the background. So it’s a startlingly beautiful landscape. It’s a productive place with vast mineral wealth. It makes it all the more depressing, that such a beautiful, wealthy place, at least in a mineral sense, could be so racked by violence and poverty.
JERRY FOWLER: Is it heavily populated, are there a lot of people around?
COLIN THOMAS-JENSEN: It’s very densely populated. As we drove from Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, to Bukavu, and then traveled around North Kivu, that was one of the most striking things, was this is a part of the world that the population is putting a lot of pressure on the land. Land use, land rights, disputes over land that go back decades, are one of the root causes of conflict and violence in the Congo. However, what’s happening now in the east is much more a power play by local politicians, warlords, militias and regional actors. Until we deal with those surface problems we won’t be able to delve down into the deeper ones.
JERRY FOWLER: Well let’s talk a little bit about that then. You mentioned earlier that there’s a perception among people you talked to that Kabila has failed, since he was inaugurated to this elected term. I guess we should point out; he’s been nominally in control of the country for a number of years since his father was assassinated. However, he assumed this elected term six or seven months ago. What’s driving the crisis in Eastern Congo? You mentioned warlords, local militias and regional actor-- can you unpack that a little bit?
COLIN THOMAS-JENSEN: Sure, I think the two principal causes of insecurity and violence in the east are number one, the continued presence of a militia called, the French acronym is FDLR, it’s the Forces for the--
JERRY FOWLER: Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.
COLIN THOMAS-JENSEN: Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo, yes.
JERRY FOWLER: Of Rwanda.
COLIN THOMAS-JENSEN: Of Rwanda, sorry. The FDLR crossed over from Rwanda after the 1994 genocide and the command structure of the militia is made up of the very same people who orchestrated and carried out the slaughter of anywhere from eight hundred thousand to a million Rwandans in the genocide in 1994. This militia has melted into the towns and the forests of the east. They commit atrocities against civilians, where they have taken families, have taken wives, and have held out their insurgency against local Tutsi populations, the Congolese army, and their ultimate enemy which is the Rwandan government. On the other hand, the other cause I think after the FDLR, is just the weakness and the criminality of the Congolese state. Most critically in this regard, of the Congolese military, despite the abuses that the FDLR and other militias commit against civilians, the Congolese army is in fact the most abusive armed group in the Congo, rather than a protector it’s a predator. And until the army is a force for stability, there is going to be violence, widespread displacement and a continuing mortality rate in excess of a thousand people a day in the east.
JERRY FOWLER: Let me ask you about the army. It’s a national army, but isn’t it comprised largely of former rebel groups that have been re-branded, so to speak?
COLIN THOMAS-JENSEN: That’s correct, and that’s really the cause of the current crisis, the crisis that we were there to investigate. The peace agreement committed various rebel factions to integrate their forces into the Congolese army, to create a true national army, through a process called brassage. Whereby army units would collect in central locations, mix, train, and then be redeployed to parts of the country to serve, as any national army does, as a source of security and stability. In Eastern Congo, where militias are threatening civilians, and particularly where the ethnic Tutsi population, many of them who were the principal victims of the genocide in Rwanda, commanders from this region feel that the brassage process would take them away from their communities, remove them, send them to other parts of the countries. Therefore, leave their people in their home areas vulnerable to attack by the FDLR, and indeed some elements of the Congolese army. And so the national army is a divided institution, divided in it between commanders who are loyal to the state, and outliers, dissident commanders, who have rejected the authority of the state, refused to go to brassage, and instead are staying in the Kivu to protect local populations from abuse.
JERRY FOWLER: There is a United Nations force that’s on the ground there, the United Nations helped to organize these elections and then there’s this peacekeeping force that’s often referred to by its French initials acronym, MONUC. I guess the first question before getting into the details, is did you see the UN presence there. When you’re traveling through the country is there a visible armed UN presence, blue helmets?
COLIN THOMAS-JENSEN: Yes and no, there’s certainly a heavy UN presence in the east, many of the towns that we visited, in fact all of the major towns, had a MONUC deployment in the area, a permanent deployment. We visited one village way out in the bush. We were treated to an Indian lunch -- many of the troops in North Kivu are from India, and so the commander of this company treated us to a full Indian lunch while we talked about the situation on the ground. They are present, they are there, in many cases they’re doing excellent work, and the people are certainly aware of their presence. In fact as we were driving around kids that would see our vehicle would say “MONUC, MONUC,” assuming that we were from the UN. Their first thought on seeing a vehicle with a couple of foreigners was that we were UN workers. So they are present and they’re doing good work, but the situation that’s brewing now, it does put them in a very tight spot.
JERRY FOWLER: And elaborate on that, in what sense are they in a tight spot?
COLIN THOMAS-JENSEN: Well, MONUC, after the-- MONUC’s mandate was to, throughout the political transition was to, really to facilitate a transition that would lead to elections. MONUC, you know, the elections could not have happened without MONUC. It was a five hundred million dollar logistical accomplishment. To get an election, to perform an election in Congo, as I said, with three hundred kilometers of roads and forty million people and the third biggest country in Africa, was quite a feat. But post-election, now their mandate is not to support the transition, but to support the Congolese government. So the question becomes then if the Congolese government, if Joseph Kabila’s government decides to say use offensive military force to attack a dissident commander or the FDLR, what is MONUC’s role? Are they committed to joint operations? Are they committed to provide support to those operations? The tricky question is because the Congolese military is, as I said, the principal cause, the principal source of atrocities and violence. How does MONUC deal with it? How does MONUC support a military that is in and of itself a destabilizing and in many cases a criminal factor?
JERRY FOWLER: And the answer to that question is?
COLIN THOMAS-JENSEN: The answer to that question is, and this was I think our most distressing meeting, was that the mandate is not yet clear? Those questions haven’t yet been answered by political leadership at the United Nations in New York, and within the Congo. We spoke with a lot of military, MONUC military officers, who essentially passed the buck off on the political leadership to tell them exactly what they’re supposed to do if civilians come under a direct attack from the Congolese military, or if there’s a full frontal assault on dissident Congolese commanders. So, as I said, they’re in a tricky spot, they’re trying to figure out how to act in this new operating environment, how to engage with what was for four years a ward of the international community, that is now a sovereign, a fully sovereign state. And that transition period is still ongoing but I think they need to figure things out very quickly if they’re going to mitigate the impacts of a possible renewed conflict.
JERRY FOWLER: Now if you think about the presence in the east of a Congolese army that is brutal, commits human rights abuses, has kind of muddy chains of command, one would say “Well, it needs to be reformed,” and I know in discussions about Congo there’s a lot of talk about security sector reform. To what extent is that being undertaken? What’s the role of the international community, the United Nations or MONUC, or some other arm of the United Nations in doing that?
COLIN THOMAS-JENSEN: I think from a policy perspective in dealing with the crisis in Congo, the number one priority for the international community has to be this big issue of security sector reform. Then how do you unpack that? What does that mean, what do people do. Right now there are a number of initiatives going on to train Congolese troops, to look at how they’re paid, how they’re equipped, but for the most part these are not as well coordinated as they could be, and not as well resourced as they could be. The South Africans are involved in training Congolese brigades. The Belgians are involved in training Congolese brigades. The Angolans are involved in training Congolese brigades. But there’s a real sense that the European Union and the United States, which can bring significant resources to bear on this problem, need to get more involved. They need to coordinate with MONUC, the UN force, on a process to whip the Congolese army into shape, as it were.
JERRY FOWLER: But to some extent when you talk about training, it’s an issue of taking soldiers and saying “The way you should do things is this and not that,” and giving them a model that’s different than maybe the model they have. But part of what you’ve described in terms of these abuses is there’s a purpose to the abuses. There are leaders who are using violence to achieve their own goals, so to that extent it’s not really a technical issue of training, as much as a political issue of removing bad guys.
COLIN THOMAS-JENSEN: Exactly, I mean it’s both, I think the technical issue of security sector reform has to go hand in hand with a political process to deal with crises within-- political crises within the Congolese army itself, and the Congolese state. To get back to the principal issue at hand, and that is how the Congolese government and the international community are going to deal with dissident army commanders, the specific case now is a commander named Laurent Kunda. He is an ethnic Tutsi. He has a long and story history of human rights abuses himself. Yet, he has built himself up in North Kivu as the only person who can protect the large Rwandafone, those Congolese who speak the language of Rwanda, Kenya-Rwanda, the only man who can protect these people from the FDLR and the possible predations of other Congolese army commanders. The problem is that he’s been backed into a corner right now. There is an impending call for brassage, where the Congolese government will very likely demand that he come out of the bush and enter the brassage process, which he will almost certainly refuse, and then what next? There is no political dialog going on. As you said, removing these bad actors, figuring out how to deal with those individuals that are making decisions, that are making conflict worse, requires a political process. Right now, neither the UN nor the Congolese government, nor the international community is particularly engaged on getting a process of dialog going.
JERRY FOWLER: Colin Thomas-Jensen is Policy Advisor to the Enough Project, and just returned from a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Colin thanks for joining us.
COLIN THOMAS-JENSEN: My pleasure, thanks for having me.
