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Current Situation
 
FALL 2008
Sporadic clashes between rebel forces loyal to Laurent Nkunda and Congolese government soldiers resumed in late August after eight months of relative calm and intensified into full-scale fighting in October around the North Kivu capital of Goma in Eastern Congo. As of October the fighting had displaced more than 250,000 Congolese in North Kivu province in addition to at least a million already displaced over the past two years.
Last January, belligerents including Nkunda signed the Goma Peace Agreement and pledged to honor a ceasefire. The agreement appears to have totally collapsed. In October the Congolese government alleged that Rwanda was supporting Nkunda's rebels with arms and fighters, but the allegations have not been confirmed by the United Nations or credible observers.
Additionally, at least 50,000 people have been displaced in Ituri Province since September. The Lord's Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel group that frequently crosses into Congo and forcibly recruits children, along with a new militia calling itself the Congolese Front for Justice in Congo (Front Congolais pour la Justice au Congo) has recently been blamed for attacks against Congolese villages in Ituri that have killed at least 100 civilians and have clashed with the Congolese Army.
SUMMER 2008
In the last six months, UN officials reported at least 200 violations of the Goma Peace Agreement. Since the agreement was signed in January, the violence in eastern Congo has killed more than 200 people and displaced 150,000 people. Those newly displaced add to the already 1 million people displaced by earlier violence in North and South Kivu. Violence against women continues, with more than 2,200 cases of rape recorded in June 2008 in North Kivu province alone, according to the Congo Advocacy Coalition. Humanitarian workers have also been attacked, stymieing their ability to provide assistance.
With 10,000 troops spread thinly across northeast Congo, the United Nations peacekeeping force MONUC is largely unable to halt the attacks. Civilians seeking safety often gather near UN deployment sites, but their protection is short-lived as peacekeepers rotate frequently in a struggle to cover the vast terrain.
Former vice-president and presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba was arrested on May 25, 2008 in Brussels by Belgian authorities and transferred to The Hague a few weeks later. The International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant charges him with several counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for leading Congolese rebels in a widespread and systematic attack against the Central African Republic’s civilian population in 2002 and 2003.
WINTER 2008
There was sporadic fighting in Kinshasa in May 2007 between the forces of former rebel-leader and at the time Senator Jean-Pierre Bemba and President Joseph Kabila; the situation in the capital has since quieted and 2007 saw limited progress on building a credible democratic government.
Continued tension in the provinces of North and South Kivu involving the Congolese army, dissident troops loyal to rebel leader Laurent Nkunda and predatory militias -- including the FDLR (former perpetrators of Rwanda's genocide) and local Mai Mai "self defense" militias -- continue to place civilians in the crossfire. The conflict has resulted in looting, abduction of children as soldiers, and massive sexual violence targeting women that is destroying families and communities throughout eastern Congo.
In mid 2007 the process of mixage, whereby Nkunda's rebel forces, the National Congress for the Defense of the People, (CNDP) were to be integrated into the Congolese armed forces (FARDC), collapsed, and fighting between Nkunda and the Congolese army resumed. The renewed conflict led to further civilian displacement in late 2007. All told, some 800,000 civilians remained displaced within North Kivu province in early 2008. The majority are women and children living in squalid camps where rape, disease and malnutrition are constant threats.
In late 2007, the conflict flared up again. The ill-trained FARDC, with the logistical support of the United Nations peacekeeping force MONUC, launched a major military operation against Nkunda which ultimately led to a stalemate. Tens of thousands more were displaced in November and December, while sexual violence and child abduction remain at critical levels.
There have been some positive developments as well. In November 2007, the governments of Congo and Rwanda agreed to deal with the question of refugees and the remnants of the FDLR in eastern Congo. In January 2008, a landmark conference was held in the North Kivu capital of Goma. Its stated aim was to bring peace and development to eastern DRC, most primarily a cease-fire between Nkunda's CNDP forces and the FARDC. Participants included government officials on the national and provincial level, as well as other leaders and members of civil society. A peace agreement was signed at the conference and, despite a notable absence of language dealing with the FDLR, has been tentatively heralded by experts as the best chance for peace for Eastern Congo.
BACKGROUND
First War (1996 – 1997)
Those who committed the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, both the Rwandan Armed Forces (RAF) and their militia allies, the Interahamwe, fled into Zaire (now DRC), with some 1 million refugees, and reestablished themselves in refugee camps. The new Rwandan government responded to RAF and Interahamwe attacks by joining forces with others under Congolese Laurent Kabila in 1996. This war ended with long-time leader Mobutu Sese Seko overthrown by Kabila.
Second War (1998 – 2003)
After coming to power, Laurent Kabila expelled his Rwandan advisors and began aiding the génocidaires, who had been disrupted but not eliminated. Rwanda invaded again in 1998. Other nations quickly joined in. This war pitted Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi against the government of DRC, which was supported by Zimbabwe, Angola, and Namibia. A bewildering array of local rebel groups and militias, some ethnically based and many sponsored by foreign militaries, also formed and took part in the conflict.
A key aim of almost all the combatants was control of eastern Congo's vast natural resources, which include diamonds, gold and coltan, a mineral used in cell phones and other electronic equipment. A UN Panel concluded in 2002 that "[c]riminal groups linked to the armies of Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe and the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo ... have built up a self-financing war economy centered on mineral exploitation." Amnesty International reported that human rights abuses are tied to the systematic plunder: "economic interests have led to the emergence of a pattern of violence by all forces in the region that is aimed primarily at Congolese civilian communities and is predatory in character." The International Rescue Committee reported that by 2000, some 2.3 million civilians had died as a result of the conflict.
Transitional Period (2003 – 2006)
An internationally sponsored peace process produced an accord signed in 1999 in Lusaka, Zambia. The focus of the Lusaka Accord and other diplomatic efforts was to get foreign forces out of Congo and establish an interim Congolese government that included representatives of the Congolese rebel groups in the east. In 2003, foreign forces officially withdrew and a Government of National Unity, a transitional government, was established in Kinshasa. But these steps did not substantially alleviate the crisis in the east. In fact, in 2003, the killing spiked upon withdrawal of the Ugandan forces. One reason that the withdrawal of foreign forces did not improve the situation was that Uganda and Rwanda, as well as the DRC government, continued to exercise control through the use of proxy militias. Additional armed groups, including forces composed of former génocidaires from Rwanda, also remained active.
Another element of the Lusaka Accords was a peacekeeping force authorized by the UN Security Council. Called MONUC after its French acronym, it began as an underequipped, undermanned, outgunned force. MONUC was buttressed by a French-led force in June 2003 and was soon given a more robust mandate with increased numbers of troops. However, it remains small in comparison to the tasks it faces and the area it covers, and has been accused of committing sexual abuses against civilians it should be protecting.
Violence against civilians continued throughout the transitional period, particularly in the east, where rape, attacks by armed forces, and the collapse of much of the country's health system and economic structures remained serious and constant threats to the population. On June 23, 2004, Luis Moreno Ocampo, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, announced that the Court's first-ever investigation would probe crimes committed throughout DRC. The investigation was triggered by a request from the Congolese transitional government.
Elections (2006)
The first in more than 40 years – occurred on July 30, 2006. In advance of the elections, various political and armed groups jockeyed for power. While the political struggles were often played out in the capital of Kinshasa, in the war-torn eastern region the scramble for power produced violence, much of it ethnically based. Many actors, including individual Congolese leaders and the neighboring governments of Rwanda and Uganda, manipulated ethnic grievances and fear in eastern Congo to achieve political, military and economic advantage, contributing to regional insecurity and instability.
To prepare for elections, the size of the United Nations peacekeeping force, MONUC, was increased in September 2005 from around 14,000 troops to 17,500. An EU force of 2,000, spearheaded by the Germans, was also on hand to assist MONUC in responding to insecurity during the elections.
International observers deemed the elections free and fair despite calls of fraud by some opposition leaders and limited violence by opposition members attempting to keep some voters from the polls. More than 25 million Congolese -- 85 percent of those eligible -- came out to vote. Laurent Kabila's son Joseph, who first assumed power after his father's assassination in 2001, won the presidency.
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