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Imagining the Congo Secure and Stable

DOI: 10.1080/03071840802670049 After being largely forgotten as other crises elsewhere in Africa pushed it off the agenda of the international community, long-simmering tensions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) recently boiled over anew, potentially reigniting a conflict that has already taken the lives of more than five million people and focusing the world’s attention on the future of the third largest country in Africa. At first glance, recent developments do not augur well for the 66 million Congolese and any hopes that they might have nurtured for some respite from the country’s seemingly perpetual cycle of violence – much less that they might experience real peace and sustainable development in the near term. The late September 2008 resignation of the octogenarian head of government, Prime Minister Antoine Gizenga, was widely interpreted as an admission of the failure of his two-yearold government to make much headway against the multiple military, political, economic and social challenges which it faced. Meanwhile in the eastern regions, notwithstanding a peace agreement announced at the beginning of the year, open warfare had broken out as militiamen loyal to the Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP), a largely Tutsi group led by a former general, Laurent Nkunda, compelled government troops (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo, FARDC) to retreat from positions near Goma on Lake Kivu. The fighting sent hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians fleeing toward the crowded border town, prompting the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, to warn of the imminent risk of ‘huge massacres’. As if to confirm the overall apparent hopelessness of the situation, the commander of what is the largest United Nations peacekeeping operation in the world today the Mission de l’Organisation des Nations-Unies au Congo (MONUC), Spanish LieutenantGeneral Vicente Diaz de Villegas, resigned at the end of October after less than two months on the job. He cited lack of confidence in the leadership of DRC President Joseph Kabila and foreboding that the UN mission was headed for failure.