Saving congo

Estonian School of Diplomacy Saving Congo? Tiina Veikat International Relations Professor: Morten Bøås Deadline: April, 2016 Tallinn 2016 Introduction The aim of this essay is, firstly, to evaluate what are the essential characteristics of nowadays power-seeking fractions in Congo, and their understanding of ruling that is definitely different from the West (largely as a consequence of the West’s rapid withdrawal after de-colonialism and an empty power vacuum filled by opportunists) Secondly, the paper tries to argue over how one of the biggest challenges currently is dealing with the problem of solving prejudiced attitudes of different local communities on grassroots level and their overall distrust of a strong and uniting statehood Thirdly, this paper also analyzes what role the UN is currently playing in helping Congo onwards and whether it is actually helping the state Dealing with a crippled colonial legacy and a culture prone to violent neopatrimonialism Before tackling Congo’s future, one must first start at its past As David van Reybrouck (as well as Roland Oliver2) underlies in his book, most of the negative issues now happening in Congo (corruption, raids, military insurgency) is the result of White man’s greed and race for power a few centuries back When colonial powers left form Africa, a vacuum of power was created which logically needed filling Too fragile to create and build solid democracies, many African states simply became no man’s lands, with no history of stable governments, free elections or human rights to help them develop naturally into democratic countries After 1960 when Congo became independent, a race followed (not only of groups in Congo but also its neighbors) to get hands on mineral excavating sites, even now a key element in becoming powerful in the area One of the things that Louise Wiuff Moe underlines in her report about the fragility of African states is their typical neo-patrimonial rule (which westerners simply not seem to understand or acknowledge) Wiuff states that this type of rule mixes both formal and informal spheres, often resulting in so-called warlord politics In the latter case, it is definitely not the state institutions that hold actual power Wiuff continues in her paper to further the idea that the West’s desire to implement western democracy in Africa runs against the often total absence of hegemony in the local level Using violence on the one hand and rewarding on the other is not likely to incite any country towards accepting Reybrouck 2015: 227 - 267, 281 - 536 Oliver 2000: 216 - 265 Moe 2010: 12-13 Moe 2010: 14-15 democratic principles In trying to propose other ways besides liberal democratic governance to the realistic picture of African states, Wiuff for example promotes the idea of Hybrid Political Orders5, which help to use different logics of governance, and make use of their potential positive advantages Wiuff thus concludes with her remark that in fact often certain non-state actors should be brought together to the same negotiating table (about how to go on in the future) instead of leaving them out of the reconstruction discourse.6 Morten Bøås seconds and elaborates the same idea, stating that despite several differences between African states, one of the key problems in many of them comes down to “violent local discourse”7, which instead of uniting people and peoples has the very opposite effect When authority is given to people who are deemed to have a more ancient or closer link to the land than others, then evidently, such a mindset is bound to create huge problems internally, between ethnic groups, villages etc If a state does not give to all its citizens the same rights to own property or land, again, inequality and conflict are bound to give way to something more profound than just dislike between different communities Contested citizenship (and the rights given by the Constitution which were written down in 1960, later changed in 1972, and again in 1981, as well as 2005 allowing (or reducing) discriminative action towards certain ethnical groups) in Congo remains an issue from which most of the other problems stem from.8 Such practices naturally marginalize and fragment communities from each other, making it more and more difficult to find a common ground Neglecting bottom–up dynamics As Séverine Autesserre argues in her paper9, one of the major Gordian knots in understanding Africa, but also in the case of Congo, has to with repeating and thus recreating “big narratives” whilst forgetting smaller and more specific ones Though the former may underline a few general problems or issues to be dealt with, they simultaneously diminish the importance of other very tangible and concrete ones And so it happens in practice that fixing anything at all becomes very difficult if the idea is to copy-paste a standardized SOS-kit to Moe 2010: 20 Moe 2010: 31 Bøås 2009: 20 Bøås 2009: 27 Autesserre 2012 very different countries in Africa This very point is one of the main critical reproaches that Autesserre accuses UN of In another thought-provoking paper, Autesserre begs the question why the UN is not capable of preventing numerous atrocities taking place in the last two decades in Congo 10 Autesserre makes the point that although international actors helped to boost Congo from a warmongering to a peaceful state between 2003 and 2006, new military opposition and warfare broke out.11 Autesserre lays the blame of inefficiency on the failure of external helpers to prevent actions on a grassroots level She notes that preventing crisis (through its three main principles12) was an important dogma to the UN in the 1990s, all part of the Responsibility to Protect slogan Yet, the problem is, one simply cannot apply a template of such a dogma in any specific vulnerable place And so Autesserre argues that in the case of Congo in 2006, although on a national or international level, preventive measures to keep the state steady and peaceful were taken, no such measure was applied on a local level, where conflicts are often ripe for exploitation.13 And so, no wonder then that in 2008 trouble in Congo escalated precisely because of power and dominance over local antagonism (mostly to with land ownership) and the unwillingness to understand why Laurent Nkunda’s rebellion had many followers (bad relations between Congolese and Congolese of Rwandan descent) Also Morten Bøås concludes that Laurent Nkunda’s National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) is evidently a part of the complicated puzzle of citizenship and rights in the country, and should thus not be regarded as a merely money-hungry insurgency group 14 Instead, Bøås reminds that issues and problems the kind like North Kivu are always part of a complicated web of history and the present of a country, and should be approached, as well as considered as such.15 UN mandates … a merry-go-round? 10 Autesserre 2015 11 Autesserre 2015: 2-3 12 [ -] ‘early reaction to signs of trouble’; ‘a comprehensive, balanced approach to alleviate the pressures that trigger violent conflict’; and ‘an extended effort to resolve the underlying root causes of violence’ [ -] (Autesserre 2015: 3) 13 Autesserre 2015: 14 Bøås 2008: 15 Bøås 2008: 6-7 (Bøås & Hentz 2013: 9.) As we all know, exterior actors continue to play a role in Congo It so happens, that the UN has in the last years used more physical power than ever before in the country As Giulio Bartolini and Marco Pertile16 point out, not only have there been “targeted offensive operations” to tackle against different insurgent groups (like M23), but also the use of drones has been approved to gather information in the area UN’s Intervention Brigade (that can boast with success and what deployed some 20,000-strong troops in Congo) might just become the new rule in keeping African states in check by the UN That also means that we will see a much more physically and militarily equipped UN missions in the future But will more military presence actually help? Not in the long run because what’s the use of employing them for a while and then taking them out, leaving behind a fragile state without a solid justice system or an integrated army? How can it be believed that one can have (or even expect) a solid macro-level intervention without assessing the micro-level antagonisms and dealing with them first? One can of course always blame the lack of funds for a large-scale bottom-up reformatting Yet Autesserre distinctly underlines that “preventing crises usually requires fewer resources than reacting to them”17 In general, it can be concluded that, as of now, the general peacebuilding culture in the UN is bound to face failures again and again since they only deal with macro-level problems and with situations where something bad has already been executed Without UN staff that has actually had special training in order to work at the local level, there is not much to be said or done Conclusion In conclusion, it must be said that state-building in its genuine form can and should be promoted on the grassroots level (by the UN) but also in a format that is accessible to also several non-state actors, to have a more general and tangible impact on the local level Unless it becomes a custom and practice for the people to actually have faith in and help along on a microscale to fight against corruption, cooperate more, not stigmatize other ethnical groups because of prejudiced views etc, then applying a “standardized state-building” platform simply will not make all the negative practices go away in the society, and it will, at some point, crack again and again and again If the UN is interested in promoting stability in Congo, it should start fast reviewing its whole system of aid-giving and be more in contact 16 Bartolini & Pertile 2015 17 Autesserre 2015: 14 with actual people on the ground (formatting special experts, dealing with conflict prevention, could be the first realistic move), also rushing will not any good, as the Africa Report 18 (of the International Crisis Group) suggests Secondly, reconstruction of Congolese society must go hand in hand in every sphere – both macro and micro – if it is to be sustainable and valid in the long-run If UN (respecting first and foremost another type of governance than Western 100% democracy, la its potential spin-off in Congo) can help with that enormous task – bringing everyone together and inviting all the different parties to talk to each other at the same table, then it will already serve a good purpose and Congo can be saved, if not, then always-late “firefighting” will only be counterproductive in the long-run Bibliography Autesserre, S (2012) Dangerous Tales: Dominant Narratives on the Congo And Their Unintended Consequences African Affairs, 00/00, 1–21 (9 February 2012) Available from: http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/02/09/afraf.adr080.abstract Autesserre, S (2015): The responsibility to protect in Congo: the failure of grassroots prevention, International Peacekeeping (1 October 2015) Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2015.1080595 Bartolini, G.; Pertile., M (2015) The MONUSCO Intervention Brigade: A test-case for the application of International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law to a robust UN peace-keeping operation QIL (18 March 2015) (Available from:) http://www.qil-qdi.org/themonusco-intervention-brigade-a-test-case-for-the-application-of-international-humanitarianlaw-and-international-criminal-law-to-a-robust-un-peace-keeping-operation/ [ Accessed: 30 March 2016] Bøås , M (2009) “New” Nationalism and Autochthony – Tales of Origin as Political Cleavage, in: Africa Spectrum, 44, 1, 19-38 Bøås, M (2008) African Conflicts and Conflicts Drivers: Uganda, Congo and the Mano River Fafo – Institute for Applied International Studies FOI - NAI Lecture Series on African Security 2008:2 Nordiska Afrikainstitutet Available from: http://nai.divaportal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A610685&dswid=2327 [ Accessed: 30 March 2016] Bøås, M.; Hentz, J J (2013) African security in 2013: a year of disequilibrium? NOREF Report (April 2013) Available from: http://www.peacebuilding.no/var/ezflow_site/storage/original/application/dfd3e89925de94c74 8e775fe6a806cc7.pdf [Accessed: 30 March 2016 ] 18 Africa Report 2015: 1-8, 28 Moe, L W (2010) Addressing state fragility in Africa A need to challenge the established ‘wisdom’? FIIA Report 2010, nr 22 Available from: http://www.fiia.fi/en/publication/119/addressing_state_fragility_in_africa/ [Accessed: 30 March 2016 ] Oliver, R (2000) The African Experience : from Olduvai Gorge to the 21st century London: Phoenix Press Reybrouck, D van (2015) Congo : the epic history of a people (transl by Sam Garrett) London : Fourth Estate Congo: Is Democratic Change Possible? Africa Report N°225 (5 May 2015) Available from: http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/africa/central-africa/dr-congo/225-congo-isdemocratic-change-possible.aspx [Accessed: 30 March 2016 ] ... playing in helping Congo onwards and whether it is actually helping the state Dealing with a crippled colonial legacy and a culture prone to violent neopatrimonialism Before tackling Congo? ??s future,... them develop naturally into democratic countries After 1960 when Congo became independent, a race followed (not only of groups in Congo but also its neighbors) to get hands on mineral excavating... numerous atrocities taking place in the last two decades in Congo 10 Autesserre makes the point that although international actors helped to boost Congo from a warmongering to a peaceful state between