Useful linksCRISIS AT A GLANCE
More than a thousand people a day die in Congo – a vast country the size of western Europe – as a result of ongoing violence, despite the official end in 2003 of a five-year war that involved seven countries and at least a dozen rebel groups.
A transitional government – involving various factions that fought each other in the war – and the political opposition, are charged with unifying the country’s army and holding elections by the end of June 2006.
But insecurity in the remote, resource-rich provinces near the eastern border threatens to derail the process, and some 3.9 million people have died from war-related hunger and disease since 1998, according to aid agency International Rescue Committee.
A U.N. force of 17,000 soldiers and police - the world’s largest peacekeeping mission - struggles to prevent violence and protect the population of almost 60 million.
The presence of armed rebels from neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda adds to the confusion and violence, and creates serious tension between Congo and its neighbours, which have intervened in the past and often threaten to send troops back across the border.
Congo was voted the world’s most neglected humanitarian hotspot in an AlertNet
poll of forgotten crises last year and featured in the
Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2005 selected by medical aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières.
KEY FACTS:Deaths
3.9 million since 1998 due to war-related disease and hunger
At least 40,000 survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Congo.
(U.N. World Health Organisation, 2005) Uprooted by violence
Almost 1.7 million people displaced at the end of 2005 (U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs)
More than 450,000 Congolese refugees, most of them in neighbouring countries (Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), February 2006).
Natural wealth
18 natural resources fuel conflict in Congo today: bauxite/aluminium, cadmium, cassiterite, coal, cobalt, copper, coltan, diamonds, gas, gold, iron ore, lead, manganese, oil, silver, timber, uranium and zinc.
(Global Witness) CRISIS IN DETAIL
Democratic Republic of Congo, a vast country in the heart of central Africa, is in a shaky transition to peace almost three years after a five-year conflict dubbed “Africa’s world war” that involved seven countries and enveloped the region.
The country’s first post-war elections are scheduled for June 2006, but some observers say many combatants are still loyal to their old commanders and ongoing violence in more remote areas could destabilise the peace process and re-ignite the regional war that officially ended in 2003.
The largest U.N. peacekeeping force in the world is stationed in Congo, with 17,000 troops, and the International Criminal Court in The Hague has launched investigations into war crimes.
But it’s a Herculean task keeping control of a country the size of western Europe, where dozens of heavily armed groups – some of them still reportedly backed by influential politicians or foreign governments such as Rwanda and Uganda -- stoke ethnic rivalries and vie for control of valuable natural resources.
Rwanda and Uganda officially withdrew their troops from Congo in 2002 and 2003, and although they are often accused of keeping a foothold in Congo through proxy militias, much of the violence in the northeastern border regions originates in the power vacuum left behind when their armies pulled out.
Militias regularly target civilian men, women and children, while brutal rapes are common and thousands of families are on the run for their lives.
Some 3.9 million people have died since 1998 from violence and war-related illness, according to studies by U.S.-based aid agency International Rescue Committee, which says fighting frequently prevents people from seeking out what scant health services are available.
“Congo is the deadliest conflict anywhere in the world over the past 60 years,” said Richard Brennan, IRC’s health director.
Aid agencies say rape is endemic in regions where militias go on the rampage and live by brutalising villagers for food and loot, and the very old and the very young suffer the worst.
“(I’ve seen cases) from a six-year-old girl to a 75-year-old woman,” said Jason Stearns, senior analyst for central Africa with International Crisis Group.
“Rape has become part of a culture of violence … The traditional moral structure of society is falling apart.”
Swathes of Congo are regularly too dangerous for humanitarian agencies to operate, and the country’s poor infrastructure means jungle paths or rivers are often the only routes of transit.
Relief workers are often targeted and supplies stolen, while fighting has forced the sporadic suspension of humanitarian programmes providing food, health care, clean water and education.
The crisis in Congo – formerly renamed Zaire by Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the country with an iron fist and a greedy purse from 1965 until his overthrow in 1997 - was voted the world’s most underreported emergency in a 2005 AlertNet poll of humanitarian experts.
“It's the worst humanitarian tragedy since the Holocaust," John O'Shea, chief executive of Irish relief agency GOAL, told AlertNet. "The greatest example on the planet of man's inhumanity to man."
How the war started
The origins of Congo’s war are intimately connected to the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda, where some 800,000 people from the minority Tutsis and political moderates from the majority Hutus were slaughtered at the instigation of the extremist Hutu government.
Rwanda’s post-war Tutsi government invaded Congo in 1996 to pursue extremist Hutu militias that had crossed the border, in the process helping Congolese rebels end Mobutu’s 32-year rule.
Rwanda installed rebel leader Laurent Kabila as president but then turned against him when he started stirring hatred towards Tutsis in Congo. Rwanda intervened to try to remove Kabila, but he fought them off with assistance from Angola, Namibia and Zimabwe, while Uganda weighed in on the Rwandan side.
The ensuing regional war raged from 1998 to 2003.
Joseph Kabila took power after the assassination of his father Laurent in January 2001, and began negotiating peace.
Kinshasa politicians, local bigwigs and neighbouring countries are accused of cashing in on valuable natural resources in eastern Congo, and international rights activists say Rwanda and Uganda continue to arm and fund militias in the area even after pulling out their national troops.
The government, the army, elections and the U.N.
Joseph Kabila, 34, presides over a temporary power-sharing government with four vice-presidents, two of them from former rebel groups. Kabila is still officially an army officer and does not belong to any political party.
In a referendum in December 2005, Congolese voted overwhelmingly in favour of a new constitution, which was widely seen as a vote for peace and stability. It was the first time in 40 years the country had gone to the ballot freely.
A presidential election is scheduled for June 2006, but several laws need to be passed by parliament before it can happen, and the logistical challenges in a country lacking the most basic infrastructure remain enormous.
Congo’s new army is meant to unite tens of thousands of former gunmen who fought with a plethora of armed groups, but few integrated units are in place, soldiers are ill-disciplined, poorly fed and don’t have proper equipment.
About $8 million leaves the central bank every month, meant for some 90,000 soldiers across the country, but many in the remote east complain they often receive little if any of the $10 per month they are supposed to be paid.
Ex-combatants who decide to demobilise, in contrast, get a package of $110 in cash and $25 a month for a year.
In the east of the country, government soldiers have fled their posts rather than fight against militias and villagers have reported being attacked by the national army as well as other gunmen.
“Instead of contributing to peace and security, (the army) abuses its power and has become a serious threat for the citizens it is supposed to protect,” the foreign minister of former colonial power Belgium said in February 2006.
The U.N. first sent a mission to Congo – MONUC -- in 2000, but it was initially small and weak.
By 2006, MONUC had almost 17,000 troops, making it the largest U.N. peacekeeping force in operation. The Mission’s mandate was renewed for a year in November 2005.
Rights activists have repeatedly called for MONUC to be strengthened even more, but the move has met resistance from the United States, reluctant to increase its budget for Congo, where it is already a major aid donor.
A 38,000-strong national police force is meant to be in place before elections, with training by a range of international donors.
But Belgian think tank International Crisis Group said it was concerned training was focused too much on crowd control and not enough on ordinary policing skills such as criminal investigation, taking statements and procedures for protecting vulnerable child and dealing with sexual violence.
Militias, motives and neighbours
Although some former rebels have given up their guns or joined the national army, others are still resisting the integration process and continue to fight over resources, territory or ethnic grievances.
A confusing range of armed groups operate in Congo. Militias called Mai Mai model themselves on traditional warriors, touting talismans that they say make them invincible and terrorising villagers.
It is hard to keep up with the shifting loyalties of militias and their leaders, some of whom have been backed at various times by Rwanda or Uganda but later switched sides. And sometimes rival militias join forces to take on the national army.
Power vacuums created by the withdrawal of Ugandan and Rwandan troops in North and South Kivu and Ituri district in 2002 and 2003 led to renewed violence.
Fighting occasionally follows ethnic divisions, often stirred up by politicians both in Congo and outside, since some Congolese tribes have affinities with Hutus or Tutsis in neighbouring Rwanda and Burundi.
Rwandan Hutu militias continue to hide out in Congo, leading to periodic tension between the two countries as Rwanda threatens to pursue them if Congo’s army doesn’t wipe them out or send them back.
Rwanda’s war is not the only one to spill into Congo.
Members of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a northern Ugandan rebel group renowned for child abductions, amputations and terrorising the local Ugandan population, sought refuge in Congo in 2005 after being indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.
Uganda threatened to invade Congo to hunt down LRA leaders. Congolese residents near the border reportedly say Ugandan soldiers have made occasional incursions, but this has not been confirmed by the United Nations. CONGO HOTSPOTSNorth and South Kivu
Self-styled general Laurent Nkunda – a former commander of the main rebel group that controlled the eastern part of the country, the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) -- rejects integration into the national army and vows to overthrow the Kinshasa government.
Nkunda, a Tutsi born in North Kivu, says he wants to protect Congolese who speak Kinyarwanda, a language of Rwandan origin.
Local Tutsis from South Kivu are known as the Banyamulenge. The RCD united Hutus and Tutsis in North Kivu, where both tribes speak Kinyarwanda.
Nkunda sparked a crisis in June 2004 by temporarily occupying the town of Bukavu in the northeastern province of South Kivu, but left under intense pressure from the United Nations.
Nkunda attacked government soldiers and U.N. peacekeepers in early 2006.
Nkunda’s renegades number 300-400, according to Crisis Group, while army brigades who are friendly to him have 1,000-2,000 soldiers.
New York-based Human Rights Watch has criticised Congo and the United Nations for failing to execute an international arrest warrant for Nkunda, despite knowing his whereabouts. Rwanda denies continuing to support Nkunda.
Amnesty International report on North KivuKatanga
Violence in Congo’s most mineral-rich province is driven by tensions between the region’s north and south, between natives and perceived outsiders, and between the army and armed Mai Mai fighters. The Mai Mai are ex-government militias who have run amok and now extort money from civilians.
Tens of thousands of people were forced from their homes in early 2006 by an army crackdown on local Mai Mai commander Gédeon Kyungu in the “triangle of death”, which lies between the towns of Mitwaba, Manono and Pweto, in eastern Congo close to the borders with Tanzania and Zambia.
Hundreds of women have been raped, according to the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which said many people had taken refuge on islands formed by clumps of papyrus plants floating on lakes in Katanga’s Upemba National Park.
U.N. troops are spread thin on the ground, with fewer than 1,000 deployed in a region the size of France.
Mai Mai in the area number 3,000-5,000, Crisis Group says.
Katanga, the home province of President Joseph Kabila, has a long history of unrest, much of it provoked by wealth in mines that once produced 50 percent to 80 percent of the national budget.
It was the site of a secessionist war in the 1960s, and Katanga’s politicians have been accused of trying to break away in more recent years.
Running for their lives - repeated civilian displacement in central Katanga, by Médecins Sans Frontières
Ituri
The mineral-rich northeastern district of Ituri was basically under Ugandan control throughout the war.
In May 2003, French troops intervened to protect thousands of civilians in Bunia, capital of Ituri, when rival militias clashed over control of the town and MONUC failed to act.
Much of the 2003 fighting was broken down into two sides, divided more or less between opposing militias from the Hema and Lendu ethnic groups.
Land disputes between the Hema, who are pastoralists, and the Lendu, who are farmers, were exploited by leaders of armed political groups vying for influence in the region. Both have, at different times, been backed by Uganda.
However, the traditional Hema-Lendu ethnic dispute is no longer the driving factor behind violence in Ituri. Both groups now fight together to protect their control of the region against the government and United Nations.
There were 1,000-3,000 soldiers in militias outside army control in February 2006, Crisis Group said.
For a list of all of the groups involved in Ituri in 2003, see Human Rights Watch's Who is Who – Armed Political Groups in Ituri.
Orientale
Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, who have terrorised northern Uganda for two decades, crossed into the northeastern province of Orientale during 2005.
The suspected camp of LRA Deputy Commander Vincent Otti – indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court – was discovered in Garamba National Park.
Eight Guatemalan soldiers were killed in January 2006 when the United Nations launched a special operation to capture Otti.
RESOURCES, COLONIALISM AND THE COLD WAR
Many analysts categorise Congo’s conflict as a “resource war” motivated by control over eastern Congo’s rich natural deposits of gold, diamonds, copper, cobalt, timber and cassiterite, a tin ore.
Mining of coltan, a conductor used to make cellular telephones, increased instability in eastern Congo when it boomed in 2000. Rwanda and its army profited from the trade, according to researchers at British-based advocacy organisation Global Witness.
When the bottom fell out of the coltan market in 2001, producers switched to cassiterite, often found in the same places. The tin ore is used in lead-free circuit boards for electronic equipment and its rising value was heavily influenced by China’s phenomenal economic growth.
World consumption of cassiterite climbed by 14 percent in the first half of 2004, Global Witness said.
“The Chinese demand for tin made the world price skyrocket,” said Stearns of Crisis Group.
Cassiterite miners earn $4-6 a day, well above the $1 a day most miners can expect to take home, according to Global Witness, who have written a report on the subject, Under-Mining Peace: Tin – the Explosive Trade in Cassiterite in Eastern DRC.
The mining industry is unregulated and dangerous. During the coltan boom of 2000, so many people abandoned farming to work in the mines that there were food shortages of the local staple of manioc flour.
Profits from Congo’s resources have historically been extracted by whoever controls the soldiers at the mine gates, making demilitarisation unattractive to those with bank accounts on the receiving end, including politicians in Kinshasa.
Mobutu Sese Seko – who ruled the country for 32 years -- diverted enormous quantities of wealth into his own bank accounts, much of it from the copper mines in Katanga. He built up a fortune while the state was deprived of funds to build infrastructure and services for the general population.
After nationalising foreign-owned mines in the mid-1960s, Mobutu encouraged local entrepreneurs – usually his friends and relatives -- to take charge of guarding their own territory, setting the pattern for the present day.
Historians say Mobutu was following in the footsteps of Belgian colonialists, who forced huge swathes of the population to work on rubber plantations that funded lavish palaces for the Belgian monarchy.
Colonial administrators instituted a brutal system of slavery, demanding employees account for every bullet used with the hand of the slave who had been shot. The hands were smoked to preserve them, according to historian Adam Hochschild.
TIMELINE: Brief history of Congo crisis The Belgians1870s - Belgium’s King Leopold II starts his colonial project in central Africa.
1871 - British explorer Henry Stanley – who navigated the Congo River to the Atlantic Ocean for King Leopold, opening it up as a trade route -- gives the famous greeting “Doctor Livingstone, I presume” to a missionary who had been out of contact for some time.
1885 - Leopold announces the establishment of the Congo Free State, under his direct control.
1892 - Belgians conquer the eastern region of Katanga, which had held out against the colonialists.
1908 - Leopold sells control of Congo to the Belgian state, but life for Congo’s inhabitants continues much the same.
Independence1960 - Congo gains independence from Belgium after a year of anti-colonial riots. Socialist Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba attempts to steer a neutral course between the United States and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, but is dismissed by President Joseph Kasavubu in September, three months after taking office.
1960-1965 - Secessionist movement in eastern Katanga province.
1961 - Lumumba is murdered in February, three months after being arrested.
1965 - Joseph Mobutu seizes power from Kasavubu.
1966 - Mobutu nationalises mining and redistributes foreign-country management to a local elite, mostly his friends and family. He squanders and embezzles billions of dollars through trade in copper, cobalt, diamonds and coffee.
1971 - Mobutu calls himself Mobutu Sese Seko and renames the country Zaire. He becomes the darling of Washington by turning the country into a springboard for operations against Soviet-backed Angola.
1974 Black U.S. boxers Muhammad Ali and George Foreman fight the “rumble in the jungle” in Zaire. Ali, who wins the fight, says he wanted to establish a relationship between African Americans and Africa.
1990 - Mobutu appoints a transitional government but holds on to substantial powers.
War1994 - Rwanda’s Hutu extremist government orchestrates the genocide of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. About 800,000 Hutus – many of party to the genocide -- take refuge with their families in camps in Congo when Tutsi rebels take control of Rwanda.
1994 - Nearly 12,000 people die when cholera spreads through huge, squalid refugee camps in Congo, according to U.N. refugee body UNHCR.
1996-1997 - Tutsi rebels gain control of large swathes of eastern Zaire while Mobutu is abroad for medical treatment
1997 - Anti-Mobutu rebels with Rwandan backing seize Kinshasa, and Laurent Kabila is installed as president. The country is renamed Democratic Republic of Congo.
1998 - Kabila tries to gain popularity by whipping up anti-Tutsi sentiment and purging Tutsis from his government. Rwanda is enraged, and along with Uganda backs rebels in an attempt to oust Kabila. They are repelled when the president receives support from Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola. The rebels remain in control of large parts of eastern Congo’s border regions.
1998 - British advocacy group Global Witness launches its campaign against “conflict diamonds”. Its initial focus is Angola, but by June 1999 is talking tough on Congo and other countries too.
Peace1999 - After three years of war, a ceasefire is signed in Lusaka, Zambia.
2000 - The U.N. Mission for Congo, MONUC, is deployed to monitor the ceasefire, but with a mere 5,500 troops and a weak mandate it fails to stop fighting between rebels and government forces.
2001 - Laurent Kabila is assassinated by a bodyguard. His son Joseph takes office.
2002 - Mount Nyiragongo, a volcano overlooking the eastern town of Goma, devastates the city when it erupts in January.
2002 - Rwanda and Uganda say they have withdrawn most of their forces from eastern Congo after peace accords in which Congo agrees to disarm and arrest Hutu militias in its territory. A peace deal signed at the end of the year states that rebels and opposition members will be given jobs in a power-sharing interim government.
2000 Diamond industry launches the Kimberley process in May to crack down on trade from war zones. In Dec., the U.N. gives its backing to a certification system to track the origin of rough diamonds.
May 2003 French troops intervene to protect thousands of civilians in Bunia, Ituri, when rival militias clash over control of the town.
2003 - Last Ugandan troops pull out.
2003 Allegations of sexual exploitation, child pornography and the rape of babies made against Moroccan peacekeepers with MONUC.
2003 - President Kabila names a transitional government
Early 2004 Renewed allegations of sexual exploitation of women and children by peacekeepers around Bunia, Ituri.
May/June 2004 - Siege of Bukavu, south Kivu, by renegade commander Laurent Nkunda. There are riots around the country in protest at the U.N.’s failure to act, and international aid agencies come under attack by angry crowds.
June 2004 Attempted coup in Kinshasa.
June 2004 The new Hague-based International Criminal Court opens investigations on Congo, sending its first official visit a month later.
Jan. 2005 U.N. enquiry upholds sexual exploitation allegations. MONUC sets up an office to deal with the issue, which operates from Feb. to Nov.. A new unit for conduct and discipline takes over after that.
March 2005 - Nine Bangladeshi U.N. peacekeepers are killed in an ambush by ethnic Lendu militias in Ituri.
May 2005 - A new constitution is approved by parliament
Sept. 2005 - Uganda threatens to invade in pursuit of rebels from the Lord’s Rebel Army (LRA).
Dec. 2005 - The new constitution is given public backing in a referendum.
Dec. 2005 The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague – the highest U.N. court -- finds Uganda guilty of rights abuses and plundering resources in Congo between 1998 and 2003, and says compensation is due.
Late 2005/early 2006 A government crackdown on Mai Mai militias in Katanga forces thousands of civilians to flee.
Jan. 2006 Eight Guatemalan peacekeepers are killed when they come across an LRA camp in Garamba National Park in the northeastern province of Orientale.
Feb. 2006 The ICJ rules it has no jurisdiction to rule on Congo’s application of rights abuses by Rwanda during the 1998-2003 war, since Rwanda hasn’t accepted U.N. conventions on torture.
USEFUL LINKS
Global Witness, a British organisation dedicated to investigating resource wars and corruption, details Congo’s natural wealth, not just coltan and cassiterite.
Human Rights Watch, a U.S.-based organisation with experienced researchers such as Anneke Van Woudenberg
International Criminal Court, which is investigating war crimes, lists its rulings on Ugandan and Rwandan involvement in Congo.
International Crisis Group, a Belgian-based thinktank offers analysis. Good reports on security reforms and violence in Katanga.
International Rescue Committee mortality surveys are the definitive guide to how many people die in Congo because violence stops them tending crops, getting to market or reaching health care.
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