Global Policy Forum

By Karl Vick

For the first time since fighting erupted in Congo 22 months ago, Africa's most far-reaching conflict is producing promising news.

A cease-fire negotiated six weeks ago has held firm, in stark contrast to an accord signed last August. Governments that have been at each other's throats are exchanging peace envoys. And the countries that rushed into what was supposed to be a civil war now appear anxious to leave.

"We need someone to bail us out of the problem of Congo," said Col. James Kabarebe, deputy chief of staff for the army of Rwanda, which for four years has done so much to call the tune in its neighboring giant.

The problem is who would do the bailing. In Congo, the warring parties expect peace to be assured by the United Nations, just when the delicate notion of peacekeeping in Africa is under assault 2,000 miles to the northwest in Sierra Leone.

The situation in Sierra Leone--U.N. peacekeepers held hostage by rebels, a peace agreement in tatters and African countries imploring Western powers to do more--casts a pall over a U.N. monitoring mission in Congo that has had a promising but glacial start.

"The shadow is huge," said one U.S. official. "And it's really going to require a correct response in Sierra Leone to unlock a deployment in Congo."

At the start of the year, when the United States declared January "Africa Month" at the U.N. Security Council, solving the war in Congo was a priority among African governments--including those of the seven countries directly involved in the conflict--as well as for international organizations. Earlier this month, U.S. Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke led six other Security Council members on a tour of the region.

But by the time the group returned to New York, the United Nations was consumed with the Sierra Leone crisis and distracted by renewed fighting between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

"Our problem," said U.N. Ambassador Peter Van Walsum of the Netherlands, as he presented a report on Congo to the full council, "is how do we sell this information to an international public . . . that feels that Africa is falling apart?"

The proposed Congo mission would be decidedly less ambitious than the Sierra Leone undertaking. The approximately 90 U.N. observers and staff members now in Congo are the vanguard of a force that would eventually total 5,537. Most would be support troops charged with protecting 500 observers monitoring the cease-fire and pullback. The U.N. force would be required to protect itself but not to engage in military action to ensure freedom of movement and protect civilians. The council called on Secretary General Kofi Annan to decide when it is safe enough to send troops.

"Of course, countries are less keen to send troops on the ground here" after Sierra Leone, said a spokesman for the U.N. Mission to Congo. "But it's not a real threat. This is a lesson for us. It's something we will learn from."

Congo and Rwanda offer lessons of their own to the United Nations. The organization sent a massive peacekeeping mission to Congo when civil war erupted in 1960. Of the 19,000 troops sent, 250 were killed. U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold died in a plane crash on his way to effect a peace settlement there.

Thirty years later, massive intervention in Somalia to stem a famine collapsed when warlords targeted U.N. peacekeepers, especially Americans. The lesson was not lost on Hutu extremists plotting to kill ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda months later: They targeted a small force of peacekeepers, and the United Nations promptly fled, allowing the extremists to kill at least 500,000 Rwandans with no international interference.

It was the pursuit of the remnants of the Hutu extremist force after the 1994 Rwandan genocide that prompted Kigali's current government to send its army into Congo, first in 1996, and again in 1998. Rwanda now has as many as 40,000 troops there.

"There's no way any of us can depend on the security of the U.N.," said Emmanuel Ndahiro, a Rwanda army spokesman. "The experience we have is too long."

What the United Nations can do, Rwandans say, is sound the alarm if any side tries to move forward while another pulls back. "The temptation will be very high for [Congo President Laurent] Kabila," said Theogene Rudasingwa, chief of the Rwandan cabinet.

Several countries have signaled a willingness to pull out of Congo. The war is intensely unpopular in Zimbabwe, which sent 10,000 troops to support Kabila and faces a collapsing economy as well as a crisis over farm ownership. Namibia and Angola, also Kabila allies, have agreed to pull back.

Uganda, which entered the war on the side of Rwanda and the Congolese rebels, has been working toward its own resolution since last year, when it signed an accord that let troops from Chad return home after they had crossed into Congo to help Kabila.

Since then, supposed allies Uganda and Rwanda have clashed twice in the jointly held river city of Kisangani. Coupled with intense infighting in two of Congo's three rebel groups, the spat between the allies has complicated the conflict.

But the latest Kisangani battle, earlier this month, also offered a ray of hope. A U.N. monitor stationed in the city promptly reported that Uganda had attacked first. His report nipped in the bud the round of recriminations that had helped fuel the feud since an earlier clash last August.

"It justifies our argument that even a little force like 500 can make a difference," said Rwanda's Rudasingwa. "Let's deploy it and deploy it quickly."

But even a full U.N. deployment would leave huge problems unaddressed. Decades of neglect have left the vast country with almost no infrastructure. And there is barely a semblance of local administration in the half of the country held by the rebels or foreign forces; thousands have died in intertribal fighting that sprang up in the void.

"If both sides withdraw, who maintains normal civil order--or what passes for normal civil order in Congo?" asked a Western diplomat in Kigali.

The answer is supposed to be provided by the "national dialogue" mandated by what is known as the Lusaka accord, which was signed last year by all the governments involved. But the dialogue has been slow in coming.

Also pending is the question of who will deal with the Hutu extremists who remain in Congo. While the front lines have fallen quiet, Rwanda has been steadily fighting a rear guard action in the Congo provinces closest to its border.