October 16, 2001
Congo's civil war has taken place, not in front of the world's television cameras, but deep within the dense and trackless rain forest of a sparsely populated country two-thirds the size of Western Europe. Since the fighting erupted in 1998, as many as 2.5m people may have died according to some aid groups: some of bullets or machete-blows, most of hunger or disease. But this is merely an educated guess. Congo is too vast and chaotic for anyone to measure accurately the scale of its tragedy. Westerners may sympathise, but so far they have had no interests in Congo large enough to make them intervene in any forceful way.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is a country only in name. The government of Joseph Kabila, who took over after his father was assassinated in January, controls the capital, Kinshasa, and the southern part of the country. He is backed by troops from Zimbabwe, Angola and, until recently, Namibia. The rest of the country is divided between a rebel movement that has split three ways, its factions backed by Uganda and Rwanda. In the densely populated east of the country the civil war has sparked off numerous local battles with bigger players backing rival groups. Gangs of former soldiers and militias who took part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, now supplied by Kabila's government, cause havoc and local militias, originally set up for self-defence, have taken advantage of the power vacuum to extend their territory by looting and killing. Trade has been stopped and the people impoverished. Though there has been little formal fighting for a year, both sides try to grab strategic sites, control trade routes or sieze mineral-rich areas, in advance of the next stage of the peace talks.
Out of this mess, the 380 delegates meeting this week in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, have promised to fashion a unified state, with a government, an integrated army and national reconciliation. Representatives from Mr Kabila's government, from the three main rebel groups, and an assortment of political parties, civil society groups and church organisations are meeting to map out a future for their country. Congo's long-suffering people, if they knew of the initiative, would probably favour it. But how to install a legitimate government in a country which has never had one?
Perhaps predictably, the inter-Congolese dialogue got off to what diplomats call a "slow start" on Monday October 15th, when it began four-and-half hours late and without three of the main participants. Congolese president Joseph Kabila failed to show up, as he was supposed to, although he did send four ministers. He seems to be using his attendance as a bargaining chip—he wants the agenda changed and more of his allies included in the talks. Adolphe Onusumba, leader of the largest rebel movement, the Rally for Congolese Democracy, (which is backed by Rwanda) was in Addis Ababa but boycotted the talks in protest at Mr Kabila's absence. Jean-Pierre Bemba, another rebel leader, did not show up at all.
Such tensions reflect the convoluted nature of the conflict in Congo. Congolese people have a strong sense of nationhood, but no real experience of democracy. The country was ruled brutally when it was a Belgian colony, and equally brutally under the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who reigned from shortly after independence in 1960 until he was toppled in 1997. Mr Kabila's father, Laurent, was installed by Rwandan troops, who hoped he would help them wipe out the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, many of whom were hiding in eastern Congo. But he did not keep his side of the bargain, and Rwanda launched another invasion to topple him. Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia joined the fighting on the side of Mr Kabila. Uganda joined with the Rwandans and the rebels, but subsequently came to blows with its supposed allies.
The war reached a stalemate in 1999, and a peace accord was signed in Lusaka, Zambia. Mr Kabila flouted the agreement, however, and the fighting continued. Since his murder, his son has won western friends by allowing UN monitors into the country, and by pursuing less despotic policies than his father did. He might just have what it takes to negotiate a lasting peace.
But few of the men with guns are planning to throw them away, and most have an interest in preserving the status quo. All sides are trying to steal as much as they can from the areas they control: ivory, gold, diamonds and col-tan (a mineral used in the manufacture of mobile telephones). Several generals have grown exceedingly rich. Given all this, it is hard to see how any agreement reached in Addis Ababa can be made to stick. At the very least, large numbers of UN peacekeepers would be needed, but given the country's size and the almost total lack of roads, they would not be able to police more than a fraction of it.
In the meantime, Congo's civil war has done more to destabilise Africa than any conflict since the cold war. Rebels from several neighbouring countries use its lawless jungles as a base from which to mount raids against their own governments: a particular worry for Uganda, Rwanda and Angola. Other neighbours, such as Tanzania and Zambia, endure large and sudden surges of refugees whenever the fighting grows particularly bloody near their borders. Congo's neighbours include nine countries—pretty much the whole of central Africa. The shockwaves reverberate even farther afield: Zimbabwe, which is hundreds of miles to the south, has been virtually bankrupted by the insistence of its president, Robert Mugabe, on keeping a quarter of his army in Congo. And investor confidence in the entire continent has been shaken by the inferno at its heart. Even relatively stable and prosperous places, such as South Africa, are not immune to the effects of Congo's war.
The saddest victims, of course, have been the people of Congo. A recent report by the United Nations said that suffering in some areas was hard to imagine. It cited the example of 200,000 people in the north-western province of Equateur, who had fled from the villages to avoid marauding soldiers and "so as to maintain a modicum of dignity".
Even if the delegates meeting this week in Addis Ababa can agree a way to reduce the chaos in Congo, and to start to build a stable peace, any agreement will need the active support of the international community, and that means rich western countries. Their attention, understandably, is focused on America's war against terrorism and the considerable challenge of waging this without alienating the entire Islamic world. And yet Congo deserves some attention too. Continuing warfare there is not only producing a humanitarian catastrophe big enough to rival that unfolding in Afghanistan, but it is also damaging the future of the rest of Africa, and with it the prospects of tens of millions of other Africans.
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