Global Policy Forum

By Finbarr O'Reilly

The Democratic Republic of Congo is sliding dangerously back into war and aid agencies are preparing against an expected return to fighting in the volatile east, a senior U.N. official said on Thursday. The vast central African nation is struggling to emerge from a devastating five-year regional conflict that involved at least six countries and killed more than three million people, mostly civilians who died from hunger and disease.

But deepening divisions within Kinshasa's transitional government, entrusted with steering the chaotic and divided state towards general elections next year, have threatened to derail a shaky peace process in the former Zaire. "We are extremely concerned because all the indicators have turned from green to red. Things have gone sour in eastern Congo," said Jahal de Meritens, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Congo (OCHA).

OCHA oversees relief efforts by U.N aid agencies and groups such as World Vision, OXFAM and Caritas. "We have been working on contingency plans for the eastern provinces, but it's more a plan of action because we are now so close to being in a crisis. The situation is deteriorating very quickly," de Meritens told Reuters in the eastern Congolese town of Goma, bordering Rwanda.

Threat to the Region

Clashes have erupted in recent weeks between the newly united but still disorganised Congolese army and Rwandan Hutu rebels who have been hiding in the Congolese bush for a decade since fleeing Rwanda after the 1994 genocide. Many of the Rwandan rebels, also known as "Interahmwe", were involved in the 1994 slaughter of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, and their presence in eastern Congo helped fuel half a decade of conflict in the ex-Belgian colony.

Their renewed activity has further divided Congo's already fractious transitional government, which includes ex-rebels sympathetic to Rwanda, and could again destabilise the region. Aside from localised fighting, some observers fear the deteriorating situation could spark a fresh Rwandan invasion. Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who withdrew his 23,000 troops from Congo under a 2002 peace deal, threatened this month to send his army back if the U.N. mission and Congo could not neutralise the threat from the Hutus rebels.

Burundi, which shares borders with both Congo and Rwanda and is emerging from its own 10-year civil war, said this week it was stepping up frontier patrols to prevent Hutu rebels from using its territory to stage a possible attack on Rwanda.

Rwanda says the Interahamwe attacked a village within its borders on April 8, but the U.N. and foreign diplomats have been unable to confirm a cross-border raid took place. The long-awaited appointment this week of governors to Congo's 11 provinces diffused some tensions of the past month, according to some aid workers and Goma residents, but de Meritens said he still wanted to be prepared for the worst. "Wars in Congo tend to target the civilian population and we have to be ready to deal with the massive displacement of people when it happens," he said.