Global Policy Forum

By Alexander Schwabe

German peacekeepers are supposed to help stabilize the Democratic Republic of the Congo so the strife-torn country can hold elections this summer. But many fear the chaotic situation in the eastern provinces could pitch the massive African nation once again into civil war.

The doga is crammed with people on this Saturday night. The club, a huge round hut which opens onto the street, has a pointed roof made from banana leaves and is popular with the white and wealthy citizens of Goma. Several women sit invitingly at the bar or on the veranda. The pizza is fantastic -- of course, it costs roughly the monthly income of the average Congolese family.

Most of the 400,000-strong city's residents are already sleeping as General Patience Muschidi sits in a screened and gloomy backroom sits with his confidantes. Muschidi has signed his name into the guestbook of a nearby hotel, located on the banks of the Lake Kivu. The commander of the Congolese police's rapid deployment force arrived in Goma from Bakavu, roughly 100 km (62 miles) further south, on a speedboat this afternoon. Roughly two dozen members of his elite police force then proceeded to position themselves around the hotel with their machine guns, as if the building were under siege.

The bald and portly police general has come to Goma on a classified mission. Rumors are going around that he's preparing a police team for the arrival of Congo's President Joseph Kabila, who will be appearing in Goma as part of his re-election campaign.

Kabila is expected to win the parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for the end of July. Kabila is relatively popular, far more so in any case than the provincial rulers in the east of the country, with their bloody past. Many see Kabila as the lesser evil, despite the fact that the Congo's central government has tended to neglect the population in the east of the country while exploiting rather than developing the provinces of South and North Kivu, which are known for their natural resources and fertile soil. Most farmers in the villages around Goma display the yellow flag of Kabila's People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy, the PPRD, in front of their clay huts.

The electoral campaign has yet to begin. But the local authorities in northern Kivu are already fighting for their political survival, especially Governor Eugene Serufuly and the party chairman of the pro-Rwandan RCD party, Azarias Ruberwa, who is also one of the country's four vice presidents and one of 32 presidential candidates. Regardless of how well Serufuly and Ruberwa do during the parliamentary and presidential elections, no one is expecting them to give in without a fight if they are outdone by Kabila.

"The RCD-Goma will never resign," says Kohn Krijnen, whom the Dutch government has charged with helping to develop policies for the Great Lakes in Africa, and who is currently traveling through the east of the continent. Krijnen warns against the danger of separatism, envisioning scenarios whereby the Kivu region either secedes from Congo or is annexed by Rwanda, which has a strong interests in the region. The little country east of the Democratic Republic of Congo certainly could use more territory -- its population doubles every two years and its woodlands have been virtually eradicated since 95 percent of its energy needs are met by the use of wood fuel. Electricity is only a minor issue. Only two percent of the people have access to it.

Rwanda's influence on the eastern part of the Congo is as strong as ever. Much of this influence is exercised through Goma, the capital of the North Kivu region. The governor and the chairman of the ruling RCD party are simply puppets controlled by Rwanda, according to Georg Dí¶rken, who has worked in the Congo for 12 years, as an employee of Germany's GTZ development agency and the non-governmental organization World Hunger Relief Fund. "Kabila is too weak militarily to control the east of the Congo," says Dí¶rken. "There are too few roads and airports for him to be able to stage an effective police or military intervention."

Goma's governor Serufuly spends his days behind carefully guarded walls, in the former provincial palace of Congo's late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Gold-plated doors, hand-crafted windows and a luxurious bathroom provide him with all the comfort he needs -- but not with peace of mind. He prefers sleeping across the border, in Rwanda.

The provincial ruler is a descendant of Rwanda's ruling Tutsi elite. His party, the RCD-Goma, controlled about a third of the Congo until the 2002 Sun City peace treaty. Now he's faced with a dramatic and irreversible loss of power. That's why there's a significant risk that Serufuly and Ruberwa will plunge the province of North Kivu into chaos following the elections.

The danger of civil war breaking out again in the east of the country remains very real. "Militias already attack villages every week, plundering and raping," says Alexandra Brangeon of the UN-administered Radio Okapi. She's stationed in Bukavu, in South Kivu. "The RCD-Goma has a lot to lose, so they want to destabilize the elections," says Christine Leikvang from Norway, who works for the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

German-led mission It is into this perilous situation that a German-led European peacekeeping mission will dive this summer. Some 1,500 soldiers from 10 EU nations will hope to stabilize the country during the elections. MONUC, the UN peacekeeping mission of 17,500 soldiers already in Congo, welcomes the help, but doesn't believe things are that bad -- at least not officially. A MONUC spokesperson is happy to report there are no major problems and that everything is under control. But speak to MONUC experts more informally and you'll hear a different story. They'll tell you the Congo's national army, FARDC -- which is controlled from Kinshasa, 2000 km (1243 miles) away -- is in a terrible state here in the eastern part of the country. It's so short on money and supplies it won't be able to intervene effectively in the provinces. And the plan to integrate 15 brigades controlled by warlords into the national army has failed miserably.

Police General Muschidi could have his work cut out for him. With plenty of people looking to disrupt Congo's democratic process, he certainly won't be able to while away his time in the club anymore.

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