Friends of Africa often anoint “for the moment” selected leaders from that continent as heroes. Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo, Congo’s Mobutu Sese-Seko, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame have all enjoyed that status at one time or another. Often the “hero” immediately follows a tyrant–or chaos. Obasanjo followed a generation of military rulers, and his immediate predecessor was the “tyrant” Sani Abacha who resorted to judicial murder; Mobutu emerged from Congo’s domestic chaos and civil war and promised inoculation against the Communists; Mugabe followed the racist regime of Ian Smith and promised racial reconciliation; and Paul Kagame “ended” the genocide in Rwanda. Read more »

Search for Common Ground, a distinguished Washington-based NGO devoted to international conflict resolution and peace building that has long focused on the Great Lakes Region, organized a special two-day meeting of the Great Lakes Policy Forum (GLPF) earlier this week–the 165th meeting of the Forum. The Council on Foreign Relations and the Nitze School of International Studies at Johns Hopkins hosted and participated, along with many other Congo-watchers from the executive and legislative branches, NGOs, and academia. Search for Common Ground arranged for the presence of experts from the Congo, and there were representatives of the Congolese diaspora in the United States. Read more »

There is a useful new feature on cfr.org, the Council on Foreign Relations’ website. Ask a CFR Expert invites members of the public to submit questions on U.S. foreign policy, and CFR fellows respond to questions that pertain to their own areas of expertise and research. Read more »

The situation in the eastern Congo is no less obscure than before the regional leaders met for negotiations over the weekend. M23 stated they would leave the city of Goma, captured on November 20, by November 27. They are still there. Now they claim they will hold a handover ceremony and pull back to Rutshuru, their original stronghold, on Friday, November 30; but only so long as M23 troops remain at the Goma airport. And possibly, that their political wing remain in Goma itself. Read more »

Since I blogged yesterday about the fighting around the city of Goma between the army of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) supported by UN forces and the M23 rebels, the situation has deteriorated.

Yesterday, the rebels had pulled back to await a response from Kinshasa to its demands that Goma be de-militarized and that a border post with Uganda be reopened. Kinshasa did not accept the M23 ultimatum, and the rebels have now occupied the city and its international and military airports for the first time since 2003. In the general melee, DRC soldiers shelled a neighboring Rwanda district, killing two, according to Rwanda sources. That same Rwanda source says, however, that Kinshasa has apologized. If so, Kinshasa and Kigali may be trying to avoid any cross border escalation, a positive development. Read more »

M23, a rebel group active in the eastern Congo, advanced on the provincial capital of Goma over the weekend, but has subsequently pulled back. Instead of an attack on Goma, the rebels presented a list of demands to the Kinshasa government that include de-militarization of the city and its airport. It is also demanding the opening of a border post with Uganda, in the town of Bunagana. Read more »

The ongoing tragedy in eastern Congo is closely related to the history of genocide in Rwanda. Herman J. Cohen, former assistant secretary of state for Africa, former ambassador to Senegal and Gambia and once deputy chief of mission in Congo-Kinshasa, has just published a must-read article (gated): “Rwanda: Fifty Years of Ethnic Conflict on Steroids.” Cohen shows that the 1994 genocide in Rwanda was not a one-off event but part of an ethnic conflict that started in 1959. Its root causes included overpopulation, poverty, and bad colonial policies, especially with respect to sharpening ethnic differences and identities. Read more »

On Friday I blogged about the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ report that internally displaced people in Congo-Kinshasa number more than two million, mostly in North and South Kivu. I also cited a BBC report based on UN sources of Rwandan involvement with mutineers whose violence is engendering the displacement—a report vigorously denied by the Rwandan foreign minister.  Today, the respected human rights non-government organization (NGO) Human Rights Watch issued a press release stating credibly that Rwandan military officials are arming and supporting the mutiny of Gen . Bosco Ntaganda and a (supposedly) separate one by Col. Sultani Makenga.  HRW’s conclusions are based on on-the-ground interviews. Read more »

The UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that internally displaced people (IDP) in Congo-Kinshasa numbers more than two million, as of March 31.  That is up from 1.7 million IDPs at the end of December. Most of this increase is in the two eastern provinces of North and South Kivu. The UN Stabilization Mission in Congo (MONUSCO) is stepping up efforts to protect civilians, especially in North Kivu, in the aftermath of a mutiny led by Bosco Ntaganda. Ntaganda is a Tutsi warlord whose forces had been incompletely incorporated into the regular Congolese army as part of a deal between Kinshasa and Kigali.  MONUSCO refers to “significant” displacement of civilians and refugee flows into Uganda and Rwanda. Read more »