In a country without law, the man with the Kalashnikov is a prince. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has never known law. Under Belgian colonialism, its ethnically diverse peoples were brutalized to a degree that far exceeded the imperial repression and control of any other European power. In the 43 years since independence, the people of this huge country have never had a chance, have never known a day without insurrection, have never lived without fear of robbery or murder and have never experienced government under the law. In such an acidic political stewpot, many decent men were thrown back upon their ethnic communities and took up arms to defend family and friends. Innocents without guns, who do not fit the correct ethnic profile, are hewn down like unwanted jungle.
Into this nightmare society, the first elements of a European military force, mandated by the United Nations have just arrived. The town of Bunia, in the northeast of the country, is to be given protection by a 1,500-strong multinational unit dominated by French troops. The UN has authorized them to use force to protect the local community which has been subject to horrific intercommunal massacres in recent weeks.
Welcome though this may seem to be, in truth the intervention is about as much use as applying a single Band-Aid to a body shattered by multiple fractures. The mandate of these troops is limited to the region around Bunia. No doubt they will restore some semblance of peace to this community but the rival militias know that these well-armed foreigners cannot stay there indefinitely. They have only to bide their time until the UN withdraws them and then the horrors and savagery can begin anew.
On paper, there is hope. The DRC’s neighbors — principally Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe — have agreed to pull back across their borders. However if history is any guide, they will leave behind client militias in an attempt to preserve their influence and access to the wealth of natural resources which occasioned their invasion in the first place. Central government in the DRC is pretty well just that. The center in Kinshasa is governed but over vast tracts of this large country, the government’s writ simply does not run. Even were the international community to commit the massive military resources needed to exert central authority, so anarchic has this diverse society become that the moment the troops withdrew, chaos would return as sure as the jungle to clearing.
We must of course all hope, though hope is in short supply. The terrible reality is that the DRC is appalling proof of the havoc that foreign greed and local ignorance can wreak on a society which ought in theory to have so much going for it.
