Why is Secretary of State Clinton visiting the Democratic Republic of the Congo?
Secretary of the State Clinton is visiting the Democratic Republic of the Congo because it is one of the most important countries in Africa. It is a country of great promise, but also of great peril. Great promise because of its enormous natural wealth, and it has the potential to be an economic hub for the entire continent. Great peril because it is the site of one of the deadliest wars since World War II. According to the International Rescue Committee, nearly 5.4 million people have dead as the result of violence primarily in eastern Congo since 1998. Secretary Clinton is especially seized with the crisis of sexual violence in Eastern Congo where rape has been used as a weapon of war by a number of armed groups, and she plans to address this when she visits the eastern Congolese of Goma.
What is the United States’ strategy to help end the crisis in eastern Congo?
The United States’ strategy to end of the crisis in eastern Congo is essentially one of conflict management. The United States is major contributor to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in eastern Congo, which is the world’s largest. Nearly 17,000 troops working to protect civilians in eastern Congo are in very difficult circumstances. The United States also contributes to a large humanitarian operation in eastern Congo that provides life-saving assistance to over 1.4 million people who have been displaced by this conflict. But the U.S. and its allies are really just nibbling at the edges of what is needed –a holistic, comprehensive approach to end this conflict once and for all.
What should the U.S. be doing to end the conflict once and for all?
There are four main elements to a comprehensive approach to ending the conflict in eastern Congo. The first is army reform. The Congolese Army is one of the most abusive, corrupt armies in the world, the U.S. needs to work with other donors to leverage support to a decades-long plan to reform the Congolese Army.
The second element is a comprehensive counterinsurgency approach to removing two of the deadliest militias in eastern Congo. The first is the FDLR, a Rwandan militia that contains some of the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The second is the Lord’s Resistance Army, a Ugandan militia that is now based in northeastern Congo and has target civilians with impunity for over 20 years.
Third is a strategy to end the trade in conflict minerals. Armed groups that are committing atrocities against citizens in eastern Congo make upwards of $180 million through the illegal trade of minerals that are used in everyday electronic products. The U.S. should get behind a comprehensive international strategy to end this trade.
Finally, Secretary Clinton needs to make a strong stand against impunity in eastern Congo. There is no accountability for criminals in eastern Congo, where war crimes and crimes against humanity are committed every day. The U.S. needs to two things to support and end to impunity. First, it needs support reform in the Congolese justice sector so that the Congolese government itself can prosecute war criminals itself within its borders. Secondly, the United States needs to do much more for prosecution of the worst criminals. The International Criminal Court has an active investigation in eastern Congo, and the State Department and others can do much more to express support for this investigation.