North Kivu: how to end a war, David Mugnier

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 06:28:57 +0000

The disarmament deal signed by the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda on 9 November 2007 is a landmark step in the peace process between both countries. But to finally cool tensions in Africa's turbulent Great Lakes region, all parties are going to have to now tackle the collapsing eastern Congolese province of North Kivu.

Even in the context of the incredible scope of the conflict in central Africa, the North Kivu situation seems intractable. Its immediate origins lie in Rwanda's invasion of its larger neighbour in 1996 as part of the effort to hunt down some of the perpetrators of the genocide in Rwanda two years earlier. This campaign against the Hutu interahamwe militias sparked what came to be known as the "first Congo war". Rwandan troops then repeated their move into Congo in 1998 - igniting the "second Congo war", in which nine other African countries joined the fray. In the next five years an estimated 3.8 million lives were lost either because of the fighting itself or through hunger and disease; and even after a peace deal was finally signed in 2003, the aftershocks of war were bound to continue to affect the region.

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North Kivu: how to end a war, David Mugnier