Emmanuel de Mérode shot: an emerging saga at Virunga

Emmanuel de Mérode, head warden of the Virunga National Park  in North Kivu, DRC was shot and wounded this week while driving alone from Goma to park headquarters at Rumangabo.

de Mérode's jeep with bullet holes in windscreen

This is one of the most dangerous areas in DRC. Congolese armed forces with international support are gradually regaining control of the area but armed rebel groups and militias are still present. Some carry out illegal exploitation of natural resources.

The attack is not surprising. More than 130 park rangers have been killed in Virunga since 1996.

Loved by his staff and well-respected by conservationists, the Belgian warden also made powerful enemies. Poachers are shot and charcoal makers who are illegally active in the park are systematically routed out.

MONUCSO boss Martin Kobler and Belgian ambassador to DRC Michel Lastschenko travelled to Goma to be with de Mérode, proving the high-profile nature of the attack.

The attack on de Mérode, qualified as a seemingly ‘targeted ambush’ by the Belgian ambassador in a confidential cable, may have something to do with his longstanding battle against British oil company SOCO.  SOCO has been given oil exploration rights in the park. This contravenes DRC’s commitments to conservation and is in flagrant violation with UNESCO which has listed the Virunga park as a National Heritage Site. It also reveals the fragmented nature of Congolese power systems. The Ministry of the Environment is a featherweight compared to the far more powerful Ministry of Oil.

Head warden de Mérode deposited a legal complaint against SOCO at the Goma public prosecutor’s office the morning of the ambush. One of the items in the complaint relates to bullying of local populations by SOCO sub-contractors. A similar complaint is about to be lodged in London with the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).

SOCO is suspected of being behind the attack – a suspicion that they reject. Belgian MP François-Xavier de Donnea qualified the coincidence as ‘extremely worrisome’ as reported in La Libre Belgique.

SOCO is an international oil and gas exploration and production company, headquartered in London, traded on the London Stock Exchange and a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. The Company also has interests in Vietnam, the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville) and Angola.

 Billionaire son of Warren Buffet, Howard G. Buffett is the Executive Producer of a film about park rangers in Virunga to be previewed at the Tribeca Film Festival today. Buffet has been involved in infrastructure development and peace-building initiatives in and around the park in recent years.

Nature conservation is dangerous business in DRC. This is just one of many violent incidents. The presence of armed groups is an ongoing conservation and human tragedy. The deadly Lord’s Resistance Army has been active in Garamba (where de Mérode did his PhD fieldwork in the mid-1990s), as was the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army. Virunga has been threatened by multiple armed forces such as the M23 rebel group, the Hutu Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda and other Mayi Mayi militia. At the Epulu Reserve, militia chief Morgan and his men stormed the main station with AK47 assault rifles killing seven people and all but one of the 16 okapis in June 2012.

These events testify to the legacy of armed conflict in the Congo that continues to haunt people and wildlife. Even when armed conflict ends, negative impacts persist.

Emmanuel, get well soon. The Virunga staff needs you, the gorillas need you, conservation needs you. All the best and bon courage.

Coltan, Goma & my mobile

Here is a link to a BBC article I published today about why Goma matters.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20415534

Photos from a visit there in September 2012.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20415534

ICG on MONUSCO & Powerlessness

Louise Arbour, President and CEO of the International Crisis Group published an open letter to the United Nations Security Council, calling for more creative thinking in its approach to insecurity in eastern Congo.

The letter merits a careful read. Congo experts won’t learn much from it, but it reinforces the view that a realistic diagnosis of the situation is a step towards solutions. Some interesting passages are indicated below:

… the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Congo (MONUSCO) is failing in its core mandate of stabilisation and protection of civilians.

The stabilisation strategy underpinned by MONUSCO was centred too heavily on an expectation that the 2008-2009 rapprochement between DRC and Rwanda was enough to contain the conflict in the Kivus. The bilateral agreement was based on President Kabila's willingness to integrate Rwanda's proxy CNDP forces into the army, but the strategy was short-sighted as it made no provisions for addressing the underlying causes of conflict beyond Rwanda's security objectives.

The current mutiny underway in the Kivus is perhaps the clearest evidence to date of how little progress has been made in stabilisation.

The 2008 and 2012 crises appear remarkably similar, including their ethnic dimension, reported support from Rwanda and the negative impact on civilians, including displacement and potential for increasing ethnic tensions at the community level. These crises are symptoms of unresolved regional and local conflicts over access to land and resources, as well as a failure to achieve structural reform within the security sector, poor governance and non-existent rule of law, and the inability to address the sources of financing for armed groups, end impunity and extend state authority, including through decentralisation.

Without a new approach and re-engagement by the Security Council, MONUSCO risks becoming a $1.5 billion empty shell.

MONUSCO has lost credibility on several fronts and urgently needs to reorient its efforts.

Durable protection of civilians will only come through an enhanced political process and the establishment of accountable state institutions.

… MONUSCO technical and logistical support to deeply flawed elections in 2011 and the inability to successfully promote dialogue between the parties has altered perceptions about the mission's impartiality… If not corrected, international involvement in the DRC, including through MONUSCO, risks entrenching an unaccountable government and undermining its own eventual rule of law and peacebuilding efforts.

The Security Council should undertake a review of MONUSCO's strategy and improve performance.

Clearly there is a need to address both local drivers of conflict between communities and the interplay with regional dynamics, including relations with Rwanda, whether through renewed political dialogue or a national accountability and reconciliation process, or both.

To bolster the government's accountability, the holding of credible provincial and local elections, including in the east, is essential. The mistakes of 2011 should not be repeated and clear standards on the organisation and holding of elections should be communicated to the government by the Security Council and MONUSCO, in particular serious reform of the Commission électorale nationale indépendante (CENI) and improved transparency in the logistics and supply procedures of the elections.

The Security Council should send a signal to the Congolese government and its partners that it is time for a new strategic dialogue. A business-as-usual rollover of MONUSCO's mandate will send the wrong message to all parties.

Soldiers mutiny in Ituri

Paid soldiers are happy soldiers. Unpaid soldiers can wreak havoc. Joseph Kabila would be wise to not forget this golden rule of political survival.

Radio Okapi and other media have reported a mutiny of two battalions – approximately 2,000 soldiers in Marabo (40 kilometers from Bunia ) in the north east Ituri territory. The mutiny is yet another blow to the Kabila’s fragile authority.

Salary problems started the movement. Last year a census was taken to establish the number of men in uniform compared to the ghost soldiers whose salaries were used to reinforce their pay. Once the ghost soldiers were removed from the payroll, real soldiers saw a cut in their pay.

A letter was sent to President Kabila complaining of the inhuman conditions soldiers are forced to brook and SMS messages were sent to the heads of the regional military authorities to reiterate their dissatisfaction. Their complaints read more like an NGO diatribe than a military declaration.

Major Faustin Balizana, adjunct commander of the 42nd battalion and spokesman for the rebellious troops, said soldiers continue to be poorly paid and are taken advantage of from the military upper echelons. He made explicit reference to the existence of mafia-style networks of corruption and theft of money that should go to foot soldiers.

Prior to the mutiny, approximately 30 well-armed soldiers deserted. Some headed back to their base but others are still on the loose in the vicinity of the Lubero forest.

200,000 national army troops and the majority of MONUSCO blue helmets are deployed in the east. They have not succeeded in bringing local militias, FDLR, FNL and the Lords Resistance Army under control. The political economy of plunder and blood minerals earnings are strong incentives to continue sabotaging the security landscape.

Election snags in Congo

Pastor Ngoy Mulanda, president of the National Independant Electoral Commission - CENI, has systematically confirmed that elections will take place as scheduled on 28 November. But with less than three months to go, ballot boxes, voting booths and other equipment are unavailable. The material has not been delivered by Chinese, South African, German and Lebanese suppliers who have received 70% of their purchase fees. MONUSCO has committed to dispatching voting equipment within the country - but has refused to import it from abroad.

Ngoy has recalculated the budget. The new one is now $1.2 billion, up from $700 million. While international partners paid most of the voting costs five years ago, the brunt of the burden is on the Congolese government this time around. To generate money needed to carry out the polling, the government has proposed to sell of Gecamine state assets in what has been reported as shady deals.

There are growing concerns that the elections will consequently be delayed. While this is not a major problem for most of Congo’s international partners who are more preoccupied about fairness and transparency, delays would be severely condemned by opposition leaders. This is somewhat of a paradox because the opposition seems to timidly making progress in talks about presenting a single opposition candidate - so they could benefit from delays. Another concern about delays is that they will give the Kabila camp more time to figure out how to cheat on results reporting. This will be done by a sophisticated computer system that even the best intentioned elections monitors will be unable to control.

World Politics Review on U.N. in DRC

Congo experts will not learn much from this posting which is an email interview I did for World Politics Review. It may however introduce you to an interesting web platform on international relations.

Global Insider: The U.N. Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

By The Editors | 18 Jul 2011

In late-June, the U.N. Security Council renewed the mandate of the peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), despite calls by DRC leaders for its withdrawal and fierce criticism of the mission's failure to halt the country's rape crisis. In an email interview, Theodore Trefon, senior researcher at the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Belgium and author of the forthcoming book "Congo Masquerade," discussed the U.N.'s peacekeeping mission in the DRC.

WPR: What are the main challenges facing the U.N. in the DRC?

Theodore Trefon: Powerlessness is the word that best captures the challenges facing the U.N. in this Western Europe-sized country of 70 million people. Congo is a fragile state with overwhelming macroeconomic, security and governance troubles. The territory is fragmented, with no real central government. Those in power lack political expertise and tend to be driven more by personal gain than the common good.

After decades of dictatorship, state collapse and war, both the state and society need to be rebuilt. Public health, education, infrastructure, security, the economy and establishing trust between government and people are all priorities. But the U.N. has neither the financial means nor the conceptual or operational capacity to deal with these fundamentals in a coherent way.

There is no master plan to piece the country back together. The reconstruction agenda is a series of isolated actions by partners with diverging perceptions and objectives. This is exacerbated by the fact that Congolese authorities see their sovereignty undermined by the U.N., and so have not accepted the relevance of the imported state-building agendas.

WPR: What successes has the U.N. Mission in the DRC achieved?

Trefon: It makes more sense to start with failures. The U.N. Mission in the DRC (MONUC), as it was originally called, is powerless to protect civilian lives. It has been accused of sexual abuse of children, gold and diamond smuggling, arms trading and running away from rebels. It has formal links with the national army, which is the major perpetrator of human rights abuses.

Nonetheless, the mission can claim some tenuous achievements. It participated in peace building and the transition toward democratic rule by overseeing the Lusaka Agreement and the Sun City national dialogue. It provided logistical support for the 2006 elections and helps coordinate humanitarian aid while monitoring human rights abuses. MONUC has monitored cease-fires between foreign and Congolese forces, brokered local truces between rival groups in the Kivu provinces and disarmed and repatriated thousands of foreign combatants.

The mission's aviation sector plays a major role in reuniting the country through the transportation of goods -- electoral kits for example -- and people. Its Radio Okapi is one of the best sources of nonpartisan information.

WPR: How have the mission's objectives changed over the course of the mission, and what impact will the recent one-year extension have?

Trefon: There has been a shift from a military approach toward a political one. The mission's military strategy was justified in the early years because of the illegal exploitation of natural resources, institutional weaknesses, ethnic rivalries, land disputes, the perpetration of human rights violations and the presence of heavily armed rebel groups.

The world's largest U.N. mission had 20,573 uniformed personnel in early 2010. But 2,000 troops withdrew in July 2010, and the operation was rebaptized the U.N. Organization Stabilization Mission in in the DRC (MONUSCO). "Stabilization" implies development work and political support, along with the ongoing priority of preparing for this year's presidential and legislative elections.

Withdrawal will not be easy. By staying, MONUSCO continues to artificially replace the state, perpetuating dependency. When it leaves, a security vacuum could result with the likelihood of renewed armed conflict.