Situation Report: The United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC): Experiences and Lessons, Amb William Lacy Swing

Five years ago, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was engulfed in what some called “Africa’s First World War”. Six foreign armies and numerous Congolese militias ravaged a country the size of Western Europe. In the globe’s most deadly conflict since the Second World War, nearly 4 million people died, 800,000 refugees were scattered over the nine neighboring countries, and some 3 million Congolese were internally displaced. State services collapsed and, in an ironic, cruel twist of history, the Congo – one of Africa’s potentially richest countries – became one of the world’s poorest. The Congo’s wars illustrated the post-Cold War reality: that most conflicts today are intra-state rather than inter-state – that is to say, they are conflicts in which internal factions fight for control of government, resources or territory, with or without external support. These conflicts usually occur in a “failed” or largely dysfunctional state.

Today, the sad heritage of this “silent war”, and the preceding years of chronic instability and corruption, is still everywhere to be seen: an estimated 1,200 Congolese continue to die every day as a consequence of poverty, disease, hunger and violence, including shocking levels of gender-based physical abuse.