Coltan Blood and Tears: The Missing Link in Congo`s Peace
blurb:isstoday:111108drc
11 November 2008: Coltan Blood and Tears: The Missing Link in Congo’s Peace
Picture the scene: a well coordinated diplomatic gathering of Heads of State of the Great Lakes region, together with a barrage of their respective delegations shuttling from all corners that define regional and international power politics, conducting their business in one of the region’s most affluent leisure country homes, The Windsor, in Nairobi. At the same time and in the same geopolitical space - not very far from this diplomatic venue - on the 7th of November 2008, thousands of frightened civilians flee skirmishes near a refugee protection zone in Eastern Congo. This comes as renewed clashes between rebels and government troops add urgency to a positive outcome of peace talks about the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) conflict. Meanwhile, on the other end of the continuum, the one key player absent from the diplomatic discussions -‘General’ Laurent Nkunda - scoffed at the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) -United Nations summit held in Nairobi. To cite his exact words, the Nairobi Process “Is only a regional summit, it doesn’t have any impact on our demands”.
In a conflict and region where peace agreements and ceasefires are notorious for being short-lived, it is apparent that there is a missing link in the negotiation processes and agreements that follow these negotiations. Congo’s lack of peace has been defined by two dominant variables that unfortunately have not been properly weighed and matched in conflict management exercises. The first variable is the most apparent bone of contention in the DRC namely the equitable and political distribution of vast natural resources in the country.
Secondly is the variable of regional politicisation of civic activities. Unfortunately, all peace attempts have emphasized the latter: from the negotiation stages to the peacekeeping mandate architecture of MONUC (The United Nations Mission in Congo).
The politics of natural resource management in the DRC has indeed been a missing link in the diplomacy of conflict management in the country. This may explain the often intermittent reconstitution of the different ethnic control politics and militarization, essentially as pertains to the governance of North and South Kivu. The two provinces are a buffer zone between the DRC and Rwanda and elements of both governments have an interest in continued instability there. Partly as a result of this, and partly for local reasons, the two provinces are populated with opposing ethnic militias that fight intermittently, with or without the assistance of the Congolese and Rwandan armed forces. The recent skirmishes between the Mai-Mai and Nkunda’s loyalists are perhaps the most visible of this resource-fuelled contestation in some the resource-richest parts of the DRC.
It should be noted that the different inchoate and incomplete peace processes that do little for environmental conflict management have actually had a negative centrifugal effect. It seems that these agreements - as is apparent with the current short-lived Goma peace agreement of January 2008 - legitimize positions taken by different recognized official players in the Congo conflict. As a result, a non-recognized player is put on the other end of the conflict continuum and his interests are not catered for.
The absence of Nkunda, who purports to be fighting for the freedom of his Tutsi clansmen, in the Nairobi Peace Process or in any pre-shuttle diplomacy exercises, is yet another diplomatic blunder that does not address the real issues. Nkunda’s military excursions, it should be noted, have been conducted in the Coltan-rich North Kivu area. Given the large geographical terrain of the DRC and the fact that this area is far from the DRC capital Kinshasa, government presence here has been weak. The question therefore is how does the international community deal with these areas that have alternative authorities of control and secondly how to clothe peace processes with effective natural resource management mechanisms that provide equitable resource-dividends to all internal players in the conflict? The peace processes and exercises in the DRC should be well matched to inculcate equitable sharing of resources pegged additionally within a rights based diplomatic process. As such, resource dividends should be determined by a process where rightful actors in the conflict are provided legitimacy to the resources and governance thereof by their adherence to the cause of human security and human rights determination of their cause. This means that environmental conflict management in Congo’s peace should work within diplomacy of human rights whereby genuine underlying issues of the conflict in the Congo are critically addressed.
The second variable of the regional ethnicisation of Congo politics can be effectively handled by existing processes namely the ICGLR process and the currently mandated diplomatic efforts of former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa and former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo as African Union and UN plenipotentiaries for the Great Lakes conflict negotiations. Therefore the politics of Coltan and related minerals in the Congo should constitute the genuine ingredients of peace processes for the DRC and not the procedural conference diplomacy exercises that do not recognise the urgency of the situation and the finesse required of a consolidated negotiation and mediation process.
Philip Arthur Njuguna Mwanika, Researcher, Environmental Security Programme, ISS Nairobi
