On October 25th in the Economist, there was a second article that I wanted to talk about that week and figured I would discuss in this weeks post. This article discussed the growing internal tensions within the Congo. The Tutsi minority in the country has broken the cease fire and heavy fighting has broken out in the eastern regions of the Congo. The current president of the Congo has said that he does not plan to negotiate with the rebels in his country, rather he claims that he is going to crush them.
“Mr Kabila [The Congolese President], who has refused to negotiate directly with Mr Nkunda [The Rebellion Leader], now seems bent on crushing the rebellion by force by the end of the year. “Have we ruled out now the possibility of a negotiated solution? I don’t know what a negotiated solution is,” says the president.”
The issue here is that the Congo, in 1998-2003, just got out of a bloody war where 4-million Congolese people died. “But with wounds still raw from Congo’s war that lasted from 1998 to 2003, … not everyone favors a military option.” the Bush administration has tried to get involved to calm the situation in the Congo, yet they have made it clear that they do not wish to host a president who could potential become responsible for the deaths of thousands in the near future. Yet, the United States still seems to be making a push to befriend the Congo, for a long time the Congo has been reluctant to work with the United States due to our alliance with Rwanda, one of the Congo’s enemies.
In the end what is needed in this region is stability. It has only been 12 years since the Rwandan Genocide and yet we still see is that the tensions that spawned 1994 are still present and without close monitoring we could see that region fall back into a violent situation. There needs to be continued support and continued efforts to make compromises and find common ground in the region, otherwise no matter how many cease fires are made, we will inevitably fall back into violence.
