Conflict in Congo

CONFLICT IN CONGO

INTRODUCTION

1. Congo has a long history of exploitative leaders who have pillaged the nation's natural resources, beginning with King Leopold II of Belgium in the 1880s, continuing post-independence (1965) with Mobutu Sese Seko, and ending with democratically elected president Joseph Kabila in 2006. Congo has endured a near-constant state of war and chaos over the past 17 years. Its fate has been inextricably bound with its tiny neighbour, Rwanda, where in 1994 a Hutu extremist regime killed 800,000 Tutsis in the last genocide of the 20th century. Hundreds of thousands of women have been violently raped, many dying after the attacks, child soldiering continues, and around 2 million Congolese people are internally displaced.

2. Today, Congo continues to struggle with an explosive combination of conflicts at the local, regional and national levels. The UN mission in Congo is the world's largest peacekeeping operation, costing $1.35bn a year. With a force of 18,500 blue helmet-wearing troops in Congo, the UN has assembled the biggest peacekeeping operation in the world.

PREVIEW

3. The presentation of the topic will be done in the following parts:-

(a) Part I: Genesis and early history.

(b) Part II: Congo crisis incl Mobutu regime.

(c) Part III: First and second Congo war.

(d) Part IV: Current situation.

(e) Part V: Suggested roadmap.

PART-I : GENESIS AND EARLY HISTORY

4. Events don't unfold in a vacuum. What happens today is an

outgrowth of history. Until the latter part of the 19th century, the Europeans had not yet ventured into the Congo. The rainforest swamps and malaria, and other diseases such as sleeping sickness made it a difficult environment for European exploration and exploitation. In 1876, King Léopold II of the Belgians organized the International African Association with the cooperation of the leading African explorers and the support of several European governments for the promotion of African exploration and colonization. After Henry Morton Stanley explored the region, a journey that ended in 1878, Leopold courted the explorer and hired him to help establish Leopold's interests in the region. Léopold II had been keen to acquire a colony for Belgium even before he ascended to the throne in 1865. He was convinced that the acquisition of a colony would bestow international prestige on his relatively young and small home country and that it might provide a steady source of income. Belgium was not greatly interested in its monarch's dreams of empire-building. Ambitious and stubborn, Léopold II decided to pursue the matter on his own account.

5. Colonization of the Congo refers to the period from Henry Morton Stanley's first exploration of the Congo (1876) until its annexation as a personal possession of King Leopold II of Belgium (1885). Leopold is chiefly remembered as the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken by the King. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, an area now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Powers at the Berlin Conference agreed to set up the Free State in 1885, on the condition that the inhabitants were to be brought into the modern world and that all nations be allowed to trade freely. From the beginning, however, Leopold essentially ignored these conditions and ran the Congo brutally, by proxy through a mercenary force, for his own personal gain. He extracted a personal fortune from the Congo, initially by the collection of ivory, and after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s by forcing the native population to collect sap from rubber plants. His harsh regime was directly or indirectly responsible for the death of millions of people. The Congo became one of the most infamous international scandals of the early 20th century, and Leopold was ultimately forced to relinquish control of it to the government of Belgium.

6. European rivalry in Central Africa led to diplomatic tensions, in particular with regard to the largely unclaimed Congo river basin. In November 1884, Otto von Bismarck convened a 14-nation conference (the Berlin Conference) to find a peaceful resolution to the Congo crisis. After three months of negotiation on 5 February 1885, the Berlin Conference reached agreement. While it did not formally approve or disapprove the territorial claims of the European powers in Central Africa, it did agree on a set of rules to ensure a conflict-free partitioning of the region. Key among those were the recognition of the Congo basin as a free-trade zone, and the general acceptance of the principle that any territorial claim needed to be backed up by evidence of actual and durable occupation of that territory. In reality, Leopold II emerged triumphant from the Berlin Conference. In a series of bilateral diplomatic agreements, France was given 666,000 km² (257,000 square miles) on the north bank of the Congo river (modern Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic), Portugal 909,000 km² (351,000 square miles) to the south (part of modern Angola), and Leopold's wholly owned, single-shareholder "philanthropic" organization received the balance: 2,344,000 km² (905,000 square miles), to be constituted as the Congo Free State.

7. By 1908, public pressure and diplomatic manoeuvres led to the end of Leopold II's rule and to the annexation of the Congo as a colony of Belgium, known as the Belgian Congo. The Belgian Congo was the formal title of present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) between King Leopold II's formal relinquishment of his personal control over the state to Belgium on 15 November 1908, and Congolese independence on 30 June 1960.

8. When the Belgian government took over the administration from King Leopold II in 1908, the situation in the Congo improved in certain respects. The brutal exploitation and arbitrary use of violence, in which some of the concessionary companies had excelled, were curbed. The tragedy of 'red rubber' was put to a stop. Article 3 of the new Colonial Charter of 18 October 1908 established that: "Nobody can be forced to work on behalf of and for the profit of companies or privates". However, in reality, forced labour, in differing forms and degrees, would not disappear entirely until the very end of the colonial period.

9. Colonial