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Looking Back at Rwanda and Ahead at Burundi: Regional Links and the Current United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Lara Romaniuk

Index

Introduction

That Africa is undergoing its "first world war" has become a favourite catch phrase in the West to describe the present situation in Central Africa. The phrase accurately characterises the international nature of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo - where the troops of at least six states have been embroiled in war since 1998. The phrase also evokes the regional approach to peacekeeping advocated by the various United Nations (UN) organs, including the UN Security Council. The approach of the current UN Secretary General to the hostilities in region reflects his predecessor's view that "instability in any State in the area could have a dramatic effect on all its neighbours; destabilising influences should be prevented through co-operative efforts." The assumption that establishing peace in the Congo will have stabilising effects throughout the region is the impetus behind the present UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC), launched in November 1999.

However, recent advancements in the UN mandate to implement the 1999 Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement might be at the expense of peace in neighbouring countries - particularly, at this stage, in Burundi and the United Republic of Tanzania. The scenario of the spreading or transposing of conflict is hardly an unknown phenomenon in the region: the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), though complex in its causes, is in part a spill over from the Rwandan civil war. Recalling there were two UN missions in Rwanda between 1993 and 1996 - the UN Observer Mission Uganda-Rwanda (UNOMUR) and the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) - the cynic might conclude that the UN "regional approach" in Central Africa consists of setting up camp in one country, only to pack up and resettle in a neighbouring one. The cynic might be right: the "regional" approach adopted by the UN is in many ways a fragmentary rather than an integrated, one.

The current UN mission in the DRC, like the recent missions in Rwanda, appears to be fragmentary rather than integrated in two, overlapping senses: first, the peace initiative is conducted largely on a case by case - or country by country - basis; and, in the second sense that, the mission's mandate is too narrowly formulated in response to events rather than in anticipation of them - consequently, few preventative regional measures are set forth.

The present analysis will review MONUC's mandate within this broadened definition of a regional approach to peacekeeping. It will argue, first, that the partial regional view adopted during its recent mission in Rwanda led to an explosive situation in neighbouring Zaire/DRC, where UN forces are currently mobilised; second, that similar lacunae characterise MONUC's regional approach, and are exacerbating tensions in neighbouring Burundi and elsewhere in the region. In sum, UN peace missions in Central Africa do have regional effects - though not exclusively the intended, stabilising, ones.

The effects of the UN Missions in Rwanda on the DRC

The UN mission in the DRC is informed by a number of geopolitical factors. The DRC, an extensive country of 2,345,410 km² and 51 million people in the heart of Africa, is surrounded by ten countries - counting Tanzania across Lake Tanganyika. Each of the DRC's neighbouring countries is either experiencing violence or is vulnerable to instability. The porous nature of state-borders heightens the potential effects of economic, political and ethnic upheaval.

Although this heightened regional inter-susceptibility greatly challenges attempts to anticipate, let alone keep up with, events in the region, this very factor demands that a regional outlook be adopted when planning any strategy in the DRC. In fact, the UN Security Council is largely acting on the assumption that the civil war in the DRC could have dire effects on neighbouring countries. This is in large part why the UN recognised the need to implement the 1999 Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement following Uganda and Rwanda's 1998 military intervention in the DRC. However, UN strategy should give forethought not only to how events in the DRC might affect neighbouring countries, and vice versa - but how UN mandates might [adversely] affect neighbouring countries, and vice versa - thus giving mind beyond the immediate UN mandate.

As such, this analysis takes the position that the success of the UN mission in the DRC should be measured against the establishment of regional stability, rather than its narrower mandate, the implementation of the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement. In fact it assumes that the UN missions in Central Africa cannot be assessed in isolation from one another - that to accurately assess the present UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC) one needs to place it in the context of, on the one hand, the recently completed UN missions in Rwanda and, on the other hand, the UN response to the developing crisis in Burundi.

Fortsetzung: Looking Back at Rwanda and Ahead at Burundi: Regional Links and the Current United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo