Scribd
Upload
9 views1 page

UN's New Strategy in DRC Conflict

The document provides context on the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It discusses how armed rebel groups have crossed the DRC's porous borders, igniting war. Following the Rwandan genocide in 1994, around two million Hutu refugees fled to neighboring countries including Zaire, now the DRC. These refugees included Hutu troops who used camps to attack Rwanda. This led to the First Congo War, where Rwanda and Uganda invaded Zaire in 1996 to support rebel forces and remove the refugee camps, causing the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko to crumble. The UN is now taking a new, more aggressive approach by deploying an intervention brigade to the conflict-ridden Kivu provinces.

Uploaded by

Clara Martinez Polo
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
9 views1 page

UN's New Strategy in DRC Conflict

The document provides context on the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It discusses how armed rebel groups have crossed the DRC's porous borders, igniting war. Following the Rwandan genocide in 1994, around two million Hutu refugees fled to neighboring countries including Zaire, now the DRC. These refugees included Hutu troops who used camps to attack Rwanda. This led to the First Congo War, where Rwanda and Uganda invaded Zaire in 1996 to support rebel forces and remove the refugee camps, causing the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko to crumble. The UN is now taking a new, more aggressive approach by deploying an intervention brigade to the conflict-ridden Kivu provinces.

Uploaded by

Clara Martinez Polo
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Transcript

This is the first of a two part series in which Pod Academys Paul Brister looks at the
fundamentally new approach the UN appears to be taking to the crisis in the Kivu provinces in
the East of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In it he speaks to Dr Phil
Clark, Reader in Comparative and International Politics, with reference to Africa, from The
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), to consider the causes behind the conflict;
why the UN is changing tack and deploying an aggressive intervention Brigade; and what this
brigades chances of success are.
But first Paul explains the context.
The paradoxically named Congo Free State was famously the setting for Joseph Conrads The
Heart of Darkness. The country has changed its name four times since then, but the title of
Conrads novella seems as apt a description of the DRC today as it was then.
Sat astride the equator and covered in jungle, the country receives high rainfalls and has the
highest frequency of thunderstorms in the world. Beset on all sides by countries that have
themselves been ravaged by conflict including Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and South Sudan
armed rebel groups have repeatedly strayed across its porous borders, spilling conflict into
the DRC and igniting war there.
Following the Rwandan genocide in 1994 which was perpetrated by the Hutu Interahamwe
and republican guard the Hutu regime in Rwanda was overthrown by the Tutsi rebel group,
the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Around two million Hutu refugees fled into neighbouring
countries, including Zaire, as the DRC was then known. These refugees included many Hutu
troops and militia members who had participated in the genocide, and who promptly
proceeded to militarise refugee camps, which they used as bases to make incursions into
Rwanda to bring down the new RPF-dominated government.
This led to the First Congo War. By 1996, the RPFs patience had run out. Allied with Uganda,
Rwanda launched an invasion of Zaire in support of their favoured proxy force, the AFDL
[Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo] led by Laurent-Dsir Kabila. The
border refugee camps were rapidly flushed out and the fleeing Hutu militants pursued
westwards. The regime of longstanding dictator Mobutu Sese Seko crumbled and Kinshasa
was taken. In May 1997 Kabila pronounced himself president of the retitled Democratic
Republic of Congo.

You might also like