The UN Peacekeeping Ops in Congo: What Needs To Be Said

On my last night in the DRC, I went to a BBQ at the housing compound of a group of UN officers. A good number of troops were there, along with some NGO workers stationed in the DRC for time periods ranging from months to years. It was a fascinating group of people to be around. The UN-funded house itself had that simple/slick/spacious/clean/modern/geometric feel to it, with ceilings so high I actually felt short for once in my life. Everything was white – the walls, the floors, the ceilings, the closets, the bed frames. One of the U.S. officers grilled steak for us – it was perfectly glorious after not having slabs of deliciously-seasoned protein like that available to me in months. Oh yeah, and the homemade mashed potatoes were straight from the land flowing with milk and honey.

While there, I talked with a guy from Sweden who serves as a civilian observer in the UN forces. Translated, “civilian observer” means the following: every morning, this guy wakes up, puts on his army garb, gets into a UN SUV tank with caged-in windows and a bullet-proof frame, drives around the bush with a pen and sheets of paper in his lap, and documents human rights violations. He couldn’t have been older than me. I can’t even imagine the things he sees every day.

I talked also with an upper-ranking British official in the UN, a blunt, loud, and outgoing guy. He was having a genuinely good time talking and joking with me and Nina, and I had a few small conversations with him throughout the night about all kinds of things. At one point, his presence there and the general question of the UN Mission came up. It was close to the end of the night, and things were winding down. He became brutally honest in his parting conversations with us. At one point, he sighed, dropped his head a bit, stared at his feet, and between a few swigs of beer, he said, “The militias…they’re out there, alright. But we can’t get ‘em.”

Things went silent in my head. Coming from him – with his position, his sway, his influence, his credibility in the Mission – that was hard to take. There, floating around that house, were some of them, representing thousands upon thousands more UN soldiers, peacekeepers and operations employees, dispatched around the country. They represented huge sums of money being poured into the nationwide Mission. They represented long-term efforts and weapons and strategy infiltrating the jungles and scanty towns. And that is what he had to say about the whole thing – the whole enterprise. I will say that there are few times in my life when I felt as hopeless as I did then.

So then, is peacekeeping, especially UN peacekeeping, in such a plagued place as the DRC pointless? Really, is it fruitless to station soldiers from all over the world in an unconscionably unstable region of the world? The UN has been active in the DRC for far too many years, and by now, people kind of roll their eyes. What’s the point? The wars haven’t ended. What gives? What, if anything, is becoming of our efforts there?

Some things need to be said here about the UN. I’ve developed these points through conversations with UN personnel, conversations with people deeply involved in the DRC and its issues, and research of my own. And in saying these things, I am not giving excuses or taking some sort of side. Like anything, the UN is imperfect and it has its fair share of problems. NGOs aren’t perfect. Small businesses aren’t perfect. Think-tanks aren’t perfect. Corporations aren’t perfect. And my goodness, human beings aren’t perfect. Neither are our ideas. But we continue to be imperfect human beings with imperfect ideas who form imperfect NGOs and imperfect small businesses and imperfect think-tanks and imperfect corporations in order to combat the imperfections of the world. We must, in all cases, before wholly losing heart in the DRC and the presence of the UN Peacekeeping Ops there, understand what exactly the UN is positioned to do, what its purpose is, and on a broader level, what peacekeeping aims to do. Armed with this knowledge, you can become aware of what you can do.

First of all, the UN never went to the DRC to directly and single-handedly wipe out the wars there. If we – a herd of uniformed outsiders – set out to do that, then yes, we would fail. In fact, if we set out to do that, we have already failed. In our intentions, we have failed. We can do our part to help create an environment where peace can take shape, but the people in the country are the ones that need to actually shape peace (The more time I spend in East Africa, the more firmly I hold this opinion.) They do this through good governance, through compliance with human rights regulations, and through recognition of the dignity of human beings. We cannot, no matter how diverse and big we are, force any of these ideas down the throat of any individual and certainly not of any nation. Which leads to the next point:

Second, the UN is a peacekeeping – not peacemaking – body. This implies that communities are already living in relative peace, e.g., innocent civilians, and the UN aims to “keep” that peace. Which leads us to the next point:

Third, the UN is a defensive, not offensive, force. It is not authorized to “wipe out” the militia groups through killing sprees and violence. It has neither the mandate nor the manpower or resources to do this. So, for example, you have a village inhabited by innocent civilians in the rural hinterlands of the DRC who are trying to live in peace. A militia group stumbles upon this community and decides to blow it to smithereens (for any one of several preposterous reasons, discussed in previous posts). This is where the UN steps in. The UN’s primary purpose is to defend civilians. Which leads us to the next point:

Fourth, the UN’s secondary purpose is to serve as a buffer between opposing parties. I know of French-speaking people in the UN whose sole responsibility it is to locate militia members, sit down with them, and try to convince them to demobilize. This “buffer” idea implies that UN personnel do not commit violence against militia groups, unless in defense of civilians. They do their best to create a buffer with the number they have, but they cannot possibly create a sufficient buffer between ginormous militia groups. Which leads us to the next point:

Fifth, the UN is not big enough, and can never possibly be big enough, to create peace in every part of the DRC. The DRC is gigantic. It is an incalculably gargantuan hunk of land. Its own government does not even know the precise size of its population, or where its population really resides, or even where its borders really are. Which leads us to the next point:

Sixth, the UN is also not big enough to create peace in a single village. Say 10 UN soldiers are dispatched into the DRC’s territory and discover a tiny village of civilians somewhere out there in the boonies, and they resolve to do everything they can to defend it. Well, “everything they can” just will never be enough to combat the entire Lord’s Resistance Army descending upon the village, outnumbering the UN clan by hundreds, killing everyone in the village, including the UN soldiers. Which leads us to the next point:

Seventh, the militia groups that roam around in the DRC have had all kinds of time (as in the last several decades) to get accustomed to the harsh terrain of their country. While harsh, they know it well, and they know how to navigate it. Not only do they know how to navigate it, they use it to their advantage. It’s conducive to hiding. They live among the volcanoes, on top of the volcanoes. No UN vehicle, no matter how robust, can reach these militias if they are on top of a volcano. The rebel groups traverse their territory on foot, and they are ludicrously good at doing it. Speaking of territory:

Eighth, The DRC is known to be the weathiest region of the world – wealth, in terms of its vast supply of natural resources. And this wealth is exploited beyond belief. The country’s natural resources actually fund the ruthless and systematic rape, torture, and slavery of DRC citizens, executed by the rebel armies. Militia groups run the entire venture. Just last night, I was having coffee with a Rwandan friend of mine, and he pointed out just how much of an ironic contradiction the situation really is: The country is so rich in resources and so beautiful, and yet the bulk of its population lives in some of the worst poverty known to man. The DRC could say goodbye to its militia groups and lift itself right out of extreme poverty if only the profits from the export of these natural resources were actually invested in its people, and not its wars.

Read closely: The militia groups aren’t financed by export solely to the rest of Africa. Today, the DRC’s multi-million dollar trade in conflict minerals is worldwide. Gold, along with what’s now known as the 3Ts – tin, tungsten, tantalum – from the DRC are used in almost every consumer electronics product – like your laptop and your cell phone. These things are bought and sold all over the world, including the Best Buy down the street from your house. The funds go directly to financing war in the DRC – to financing these rebel groups.

Fortunately, different states and cities in the U.S. have recently enacted legislation that prohibits the purchase of minerals from the DRC that fund the militia groups – this means that there’s a growing commitment (and requirement) among many electronics companies to exercise extreme vigilance when it comes to monitoring their supply chains.

The bad news: Conflict minerals fuel the war in the DRC. And by gosh, the UN cannot possibly single-handedly halt the conflict mineral trade. The good news: Every single person – yes, that would mean you – can participate in stopping the trade in conflict minerals. All it takes is a little extra vigilance on your part, and some action. If we refuse to sustain these rebel groups through our purchases, they can’t go on. There are lots of things you can do about this. Among them are:

1. Check out this website: www.enoughproject.org. Enough Project is an incredible org that takes action against genocide and crimes against humanity. They have an awesome website and blog that I could spend hours perusing. They do intensive field research in Sudan, Congo, and areas affected by the Lord’s Resistance Army; develop policies that combat the conflicts in these areas; and offer tools to think-tanks, individuals, and organizations in the fight against these conflicts and the ideologies that sustain them. They have a great blog you can follow, and tons of information about these parts of the world and how to take action. Educating ourselves, no matter where we are in the world, is the first step.

2. Visit this page, supported by Enough, which ranks companies in terms of their commitment to producing conflict-free electronics. You can write directly to any company via the site, whether to thank those electronics manufacturers that are making strides towards putting the rebel militias out of business or to tell those that have little to 0 regulation to step it up.

3. Next time you think about buying a new laptop, cell phone, or other electronic device, do the research. Don’t pay for this stuff to continue happening. If the world responds, we are way closer to watching the DRC come out of its hole. It’s amazingly possible.

4. Also via the Enough Project website, you can write to policymakers to urge them to take action on the conflict in the DRC in different ways.

5. Not only do university campuses often invest in electronics in bulk, but they are also known to be giant intellectual conduits for change. Universities just might take us over the edge. If you’re a University student, administrator, professor, or connected in to a university in any way at all, you can begin a Conflict-Free Campus initiative on your campus. You have every resource you need to do this here.