CAN CONGO BE SAVED FROM ITSELF?

Panel 3 of a Triptych for Peacehawks, by Jamie Arbuckle

Introduction

On 6 November, the Army of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with support from UN, Tanzanian and South African forces, defeated the rebel group M23. On 5 December, Nelson Mandela died.  In one month, then, we have been confronted with the worst and the best of sub-Saharan Africa.  Which is the true picture? Which represents the future of Africa? Are conflicts to be peacefully resolved, which we might call the Nelson Mandela Future Model, or are conflicts to be endlessly and brutally protracted, which we might call the Central African Future Model?  Is there hope, or do we face merely a grim preparation for more of the same, in Africa south of the Sahara?  

Is the Congo still at the heart of darkness, or is it the birthplace of the first great international human rights movement of the 20^th Century?[1] 

It does not simplify our understanding of the situation there that it is in fact both.

To address these questions, we need to assess several tributary influences:

1.     The colonial legacy, which was one of cruelty, disregard and dysfunction.

2.     We will review briefly the state of the game board in DRC.

3.     We will survey progress in human development in Africa as a region, with a view to gaining a better sense of what progress in DRC might mean – or might not.

Light Candles or Curse the Darkness: East Timor Turns the Century

“Militaries that are doing something bad sometimes go into their shell. It’s them against the world.”


- Admiral Dennis Blair, CinC U.S. Pacific Command, on the Indonesian Armed Forces, in 1999.


“ … cutting off contact with Indonesian officers only makes the problem worse”


- Paul Wolfowitz


“Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”


- Confucius

- a book report by Jamie Arbuckle for Peacehawks:

If You Leave us Here, We Will Die – How Genocide was Stopped in East Timor, by Geoffrey Robinson, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2010, 317 pages, $35


INTRODUCTION

This book tells of the terrible and the wonderful events in East Timor, centred on but not limited to the years 1999- 2000, and of the candles that were lit then. For us the messages in this book are three, and they bear directly on our central belief that peace must be maintained at least as robustly as it is violated. These three messages concern:

1. The uses of humanitarian intervention, and the military role in such interventions;

2. The issue of consent, especially that of the Security Council, of the major powers and of the “host” government, to an intervention;

3. The relationship of peace to justice – can there be one without the other?



Geoffrey Robinson is that most valuable combination of practitioner and academic, and his book is given dramatic thrust by the fact that he was an eye-witness to much of the action of that critical year, as he was at that time a political affairs officer with the UN mission in East Timor. Reading between his lines with your accustomed skill, you will infer as did we that he and his colleagues were brave to a degree way beyond his spare descriptions of the hazards they faced. He is in “real life” a professor of history at UCLA, and he was six years with the headquarters of Amnesty International in London. He is thus well able to zoom in for the detail, and then back seamlessly out to the wider time-frame and perspective. He is a superb writer, and this book is both an invaluable reference, and a cracking good read.