TUESDAY, JANUARY 6, 2015
Four reasons military operations against the FDLR will have limited success
It is not clear why the UN and the Congolese felt that it was necessary to get rid of the FNL bases first––the FDLR are located in the mountains overlooking the Rusizi Plain; there are ways to get to their positions without going through the FNL positions. Nonetheless, the Congolese army and its UN counterparts have been planning operations against the FDLR for several months, and we are likely to smell more gunpowder in coming days, probably after the meetings of regional heads of state, to be held in Luanda next week.
And yet, despite all this talk about military operations, here are some reasons why they are not––at least, not alone––going to produce a solution:
- The Congo is vast and the FDLR is no mood to fight: The FDLR is not like the M23 or other Congolese armed groups––it will not stand and fight, and has no sense of "homeland", at least not in the Congo. The FDLR operates over an area roughly the size of Belgium or Maryland, and covered in impenetrable forests, marshes, and ragged mountains. Attacking the group is like squeezing a balloon: the FDLR will simply run;
- The United Nations peacekeeping force is divided internally: Yes, the mission has said on many occasions it will launch operations against the FDLR. But it recently moved the HQ of its Force Intervention Brigade––the South African, Tanzanian, and Malawian troops who have a more aggressive mandate––to Beni, where a string of massacres has killed more than 200 since October. A senior MONUSCO commander recently suggested, in private, that the situation of Beni is of much greater humanitarian concern than the FDLR. In addition, regional tensions between Rwanda on one side and Tanzania and South Africa on the other have complicated matters. The Tanzanian government has been reluctant to move against the FDLR, going so far as to call them "freedom fighters," while the South African government has also dragged its feet;
- It's the Congolese population that suffers from military operations against the FDLR: A lot. The UN uncovered evidence in 2009 that the FDLR used the massacre of civilians as a means of pressure against the international community. It could do so again. In 2009, almost a million people were displaced in the space of a year during ham-fisted operations by the Congolese and Rwandan armies. To minimize the backlash, operations would have to be extremely targeted, and it isn't clear whether the UN and the Congolese army have that sort of special forces capability;
- There is no exit valve for FDLR commanders: Few are the rebellions that are defeated by military might alone. Almost all combine a carrot and stick. In this case, the only option that senior FDLR commanders have to fighting is to return to Rwanda, where they face a life of poverty and possible arrest. There is a well-oiled demobilization program for rank-and-file combatants, but only ad hoc arrangements for individual commanders.
Posted by: Nzinink <nzinink@yahoo.com>
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The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile.
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
When the white man came we had the land and they had the bibles; now they have the land and we have the bibles.
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