The Fallout of Rwanda's Genocide Still Burns

Last night I plugged some good news in Africa; tonight, it seems more appropriate instead to point out one of its worst conflicts, which is threatening to spiral even further out of control, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. There, the fallout from Rwanda's 1994 genocide continues to grow:

Peacekeepers attacked rebels in eastern Congo with helicopter gunships Monday while crowds of protesters threw rocks outside four U.N. compounds, venting outrage at what they claimed was a failure to protect them from advancing rebel forces.

U.N. spokeswoman Sylvie van den Wildenberg said the peacekeepers fired Monday at rebel forces surging on Kibumba, about 28 miles north of the provincial capital of Goma.

In December, U.N. officials also used helicopters to repel the rebels, killing hundreds under their mandate to protect civilians in the vast Central African country that has been ravaged by years of dictatorship and civil war.

Rebel leader Gen. Laurent Nkunda has threatened to take Goma in defiance of calls from the U.N. Security Council for him to respect a U.N.-brokered January cease-fire.

The conflict has been ebbing and flowing since 1994, when Rwandan rebels took the country from the genocidaires and drove many of them across the border with the Congo.(For more background, see this International Crisis Group report, as well as this story and the related links from Reuters.)

A UN peacekeeping force of 17,000, the largest in the world, has been struggling to protect a population of 1 million displaced persons in the area, as a rebel force has taken a number of villages from the poorly armed and poorly trained Congo army.

The head of the UN force resigned after the protests turned violent (although the exact reason for the resignation doesn't seem to be clear). A quarter million people have been displaced by the fighting in just the last six weeks.

The last thing the world needs right now is another crisis, but if the situation isn't addressed quickly, there is a real risk that the conflict could spread much further and become even more devastating; 8 million people live in the area the UN troops are struggling to protect. Unfortunately, there aren't many options for the existing force, or many resources available from which to draw reinforcements.

I wish I had a suggestion for what could be done, but I don't. Is this an example of a problem that just doesn't have a solution right now? Or can some combination of clever diplomacy and a (very politically risky) commitment of new resources turn this increasingly horrifying tide?

For ongoing updates, see the amazing work being done by Michael Kavanagh with World Focus, who is trapped in one of the UN outposts himself.

Update: Anthony Gambino, with the Council on Foreign Relations, has also just published a very detailed and timely report on the Congo. It's a hefty 80 pages, but well worth a read for those who want to get a handle on this tragedy.