The fighting has led to deaths and internal displacement as citizens flee the violence. Under Kenya’s leadership, the East African Community (EAC) has taken bold steps to resolve the crisis in eastern DRC.
The bloc’s diplomatic and military engagement comes after the DRC joined the EAC in March, becoming its seventh member state. Already there are boots on the ground as Kenya has already sent close to 900 soldiers into the country. The decades-long conflict now comprises over 100 active armed groups. Its roots lie in the massive refugee crisis caused by Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, which saw people and armed genocidaires moving into the region.
As rebel groups flourished in the absence of a strong Congolese army and government, neighbouring Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi pursued their enemies and their economic interests in the restive region, taking advantage of its enormous natural resources. On June 20, 2022 former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta, who is now Kenya’s peace envoy, convened a peace conference of EAC leaders. They undertook to deploy a regional force to the eastern DRC to help combat the armed groups. Under Kenyatta’s guidance, Kenya is leading the diplomatic and military efforts. A senior research consultant with the Institute of Security Studies based in Pretoria, Professor Koffi Sawyer, recently gave an in-depth analysis of the EAC mission which is aimed at bringing the illusive peace and stability in the DRC.
Sawyer states that as this is the first time the EAC will be sending troops to a member state, the mission will be a serious litmus test of the bloc’s ability to handle complex political and security challenges. The regional force (comprising contingents from Burundi, Kenya, Uganda and South Sudan) will help the DRC’s armed forces ‘contain, defeat and eradicate “negative forces”’ in the east. The EAC force has a six-month renewable mandate subject to bi-monthly strategic reviews. This decision was spurred by rising political and security tensions in the eastern DRC. Armed groups multiplied, with a notable resurgence of M23, allegedly with support from Rwanda and, to a lesser extent, Uganda.
In his analysis Sawyer, who has observed the political situation in the region for many years, postulates that the EAC peace process puts the bloc’s conflict resolution capacity in the spotlight and that its success will depend on resolving intractable political, security and economic challenges in eastern DRC, which probably won’t happen soon. He rightly points out that there are some advantages for the EAC in this mission. Unlike the various initiatives led by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) since 1998 in the DRC, Sawyer says the EAC intervention falls squarely within the political scope of subsidiarity and this principle prioritises regional bodies’ role in resolving crises in their jurisdiction.
From his reasoning, one can safely argue that the EAC force’s robust and offensive mandate means it can engage armed groups as all countries bordering eastern DRC (Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi) are EAC members. So in this case, solutions involving all four states should have a greater chance of success, considering how intertwined their political, economic and security interests have become over the years. This is in addition to the fact that East African leaders have a better understanding of the crisis and with the necessary political will, they would know which forms of leverage work best and could call out recalcitrant counterparts who frustrate the process.
Furthermore Sawyer says that the combination of military and diplomatic action is another positive feature of the EAC initiative. He strongly believes that political dialogue and consensus are vital and this can further be supported by the Luanda Process, which was started in July 2022. The Luanda Process was facilitated by Angola, with the aim to mediate between DRC and Rwanda. So in this case, the military component of the EAC process complements existing efforts to stabilise the region and build an effective and professional DRC army that can secure its borders. Sawyer states that with a force’s robust and offensive mandate, this means EAC is ready to engage the armed groups in the eastern DRC and this presents an opportunity to tackle the limitations of the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) and the Force Intervention Brigade forces that it absorbed.
He, however, warns that the EAC force must learn from the experiences of similar deployments, including the AU Mission in Somalia, SADC Mission in Mozambique and the G5 Sahel and Multinational Joint Task Force against Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin. These lessons include the need for strategic coordination, local partners, support for peace building and securing the necessary resources. Sawyer is right in this case because in an area as complex as eastern DRC, the challenges facing the EAC might yet outweigh the advantages. These include securing the financial, technical and human resources for a robust political process that reaches into the root causes of the crisis.
This in many aspects is the DRC’s profound governance and institutional problems. Another test, which he highlights, will be on how to address countries’ security concerns while tackling thorny issues of ethnicity, access to land, justice and equity in eastern DRC. Grassroots engagements would need to complement international mediation and peace building. The most difficult task will probably be building trust and confidence between countries. Relations between the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda are poor with the DRC accusing its two neighbours of supporting M23. Sawyer says full-scale and lengthy diplomatic efforts will be needed to reverse this.
Sawyer’s assertions on trust issues are spot on as current tensions between Rwanda and the DRC, which lead to the expulsion of Rwanda’s ambassador to the DRC, are unhelpful and failure to resolve the conflict could ignite a new crisis. This therefore calls for a sustainable solution that must involve Rwanda, which has been excluded from the EAC regional force. Worthy to note is that Rwanda remains sensitive to the presence of other regional rivals such as Burundi and Uganda in an area it considers vital to its security. Complicating matters is that the DRC government allowed Uganda to deploy troops to eastern DRC but not Rwanda.
Last but not least, it is important, as Sawyer advises, that the EAC regional force must define its scope of engagement, clarify different contingents’ roles, lay out command and control structures, establish oversight measures and coordinate with MONUSCO and the Force Intervention Brigade. For the EAC process to succeed, it must be coordinated with other regional and international initiatives that the DRC is a part of. This can happen under the DRC and Great Lakes Region peace and security framework currently chaired by DRC President Félix Tshisekedi. These diplomatic steps are vital. Without them, the EAC’s engagement risks adding to an already over-militarised eastern DRC without helping to restore peace and stability.
