By Koen Vlassenroot and Christoph Vogel – Published On 26th Octobre 2024
How the world keeps failing eastern DRC
On August 10, at least 18 were killed near the city of Beni, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) near the border with Uganda. Two months earlier, on June 7, a massacre had left 80 dead, and another one on June 13 had killed 40 people. Such attacks have become all too common in recent years.
The intense violence in this part of eastern DRC has been generally attributed to the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan-origin rebel group that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2019. As with previous massacres, none of the nearby military forces – including the Congolese army, invited Ugandan military or UN peacekeeping troops – intervened to stop the killing.
UN peacekeepers patrol areas affected by attacks by M23 rebels near Rangira in North Kivu in the east of DRC on March 29, 2022 [File: Reuters/Djaffar Sabiti]
This inaction reflects a broader politics of agony that has turned eastern DRC into a graveyard for thousands of civilians. At its roots is the failure of the mantra of good intentions professed by a divided and distracted “international community”. So, where did it all go wrong?