Photo: Siegfried Modola/IRIN

Fleeing fighting (file photo).

In expressing support for the signing this week of the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework agreement for the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African region, the U.S. State Department urged all signatories to quickly establish concrete follow-up mechanisms for its implementation.

Earlier this month, outgoing Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson provided more details on the U.S. position.  Kambale Musavuli, spokesman for the non-profit advocacy group Friends of the Congo, gives his analysis.

Carson's presentation, "Finding a Lasting Solution to Instability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo" at the Brookings Institution, focused on why efforts should be redoubled to bring stability to DRC and how to move forward.

He outlined four main reasons for action: a moral imperative; fiscal and financial imperatives; the consequences of Congolese instability for U.S. national interests; and the lack of an option for failure.

"The international community has a moral imperative to act more effectively in the DRC to break this cycle of death and suffering and to address the other consequences of this violence," he said.

He laid out the U.S. administration's strategy for moving forward, including:

1. Implementation of the United Nations Framework Agreement which was signed last Sunday;
2. Establishment of a comprehensive and inclusive peace process around the UN Framework Agreement, led by a UN special envoy; 
3. Restructuring of the UN Stabilization Mission in the Congo (Monusco), including the integration of a regional intervention brigade;
4. Enactment of governance and security sector reform in the DRC.

Carson called for greater attention to the crisis in the DRC. However, it appears that the administration continues to operate on the notion that "quiet diplomacy" is the best way forward when it comes to holding its allies Rwanda and Uganda accountable for their role in destabilizing the Congo.

The most telling and poignant point in Carson's remarks came not in his presentation of the U.S. administration's four-pronged approach, but in the question-and-answer session.  Carson was asked for his input regarding Rwanda's involvement in the DRC, as documented by a special UN panel, and why officers of Rwanda's military had not been sanctioned as had leaders of the M23 rebel group and DRC's armed forces.

Carson gave an unsatisfactory response that betrayed the claims in his presentation. He asserted that the actions of the administration of President Barack Obama - the cutting of U.S.$200,000 in military aid to Rwanda and Obama's phone call to Rwandan President Paul Kagame - "have been appropriate for the time".

This response pinpoints the failure of U.S. policy, in particular, as well as that of other nations and international institutions. They demonstrate a reluctance to fully hold to account DRC's neighbors who have played a direct role in the deaths of millions of Congolese, the pilfering of the country's resources and the perpetuation of the conflict through repeated invasions and the sponsoring of proxy militia.  [The International Rescue Committee said in a 2008 report that conflict and humanitarian crisis in the DRC had claimed more than five million lives since 1998.]

Evidence of this reluctance has manifested itself in the persistent inaction and burying of the UN Mapping Exercise Report, which documents serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law carried out mainly by U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda in the DRC from 1993 to 2003.

The Mapping Exercise report is unequivocal in identifying outside destabilization. "The apparent systematic and widespread attacks described in this report reveal a number of inculpatory elements that, if proven before a competent court, could be characterised as crimes of genocide," the report says, referring to the Rwandan army.