Conducted By Michael Camarda

Marijan Zumbulev has worked at the Crisis Group in New York since June 2004, before which he worked in Belgrade researching the state of the post-Milosevic Serbian economy.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo holds more than half of the world’s cobalt, 30% of all diamonds, 70% of coltan—a vital ingredient of mobile phones—as well as huge deposits of gold, copper, and various other minerals. How do these vast resources affect both the economy and politics in the region?

These resources affect both the economy and politics traumatically. Congo has what may be called the curse of natural resources, which have been exploited mostly for the worse. If you control the resources, you can control the economy, which in turn allows you to control the people. In short, political power is a function of economic resources under one’s control.

The Second Congo War, from 1997-2003—sometimes called Africa’s World War—involved eight countries and resulted in 3.8 million deaths between August 1998 and April 2004, according to the International Rescue Committee. Most of these deaths were due to starvation or disease that resulted from the war, not from actual fighting. Millions more have become internally displaced or have sought asylum in neighboring countries. Why was this humanitarian disaster allowed to play out for as long as it did without being stopped either internally or internationally?

While I hate to say it, the Congo remains to some degree the proverbial “heart of darkness.” I don’t want to psychoanalyze Western governments, but it’s just not a high priority for international communities. Why is this so? The Congo is a remote place on a remote continent. In the late 1980s, you’d see something about the Congo in the newspaper or on television, but now you are unlikely to see much of anything about it. Domestically within the Congo, the conflict went on for so long because many factions had taken root in many parts of the country. It became a huge mess that could not be stopped.

How did Laurent Kabila’s rule—from 1997 until 2001—differ from his predecessor, Mobutu? How might the Congo be different had he not been assassinated in 2001?

Kabila’s son was at least subsequently willing to negotiate a compromise between factions.

The Congo itself has its own “red-state/blue-state” divide, with clearly demarcated electoral zones. In the 2006 presidential election, the eastern portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which bore the brunt of the fighting, strongly supported Laurent Kabila’s son, current President Joseph Kabila. In the western portion, many view Joseph Kabila as a foreigner who works for foreign interests; they voted for former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba. How important is this east-west split, and what factors contribute to it?

The split is mostly artificial. Kabila stopped the war; he reached out and brokered a compromise. The war was mostly fought in the east, so stopping it made him immensely popular there. In the west, he was just the guy who got rid of Mobutu—he’s not much liked because little changed there. Bemba’s primary qualification was that he wasn’t Kabila. Bemba’s forces were not much liked in the east. Bemba was just a local boy in the west; he has much better allies in the west because his father networked quite a bit in Kinshasha. Kabila is seen as the foreigner.

This is not about ideology or platform; the split is more or less completely baseless. You have some empty slogans from both camps. Kabila talks about fixing roads and schools and improving social life. But this was the first fair election for the Congolese. It basically boiled down to feelings—with whom you felt you were better off or worse off.

If Joseph Kabila is to gain support in the west and maintain backing in the east, he must tackle strongly-entrenched corruption and poverty. But bringing unity and peace to the Congo, a country two-thirds the size of western Europe, with some 200 ethnic groups and only 300 miles of paved roads, is likely to present major challenges. What can Kabila do to help unite the country? And what can he do to assure his biggest accomplishment to date—peace—is maintained?

Kabila can do three things: He can reach out to the opposition, he can transparently run the economy to exploit natural resources, and he can reach out to neighbors, especially Rwanda. The third effort is especially important. Congo-Rwanda relations are crucial, but he has not done enough on Rwanda. Many of the problematic factions in the east have ties to Rwanda. He should take better care of the Tutsi community of the eastern Congo.

Kabila also needs to democratize. He needs to run things openly. He needs to reform the army and police; we call this security sector reform. This means he will have to gain and maintain control of all of the Congo.

Atrocities in the east Congolese province of South Kivu go “far beyond rape” and include sexual slavery, forced incest, and cannibalism, a UN human rights expert said in July. Yakin Erturk called the situation the worst she has seen in four years as a special investigator of violence against women. Sexual violence in the Congo is “rampant,” she said. She blames rebel groups, the armed forces, and the national police. How would you compare the humanitarian crisis in South Kivu with the crisis in the Darfur region of the Sudan? Does South Kivu get the amount of international media coverage it warrants?

I don’t like comparing one humanitarian crisis with another, but obviously Darfur gets much more attention. There are a few reasons for this: Darfur is part of the Sudan, and during the Second Sudanese War the country was a big priority for circles in the United States. Especially for religious circles it was important—you had the Muslim north fighting the Christian-Animist south. Many Christian groups in the U.S. were pushing to end that war. So when Darfur began to get bad a few years ago, you already had a mobilized constituency with ties to the Sudan already—it was a bigger basis to move on. You had student movements, anti-genocide campaigns.

Compared to that, the Congo has garnered less attention. The Congo, at the end of the day, is just not much of a priority for the U.S. It doesn’t make headlines. Oprah, I believe, had one segment on gender violence. It’s not a big issue for the U.S. public or elected representatives. The only people in the international community who care are businesspeople, and they see it as a pit of natural resources. As long as a company gets what they it wants, governments like that of the U.S. won’t be under any pressure to democratize the Congo. The priority list is long, and the days are short for many governments.

The situation is very bad. I met with someone who runs a hospital in South Kivu. Sometimes people use words like cannibalism to get attention, but it does go beyond what would be considered rape. Mass rapes are common, very brutal.

What kind of work do you and your organization, the International Crisis Group, do to help the situation in the Congo?

In the Congo, we zero in on a problem. We have field officers in hotspots around the world. We write policy briefs and try to influence anyone and everyone who has leverage or decision-making capacity in the area. It depends on the topic or issue at hand, but we may try to influence the Congolese people, major Western business, Rwanda, or the Africa Union.

We did a report on the situation in the east in Kivu. Three to five people worked on this report for weeks, but our reports have no authors because there are always a number of people involved in writing them. We go about collecting information through examining government documents, interviewing people, speaking with people at the UN secretariat. We don’t shy away from any information source.

In what direction has the Congo been heading under Joseph Kabila? Where do you see the Congo in five years?

Last November, the Congolese people elected a president in their country’s first fair election, but the events of the last year do not leave me extremely encouraged. The international community is not seeing all the progress it should be seeing. Why? The answer could be a month long conversation. I do not want to simplify things to the point of meaninglessness. If I had to answer, I’d say there is a lack of will to progress. It only has been a year, and things
might need more time. International relations for the Congo are less than fully settled. The international community decided to disengage more than they should have after the elections. They claimed, once a free and fair election had taken place, that they had no right to stay and influence the policies of a sovereign government. On face value, this is a good argument—you don’t want to tell a free country what to do. But as we have seen elsewhere, certain structures must exist before a true democracy can take place—elections are not enough.

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