This week the UN launched two inquries in the conflict
in the Congo. But the real issue is still being
ignored-who will disarm the militias? I produced
Victoria Brittain comment and analysis on Guardian.
Analysis
By;- Victoria Brittain

A humanitarian catastrophe more overwhelming than
Afghanistan's grips the Democratic Republic of
Congo.UN figures suggest than 2 million people are
displaced, and estimates of the number killed in the
past half-dozen years of the invisible war ranges from
1 million to 3 million.
This week the UN has announced two human rights
inquries into different areas in the eastern part of
DRC; the international court of justice at the Hague
has started hearing a case between the DRC and
neighouring Rwanda; and the UN's mission in the DRC,
monuc, has had its mandate prolonged for year.
Earlier this year, hundreds of thousands os dollars
were sent by international community on seven weeks of
peace talks in suncity, South Africa, between the
various Congolese factions.The political talks
produced a power-sharing formula between president
Joseph Kabila and the millionaire northern leader,
Jean- Pierre Bemba, a protege of Uganda, but no
resolution in the east.
Meanwhile, the social and political crisis is
worsening. A report from human rights watch this week
on the war in the east reveals a level of sexual
violence against women and a barbarity which local
doctors describe as unprecedented. The consequences of
this growing culture of brutality, and the health
crisis rendered acute by galloping HIV/Aids are grim.
The UN inquries, the internationally guided peace
talks and the extension of MONUC's mandate are aspects
of an old Congolese story; the attempt bu out-siders
to impose their own norms on the huge country.The
Kinshasa government's court case against Rwanda is
another old Congolese story;a government that counts
on westerners to do their dirty work-in this case
hoping to persuade the UN court to order Rwanda's
troups to leave DRC without ending the threat of
1994's genocide in Rwanda.
The DRC is a product of colonialism, too vast and
diverse to be a viable country.The atmosphere in Goma
in the east is instantly recognisable as East Africa,
while Kinshasa feels like Guinea, Senegal or
Angola.The eastern provinces of Kivus have long been
regarded as a bastion of opposition to central
government, and since 1993, when a violent land
dispute broke out, there has not  been a day of peace.
Today, around 40 percent of the east is nominally
under the control of the rebel RCD that has the
trappings of an administrative structure, as well as
an army.But the RCD leadership has fractured severeal
times and has little credibility. Various RCD factions
were allegedly in volved in the killings in Kisangani
ON May 14, which are being investigated by the UN, and
in the repeated bouts of ethnic conflict between the
Hema and Lendu in the north-east, where the second UN
inquiry will take place.
The RCD-Goma faction, which has the biggest army, is
supported by Rwamda, other factions by Uganda.
The fabulous welth of DRC's mining industry(gold,
cobalt,diamonds, copper.cadmium,coltan and germanium)
has long made it a magnet for unscrupulous outsiders.
Its postcolonial leadership was happy to be wooed by
western interests,notably the US and France, and to
grow rich while the country stagnated and its vast
areas were used for subversion elsewhere in Africa.
The new, post-cold-war DRC shows little sign of being
different. The fundamental power struggle remains for
the wealth of the country.The weak Congolese elite in
Kinshasa is courted by ambitious businessmen from the
host of countries.Meanwhile, the formal economy and
the state have virtually collapsed over much of the
country.
The catastrophic condition of the people is even worse
than undercPresident Mobutu. The vast majority of the
people eats less than two-third of the calories needed
to maintain health, and 70 percent of the population
have no acess to healthcare.
As the human rights watch report details, destitute
women, often displaced or widowed by war, now make a
living selling sex, the only commodity they have.
Since 1996 this tragic place has been at the centre of
series of wars that have greatly contributed to the
continent's impoverishment.The war has varying extents
involved almost all the DRC's neighbours:
Sudan,Uganda,Rwanda,Burundi,Zimbabwe and
Angola.Zimbabwe has no strategic interest in the war.
For the three close neighbours in the east-
Rwanda,Uganda and Burundi- war in DRC threaten chronic
instability. The poison which feeds it now is the
continuing presence in the DRC of 12,000 or so armed
former combatants from the days of genocide in
Rwanda.After they and thousands more fled into exile
in the DRC they were initially used by president
Laurent Desire Kabila, father of the current
president, against his former backers, the government
of Rwanda. Many were retrained in camps in Zimbabwe,
and aimed to return to Rwanda to complete the
genocide.
In the lawless east, where numerous militias of
shifting alliances make much of the region a no-go
areas,the Interahanwe militia and ex-soldiers from
Rwanda- participants in the genocide- remain a
significant factor.Over the years, thousands of them
have returned voluntarily to Rwanda or been
captured.Peace talks, UN inquries into human rights
violations and international court cases are
distractions from the central issue of who will disarm
this group of men, who have caused so much suffering.

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