DRC polls may reignite conflict
2006-07-21 15:22
Dakar - Democratic Republic of Congo's historic elections this month risk plunging the central African giant back into conflict by creating a class of angry rebels and politicians stripped of lucrative government jobs, says a think-tank.
A peace deal to end DRC's cataclysmic 1998-2003 war - which killed an estimated four million people - drew the main factions into an interim government under President Joseph Kabila, the favourite to win the July 30 election.
But, that fragile balance could be tipped by the polls, the first open multiparty elections since 1961, the year after the mineral-rich country's independence from Belgium.
Jason Stearnes, senior analyst for Central Africa with International Crisis Group, said: "Elections, in the short term, will have a destabilising effect on the DRC ... in the next three to four years.
"There will be winners and losers, and many of the losers have guns. ... The probability is high that conflict will break out again, unless something is done."
1 000 people killed
Crisis Group said donors, which financed more than half the DRC's budget, must press the new administration to end decades of graft so state revenues from copper, coltan and diamonds were no longer viewed as means for enrichment.
In many parts of the DRC, especially the east, where militias continued to kill and loot, the state had simply broken down.
An estimated 60% to 70% of government revenues were embezzled, while a humanitarian crisis killed more than 1 000 people a day.
In the military, a system dubbed "operation retour (return)" ensured at least 10% of soldiers' salaries was sent back to commanding officers, leaving troops hungry and unpaid.
According to Crisis Group, the army remained the main threat to DRC's 60 million inhabitants.
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It said: "Given the poor state of the national security forces and the many disgruntled soldiers, renewed violence is likely before the next electoral cycle in five years if action is not taken now."
With turmoil in Iraq and rising tensions in Lebanon drawing international attention away from the DRC, one of the world's forgotten crises, Crisis Group joined aid groups in urging donors and the United Nations not to cut and run.
One of the main risks from next week's polls was that Kabila's campaign, criticised by the Carter Centre democracy watchdog for intimidating opponents, won both the presidency and a parliamentary majority, removing any check on his power.
Stearnes said: "This is not a two- or three-year process: this is going to last for the next 10 to 20 years; we need to change the system which has been in place since independence."
The UN had spent some $6bn in the DRC since 2001, mainly on the world's largest peacekeeping force. But, Crisis Group said the money could more efficiently be spent bolstering weak parliament and courts, and retraining the army.