The DRC: "Total Panic," Indeed

My co-blogger Michael posted earlier today on the "total panic" in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), as 100,000 people flee the advance of rebels on the city of Goma. UN and government troops have thus far been unable to halt the rebel advancement.

Earlier this week, DRC President Joseph Kabila sacked several interior and defense ministers and appointed a new "combat and reconstruction" government, in response to the new rebel onslaught.

Let's take a minute to recap the playbill--or what UN Dispatch blogger John Boonstra calls the "alphabet soup of armed elements" in the DRC:

General Laurent Nkunda and his Congres National pour la Defense du Peuple (CNDP) claim to fight for the protection of the Congolese Tutsi population from the DRC's most uninvited and unwelcome guests,

The Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR), or Interahamwe, the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, who set up shop in the eastern DRC following their reign of terror in their own country. The FDLR's ranks now include a substantial number of Congolese recruits, including chidlren.

The Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC), the Armed Forces of the DRC, past masters of doing everything a national army is not supposed to do, and

MONUC, the United Nations Mission to the DRC, which, as Michael described, is currently under attack by civilians angered over the force's inability to offer protection. Refugees International describes MONUC's rock-and-a-hard-place here.

ALL of the aforementioned players are responsible for some of the most egregious atrocities

Now, here's the (simplified) political backdrop for the humanitarian crisis/displacement-free-for-all Michael described:

Nkunda recently reneged on a cease-fire agreement signed in January and vowed to "liberate" all of the DRC from the government of President Kabila, accusing him of failing to protect Congo's ethnic Tutsi population from the FDLR. He's clearly making a valiant effort to fulfill this pledge, and grows more formidable with the capture of army bases (and thus, weapons).

Kabila accuses the government of Rwanda of providing material and logistical support to Nkunda, a claim denied by the Rwandans but supported by some UN officials and other regional diplomats. For their part, the Rwandans are frustrated at DRC for failing to quell the FDLR, whom they fear are intent on overthrowing the Rwandan government and renewing the push for genocide. The Rwandans were particularly peeved at evidence of FARDC/FDLR collaboration against Nkunda.

But of course, like any good conflict (and by "good," I mean "wretched"), it gets even trickier. As Scott Baldauf of the Christian Science Monitor writes,

"At the root of the conflict is the paradoxical weakness and poverty of a country that, on paper, should be one of Africa's richest. With vast mineral deposits of gold, diamonds, uranium, copper, cobalt, and tin, Congo has what the booming emerging economies of China and India want, and what the now crumbling markets of Europe and North America still need. Unable to pay its soldiers and government officials on a regular basis, unable to control the outflow of the mineral wealth, Congo is a giant piggy bank waiting to be smashed."

In fact, access to the DRC's mineral resources fuels and perpetuates the conflict, as various rebel groups (and some criminal opportunists) use the wealth to finance their war-related expenses. (And likely enrich themselves, along the way.)

[Photo of CNPD rebels by AFP.]