If there is anything highly observable about civil wars fuelled by the presence of minerals, other than the devastation that war imposes upon the most vulnerable people in communities and a myriad of intractable humanitarian problems that inevitably persist in war zones, is the fact that wars that burn on minerals do not end.
International intervention has been the best solution for weak governments presiding over polities laden with minerals.
The remains of 14 South African soldiers are being repatriated from Uganda, following the loss of their lives in a battle with Congolese rebel group M23, believed widely to be enjoying support from neighbouring Rwanda.
The thought of a neighbouring state implicated in the aiding of a rebel group that has no intention to defeat the country’s army and take over government should, at this point, call to our collective memory the war in Sierra Leone, for which former Liberian president Charles Taylor is still serving a 50-year sentence in a British prison.
All the hallmarks of the Sierra Leone war seem present in the war in eastern DRC.
Taylor was indicted for aiding the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) a rebel group whose mission was to capture a diamond-rich region of Sierra Leone and keep the war raging perpetually while mining blood diamonds and sending them out to world markets through Liberia. Taylor was found guilty on all 11 charges by the special tribunal on Sierra Leone held in The Hague and sentenced to two score and 10 years.
In that war, Sierra Leone’s military did not have the wherewithal to defeat the rebels, and the rebels did not have any interest in marching to Free Town and toppling the government. The convenient stalemate suited the RUF and its handler next door.
You might see striking similarities with the DRC conflict that has claimed the lives 14 South African soldiers.
The Sierra Leone government eventually infiltrated rebel-held territory by hiring mercenaries from South Africa to fight side by side with the Sierra Leone army. The involvement of South African soldiers in that war was a shameful morsel of news and the humanitarian tragedy that resulted from freelance soldiers from the south crashing the RUF, which hid in and among communities was a thing to be crestfallen about.
This time, in the DRC, South Africa’s involvement seems more noble as it is the regular South African army and not a private one that is part of multilateral intervention in the protracted civil strife in the DRC.
Similarly, the South African forces were fighting on the side of the government in a foreign country!
The war in the eastern DRC has been going on for a long time and various ways to intervene by international communities have failed. South Africa’s involvement is as part of both the SADC force, which metamorphosed at some point into a UN mission named Force Intervention Brigade (FIB).
FIB is not a peacekeeping mission. It holds a mandate to be offensive against rebel groups. The DRC is coursed with not one popular rebel group in M23, but numerous.
The point of this article is to argue that it is morally and politically problematic for multilateral organisations to bring international forces on the ground to fight offensively in civil wars. Politically, multilateralism propagates for democracy, social justice and the rule of law.
Traditionally, and perhaps more acceptable morally, peacekeeping missions were the more common way for international intervention at a military level, which ran parallel with negotiations.
The understanding has been that the negotiators share the same sovereign home and the push by the international community even with boots on the ground in peacekeeping missions, would be to encourage incumbents to make room for their rebel compatriots to serve in interim governments while waiting an opportune moment to hold elections so that the people can decide who govern them.
SADC member states fighting on the side of their fellow member states against their people is a troubling thought to even contemplate. How do you as SADC member states resolve to go in and aid your members militarily against groups rising in dissatisfaction with their government?
How can you know that if an election was called, people would vote for the incumbency or against it?
Of course, there are complications in the eastern DRC scenario because of the presence of minerals and neighbouring countries. But it does not justify the use of offensive force from regional multilateral groups, despite how hard it is and has been to find solutions.
It does not advance the nobility of multilateralism in cases of intervention. Perhaps some may argue that if Ecowas had had its own FIB the coups in West Africa that now culminated in breakaways by Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso may have been eschewed.
• Sydney Seshibedi is a PhD candidate in the department of political sciences and international relations at the University of Pretoria
