Hello everyone,
This week, a complicated one to explain but we’ll get there.
Proximities mentions the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) very regularly, so I’m hoping this Q&A will offer some useful context for those entries because this story isn’t going away any time soon.
DRC has been at war for decades. That much is sadly safe to say.
But there have been many stops and starts, many different phases, and so many armed groups I struggle to recall their names. Most often referred to as a “patchwork” of militias, they fight over territory, ethnicity, ideology and, most importantly, control of the region’s abundant natural resources, which include cobalt, lithium, manganese, tantalum, copper, gold and diamonds.
But forget the gold and diamonds. It’s the minerals in that list needed to power cell phones, computers, electric vehicles, military hardware, wind turbines, and now AI, that everyone wants to get their hands on.
In 2007, after being refused a journalist visa by the Congolese authorities, I bribed my way into eastern DRC via the border with neighboring Burundi. I don’t recommend it, but I was young and stupid and desperate for a story.
I traveled up through the region for about 12 days, visiting small villages and towns, and the cities of Goma, Bukavu and Beni. I met locals who were exhausted by the insecurity, I met people who had fled their villages with the most horrifying stories, I met young boys who were once child soldiers, and I met young girls who had been kidnapped to act as sex slaves for the armed groups.
One night, while sitting having a beer with some people I had met earlier that day, we were attacked from a distance by men who sprayed bullets at us, forcing us to dive for cover under the tables, from where I saw two of our bottles explode as if we had set up some sort of a shooting gallery at a carnival.
It was a dangerous place then, and it’s a dangerous place now.
But what I most vividly recall is meeting a journalist named Serge Maheshe. I popped in unannounced to his office at Radio Okapi in Bukavu after a mutual friend recommended I look him up. He was welcoming and we chatted for a while, but he was in a rush as it was the end of the day. He told me to come back at 8am when we could grab breakfast and he would show me around.
When I turned up the next morning, I was momentarily confused by the sounds coming from his office. I slowly realized it was weeping, that it was the sound of very many people weeping. Serge, just hours after I spoke to him, had been shot dead. It was an assassination. The people with him were ordered to sit quietly on the ground, after which the gunmen shot him several times in the chest.
Much like in Gaza, dedicating yourself to journalism in DRC, especially when covering the activities of the armed groups, as Serge did, comes with risks. But Serge, and many others, didn’t let that stop them even if the outside world was relatively deaf to the day-to-day suffering they meticulously documented.
I won’t ever forget the sound in his office that morning. And I won’t ever forget many of the other people I met in DRC. I don’t know what became of them but, in the nearly 20 years since, not much has changed and a whole new generation are living their lives caught between the militias and the government.
It’s an important story.
Until next Saturday,
Barry.
What is the background and who is fighting?
Like I said above, I could go back decades but what makes sense is to focus on the current phase of the conflict and today’s key players. The main source of violence right now is a war between government forces and a powerful armed group known as the March 23 Movement or, more commonly, the M23.
The group, backed by Rwanda, was formed in 2012 and began an ethnic Tutsi-led uprising against Congolese government forces. Its name referred to a March 23, 2009 peace deal signed to end a previous Tutsi uprising. The M23 accused the government of not keeping promises in that agreement to integrate Congolese Tutsis into the army and government. And so they went to war.
Tell me more about the M23, and why is Rwanda involved?
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