What is next?

On the security front, the picture for the future is rather bleak. The FDLR cannot really be defeated militarily to begin with, and it serves a strategic interest for the Congolese army to keep them at hand. The only durable way in which the FDLR may be handled would perhaps be to start a dialogue with its leaders to return, but Rwanda is unlikely to mollify its position there. Considering the past, it is likely that the FDLR will just disappear into the forest again, and the dynamic will start all over from the beginning. Whether the M23 will re-mobilise is impossible to say, but it is unlikely that Rwanda will stand by and do nothing if it perceives that the FDLR is re-mobilising across the eastern provinces. Rwanda needs a security buffer on its border with Congo. If the M23 can no longer function as a proxy, some other force could be constituted to safeguard those interests. Kigali’s earlier threat to leave the PSCF clearly shows that its strategic interests trump regional collaboration, especially if it increasingly sees the PSCF as an attempt by the DRC-SADC bloc to gang up on them. Whatever happens to the FDLR and the M23, as long as the east is in turmoil, as long as the FARDC has the limited capacity it has always had, and as long as there is no in-depth political dialogue around local grievances, local mayi-mayi groups will continue to mobilise, and violence will continue.

On the political front, the presidential coalition is likely to focus its efforts on staying in power, disorganising or co-opting the opposition where it can. As we have seen, ‘downswings’ of the cycle have always been used to reinforce the powers that be, and the post-M23 period is not likely to be an exception. The new focus of the governing coalition may well be the local and provincial elections planned for the second half of 2015 – replacing elected positions at grassroots level with allied politicians and increase sources of patronage. This may lead to new tensions about the division of public re­sources. As there is no more real pressure on the government, Kinshasa’s involvement in the PSCF and the reforms required under the National Oversight Mechanism are likely to grind to a halt.

The question, then, is will this situation ‘explode’? If, indeed, the government has returned to the same old approach to deal with the eastern provinces, and long-term threats remain unaddressed, will there be a crisis, as there was in 2006, 2008 and 2012, and what form will it take? This is impossible to say, although it is not an entirely unlikely scenario. However, there is something to be said about the likely international reaction to any forthcoming crisis.

If developments in the eastern DRC are difficult to predict, then, unfortunately, the reaction of international partners is not very likely to change. As before, partners are likely to continue financing a string of technical post-conflict interventions. Strategic interest in the DRC has remained unchanged, so it is unlikely that there will be a stronger discussion with Kinshasa, preconditions for further support, or more risk-taking peacekeeping operations in the near future. MONUSCO is likely to keep the door open to the government as long as it can; DPKO chief Ladsous recently stated that a full drawdown of MONUSCO could take three to five years, enough time to see whether there will indeed be another crisis, and scale the mission back up if required.[150] The mission’s approach will likely remain tilted towards military operations and elections, and to state authority to ‘stabilize’ the east. It is quite likely that whether the country will actually start to stabilize, remain in the current situation, or come apart at the seams, the deployment of state officials to ‘fill vacuums’ will remain the solution – either to ‘strengthen the gains made’ and allow for an exit strategy, or to ‘strengthen the state’s grip’ if the situation goes downhill.

In the meantime, development officials will change functions, institutional memory will be lost, and interest will remain lukewarm. If a crisis erupts, everyone will be surprised, and if a peace agreement is signed, everyone will cheer and pretend, once more, that a ‘page has been turned’. And after that, it may well be back to business as usual.

What are the alternatives?

The central point this report has tried to make is that the way in which the Congolese government and the international community have responded to the crisis in the east of the country is a result of a number of (partly self-inflicted) constraints. The choices made are products of a wider ‘system’, a set of incentives and strategies. As such, when we look at what can be done differently, it is important to not merely come up with ‘should haves’ – ideal but unlikely scenarios (‘the Congolese government should move forward with SSR’) – but with ‘could haves’ – things that could be done differently despite the fundamental constraints on the Congolese and international side.

Perhaps the most important move that international partners could make would be to take a step back and a deep breath, and fundamentally re-think the situation instead of rushing forward. There are all sorts of issues that cannot be dealt with, but the one thing international actors are not forced to do is succumb to lazy thinking. Good practice requires good theory, and judging from the standardised formats and solutions that have been proposed so far, good theory seems to be rather lacking at the moment.

It would be worthwhile to bring the main international partners together and question their assumptions through an extensive political economy analysis. How do ‘we’ (the international partners) define the drivers and the root causes of conflict? Which of these drivers could potentially be addressed, and how? By whom? When it comes the GoDRC, what do we think it wants at various levels and within various elite coalitions, and why? A neo-patrimonial state is not against any form of change; it can support change where there is an interest, and we currently do not know what those interests are or what ‘coalitions of the willing’ with leverage exist. Taking the time to understand the common ground between the government and the international community will make for a firmer basis on which to build peace than if both sides mistrust the other’s intentions and work past each other. A critical question to ask is whether the expansion of a largely predatory state can have a positive impact on peacebuilding and if so, how? What are the existing positive dynamics (increasing citizen voice, for example) that can be built on? At regional level, what are the legitimate concerns of regional power brokers, such as Angola, Rwanda and Uganda, and where can they be accommodated? On the international side, which partner can address which sort of driver, or rather support which sort of process to address which conflict driver, and how? What are the constraints for them to do so, in terms of willingness, time and money? Can the burden be shared? This political economy analysis is not about producing the ever-dreaded ‘more paper’, nor is it about uncovering facts no one knew yet; a lot of what the analysis will bring up will be known already, although a mapping of elite coalitions may be a first.[151] Rather, the exercise would be about building joint understanding to force the partners to face a few uncomfortable truths about their role and the impact of their interventions, create some sort of shared vision, and get all noses pointing in the same direction.

It is on the basis of such a joint analysis that the international partners could start working on an actual strategy: not a set of well-meant catchphrases about ‘restoring state authority’, but an agreed-upon idea about what a relatively minimal ‘end state’ could look like, what the process to get there could be, what positive dynamics to support and what negative ones to mitigate. Once this is done, scenarios could be worked out, with a series of options to deal with them and a corresponding division of labour. It is only then, once this work is done, that it makes sense to start thinking about peacekeeping priorities and stabilization and development frameworks, and only after that, about actual projects. A single plan, based on clear scenarios, would aid coordination and prevent partners from going all over the place. The strategy needs to be closely guarded – international partners need to be forced back into the framework if they seem to ‘stray’. Should partners disagree with elements of the strategy, that would be fine – but it would need to be openly discussed instead of partners going off by themselves. Keeping the group together will require strong leadership, perhaps through a committee made up of some of the more prominent donors, together with MONUSCO.

A realistic strategy for the DRC may well be a very minimalist one. The conflict is too complex and the political actors too difficult, for international partners to achieve more than damage control at local level, capacity building and support for positive dynamics where they exist. This will no doubt have to be clothed in development wording like ‘stabilization’ and ‘restoring state authority’, as long as the partners, through the strategy, know what they are really working on and keep their eyes on that (granted, rather minimal) prize.

Unfortunately, there are some processes that the international community, mainly MONUSCO, will have no choice but to support, as they are the price of remaining in the DRC. The peacekeeping mission will be required to continue supporting military operations. The way these are currently conducted is often harmful to conflict dynamics and leads to displacement and human rights violations, but MONUSCO can at least exert some small damage control. Should MONUSCO decide to step back from military operations, the government is likely to speed up the process of pushing the mission out, as we are currently seeing. Second, MONUSCO will likely be forced to support the elections. These may well be fraudulent and further alienate many eastern Congolese from their national government, but again, Kinshasa will put the thumbscrews on if it doesn’t. If the international community doesn’t support the elections, Kinshasa is likely to use a lack of funds as an excuse for even further delays. Third, MONUSCO and the wider international community must support the DDR process; it is a flawed process, but as long as the camps are not functional, the M23 and the government have an excuse to drag their feet. None of these processes can be fully ‘steered’ – they touch too closely on the political incentives of the government to allow for much outside guidance. MONUSCO will unfortunately have to grit its teeth and bear it, and develop a good communications strategy to deal with the unavoidable negative fall-out.

If the strategic re-assessment suggested above seems like too much work, there is another alternative. MONUSCO could undertake an assessment of how much its presence is actually changing the situation on the ground. Are people really being protected? Is the mission’s presence deterring violence and creating political space? If this is not the case, or if the difference is not enough to warrant an annual US$1.6bn for a peacekeeping mission, then MONUSCO could decide to pull out. Should the mission decide to push the agenda for a drawdown, it might change the existing dynamic. As we have seen, at the moment there is a sort of status quo. Provided the regional states will not step in to take over MONUSCO’s tasks (which is not an entirely unlikely scenario, as the deployment of the FIB has shown), Kinshasa would be on its own to provide security in the east. It may go wrong and lead to more suffering, but continuing down the current path, without a strategic re-assessment as described above, does not seem to be much of a solution either. If MONUSCO cannot keep people as safe as they thought they could, there is no shame in a withdrawal: ‘ought implies can’, and there is no moral obligation to do what you cannot do.[152] At the same time, that would be a serious loss and a sign of international defeat: MONUSCO has a critically important role to play in the DRC, and it could do so if it and the wider international community changed its strategy, as discussed above.

Are the above scenarios, of a fundamental strategic re-assessment or the more extreme option of MONUSCO pushing the drawdown agenda, likely to happen? Not really. A strategic re-assessment would have to be spearheaded by the same coalition in the Security Council that in the past has shown little interest in the DRC, and it would take a brave Special Representative indeed to commission an independent evaluation of the impact of his or her own peacekeeping operation, and the effort, funds and lives invested in it. The institutional interests against changing course are legion. As Machiavelli put it: ‘There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.’[153] It is a sad note to end on, but if there is one thing that the DRC has taught us over the last few years, it’s that the status quo has a habit of beating the progressives. We may be going around in circles for quite some time to come.