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One of the most underreported stories about conflict in Africa of the past few months involves the demise of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s M23 rebel movement. M23 (started by a group of disgruntled Congolese army soldiers who used to be part of another rebel movement called the CNDP) was led by mostly ethnically Tutsi Congolese and had as its stated aim protecting Tutsi interests and civilians in the DRC’s eastern Kivu provinces.
Though Kigali disputes the claim, the U.N. Group of Experts on DRC, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch gathered large bodies of evidence showing that M23 rebels received substantial financial, logistical, and manpower support from the Rwandan government. But in November 2013, the rebels, who just a year before had been powerful enough to take a major eastern city, Goma, collapsed.
Why? What explains the sudden dissolution of a major rebel movement in a country known for its proliferation of armed groups? Why was the notoriously incompetent Congolese national army, the FARDC, able to decisively defeat a rebel movement for the first time since the current regime came into being?
Writing for Foreign Affairs, Enough Project founder John Prendergast examines what he believes to be the reasons M23 stopped fighting. Prendergast attributes the M23′s demise to three factors: the creation of the United Nations Force Intervention Brigade (FIB), a well-trained, 3,000-soldier peacekeeping force with the authority to kill armed actors who threatened civilians, ongoing efforts to stop the trade in Congolese “conflict minerals” (minerals from the mining, sale, or transport of which armed actors finance their activities), and international pressure on Rwandan President Paul Kagame to stop supplying the M23 with troops, arms, and other forms of assistance.
Predergast’s first and third claims are somewhat accurate: The FIB’s presence in particular was the key to success as it could engage in offensive military action against M23. However, this point underemphasizes the fact that the FIB did not fight alone.
It was joined by FARDC troops who were better trained (some by U.S. AFRICOM forces) and far more disciplined than many of their comrades, and MONUSCO’s force commander interpreted the FIB’s mandate to require cooperation between the two forces rather than allowing the FIB to go it alone. There is no question that Congolese forces, alongside their FIB counterparts, were the deciding factor, and M23 was significantly weakened when diplomatic pressure forced Kagame to cut support to the rebels.
Prendergast’s second claim, however, lacks similar supporting evidence. He writes:
Numerous corporations, including Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Motorola Solutions worked to reform international supply chains that had allowed illegally extracted minerals to trade on global markets and end up in cell phones and computers everywhere. Congressional legislation and corporate initiatives have dramatically reduced the money available to armed groups such as the M23, which previously financed themselves by smuggling minerals and other natural resources.
It is not surprising Prendergast would make such a claim; since 2009, he has led a campaign centered on the narrative that cutting armed movement access to mineral wealth by requiring corporations to trace the presence of Congolese conflict minerals in their supply chains is one way to get fighters to stop fighting. Prendergast’s efforts led to the passage of section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank financial sector reform bill, which requires just that. The logic behind this argument is that without the revenue from mineral wealth, armed groups will have trouble financing their activities and will therefore be weaker and/or decide to stop fighting altogether.
For the rest of this article, click here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/03/25/did-cutting-access-to-mineral-wealth-reduce-violence-in-the-drc/