How the world continues to lose eastern DRC

On August 10, at least 18 people were killed near the town of Beni in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), near the border with Uganda. Two months earlier, on June 7, a massacre killed 80 people, and another massacre on June 13 killed 40 people. In recent years, such attacks have become all too common.

Intense violence in this part of eastern DRC is generally attributed to the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan-born rebel group that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2019. As with previous massacres, none of the nearby armed forces – including the Congolese army, the visiting Ugandan military or UN peacekeeping troops – intervened to stop the killings.

This inaction reflects a broader politics of agony that has turned eastern DRC into a graveyard for thousands of civilians. At its core lies the failure of the mantra of good intentions espoused by a divided and distracted “international community.” So where did it all go wrong?

For much of the past three decades, the DRC has led the international rate of internal displacement caused by conflict, currently peaking at nearly 7 million people, according to the International Organization for Migration. Meanwhile, human rights violations by both armed groups and government forces have increased. More often than not, the accompanying cycles of violence and displacement go unnoticed.

It was only with the revival of the March 23rd Movement (M23) almost three years ago that the conflict attracted new international attention. While the ensuing fighting contributed to the growing number of displaced people, the exclusive political and media focus on the M23 ignored the proliferation of armed groups causing chaos in the region.

The government used nationalist rhetoric to rally various militias to join the war effort against the M23 movement. These policies have strengthened armed groups and created an even more complex security picture.

Meanwhile, international donors continue to pour millions into conflict resolution, including a costly, aging UN peacekeeping mission, huge humanitarian funds and expensive peacebuilding projects designed to tackle “root causes.” What appears on paper to be purposeful engagement largely lacks deep understanding of political realities, constructive strategy and innovative diplomacy at key levels of international decision-making.

Responses to the crisis in the DRC are often based on simplistic understandings of the causes of the war. Experts and influencers – including on social media – are rehashing outdated colonial stereotypes about natural resources and ethnic hatred. Few commentators recognize the full political nature of the crisis, with its varied drivers and complex logic.

Western donors—today often referred to as “international partners”—largely continue to apply technocratic templates to political problems. Anti-corruption rhetoric, regulation of “illegal” trade and calls for social cohesion feature in glossy strategies and press releases, but concrete action to combat these scourges is often either superficial or absent from policy altogether.

The international community’s response also remains largely inconsistent in the specific context of the current escalation. There is little pressure that could prevent the Congolese army from actively cooperating with armed groups. Networks of grand corruption are rarely prosecuted and result in periodic, bizarre sanctions sensitive to political changes in relations between the DRC and key Western powers such as the European Union or the United States.

Reactions to military intervention by neighboring countries have been equally inconsistent. Western condemnation of Rwanda’s support for the M23 does not stop those same governments from insisting military aid to Rwanda in the context of the Mozambican crisis. Burundi’s massive support for the DRC has attracted little international attention, although it has further complicated the security situation and led to a situation close to a proxy war between Burundi and Rwanda, raising the risks of further regional escalation.

This accident and the arbitrariness of the pro-Western international community did not go unnoticed by the Congolese and their neighbors.

As with similar ongoing conflicts, the reaction in the DRC demonstrates that classical international conflict resolution appears to have reached its limits and is losing much of its authority, heralding the end of international peacebuilding and liberal interventionism in its current form.

Today’s conflict zones are seeing new approaches and new players vying for their place at the table. This is partly due to changing global power structures.

Three decades of violence in eastern DRC checked all the boxes on the “wish list” of Western intervention and state-building: the DRC held its first democratic elections in 2006; it underwent a peaceful political transition; The International Monetary Fund has resumed cooperation with the country; and regional bodies are now taking up the peacekeeping baton.

However, amid broader geopolitical quandaries, non-Western forms of colonialism are seeking to replace the Western template, and private military companies are gaining strength.

The DRC and its rivals have turned to new and not-so-new partners in business, defense and diplomacy. These partners are as ambiguous and interest-driven as the Western powers, but do not make any human rights conditions or pro-democracy slogans.

Overall, the influence playing field may not be as clear as in Mali or the Central African Republic, where Russia, a new colonial player, triggered a “hard reset” by kicking out France.

However, the decline of Western influence in the Great Lakes region follows a similar pattern, as new players take advantage of the Western powers’ long-standing leniency. In a changing global power system, these players see their chance to intervene by relying on campaigns of disinformation and polarization.

In this changing and increasingly fragmented international environment, the hypocrisy of old and new interventions is also to some extent reflected by self-serving Congolese elites. These elites are increasingly outsourcing and subcontracting national security to armed groups, private military companies and neighboring states.

This hybrid context shows that security is no longer limited to international standards, echoed by the UN, which has failed to achieve its global ambitions. By leading to the fragmentation and privatization of security governance, in the event of a crisis in eastern DRC, these global and regional shifts will only exacerbate the complex network of alliances and antagonisms that have already guided conflict drivers, interests, and responses for decades.

These are tectonic shifts viewed through a geopolitical, realpolitik, or postcolonial lens. Their humanitarian impact exacerbates already entrenched patterns of suffering and civilian displacement, while the resulting fog of war obscures the development of broader international politics of (in)security.

A sober and honest account of these changing realities is urgently needed, especially for those who represent the slowly fading system of Western liberal interventionism and conflict resolution.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.