The Congo is a mess. It has been a mess since independence arrived ahead of schedule and in a welter of violence just under fifty years ago. Except for the years of repression under Mobutu, the Congo, under its varied names, has been the central bloodbath of Africa. The place laid claim to the title of The Great Sanguinary Swamp as the Belgians pulled out and the locals started shooting, raping, and committing wholesale robbery of anything and everything that was not nailed down. And, if it was spiked in, they just got a longer crowbar.
The US and USSR used the Congo as a Cold War playground. Play, except the stakes were real for those who killed and were killed.
(Paee, the NYT, which in its summary of Ms Clinton's visit incorrectly pinned the tail of blame on the ass of the CIA for the murder of Patrice Lumumba, the pro-Soviet prime minister. Actually, while Dr Death at the Agency had prepared a subtle poison for use on Patrice, it was members of Mobutu's militia who mutilated Lumumba with predictably fatal results. What the hey! Truth, who needs it when you can kick the Agency.)
In the event, the US, working from Cold War imperatives, which confused short-term order with long-term stability, backed Mobutu. This man was a stone psycho who killed, looted, and exhibited megalomania in the first degree. His orgy of looting, killing, governmental inefficiency, and corruption assured that when he was finally removed, the Congo would lack the basics necessary for a functioning state. American policy under presidents from John Kennedy to Ronald Reagan is palpably guilty of grave crimes against the people and future of the Congo.
The Cold War imperatives were also at work in the US involvement in the twenty-seven years of internal war which devastated Angola following its gaining independence from Portugal in the mid-Seventies. We played a dangerous and ultimately futile game in the three-way war for dominance in the oil and mineral rich country. When the shooting finally stopped in 2002, our man in Angola, Jonas Savimbi, was dead and the Soviet/Cuban backed Jose Dos Santos was president.
Fortunately George W. Bush was too involved with adventures in regime change elsewhere to attempt to reverse matters in Angola. However, the quarter of a century of war had left Angola a complete ruin. In the past seven years it has made great strides to recovering the long lost infrastructure, including agriculture. More importantly, the Dos Santos government held legislative elections last year which were, particularly by African standards, free, honest, and transparent.
The scheduled presidential election has slipped to 2010 for reasons which may or may not be valid. Ms Clinton strenuously urged Dos Santos to hold the elections as soon as practical. The Angolan government gave no indication of disagreeing with this.
Ms Clinton presided over the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Chevron Oil and both the US and Angolan government providing for the use of some oil revenues for urgent requirements in agricultural and small business development. This MOU is important since Angola is rapidly overtaking Nigeria as the number one oil exporter in Africa. Despite the flow of money from the oil sector, the majority of the Angolan population is very, very poor, existing on two bucks a day or less. Only a more equitable and rapid spreading of the oil wealth in ways which benefit both agriculture and business will remedy this and, in the process, help assure that another round of instability does not wrack the country.
Of course, the American effort to spread the oil wealth around may assist the US government in countering the increased influence of China in Angola. The Beijing regime has gained more than a little traction with the Angolan government due to its practice of providing development money without any of those American style strings regarding human rights, democracy, and honesty in government. Without getting into the endless debate regarding pragmatism versus idealism in the practice of diplomacy, suffice it to say that the Chinese approach, not unlike the American customs of the Cold War period, provide major short-term benefits, but, arguably, the US linkage of development efforts with the critical ineffables will prove the winner in the longer term.
A stable Angola with increased oil exports is in our national interest. Currently, approximately seven percent of our oil comes from Angola including the Cabinda Enclave. The percentage can go higher, particularly if the MEND insurgency in Nigeria continues to shrink that country's production. To put it crassly, better the oil comes here than it goes to China.
The Angolan government, particularly its foreign minister, were fulsome in praise of Ms Clinton, her remarks, and the MOU. President Dos Santos called his talk with her on environmental issues, military cooperation, and democratic reform, "superb." Considering the past record of the US in Angola, specifically our long running effort to keep Dos Santos from power, that comment, if true, is powerful reason to think the bilateral relations may go from "correct" to "near ally."
Matters did not go so well in Congo. That is no surprise. The US is in large measure responsible for the current situation in the country. This was never the intent of any of the administrations which supported Mobutu regardless of his more than slightly evident deficiencies.
Rather, it is the Law of Unintended Consequences at work. The Congo has never been able to develop any of the necessary structures of government. Nor has it been able to foster orderly development of its vast mineral resources. It has not been able to provide for basic, let alone advanced, education for the overwhelming majority of its citizens. The country has never been able, allowed, would be the more accurate term, to foster the idea of a national citizenship in the congeries of tribes which constitute its population.
Absent a national identity, lacking national institutions, without a national infrastructure, but possessed of great and easily exploited resources, it has been almost inevitable that the DRC has become a tottering, war-wracked simulacrum of a nation-state. The Belgians ran a vast enterprise of exploitation. Independence brought Cold War politics with a vengeance. The aftermath of these as well as the legacy of Mobutu's lootocracy is what is seen today.
Eastern Congo is a venue of internal war with outsider influences. It is the rape capital of Africa. The major reason SecState Clinton flew into the regional metropolis, Goma, was to underscore the reality of mass rape as a chronic feature of warfare, Congo style.
The body count in the Congo at least equals the 1.5 million of Angola, and the internally displaced person count may well surpass Angola's 4 plus million. The consequences of this hectatomb include a loss of perceived legitimacy for the central government and a pervasive sense of hopelessness on the part of the area's youth. Considering the median age of the Congolese is 16.6 years, this means a lot of despair on the part of a lot of people.
While the UN peace keeping force in the Congo may be almost equal to the task of suppressing the dozens of armed groups fighting each other and the central government, the blue helmets cannot build hope, let alone a functioning nation-state. Nor can Ms Clinton's hectoring and imploring.
When a country, in this case the US, makes major foreign policy blunders, regardless of the reasons, intentions, or motives, that country must, repeat, must make amends. The amends must be real, practical, and quick to take some evident effect. Rather than to pass off as Ms Clinton reportedly did, the mistakes of the past as something she cannot "excuse," the US should come forward with a plan of action taken in conjunction with the Congolese government and, where relevant, the UN, with a view to rectifying the results.
This implies the commitment of resources which we can ill afford. Perhaps of manpower, which we certainly cannot afford. It means working with a government which is more one in name only than in substance. It means working to gain the trust of a people who have very, very little reason to trust us and our intentions. It means an exercise in time, frustration, and perhaps too few results coming too late.
Still, it is an effort we must make. We must make it if the current administration is to have credibility in Africa. We must make it if we are to justly see ourselves as the "last, best hope of mankind" or the "shining city on the hill."
As we had the responsibility to do our best to clean up the mess we made in Iraq, we have the ethical and practical responsibility to do our best to clean up the mess our past policies have created in the Congo, in Angola, and all the other dirty little proxy battlefields on the margins of the Cold War.
With victory come the responsibilities of having won.
And, that's a fact, Jack.
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