Webs of War in the Congo: The Politics of Hybrid Wars, Conflict Networks, and Multilateral Responses 1996-2003

Since 1996, the Democratic Republic of Congo has been the battleground for was within wars, where networks of conflict interact to produce patterns of local resource extraction and patterns of local and regional violence, resulting in one of the most devastating, yet surprisingly understudied, humanitarian disasters of our day. This dissertation explains the complex political sociologies of the three Congo wars and tests key assumptions in the new war literature through empirical observation of the wars and a case study of the Mouvement de Liberation du Congo (MLC), one of the principal rebel movements in these wars. This project challenges the assertion that contemporary conflicts are exclusively intra-state (or civil war) phenomena. There is no neat dividing line between the external and internal dimensions of the three Congo wars, as actors are linked together in transnational networks of war, and the local is never truly local. This dissertation also argues that the discursive emphasis on the economic functions of violence and the economic agendas of actors—particularly non-state actors—to the exclusion of political grievance articulation against the state or rival groups, offers only partial and at times even faulty explanations. Political contestation in the Congo is being restructured into violent, networked insurgencies and proxy movements, and public authority is contested and reshaped by a multitude of actors, state and non-state. The complexities of these wars have deeply challenged the United Nations and others in their efforts to end the continued violence. Interventions to end the violence have failed—not because local dynamics have been ignored in favor of national ones, but rather because the linkages between different scales of violence (local, national, regional, international) have been poorly understood. There is a need for new ways to conceive of and characterize what appear to be hybrid wars structured around complex, transnational networks linking a diversity of actors. This study thus represents an effort to develop a network-centered approach to explain contemporary war, in which the network is the primary unit of analysis

Home is where the heart is: identity, return, and the Toleka bicycle taxi union in Congo’s equateur

Since the end of the 2006 post-war transition, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the international community have struggled to design, finance and implement a host of national and regional disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programmes. The weak capacity of implementing institutions, widespread corruption, funding gaps, Western-driven processes and a misdiagnosis of local needs have all been raised as core reasons behind failures. Little is known about how processes of ex-combatant return shape and reshape public authority, where former combatants return to, how they negotiate and experience ‘return’ and how viable ways of life are successfully constituted post return. While many ex-combatants in the DRC continue to be re-recruited into militia groups, one group that has reintegrated successfully is the Toleka—a several-thousand-strong group of ex-combatants who returned (or remained) in the provincial capital of Mbandaka (Equateur province). The Toleka formed a bicycle-taxi organization and unionized its membership, providing protections and collective-bargaining authority to the group, while providing a public good. It also helped to reshape identities, produce a sense of civilian solidarity and provide a bridging function from life in the military. This article looks at how this organization was formed, how the former fighters identified and capitalized on a local need and the conditions that allowed them to successfully unionize and protect their rights as they re-entered civilian life. Based on extensive fieldwork and interviews, this article seeks to understand a case of ‘successful’ return in a region with few such successes

DDR and return in the DRC - a foolish investment or necessary risk?

Tatiana Carayannis and Aaron Pangburn argue that it is time to rethink Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration programs in the Democratic Republic of Congo

The 'Third' UN: imagining post-COVID-19 multilateralism

If the United Nations system is to remain relevant, or even survive, the thinking to re‐imagine and redesign contemporary global governance will come from the Third UN. This article focuses on the ecology of supportive non‐state actors – intellectuals, scholars, consultants, think tanks, NGOs, the for‐profit private sector, and the media – that interacts with the intergovernmental machinery of the First UN and international civil servants of the Second UN to formulate and refine ideas and decision‐making in policy processes. Despite the growth in analyses of non‐state actors in global governance, the ‘other’ or ‘Third’ UN is poorly understood, often ignored, and normally discounted. Some advocate for particular ideas, others help analyze or operationalize their testing and implementation; in any case, many help the UN ‘think’ and have an impact on how we think about the United Nations

Making justice work: the Bemba case and the ICC’s future

On March 21, 2016, the International Criminal Court (ICC) found Congolese rebel leader turned politician Jean-Pierre Bemba guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. After holding Bemba in detention for nearly eight years, the court determined that Bemba failed to stop his Mouvement de Libération du Congo (MLC) troops from committing atrocities against civilians in the Central African Republic (CAR) during an attempted coup there in 2002–3. Bemba remains in detention pending sentencing and a judgement on reparations

The contested meaning of ‘security’ and ‘conflict resolution’: research from the JSRP

Tom Kirk, Robin Luckham and Tatiana Carayannis draw on the JSRP’s research to argue that calls for a reinvigorated effort to tackle the root causes of conflict and insecurity require closer attention to the political meaning of ‘security’ and ‘conflict resolution’ across different contexts

What works in security interventions: rethinking DDR in today’s violent conflicts

This post was inspired by Tatiana’s Carayannis presentation at a panel discussion entitled “The Changing Landscape of Armed Groups: Doing DDR in New Contexts” on 1 May 2018 in New York. The World Bank Group, UN Department of Peacekeeping and the Social Science Research Council organized the event, and the meeting note can be found here

Crisis responses, opportunity, and public authority during Covid-19's first wave in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan.

Funder: Knowledge FrontiersDiscussions on African responses to Covid-19 have focused on the state and its international backers. Far less is known about a wider range of public authorities, including chiefs, humanitarians, criminal gangs, and armed groups. This paper investigates how the pandemic provided opportunities for claims to and contests over power in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan. Ethnographic research is used to contend that local forms of public authority can be akin to miniature sovereigns, able to interpret dictates, policies, and advice as required. Alongside coping with existing complex protracted emergencies, many try to advance their own agendas and secure benefits. Those they seek to govern, though, do not passively accept the new normal, instead often challenging those in positions of influence. This paper assesses which of these actions and reactions will have lasting effects on local notions of statehood and argues for a public authorities lens in times of crisis