Posted 547 days ago

AFRICA GREAT LAKES: Taking the initiative from violent actors

by Cliff Kindy, Christian Peacemaker Teams
Originally published at CPTnet on February 19, 2009. Used with permission.

Through a series of exploration delegations between 2005 and 2008, CPT connected with human rights organizations, peace groups, civil society leaders and church leaders to gain a better understanding of the conflict in the Great Lakes region—specifically in the Congo and Uganda.

The Africa Great Lakes CPT project is based in the city of Goma, province of North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Ongoing violence has displaced two million people and killed over five million in the past ten years. The goals of this project are to support local nonviolent peace initiatives, to bring international attention to the conflict in the region, and to research economic factors which continue this violence. The team has researched the connections between mineral extraction and the ongoing conflict and has begun exploring the possibility of accompanying villagers to their fields.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) recently integrated rebels from the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) into the country’s military. President Kabila also invited the Rwandan military to join an operation against militias of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Some FDLR combatants are considered responsible for the Rwandan genocide, and they control many of the mines in South and North Kivu Provinces. Planners hope this operation stops the conflict engulfing eastern DRC for fifteen years. But nonviolent activists are seeking to reframe the conflict, so that they, rather than violent actors, hold the initiative.

One such activist is Monsignor Jean-Luc Kuye, a Pentecostal pastor whom CPT met recently in Kinshasa and president of the ecumenical Eglise du Christ de Congo in South Kivu. In 1998, when Rwanda invaded the Congo, Msgr. Kuye asked, “What will we do? We are being re-colonized. How will we respond without more violence?” Msgr. Kuye provided leadership in a difficult political process, at each step of a fragile seven-year dance. Facilitating national dialogue, creating the new constitution, and barely saving the signing of the Sun City Accords, this church leader worked for peace even though opponents threatened his life. His fear became a stimulus for creative nonviolent possibilities rather than an immobilizer.

As a church leader, Msgr. Kuye assisted the transitional DRC government in 2003. Later, in the national reconciliation process, Kuye received the assignment to talk with CNDP General Nkunda, and FDLR militias, to enable elections in 2006. Kuye negotiated with the Council of Churches in Rwanda to smooth the return for demobilized FDLR and this year traveled to Rome to ask FDLR leadership to stop fighting.

Networks of nonviolent actors are replacing violent actors who had dominated the scene earlier. Churches already provide the spiritual undergirding that carries people through difficult peacemaking, and religious people across DRC are rebuilding the self-confidence of groups within civil society. World Relief is working in conflict areas to unite denominations and tribes, building homes for widows, and visiting prisons and hospitals. They have a “leading to see a church-led, grassroots, nonviolent movement in North Kivu.” Norwegian Church Aid offered assistance to families re-establishing themselves in Rwanda. Mennonites played a key role in 2006 election training and observing. The Quaker Ebenezer Peace Center, Catholic Pax Christi, and Anglican Bishop Isingoma are nurturing peace actors who insert nonviolent initiatives into this cauldron of conflict.

If this comprehensive nonviolent initiative led by churches works, it will usurp the joint military operation. The nonviolent campaign will define DRC history.

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