Editorial | See Africa’s wars, too

In her eloquent assertion of kinship with Africa at the African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa this month, Mia Mottley spoke only obliquely of two of the continent’s biggest and most intractable wars: the conflict in Sudan and the ongoing, Rwanda-backed rebel insurgency in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

As “a proud daughter of Africa”, as she put it; as the prime minister of Barbados, the first land mass slave ships encountered as they crossed the Middle Passage from Africa to the West Indies and the Americas; and as chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), a grouping of small countries inhabited mostly by the ancestors of slaves and indentured servants, Ms Mottley ought then, as she must now, to have spoken more directly and frankly about Africa’s conflicts – in a way that only family can with each other.

So, too, should the Jamaican prime minister, Andrew Holness, who, if he is still in the job, will succeed Ms Mottley as CARICOM’s chairman in July, and therefore lead the community’s heads of government to the first in-person AU-CARICOM summit in Ethiopia in September. Mr Holness might additionally consider himself to have earned the right to speak about the DRC conflict with brotherly confidence to Paul Kigame, the Rwandan president he hosted in Kingston just shy of two years ago.

This newspaper also expects greater assertiveness about the conflicts, especially the DRC bloodletting, from the Patterson Institute for African-Caribbean Advocacy (PIACA) at The University of the West Indies, Mona.

MORAL OBLIGATION

We point to these issues not in an attempt to embarrass individuals, institutions or agencies, or to divert attention from the Caribbean’s rightful effort to coordinate with Africa in contending with existing, and emerging, global challenges – but because of them. Internal strife on the continent or in the Caribbean will make the insulation they attempt to weave less effective, if not porous.

Moreover, the world’s rich countries, and the power centres of the Global North, including its opinion shapers, already pay too little attention to these wars, and to the countries, communities and people who endure them.

Kith and kinship places a moral obligation on the Caribbean to lend its voice and skills to the search for solutions. And in these times of global stress, enlightened self-interest insists upon the region attempting to secure the strongest coalition with which to navigate an increasingly fraught environment.

Given the attention paid to some of the world’s other conflicts, like the Russia-Ukraine war, relatively little is made of, or known about, Africa’s wars, such as the Islamists’ insurgencies in the Sahel, the civil war in Sudan, or of the long, complex conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is heading towards its third decade. These crises have cost huge numbers of lives.

Events in the DRC have recently received a renewed bit of global attention, with the M23 rebel army capturing the eastern regional city of Goma. The fighting has left an estimated 10,000 people dead and displaced more than 100,000. But the DRC conflict, partially a residue of the 1994 Rwandan genocide – in which an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis were killed by rampaging Hutus – has, in nearly 30 years, cost more than six million lives. The DRC, especially its eastern region, is in a state of instability and much of its mineral wealth is siphoned off by interests who profit from the chaos.

POLITICAL INSTABILITY

Unravelling the history and complexities of the DRC conflict would be neither an easy nor straightforward exercise. It is, however, sufficient to say that Mr Kagame clearly believes that it is in Rwanda’s interest to keep it going and weaken the DRC.

The mostly Tutsi M23 rebels, ethnic compatriots of Mr Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), originally a Tutsi-led militia (which defeated the Hutu groups in the post-genocide war and has been in power since 1994), essentially allow Kigali to outsource its mission of destroying the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (DFLR). The DFLR is made up primarily of Hutus who crossed the border into the DRC after the RPF’s victory in Rwanda.

Sudan has been wracked by political instability and regional civil wars since its independence 69 years ago. But none of its conflicts has been as brutal or disruptive as the current civil war between the UN-recognised government of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces, and Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by former militia leader Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo. Both men were part of a government arrangement after the 2019 ouster of former strongman President Omar al-Bashir.

Since their rivalry erupted into a civil war in April 2023, tens of thousands of people have died, nearly nine million have become internally displaced, and 3.5 million have fled the country. But as is the case with the Congolese conflict, too few people are aware of the tragedy.

As it prepares for that September summit in Addis Ababa with the AU, CARICOM and the institutions of the region must speak up, and speak out, about these tragedies.