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The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is in crisis. At the end of 2017, more than 80 mass graves were discovered in the Kasai region, national elections were again delayed, and the number of armed groups and violence continued to escalate. Although the DRC rarely makes national headlines, its descent into disarray poses a threat to stability — and therefore US interests — in the region.
The First and Second Congo wars, also known as Africa’s World War, lasted seven years (1996–2003) and eventually drew in all nine of the DRC’s neighboring states. During this period, an estimated 3.9 million people died, making it the deadliest conflict since World War II. Currently, there are 4.35 million internally displaced persons and 9.9 million individuals who lack reliable access to food. Refugee flows present another conundrum, as the conflict in the Kasai region alone has forced 35,000 Congolese to seek refuge in Angola. This spillover effect further poses a risk to the region by inflaming inter-ethnic tensions and raising the prospect of forcible returns of refugees back into conflict zones, as Angola has already done.
The President of the DRC, Joseph Kabila, is a central factor in the country’s growing instability. Since 2016, Kabila has delayed democratic elections twice to circumvent term limits. Furthermore, he failed to honor the Saint-Sylvestre Political Agreement between the government and the opposition, which provided a framework consistent with the DRC’s Constitution to guide the country’s first democratic transition of power. With elections scheduled for December 2018, Kabila remains defiantly opposed to outside help, denying that there is a humanitarian crisis and calling assistance efforts by the international community “meddling” in DRC politics. By blocking efforts to address the growing humanitarian challenges, Kabila is complicit in the destabilization of his country and creating the conditions for another crisis on the scale of the First and Second Congo Wars.
However, the instability and humanitarian challenges threatening the region are not the sole sources of concern for US policy. Long an important source of uranium, the DRC continues to supply strategic and critical minerals such as cobalt and copper to US consumer and defense markets. New data from the 2018 Mineral Commodity Summaries show that the US relies on imports for 72% of its cobalt consumption. While the US could diversify sourcing of imports of refined cobalt, the DRC produces 58% of the world’s supply of mined cobalt. Since this mineral is in everything from iPhones to the F-35, the DRC is a critical part of the US supply chain.
So what is to be done? The State Department’s policy priorities toward Africa have so far concentrated on security and trade partnerships. While these are imperative to advancing US interests, the DRC poses a unique risk to America’s policy priorities. Failure to adequately address the country’s humanitarian challenges before planned elections at the end of 2018 is a recipe for disaster not only in the DRC, but more broadly. US action and leadership has never been more important to the stability of the region.
Taylor Clausen is a Research Assistant in Foreign Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
Failure to adequately address the country’s humanitarian challenges is a recipe for disaster not only in the DRC but also more broadly. US action and leadership has never been more important to the stability of the region.
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