Out of the 54 countries in Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo may have the most tragic history. A country four times the size of France experienced some of the worst atrocities of the colonial era and an exceptionally tumultuous independence process. It then suffered under the thirty-two year reign of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko followed by one of the most insanely devastating wars in modern history.
Many native inhabitants of the Congo River basin were sold into slavery by the Kongo Kingdom after the Portuguese made contact with western central Africa in the 15th century. Following a few hundred years of being a hub of chattel slave trade, Belgian King Leopold II claimed the land as his own private holding in the 1870s. The ensuing decades were perhaps the most ruthless and barbaric example of western European colonialism that saw some ten million deaths, forced slave labor, and dismemberment used as a punishment:
Archive pictures from Congo Free State document its violence and brutality. In one, a man sits on a low platform looking at a dismembered small foot and small hand. They belonged to his five-year-old daughter, who was later killed when her village did not produce sufficient rubber. She was not unique - chopping off the limbs of enslaved Congolese was a routine form of retribution when Leopold II's quotas were not met.
Leopold II’s brand of personal colonialism was so gruesome (even for the incredibly low standards of the time) that the Belgian parliament wrested the colony away from him after twenty-three years. The new management wasn’t much of an improvement and Belgium is still “issuing regrets” and returning Congolese artifacts to this day.
Unfortunately like many African states in the back half of the twentieth century, after casting off the yoke of European colonialism a kleptocratic dictator managed to emerge from the chaos. The Washington Post 1997 obituary of Mobutu outlined his disastrous three-decade rule:
Under his leadership, a nation with seemingly unlimited prospects became one of the poorest in the world. By the late 1980s, per capita income was less than a tenth of what it had been at independence. In the 1990s, the degree of poverty dropped below measurable levels. Hyperinflation rendered the currency worthless. Barter was the usual means of exchange.
The country's infrastructure collapsed. Only one paved road in 10 that existed at independence survived into the 1990s. There was no way to get the products of the country's once thriving farms to market. The Zaire River became virtually the only form of surface transportation, but there were few boats to ply it. Fifty percent of the country's children died by age 5. Schools and hospitals closed.
While pocketing billions for personal use, Mobutu kept his citizens in line through state-directed murders, rapes, and detentions at torture facilities. Mobutu’s kleptocracy crumbled during the First Congo War in the 1990s which was immediately succeeded by the Second Congo War which killed millions and devolved into a regional conflict involving rebel groups and many neighboring states:
Congolese forces supported by Angola (which also reversed alliances following the ascent of Laurent Kabila), Namibia, and Zimbabwe fought the Rwandan, Ugandan, and Burundi militaries, as well as various rebel groups supported by Kigali and Kampala. Amidst the chaos of war, Laurent Kabila was assassinated in a 2001 coup attempt planned by his own aides and guards. Those involved were imprisoned and Kabila’s son, Joseph Kabila, took power. The Second Congo War was formally brought to a close under the junior Kabila in 2002, and while estimates vary greatly, the death toll of the Second Congo War and the associated humanitarian disaster may have reached over three million people by 2004.
Finally in 2006 after years of bloodshed, the Democratic Republic of the Congo held elections which saw Joseph Kabila officially elected President. Kabila stayed in office (somewhat contentiously) until 2018 when Félix Tshisekedi succeeded him in the country’s first peaceful transfer of power. Last month, the DRC held an election which saw Tshisekedi win a second term with almost Saddam-like numbers:
The president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Felix Tshisekedi, has won a second term in office with a landslide victory, according to provisional results, in a vote opposition leaders have dismissed as a “sham”. Provisional results from the single-round presidential ballot, declared on Sunday by the country’s electoral commission, Ceni, showed Tshisekedi had won 73% of the vote…Tshisekedi, 60, first came to power in January 2019 after a disputed election that many observers said he had in fact lost.
Last Tuesday the country’s constitutional court tossed an opposition leader’s legal challenge and declared Tshisekedi the winner of the election setting him up to govern until at least 2029. This certification comes despite organizations like the Africa Center for Strategic Studies noting:
Congolese churches documented 5,402 reports of serious incidents, 60 percent of which interrupted voting. Their large observer contingent, coupled with past experience, gave them substantial coverage of Congo’s 75,000 polling stations. Their daily reports found numerous shortcomings. Roughly 43 percent of these reports cited missing voter lists, ballot papers, indelible ink, and ineligible voter cards. Three-quarters of the reports identified malfunctioning voting devices, failure to open polling stations, vote-buying, ransacking of polling material, torn electoral lists, ballot stuffing, and denial of access to local observers.
This was clearly not a free or fair election and Tshisekedi may be setting himself up to rule the DRC into the 2030s. The United States cannot afford to ignore the illiberal tendencies in Africa. I’ve written before about the danger the proliferation of military coups in west Africa poses to the region and U.S. interests. Russia operates all over the continent, plundering what it can while partnering with corrupt authoritarian regimes. China has also taken notice and set up shop in the DRC using child labor to extract crucial minerals and resources while establishing a mining monopoly in the cobalt and uranium rich country.
There’s also the ever-present threat of Islamic terrorism. AEI’s Critical Threats project currently grades the country’s insurgency as ‘Active’ and ‘Escalating’. A military tribunal found 15 people guilty of financing terrorism just last week. A country with a dubiously elected president, Chinese mining operations (and the state security that comes with it), and Islamic militants and rebels running around is a pressure cooker waiting to erupt. This situation very well could spiral out of control adding to the abundance of modern conflict and suffering in the world.
Ecuador
Violence erupted in Ecuador last Wednesday when narco-terrorists set off explosions, kidnapped police officers, and stormed a live news broadcast:
The takeover of TC's studio in Guayaquil was broadcast for about 20 minutes, to the astonishment of viewers. Men wearing balaclavas and mostly dressed in black wielded guns and accosted staffers huddling on the floor. Gunshots and yelling were heard, before later police commandoes arrived to rescue the terrified media employees.
"They (the attackers) shot one of our cameramen in the leg, broke the arm of another one," added the broadcaster's Rendon. "The police came in minutes, surrounded the TV station and the tactical units intervened."
Shortly thereafter, grisly videos began popping up on X showing inmates detaining and murdering prison guards. Ecuador’s young president Daniel Noboa, elected last fall, has declared war on the drug running gangs that have been plaguing the country with violence for several years:
Much of the violence has concentrated in prisons, where clashes between inmates have left more than 460 dead, many beheaded or burnt alive, since February 2021. The country's murder rate quadrupled from 2018 to 2022 and a record 220 tons of drugs were seized last year. Noboa said he is targeting 22 criminal groups, the most powerful of which are Los Choneros, Los Lobos, and Tiguerones.
The United States should do what it can to assist Noboa’s administration in their efforts to wipe out these cocaine trafficking terrorists. If these gangs carve out zones of control it will only make it easier for them to pump drugs north and further destabilize South America.
Houthis
After three months of unrelenting volleys of missiles and drones targeting commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea, the United States and its partners have finally struck back against the Houthis. The Biden administration launched a series of strikes targeting Houthi assets, infrastructure, and personnel on January 12. The next day, an additional strike neutralized a radar facility.
It’s good to see the administration at last taking active steps to degrade the Houthi’s military capabilities. These types of strikes are exactly what I’ve been advocating for in Son of a Diplomat for months. I expect there will be retaliatory drone attacks in the coming days that will necessitate additional operations from the DoD. Hopefully the Biden administration is committed to defending a free and safe Red Sea.
Iraq
After publicly stating he was seeking the complete withdrawal of U.S. led anti-terror coalition forces from Iraq, Prime Minister al-Sudani apparently has privately indicated otherwise:
Senior advisers to Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani told U.S. officials that his declaration was “an attempt to satisfy domestic political audiences” and that Sudani himself “remained committed” to negotiating the coalition’s future presence in Iraq, according to a Jan. 6 State Department cable obtained by POLITICO.
The domestic political audiences al-Sudani is referring to are the Iranian-backed militias that have been wreaking havoc in the country. Whether it’s financing the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas or trying to pressure Iraq into expelling U.S. anti-terror forces from the country, Iran is constantly waging asymmetric war against the West. America’s Iran policy has been a mess since the ill-conceived Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was implemented in the summer of 2015. It’s time to wake up to reality and adopt a realistic posture towards the Ayatollah’s regime.
Myanmar
China looks to have brokered a ceasefire between the military junta and the National Unity Government in Myanmar:
Myanmar’s military and an alliance of armed ethnic minority groups have announced a China-mediated ceasefire after months of conflict that has posed the biggest threat to the junta since it seized power in 2021. Fighting has claimed hundreds of lives and displaced more than half a million people since October, when the alliance launched an offensive against the junta.
This comes after NUG forces captured a series of cities (Kutkai, Hsenwi, and Laukkai) in the Shan hills in early January:
The Three Brotherhood Alliance, as the group is known, said on Friday it had taken took over Laukkai town after the military's regional headquarters located there surrendered. The fall of Laukkai is the rebels' latest victory in a sweeping offensive that began in October and has become the most significant threat to Myanmar's military government since it seized power in a 2021 coup.
Around the same time, roughly four hundred miles to the west, the military junta was launching air strikes that ended up killing seventeen civilians:
A local resident who helped carry out rescue work told The Associated Press on Sunday that a jet fighter dropped three bombs on the village of Kanan, on the outskirts of Khampat, about 280 kilometers (170 miles) northwest of Mandalay, the country’s second-biggest city, killing 17 civilians who were in buildings near the village school.
It's not clear what the terms of this ceasefire are and I'm highly suspect of China's motives in this conflict. As I've said before the NUG offers a much better future for Myanmar than the current ruling junta.
Venezuela/Guyana
Guyana has denied Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro’s conspiratorial claims that the U.S. is on the cusp of establishing a military base in the country. After holding a sham referendum to claim the Essequibo region last December, Maduro seems to be taking another page out of Vladimir Putin’s playbook and cooking up fever dreams of a hostile Western presence next door.
The United States did send Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Daniel Erikson to discuss U.S. training and military assistance in the near future last week:
Guyana’s government said it is seeking help from the U.S. to improve its defense capabilities amid fears that neighboring Venezuela might one day seize a disputed region in western Guyana that is rich in minerals and oil…The talks ended late Tuesday with [U.S. DASD for the Western Hemisphere] Erikson saying the U.S. would help Guyana create a more organized and better equipped military in coming months. He did not provide further details. Erikson also said that security forces and specialized training teams that have visited Guyana in the past year will continue to do so in 2024.
This is the right thing to do in light of Maduro’s aggressive rhetoric and open designs on his neighbor’s land. Venezuela has yet to schedule the 2024 presidential election but I’ll be keeping an eye on that and how it will impact this brewing crisis.
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