REVIEW ARTICLE BEYOND CREED, GREED AND BOOTY: CONFLICT IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

As a result, there is vacillation between a complete lack of interest while the conflict rages on un-noticed, and flashes of attention when glimmers of phenomena are seen through the prism of Rwanda (or other equally immediately emotive narratives) so that the outside world can understand and process what seems otherwise completely incomprehensible. At a practical policy level, abusive simplification results in misguided action – humanitarianism or increased military protection is seen as a temporary solution that too often becomes a long-term strategy and substitution for meaningful political action. The response, for example, to the October and November 2008 North Kivu crisis was to augment the UN’s military presence so that they can better ‘do protection’ in an operational environment in which all sides have been implicated in atrocities to varying degrees. As such, the underlying grievances, the manifestations of political and social exclusion, which are at the root of the conflict, go and continue to go largely unaddressed. Today, the conflict in the DRC has, once again, disappeared from the pages of newspapers. The interest of the world, captured briefly, has moved on to other things. But in the Congo the conflict continues.