The Myth of International Protection. Claudia Seymour

in the Kivus. This was soon followed by the FARDC-led, MONUC-supported Kimia (“quiet”) II operations, marking a fundamental shift in the politico-military balance that had held since the end of the Second Congo War. Until that time, the FDLR had largely coexisted with the DRC government and the local population. The FDLR’s presence had often been instrumentalized to the advantage of national and regional political entrepreneurs.²⁵

      In direct response to the 2009 offensive, the FDLR conducted ravaging reprisals on the civilian population. The humanitarian consequences of these attacks were devastating, and the investigation of grave human rights abuses constituted much of my work in the DRC during that year.²⁶ From the beginning of the operations in January until September 2009, Human Rights Watch documented the killing of more than fourteen hundred civilians, more than seventy-five hundred cases of sexual violence against women and girls, and the forced displacement of more than nine hundred thousand people.²⁷ The FARDC also conducted attacks on the civilian population, including Hutu refugees who lived in proximity to the FDLR.

      While international and regional attention remained focused on routing the FDLR in the following years, by 2012 conflict resurged, as several key CNDP leaders created the new Mouvement du 23 mars (M23) group, justifying their rebellion with the same discourses as in the past.²⁸ Following sustained fighting with the FARDC, the M23 occupied Goma in November 2012. International outcry, including about the lack of defense by the UN peacekeeping mission, led to a strong and eventually effective military response to push back the M23. A cease-fire and a new series of peace talks led to the disbanding of the M23 in November 2013. Attention could again turn back on the FDLR, and in 2014 a voluntary FDLR disarmament process was organized. It ultimately failed, and renewed military offensives began in January 2015. Called “Sukola II” (“clean up” in Lingala), this operation was unilaterally conducted by the FARDC as the UN had blacklisted several of the FARDC commanders for allegations of previous human rights abuses and thus could not offer its support to the government forces.

      Since my last visit to the DRC in 2016, the various iterations of militarized violence in eastern DRC have continued.²⁹ As this book went to press, tensions in the DRC were high because of the repeated delays in presidential elections that should have been held in 2016 but still had not occurred; popular protests had been violently repressed, and renewed fighting threatened ahead of the promised elections in December 2018. The “common sense” of militarized violence that has guided Congolese politics throughout the DRC’s history continues to prevail.³⁰

      CONSERVING VIOLENCE