Feingold blog on Democratic Republic of Congo

[undeterred]

Sustained Attention to Eastern Congo

Posted: 09/20/2013 10:26 pm
by Russ Feingold Special Envoy, Great Lakes Region of Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo

On a Sunday morning in late April, I was considering seriously a request I received from my friend John Kerry to join him at the State Department, and put some of the 18 years I spent on African issues as a U.S. Senator back to work on behalf of the United States. The international news at the time was dominated by the serious situation which continues today in Syria. As I listened to Republican Saxby Chambliss, a former colleague of mine on the Senate Intelligence Committee, describe his concerns about Syria to CBS correspondent Bob Schieffer, I heard him say something which helped me decide to accept the State Department post. Senator Chambliss said, "The world is watching. We've got 70,000 dead people in that part of the world as a result of Bashar al-Assad." Sadly, in a part of Africa known as the Great Lakes region, many, many more than 70,000 people have been killed and, yet, there are people around the globe who are largely unaware of this decades old conflict.

When I began my work in July as the U.S. Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region of Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), I knew that one of my priorities would be to help Americans become more informed of and engaged on an area of the world too often forgotten. From the mid-1990s until today, the DRC has been home to the deadliest conflict since World War II, with over 5.4 million people dead and tens of thousands more victimized by sexual violence used as a weapon of war. The fighting and instability continues today, with more than 2.7 million people displaced from their homes, and thousands more raped or killed in the past year alone.

I recently returned from my first trip to the continent in my new capacity, and am now, more than ever, focused on how the United States, with sustained attention, can more actively support and complement regional and international efforts already underway to stabilize the region and help these countries achieve a real and lasting peace. In February 2013, 11 African countries, including the DRC, Rwanda, and Uganda, signed the Peace, Security, and Cooperation Framework Agreement, which presents the best hope for ending both the current conflict and the chronic instability in the Great Lakes region. There are many reasons why the United States should take this opportunity to step up its own engagement in the region. Many of us can agree that stopping the many war-related deaths and the disturbing human rights violations in this region is grounds for stepping up U.S. involvement. Peace in the region would also help unleash the vast human and economic potential in the Great Lakes, opening up enormous opportunities for future economic partnerships. The DRC should be one of the most economically prosperous countries in the world. The implementation of the February Framework Agreement is our best chance at helping the DRC become such a country. Greater involvement is also in the national security interests of the United States, as nations at war are often a place where those who wish to harm us, including international criminal and terrorist networks, find safe haven.

It was my great pleasure to travel recently to the region with the UN Special Envoy to the Great Lakes, former Irish President Mary Robinson, as well as with the UN Secretary General's Special Representative to the DRC, the European Union Senior Coordinator, and the African Union Special Representative. President Robinson, the other envoys and I have become friends, and we are allies in this effort, sharing the same hopes and expectations for progress in the region and for the success of the Framework Agreement. We stand united in our conviction that armed violence will no longer be tolerated in the Great Lakes region, and we vow to remain engaged as the region moves forward in its campaign for peace.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russ-feingold/sustained-attention-to-ea_b_3965347.html

[undeterred]

1. Feingold Interview

Politics Confidential

Russ Feingold, the former senator and a leading progressive, is now taking on an entirely different role as the U.S. special envoy charged with helping to find a solution to one of the deadliest conflicts in modern times: the two-decades-long war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Shortly after returning from his first trip to the region as special envoy, Feingold sat down with “Politics Confidential” and had some harsh words for the Rwanda government’s apparent support of rebels – the mostly Tutsi M23 rebels blamed for most of the recent carnage in eastern Congo. “We've seen a credible body of reporting that the Rwandan government has been supportive of the M23,” Feingold told “Politics Confidential.” “That has to stop.”

The Rwandan government, meanwhile, has publically denied that it supports the M23 rebels. Feingold was quick to add that, in the conflict that includes more than 40 rebel groups, other governments are also guilty of supporting rebel groups. He said all parties must be held accountable. “We also are concerned about any support given by any other government for the FDLR,” he said of the mostly Hutu group that was connected to the Rwandan genocide. “So it's not just one side. We are telling all sides that you must stop support for these armed groups.” Feingold said that he, along with special envoys from the United Nations and European Union, are working with the presidents of the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda “to do everything they can to stop the armed conflict.”

Feingold described a recent trip to the Great Lakes region of Africa along with fellow envoys. “So you go to Kinshasa in Congo, you go to Kigali in Rwanda, you go to Kampala and you eat with President Museveni,” he said. “But we also go to where the fighting is. We spend a day with all the special envoys in Goma. Goma is right on the border of Rwanda and Lake Kivu, and that is the epicenter of this conflict.”

On the topic of Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, whose militant group has forced thousands of children to become soldiers or sex slaves, among other war crimes, Feingold said a small contingent of U.S. troops continue to assist in the training of local forces in an effort to capture the LRA leader. “What Joseph Kony did to the people of northern Uganda is one of the most unspeakable things that has ever occurred to anyone,” he said. “I think that we are continuing to try and find this guy and stop him.”

For more of the interview with Feingold, and to hear more about his recent trip to the region, check out this episode of “Politics Confidential.”

See Video at: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-players-abc-news/special-envoy-russ-feingold-calls-rwanda-end-support-111209975.html

[undeterred]

2. Feingold meets with Obama

:large