Strategic Pressure: A Blueprint for Addressing New Threats and Supporting Democratic Change in the DRC
Publisher: Enough Project
Author(s): Sasha Lezhnev and John Prendergast
Date: 2017
Topics: Extractive Resources, Governance
Countries: Congo (DRC)
Nearly nine months after signing a political deal aimed at ushering in a landmark democratic transition in the Democratic Republic of Congo, President Joseph Kabila’ssubversion of the accord places Congo at risk of much greater violence. It is also now creating the potential for regional instability and the possible disruption in the supply of minerals strategically important to U.S. national security and to U.S. and other global manufacturers.
Kabila’s attempt to stay in power at all costs is moving Congo from a fragile democracy to a dictatorship. It has already sparked significant repression, caused armed conflict in the Kasai region where 1.4 million people have been displaced, and all major U.S. companies with directinvestments have fled Congo. Unrest that is rising in several areas of the country could also spread to mineral-rich Katanga, where 50 to 60 percent of the world’s cobalt reserves lie,(1) creating a threat to U.S. defense, auto, and electronics industries.
A much more robust strategy is needed to prevent a far costlier disaster with U.S. national security and regional instability implications, and to help Congo move toward a democratic transition. Over the past year, the international community as well as Congo’s opposition and civil society have deployed some elements of a necessary strategy of pressure and negotiation to support a transition. However, those measures have not nearly been applied at the level needed to change the calculations of Kabila and his inner circle sufficiently to motivate them to move forward with credible elections. There is international pressure, but it is too individualized, ad hoc, and not focused enough on squeezing the regime at its most vulnerable point: the global financialsystem that Kabila and his associates heavily rely on to move money.