MONUC and SSR in the Democratic Republic of Congo

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MONUC and SSR in theDemocratic Republic of CongoRenner Onana & Hannah TaylorPublished online: 04 Aug 2008.

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MONUC and SSR in the DemocraticRepublic of Congo

RENNER ONANA and HANNAH TAYLOR

From 2003 to 2006, the volatile political environment in the Democratic Republic ofCongo conditioned the implementation of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration(DDR), and army integration programmes, as well as the functioning of related co-ordination mechanisms. Programmes and modalities for coordination were constantlyadjusted – in relation to the multitude of challenges that arose, divisions within the transi-tional government, and the interests of bilateral partners. To be effective, internationalpartners should coordinate advocacy, leverage, planning and assistance for securitysector reform (SSR) from the earliest phases of a peace process. Moving sensitivereforms in the security sector forward in a coordinated and coherent manner requires acontinuous, unified and carefully prepared political effort by international partners.

The inauguration in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) of PresidentJoseph Kabila on 6 December 2006, following the organization of the first freeand fair elections since 1965, marked the official end of a post-war transitionthat began in 2003. However, that this transition was concluded in (mostly)peaceful elections should not obscure the challenges remaining to consolidatingthe peace process in the DRC. The clashes of August and November 2006, andthose of 22–23 March 2007, between elements of the Congolese armed forces(FARDC) and former Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba’s military guard (alsonominally part of the FARDC) are grave reminders of the difficulties that theCongolese polity faces in attempting to rebuild and sustain credible democraticinstitutions. One of these is the reform of the security sector – especially the cre-ation of a professional, non-partisan national army, which is considered central toprotecting the country’s borders and territorial integrity and restoring securityand state authority. As during the transition, optimal coordination of inter-national partners’ leverage and assistance, both among themselves and with theCongolese government, will continue to be essential to the reforms’ success.

Security sector reform (SSR) usually refers to the processes of reforming thearmy, police, other security services and the judicial system (see also Hanggiand Scherrer in this issue). The Global and All-Inclusive Agreement (GAIA),the power-sharing accord mediated by the UN, circumscribed the scope of SSRduring the DRC’s transition. It specified the disarmament, demobilization andreintegration (DDR) of Congolese combatants, integration of the armed forces,and integration and reform of the police, in order to establish the minimumlevel of security necessary for the organization of elections. These activitieswere to be coordinated between the transitional government and the international

International Peacekeeping, Vol.15, No.4, August 2008, pp.501–516ISSN 1353-3312 print/1743-906X onlineDOI:10.1080/13533310802239733 # 2008 Taylor & Francis

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community. This coordination role was largely assumed by the UN OrganizationMission in the DRC (MONUC) and the International Committee in Support ofthe Transition (CIAT) during the three-year transition.

The multidimensional peace support operation, MONUC, is endowed with aChapter VII mandate under the UN Charter. The mission’s troop strength wasgradually increased from 5,000 to 17,000 between 2002 and 2006, at the timemaking it the UN’s largest and most costly peacekeeping operation. Establishedin 1999 following the signature of the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement, MONUC’smandate was initially narrower, limited largely to monitoring the implementationof the UN-brokered ceasefire and helping to resolve the issue of the foreign armedgroups operating in the DRC, by organizing their voluntary disarmament, demo-bilization, repatriation, resettlement and reintegration (DDRRR).

MONUC’s mandate was broadened with the holding of the Inter-CongoleseDialogue in 2002 to negotiate a transitional power-sharing arrangement amongthe belligerent forces, the unarmed opposition, and civil society. During thetransition, the mission’s civilian structures were expanded to include, inter alia,electoral, DDRRR/DDR, human rights and rule-of-law sections, along withpolice and military components. Between 2005 and 2006, MONUC developedan integrated mission concept to better coordinate the mission and UN agencies’resources and strategic plans.

This article is not intended to serve as a template for, or a critique of, missionintegration. Rather, it uses the attempts to advance SSR in the DRC during thepost-war transition to illustrate some of the challenges that complex UN oper-ations and their partners face in establishing effective coordination, particularlyin a politically sensitive and controversial field such as SSR. These observationsmay have applications for future efforts in integrating UN peace operations orstrengthening coordination among the UN, donors and national partners on SSR.

A Volatile Environment for Coordination

The Congolese army has shaped and been shaped by the DRC’s own particular historyof instability and violence. The armed forces were a political instrument for formerPresident Mobutu Sese Seko, first to seize power and then to support his authoritarianrule for three decades. Yet the army eventually represented a threat to his power.Mobutu invested much effort in dividing and manipulating the Zairian army, de-professionalizing it as its role shifted from external defence to internal security.

Between 1996 and 1997, with the support of a coalition of Rwandan,Ugandan, Tanzanian, Eritrean and Angolan forces, Laurent Desire Kabila and40,000 troops of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation ofCongo (AFDL) defeated the Zairian army and toppled Mobutu within months.However, Kabila’s subsequent attempt to rebuild the Congolese army – entrustedto a top Rwandan army general, James Kabarebe – failed. Mistrust grew amongCongolese military officers towards Rwandan-led efforts to restructure andpotentially dominate the national army. Tensions emerged between Kabila andother leading members of the AFDL coalition and their Rwandan and Ugandanallies, sapping the political will needed to modernize the institution.

502 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING

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Kabila’s son, Joseph, who was deputy chief of staff to General Kabarebe,oversaw the establishment of the Maison Militaire, a policy and command struc-ture controlled by the presidency and operating parallel to the army highcommand. Joseph Kabila also created another elite unit for close protection ofthe presidency, the Garde Republicaine (GR), composed overwhelmingly of sol-diers from his father’s home province of Katanga. The GR was expanded to15,000 soldiers, creating something of an army within an army. From 2005, itwas deployed across the country, strengthening Kabila’s position and that ofhis political coalition as the transition slowly advanced. The bulk of the regulararmy, rebaptized the Forces Armees Congolaises (FAC) in 1998, remainedpoorly paid, trained and equipped.1

The DRC’s second war, which drew in seven foreign armies, broke out inAugust 1998 and ended in a military stalemate and power-sharing negotiations,concluded in December 2002. By then, Joseph Kabila had assumed the presidencyafter his father’s assassination in 2001. Within the GAIA and the transitionalconstitution, the creation of a unified, restructured army integrating the mainbelligerent forces was defined as one of the transition’s core objectives, alongwith organizing elections. However, during the negotiations in Sun City, Congo-lese parties became deadlocked over army integration, especially the issue ofpower-sharing in the integrated command structures. Eventually, the CIAT, themechanism established by the GAIA and chaired by MONUC to coordinate theinternational community’s political support to the peace process, proposed apower-sharing formula for the integrated command acceptable to all parties.This formula stipulated the distribution of the posts in the army high commandand the regional military command structures among the signatories to thepeace agreement.2 This established a pattern repeated throughout the transition:the international community would attempt to fill the leadership gap on SSR leftby reluctant Congolese actors and institutions by advising on and advocatingmilitary and police reforms through the MONUC Special Representative of theSecretary-General (SRSG) and two coordination mechanisms, the CIAT and(later) the SSR Joint Commission.

When the transitional government was established on 30 June 2003, theeastern half of the country was (and remained as of May 2008) heavily militarizedand occupied by a multitude of Congolese army units, rebel forces and militia,and Rwandan and Ugandan armed groups. The number of Congolese combatantsto be integrated into the reunified army was estimated at 330,000. Local admin-istration and the police authorities, as well as the extraction and trade in naturalresources, often came under the de facto control of armed elements. Unfortu-nately, the transitional government proved a divided and weak executive,unable to reassert state authority in many parts of the DRC. A series of crisesensued, as the ex-belligerents strove to maintain military control of certainregions to ensure political leverage and economic benefits.

This was the environment in which international partners were asked toassist in the implementation of the peace accord’s most sensitive tasks: DDRof combatants and the integration and reform of the army and police.Because of the combined ‘dual-track’ (or tronc commun) process linking

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DDR and army integration, this article focuses on army, rather than police andjudicial, reform.

Realities on the Ground Overtake DDR Planning

With the conclusion of the Global Agreement, it became clear that the DDR ofarmed factions’ combatants, if successful, would be important in quieting theeastern DRC, strengthening a fragile peace process, and spurring the first phaseof army restructuring.3 Throughout the east, Mai Mai combatants (commu-nity-based fighters allied with the former government faction) began approachingMONUC to disarm. In the absence of a structured mechanism to coordinateassistance for DDR, the MONUC mission made ad hoc responses. In reactionto the wave of spontaneous disarmament, the Security Council mandatedMONUC for the first time to assist with DDR of Congolese combatants in resol-ution 1493 (28 July 2003).

The first semester of the transition was marked by confusion and a number ofpolicy reversals with regard to army integration. The Congolese parties remaineddeadlocked over their opposing positions on the restructuring process. Onone side, the leadership of the rebel factions (RCD–G and MLC) supportedthe merging of all faction combatants into a single army under a politicallyled process, prior to any selection process or demobilization. On the other, thefaction led by Kabila proposed that the rebel forces’ ‘eligible’ combatants beabsorbed into the ex-government forces through a technical process led by themilitary.

Rebel leaders’ anxiety about being marginalized through a restructuringprocess that would undo the careful balancing of power achieved in the GAIAwas heightened by the fact that Kabila’s faction controlled a number of keyposts related to army integration. These fears were compounded by concernsthat the ex-government faction would co-opt rebel factions’ appointees incrucial high-level posts, such as defence minister. Meanwhile, the establishmentof the Superior Defence Council, intended by the transitional constitution asthe forum for consensual policymaking on army integration and other defenceand security matters, was blocked by the resistance of leading members of theKabila faction.

Nevertheless, and despite the mistrust within the ‘one plus four’ power-sharing structure of the Espace Presidentiel, the initial phase of planning theDDR and army integration processes (July 2003–February 2004), carried outalongside ad hoc actions, was shaped by mutual goodwill. Coordination wasinformal and frictions were mostly subsumed by the urgency of the situation.Anticipating (incorrectly, as it happened) that donors would fully finance bothDDR and army reform, Congolese actors were open to collaborate with inter-national partners.

In December 2003, President Kabila signed three decrees creating the insti-tutional framework of the DDR programme: the Inter-Ministerial Committeein charge of the conceptual and policy aspects of the programme; a national com-mission (CONADER) in charge of programme execution and coordination; and a


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separate committee (CGFDR) for managing financial resources. In 2004, aninterim mechanism, the Technical Committee for Planning and Coordination(CTPC), was created to implement DDR. With the assistance of the UN Develop-ment Programme (UNDP), MONUC and a few bilateral partners, the CTPCfinalized several interim DDR plans, including a plan for Ituri, which was stillexperiencing low levels of armed conflict. Meanwhile, MONUC intensified itsworking relationships with the Multi-Country Demobilization and ReintegrationProgramme (MDRP) – a multilateral mechanism set up in 2002 to coordinatefinancial support for DDR in the Great Lakes region – and the UNDP, thelatter considered the lead agency pending creation of a specialized national body.

Despite these positive developments, the DDR bodies did not immediatelybecome functional, delaying implementation of the interim plans describedabove. The National DDR Programme (PNDDR), developed in coordinationwith the UNDP, MONUC and Belgium, was finalized and adopted by the transi-tional government only in June 2004. The programme reaffirmed the relationshipbetween DDR and army integration and laid out a set of political, institutionaland operational principles, including national ownership.

It is worth noting a discrepancy between MONUC’s promised and mandatedroles. During discussions between Congolese and international partners on thePNDDR, it was agreed that MONUC would assist the FARDC in observingthe disarmament and demobilization process (including registration and storageof arms) and carrying out certain operations at the orientation centres, wherecombatants would assemble to disarm. It would also disarm individuals andsmall groups volunteering for DDR outside these centres, and assist with thedestruction of arms. However, Security Council resolution 1565 (1 October2004) subsequently took a narrower view, stating only that MONUC would‘contribute to the disarmament portion of the national programme of disarma-ment, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) of Congolese combatants andtheir dependents, in monitoring the process and providing as appropriate securityin some sensitive locations’.

The DDR process was conceived as an entirely voluntary one, based on thefree choice of the combatant either to demobilize or integrate into the army.However, this principle was undermined by the determination of the Congolesetransition leaders to impose a quota system for army integration. Given theinflated figures for combatants provided by every faction, this system soonimplied coerced integration into the army in order for the factions to maintaintheir quotas and, thus, their leverage within a mostly partisan national army.Significantly, the quota system spurred continued and often forced recruitmentof new combatants, as armed groups in the eastern DRC prepared for successiverounds of negotiations on DDR and army integration.

Shift to Army Integration and Reform

Alongside DDR efforts, further steps were taken towards integrating the army asan integral element of the transition. The government established the Commissionde Controle des Effectifs de l’Armee to oversee the identification of elements


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belonging to each faction’s forces, and the Etat Major Technique d’Integration(later known as the SMI) for planning and operational aspects of integration.

In November 2003 and January 2004, the Congolese defence ministry, withthe support of Belgium, organized two seminars to validate a framework forarmy integration and restructuring. The plan included a timetable and detailedcosting. This initiative intended to depoliticize the debate on army integrationthrough the adoption of a mostly technical approach, which upheld the principleof inclusivity. The parties eventually agreed to merge all factions’ combatants intoa common pool, before moving them through a combined dual-track process inwhich combatants would choose either demobilization or integration into thearmy. Belgium took the lead in developing this tronc commun plan aimed at har-monizing DDR and army integration, but readily associated the UN and otherdonors. The plan included four phases common to both the DDR and integrationtracks: regrouping, identification, sensitization and selection. Despite its key rolein policy planning and implementation, however, Belgium would not assume thelead in financing either process. Donors instead chose to use the MDRP.

Nonetheless, with the support of certain donors and MONUC, Belgium sub-sequently began training the first FARDC integrated brigade in February 2004.However, the broader initiative was hindered by the lack of basic equipmentfrom the government, raising serious doubts about future operational capacity.Moreover, although regional commanders were to integrate forces into theFARDC under a single chain of command, serious problems – including theformer belligerents’ parallel chains of command, the lack of financial supportfor sustenance and logistics, and the non-payment of soldiers’ salaries4 – under-mined efforts to integrate the factions’ forces into cohesive, disciplined units.

Meanwhile, the draft law on Defence and the Armed Forces establishing theintegrated FARDC was adopted by the Council of Ministers in January 2004,but took most of the year to be voted by parliament and promulgated. Moreover,the law was silent on key reform issues such as doctrine, size and operations of thefuture army, as well as on the size and role of the Garde Republicaine.

Adding to the difficulties that accumulated in the final planning stages of armyintegration, certain donors began challenging processes that had been previouslydeveloped. The key African partners, notably Angola and South Africa, had notbeen fully consulted and engaged, contributing to the stalling of the process.

Delays in these reform processes, along with the need to strengthencoordination, prompted the UN Secretariat to convene a meeting on SSRbetween the transitional government and various member states in February2004. Participants reviewed the status of reforms and reached a common under-standing on the way forward. Specifically, the government agreed to implement athree-point ‘road map’: (1) develop a comprehensive national security sectorpolicy encompassing the completion of the transitional DDR and army inte-gration (tronc commun) programmes and the restructuring of future Congolesesecurity institutions; (2) ensure adequate budget provisions for all defence andsecurity entities within the limits of macroeconomic reforms supported by theBretton Woods institutions; (3) ensure that all national SSR and DDR bodiescoordinate their work under a common strategy. The following two urgent


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actions were identified to revive the stalled army integration: (1) establishment ofthe Supreme Defence Council, the consultative policy and decision-making organ;(2) design of a realistic, cost-effective plan for integration endorsed by all com-ponents of the transitional government, to be complemented by a comprehensiveDDR programme. The UN and donors pledged to strengthen technical support,provide funds for immediate DDR requirements in Ituri and other areas, andestablish donor–government coordination mechanisms. The UN convened afollow-up meeting with international partners in June 2004.

As tasked during the UN-convened meetings, MONUC established theproposed SSR planning and coordination structure, consisting of a steeringcommittee of donors, a technical advisory group composed of internationalexperts, and a secretariat provided by MONUC. The first meeting of the coordi-nation committee was held on 13 July 2004. Nevertheless, some donors remainedunconvinced of the coordination formula proposed by MONUC, particularly inlight of the uncertainty surrounding the status of the SSR processes. For example,the EU advocated a broader consultative process, not exclusively driven by theUN, in order to improve and expand coordination. Criticisms focused onwhether the MONUC mechanism’s structure would strengthen coordination,and whether it adequately addressed the issue of ensuring effective nationalleadership.

These criticisms were borne out when the first SSR coordination architecture,which prevailed until early 2005, failed because of lack of acceptance by eitherthe government or donors. Without financial support to army integration, theCongolese military hierarchy lacked sufficient incentives to participate in such amechanism. This reflected a wider funding problem: although the World Bankand MDRP approved US$200 million for the National DDR Programme andCONADER in May 2004, the same level of funding was not initially forthcomingfor the new military structures, such as the Structure Militaire d’Integration, andthe centres de brassage (CBRs), where former belligerents’ combatants weremixed into integrated brigades and given rudimentary training. Although the pro-cesses of DDR and army reform were linked in theory and design, the fundingremained segregated, directly undermining the combined dual-track process.The 2004 transitional government budget, meanwhile, did not include allocationsfor DDR or army integration.

The Need for Revitalized Coordination and Pragmatic Adjustments

Lack of concrete progress in army integration had a significant destabilizingimpact during 2004 – particularly in Ituri and the Kivus, where political andmilitary events between February and December 2004 completely reorientedarmy integration. The wartime distribution of administrative and militarypower in the eastern DRC was being transformed by the transitional process ofterritorial reunification and new power-sharing arrangements. Dissident elementsof former rebel armies and other armed groups that had not joined the peaceprocess used violence to challenge the authority of the fragile transitional govern-ment and oppose integration into the FARDC under a single command chain.


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Tensions intensified in the winter of 2004, culminating in a major clashbetween FARDC loyalist troops and RCD-G renegade units in the South Kivuprovincial capital of Bukavu in June. The refusal of the RCD-G commander,General Nkunda, a member of the Tutsi ethnic group, to take up his appointmentas a regional military commander in the transition was a contributing factor tothis crisis.

The South Kivu regional commander, General Nabyolwa affiliated withKabila’s faction, initially protested that RCD-G units and arms stockpiles werenot being placed under his command during the initial phase of army integration.A series of firefights ensued between units loyal to Nabyolwa and those alignedwith his deputy, RCD-G Colonel Mutebutsi. Ethnic tensions increased in lightof charges of mutiny against Mutebutsi, a prominent officer from the Tutsi min-ority. Violence erupted again in late May, and reprisal killings were committed bythe FARDC against Banyamulenge (Tutsi) soldiers and civilians. As Rwandanmedia stoked fears of genocide, RCD-G soldiers under Nkunda’s commandmoved towards Bukavu. MONUC’s efforts to create a buffer zone to blockNkunda’s advance failed. In fierce clashes, Nkunda and Mutebusi took controlof Bukavu from the FARDC on 2 June. Their forces carried out arson, lootingand deliberate attacks on civilians, including executions and rapes.5 There werecredible allegations of Rwandan support to the dissident RCD-G officers.

At this point, President Kabila attempted to suspend the transitional processand review the ‘one plus four’ power-sharing arrangement, but was rebuffed bythe RDC-G and MLC factions and the international community. Followingreinforcements by troops from the west, FARDC forces retook Bukavu by mid-June, forcing the withdrawal of Nkunda and Mutebusi with their troops.

Accordingly, in October 2004, Security Council resolution 1565 mandatedMONUC to establish three Joint Commissions for coordination on SSR, legis-lation and elections. Each commission was co-chaired by the transitionalgovernment and the UN and included broad donor participation, aiming toprovide a mechanism for interacting with and assisting the government. Thetwo-tier mechanism included a high-level policy structure that met monthly toestablish reform priorities, exchange information, monitor and evaluate progress,coordinate technical and financial assistance, and debate issues and, if necessary,refer them to the Council of Ministers, Supreme Defence Council, or the CIAT forresolution. The commission was paired with a working-level technical committeeon military reform,6 presided over by MONUC in the absence of a designatedCongolese chair, meeting weekly to share information, identify and analyse oper-ational problems, and resolve them or refer them to the Joint Commission.

The Joint Commission provided international partners with a more effectiveforum for renewed activism on SSR, through close tracking of progress and dia-logue with Congolese authorities. It also guaranteed a central role for MONUC inSSR, particularly for army integration and DDR, demonstrating its comparativeadvantages in information-gathering based on an extensive field presence; impar-tial facilitation between donor governments and Congolese authorities; andan ability to mobilize high-level political pressure through the internationalSecretariat and Security Council.


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Nonetheless, one of the shortcomings of the mechanism was that the technicaland political levels of coordination sometimes became blurred. The technicalcommittee was not always successful in resolving issues. Technical problemswould then be referred to the Commission, where the responsible officialswere often not prepared or available to propose solutions, or sought to manip-ulate technical matters to their faction’s advantage. Thus, Congolese authoritieswere able to evade responsibility for solving certain issues despite an otherwisewell-conceived framework.

Despite progress achieved during 2005, the experience of the SSR JointCommission reminded international actors of the difficulties of ensuring success-ful coordination with a government that was not politically cohesive. Neither theCongolese political authorities nor the FARDC leadership was yet capable ofbuilding and maintaining dialogue and collaboration on these issues. Army inte-gration and DDR continued to be a process of constant adjustment and contesta-tion, requiring new policies and actions. Some in the international communityquestioned the political will of the ex-belligerents within the transitional govern-ment to accelerate reforms that would weaken their leverage as elections neared.For example, the Congolese co-chair of the SSR Joint Commission (RCD-Gfaction7) was unable to provide strong co-leadership, and thus guarantee fullnational ownership of the SSR processes, in part because of the divisionswithin his own movement that undermined his ability to exercise real authorityover defence and security issues. Many of the transitional leaders seeminglybelieved that the transitional process and elections could be postponed, withthe hope of profiting from any delay.

At the same time, the FARDC hierarchy (dominated by Kabila’s faction)sought to assert a kind of ownership over army reform, although reluctant to par-ticipate meaningfully in coordination and technical support structures that onlyprovided limited financial assistance. Accordingly, the government continued tofavour bilateral agreements to maximize financial support. By mid-2005,Angola, Belgium, the Netherlands and South Africa had signed agreements onassistance to the FARDC for brassage in order to bring funding levels for armyintegration closer to those allocated for DDR. This of course complicatedattempts to coordinate.

Parallel to the Joint Commission’s establishment in January 2005, the WorldBank and MDRP convened meetings with Congolese and international partnersin February and March 2005 to jump-start the lagging DDR process. Themeetings led to the creation of a Coordinated Joint Operations Centre(CCOC), a jointly managed Congolese-donor coordination mechanism toensure implementation of the agreed PNDDR and optimize use of resources,especially for planning and logistics. This was another example of modificationof programme implementation and modalities for coordination as a consequenceof developments on the ground.

The CCOC was given the responsibility for directing operations and ensuringcoordination among the various parties involved in DDR and integration. Tocatch up with the hastily and uncoordinated opening of the brassage centresfollowing the emergency troop deployments in 2004, the concept of ‘integrated


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mobile teams’ was also developed to carry out the tronc commun activitiesnormally planned for the orientation centres, most of which were not yet estab-lished. MONUC participation in the CCOC and the mobile teams was requiredto assist with the control and destruction of arms. However, an importanthurdle was overcome through a presidential decree which dismantled the obstruc-tive CGFDR and transferred its financial management responsibilities toCONADER.

New Impetus for DDR and Integration: But Problems Remain

Three months after the SSR Joint Commission was established, donors conducteda field mission to jointly verify ongoing DDR and integration activities with Con-golese authorities and press for additional progress, touring brassage centres(CBRs) in the east. At the time, the government claimed to have opened sixCBRs there. The delegation found appalling conditions: most CBRs lackedadequate shelter, basic equipment, food, water, medicine and electricity. Manycombatants were not paid and resorted to pillaging nearby communities.Combatants’ dependents were sometimes installed in the brassage centres orabandoned in nearby makeshift camps, adding to humanitarian crises. Contraryto the government’s claims, no mobile teams had been deployed to the CBRs inthe Kivus, meaning that DDR and integration activities had come to standstillin the wake of the recent crises in this area.

Subsequent discussions in the Joint Commission led to decisions to restrict thenumber of CBRs to be created, improve the existing centres’ conditions, tempor-arily deploy the integrated mobile teams, open the orientation centres foreseen inthe PNDDR, and carry out a census of military personnel in order to reform thepayroll. Donors also committed funding to refurbish the brassage centres andprovide support for management and training. By May 2005, the EU had estab-lished an in-country cooperation mission, EUSEC, to provide technical assistanceon army reform to the Congolese authorities.

Finally in May 2005, the FARDC produced a strategic plan that, for the firsttime, provided a detailed national vision for army integration – almost a full yearafter the national DDR programme was adopted. The plan was structured arounddeveloping: (1) infantry forces through the brassage of the Congolese combatantsfrom the main belligerent forces; (2) a quick reaction force drawn from newrecruits and/or existing units; (3) the main defence forces, also to be drawnfrom new recruits and/or existing units.

Until September 2005, the combination of intensified technical support,increased donor funding and pressure, and improved coordination, borne outof the events described above, gave new impetus to army integration and DDR.Yet, at the end of 2005, a series of ‘intractable’ problems re-emerged to impedethese processes, indicating a lack of political will on the part of the governmentand its efforts to disrupt the transition timetable as elections approached. Theseincluded logistical issues and costs and administrative problems, especially inCONADER and in the payment system for demobilization allowances. In theKivus, ethnic tensions, insecurity, political and electoral issues, and the


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deployment of integrated brigades stiffened the resistance of many armedelements to comply with the PNDDR. Some unintegrated units, mainly locatedin the Kivus, Katanga and Kinshasa, were opposed to the brassage process aswell as to deployment of integrated brigades in their areas of operation, whichoften coincided with the location of their native ethnic communities and thus,their spheres of administrative and economic control. In Ituri, reintegration pro-grammes faltered, leaving some ex-combatants to be re-recruited by remnantmilitias. Failure to pay FARDC salaries and provide rations continued to resultin criminality and violence against civilians by soldiers. Reflecting difficultiesthat recurred from the beginning of the SSR process, the FARDC had no logisticalplan or budget to equip and redeploy the newly integrated brigades. As a result,joint operations with MONUC against armed groups in the east, essential topacifying these regions, were often delayed or cancelled.

This multiplication of problems in DDR and integration intersected withincreasing demands on donors to ensure that electoral preparations remained ontrack. With the focus on elections, international actors’ efforts to maintain pressureand strengthen coordination on army reform began to erode. Donors pressedrepeatedly and unsuccessfully for explanations and greater transparency fromCONADER for the management of DDR funding, and from the governmentand FARDC regarding the military budget. Attempts to pressure the SSR JointCommission for greater transparency in the execution of the FARDC budget, asa condition for increased material support to the newly integrated brigades, alsofailed. Confronted by what appeared to be persistent mismanagement and corrup-tion, donor fatigue deepened in terms of financing for DDR and integration. InMarch 2006, the International Monetary Fund suspended its regular stabilizationprogramme in the DRC and disbursement of its support to balance of payments(US$36 million).8 One of the main problems prompting this decision was thelack of transparency in military expenditures and procurement, in part derivedfrom the existence of two parallel administrative services for the FARDC: thedefence ministry’s budget and finance department and a separate budget andfinance department within the armed forces’ joint chiefs of staff.

By December 2006, after more than two years of brassage operations, 14brigades had been nominally integrated and deployed. Most comprised fewerthan 2,500 soldiers instead of the 4,200 planned, largely because ex-belligerentforces and armed groups could not meet the agreed quota to be sent for brassage.In addition, an estimated 60 per cent of combatants chose demobilization ratherthan integration. About 90,000 combatants, including the Garde Republicaine,were still waiting for either demobilization or integration at the end of 2006.Yet the MDRP decided in 2006 to interrupt the demobilization process, by declar-ing that the DDR of certain Ituri and Katangan armed groups was ineligible forfunding.9 Citing allegations of corruption and mismanagement, the MDRP alsosuspended support for other DDR activities, conditioning disbursement offunds on CONADER’s reorganization and the government’s reimbursement ofineligible expenditures.

Consequently, a crucial aspect of the transition was left unfinished. Given thetronc commun approach, the latter decision has also resulted in blocking much of


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the brassage process and generated additional security risks. This illustrates howcertain principles – such as local ownership and anti-corruption – and priorities(such as SSR) can come into direct conflict. In this case, the trade-offs betweenadvancing reforms essential to peace and security and the imperatives of sanction-ing corruption do not appear to have been weighed in the timing of the MDRP’sdecision.

Conclusion: Prospects for Coordinating Support for DDR and SSR

The end of the transition in December 2006 left many SSR problems unresolved.The Congolese army, superficially unified through brassage, remained politicized,unprofessional and poorly equipped – victimizing rather than protecting thepopulation. Other areas crucial to national defence, such as customs, border con-trols and intelligence services, remained virtually unchanged. Civilian oversight ofdefence and security institutions was not effectively established, and there wereonly limited efforts to combat the illegal circulation of arms. While the transitionconcluded in the formal sense with elections and a government and other newinstitutions installed, it had not concluded in the sense of state-building andreform. Sustained progress in reforming the military, police, and other securityservices, as well as the judiciary, remains critical to efforts to consolidate peaceand security in the DRC and the wider Great Lakes region. Several lessons canbe drawn from the DRC experience regarding coordination among internationaland national partners and integration of UN activities in SSR.

First, the international community should coordinate its advocacy and lever-age during the earliest phases of a peace process. Likewise, all UN actors shouldcoordinate closely during the earliest possible stages of mission planning. Suchefforts can make certain that institutional security sector reforms are moreeffectively built into peace agreements and are designed not only as strictly tech-nical processes, but also as political processes. This will abet the necessary politi-cal leadership and support for implementing such reforms. Effectiveness will alsodepend on incorporating frameworks for coordination of the internationalcommunity’s political, technical and financial support for these long-termreform processes into the earliest UN mission mandates, as well as all UNintegrated planning.

In mediating peace agreements, international actors should remember thatcertain power-sharing arrangements, designed as incentives for ending conflict,may not provide the most effective leadership for difficult and controversialreforms. In the context of the transition, Congolese factions sought to maximizeleverage by either unilaterally controlling the army integration process or block-ing it. The ‘one plus four’ architecture resulted in a divided and ineffective execu-tive, characterized by little collaboration on SSR between the main Congoleseactors. Accordingly, the international community found itself with a weaknational partner, rendering problematic the principle of local ownership andundercutting coordination efforts.

In the DRC, the UN and the international community did not view SSR asa direct entry point for peace consolidation. Rather, mandates provided to


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MONUC emphasized army integration and reform as a means to two objectives:the holding of elections, the main goal of the transitional process, and addressingthe issue of the foreign armed groups, which required a capable national army.Once these priorities were dealt with, SSR was envisaged as part of theMONUC exit strategy in terms of a drawdown of peacekeeping forces. Yet weargue that SSR, particularly army, police and judicial reform, should have beendefined as crucial entry points for conflict resolution and peacebuilding inMONUC’s mandates and the UN country team’s programming.

Viewing SSR, and especially army integration and reform, as part ofMONUC’s exit strategy rather than a longer-term peacebuilding commitmentcaused the mission to focus primarily on operational issues rather than substan-tive reforms. In post-conflict situations with weak or non-existent state insti-tutions and a lack of democratic governance, SSR often needs to occur atdifferent levels simultaneously and in parallel with other major reforms, particu-larly in governance. To gradually contribute to stabilization, it may be necessaryfrom the start of a transitional process to coordinate support for reforms relatedto fighting impunity for human rights abuses, public administration, civilian over-sight, and budget transparency, so that these processes can gradually buttress oreven push forward the reform of the security services. Volatile post-conflictsituations may inevitably limit the scope of such a reform package and the resultsproduced by its implementation. Nevertheless, the international communityneeds to ensure that the mandate, programming and coordination frameworksfor such interlocking reforms are put in place at the beginning of any peaceprocess so that minimal progress is achieved within a transitional period.

Conversely, in the DRC, the UN invested most of its efforts, firstly, in missionintegration in the domain of elections and, secondly, in the protection of civiliansand DDR. Regarding DDR, much of the integration or joint activities took placein later planning and implementation phases, rather than from the starting pointof common assessments and other joint preplanning activities. Moreover, the lackof an integrated DDR team, bringing together both peacekeeping and agency staffunder a single management authority with one reporting line, diluted efforts atintegration. Little guidance was initially forthcoming on integration from UNheadquarters even as both MONUC and the UN agencies expanded their pre-sence and scaled up their activities. Various departments and agencies were stillgrappling with the concept of integrated mission and the best means of imple-menting this new policy.

The DRC was one of the UN’s first experiences in supporting army reform.Working on SSR with bilateral donors and the EU, as well as national actors,imposed the need for formal coordination. The DRC example shows that forthe UN to play an effective role in the coordination of sensitive security sectorreforms, there must first be a unanimous view within the mission regarding itsmandate and strategy in these areas. A pragmatic rather than a literal readingof relevant Security Council resolutions led MONUC, despite strong dissentingviews among some of the mission’s managers, to assist the transitional govern-ment not only with DDR, but also with brassage and the broader army reformprocess, including the use of coordination mechanisms.


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Coherence should ideally extend beyond the mission. While the SSR JointCommission did have some success in improving coordination, its experiencesalso revealed a lack of coherence among international actors. The internationalcommunity should seek to speak to national partners with one voice to theextent feasible. This will maximize influence and effectiveness, while encouragingnational ownership of the reform process and avoiding a piecemeal approach toplanning and assistance. The UN and donor community’s ability to maintaincohesion during the crises that inevitably accompany such a reform process ina transitional period is also crucial. Especially in terms of maintaining leverageon spoilers, the DRC experience shows the importance of keeping a unifiedposition among all international actors within the coordination mechanisms –this can be difficult given the conflicting agendas of various bilateral partners,particularly where partners compete for influence or procurement contracts for‘their’ companies.

The national government also has a role in ensuring that external actors areguided by a common understanding of the strategy and objectives of therelevant reform processes, and a common set of principles, which togethershould form the foundation for SSR assistance. In this case, the Congolese pol-itical and military leaderships seemed more inclined to maximize donor assist-ance at the expense of a common strategy. This inclination was probablyexacerbated by the slow and segregated disbursement of SSR funding, particu-larly early in the transition. The problem with the funding of the tronc communwas that the government assumed that the funding of the army integration bythe international community was granted. The government did not realizethat international organizations and some bilateral partners were, and are,seriously reluctant to finance army reform. That meant that linking the two pro-cesses of demobilization and army integration in the DRC, although pragmaticand politically expedient, was insecure and premature. Later on, consideringthe magnitude of problems on the ground and the risk of jeopardizing thepeace process, a serious paradigmatic shift was compelled. The DRC is theonly case to date where the World Bank (MDRP) and the UN, supported bysome partners (such as the EU, Belgium and the Netherlands), have beenobliged to rationalize the financing of army integration and military activities,especially logistics, in order to keep the processes going.

As the transition progressed, international actors made an effort to link the SSRprocess to the next phase of coordinated support: the development and reconstruc-tion frameworks. This was done primarily through the multidonor reconstructionframework initiated by the UN and the World Bank: the Country AssistanceFramework (CAF) and its governance component. The CAF represented a success-ful effort at integrated planning among UN and other international actors, enablingdonors to coordinate allocation of resources to achieve maximum impact in com-monly agreed sectors. However, following the 2006 elections, much of the CAF’sassistance to governance and security reforms remained unimplemented due to lackof buy-in by Congolese decision-makers.

All of the above illustrates that reform of the security sector in the DRC, as inmany post-conflict countries, is directly linked to the exercise of political power.


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Implementing this agenda requires navigating the complex political dynamics ofthe different Congolese institutions and actors with competing claims on thesecurity sector. The political terrain for these reforms must be prepared carefullyand continuously. International partners must maintain a constant, coordinatedand respectful dialogue with all the Congolese and regional actors to helpstrengthen the political resolve needed to implement reforms. International part-ners can also help create a political environment propitious for such reforms byreassuring Congolese actors of their active support in ‘selling’ what may bepolitically difficult policy choices to various constituencies.

Donor and UN assistance must also include support in mobilizing the con-siderable financial resources that will be needed over the long term for SSR.Scepticism and reform fatigue among both national and international actorsare problems. Therefore, coordination needs to be periodically reviewed andre-energized, both among international actors and between them and nationalpartners. This might be accomplished through recommendations included inthe Secretary-General’s reports to the Security Council or the reportingformats for the UN Peacebuilding Commission, as well as briefings organizedby these organs. Coordination mechanisms among international actors, suchas the Contact Group for the DRC (which includes a subgroup on SSR),could be another appropriate forum. It remains to be seen whether suchreviews could take place on the margins of a major donor forum or the sidelinesof certain peace and security meetings organized by regional organizations suchas the African Union.

Finally, factoring in financial constraints, incentives and risks should be apriority for both national and international partners in coordinating the designand implementation of security sector reforms, including DDR programmes.This could be as simple as incorporating mechanisms to ensure transparencyinto the initial design of DDR programmes, or evaluating whether reinsertionpackages for ex-combatants have been designed to avoid providing anyunintended incentives for demobilized groups to rearm.

DISCLAIMER

The views presented in this article are those of the authors, not the United Nations.

NOTES

1. With the integration of rebel and ex-government forces during the transition, the army was againrebaptized – FARDC (Forces armees de la Republique Democratique du Congo).

2. ‘Fourteenth Report of the Secretary-General on MONUC’, 17 Nov. 2003, UN doc., S/2003/1098;‘Memorandum II on the Army and Security’, 29 June 2003.

3. Besides weapons collection and a reduction in or dissolution of military forces, such programmesinclude support for economic and social reintegration of ex-combatants and their families intotheir home communities.

4. The basic salary for an FARDC soldier increased from about US$10 to US$25 per month in 2006.5. See, e.g., BBC News, ‘Bukavu Residents Speak of Ordeal’, 9 June 2004, accessed at http://news.

bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3777513.stm; and BBC News, ‘Congo Rebels Push Towards Bukavu’,1 June 2004, accessed at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3765597.stm.


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6. A separate working-level body was established for police reform.7. Originally known as the RCD-Goma faction, but rechristened ‘RCD’ after the transitional govern-

ment was established and it converted from a politico-military movement to a purely politicalparty, as did the other rebel movements.

8. The IMF negotiated a no-cash, staff-monitored programme with the transitional government, tocontinue in 2007.

9. Alternative arrangements were later made with the World Bank to fund this process.


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Documents

MONUC and SSR in the Democratic Republic of Congo