Re-engaging history and global politics in the accounts of the contemporary conflict in the DRC

Abstract

This chapter critically examines how armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been accounted for. It suggests that despite the shift in thinking about the causes of the conflict from a focus on resources to that of land and identity, these accounts reproduce problematic tropes, characteristic of dominant renditions of African conflicts and societies. These accounts detach the “local” from broader historical and global political and economic structures that condition it and explain the conflict as a pathology stemming from state failure and neopatrimonialism. This is illustrated by two concrete policies, the UN’s International Security and Stabilization Support Strategy and the government’s call for agribusinesses. The chapter argues that the causes of conflict cannot be divorced from the historical and global forces that have shaped the country.