Perhaps I was wrong a few days ago in expressing pessimism, indeed, cynicism, about both the prospects for peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo and what Rwanda's incursion into the troubled eastern part of that country meant. Late Thursday a joint Congolese-Rwandan force captured Congolese Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, one of the main figures fomenting regional instability. This has led myriad observers to believe that Nkunda's arrest signals better days ahead. The New York Times‘ Jeffrey Gettleman asserts that Nkunda's arrest means that things have shifted overnight. An editorial in The Boston Globe calls Nkunda's arrest “a relief,” a Washington Post story asserts that it “marks a key shift.” Even more optimistically, a report from the South African Press Association posits that the arrest might “bring peace,” while Barron YoungSmith believes that this news signals that an end of the troubles could be in sight in that tortured region.
So, if I was so wrong, why do I not feel especially chastened or embarrassed. Or even, frankly, all that wrong? The current reports strike me as making the current crisis too dependent on the power and influence of a charismatic, and admittedly powerful and influential, leader like Laurent Nkunda. Perhaps cutting off the head will kill the body. But perhaps the apt metaphor is a starfish, which, as we all know, can regenerate severed limbs. It strikes me as dangerous, even simplistic, to spin a narrative whereby Nkunda was the rebellion and the rebellion was Nkunda. Something tells me, and I hope I am wrong, that this narrative in which Nkunda was the primary source of the region's difficulties, and thus his arrest is the beginning of its redemption, is too facile by half.
