Beyond diagnosis: What it will take to stabilise Eastern Congo

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OPINION

By Edgar Tabaro

In a previous article [NV 23.12.25 at p.15], I argued that the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is often mischaracterised as ethnic, when in fact it is sustained by competition over land, minerals, and informal trade in the absence of effective state authority.

That diagnosis is not controversial among serious observers. What remains contested, and politically uncomfortable, is what must be done next.

Eastern Congo does not suffer from a shortage of peace agreements, mediators, or international attention.

It suffers from a persistent refusal to confront the political economy of violence that has taken root over decades. Armed groups endure not because they are misunderstood, but because they are economically rational actors in a collapsed governance environment.

The first hard truth is this: peacekeeping alone cannot stabilise eastern Congo. Peacekeeping assumes that the primary task is to separate belligerents and protect civilians while politics takes its course.

In eastern Congo, violence is not an interruption of politics; it is a system of economic regulation. Armed groups tax trade, control mineral sites, and enforce access to land.

Removing violence without replacing these functions merely creates a vacuum into which new armed actors emerge.

Stabilisation, therefore, requires restoring state presence as an economic reality, not merely a symbolic one.

Roads, customs posts, land registries, courts, and local administration matter more than communiqués and ceasefires.

Where the state cannot regulate trade and protect property, armed groups will continue to do so by force.

Second, regional integration must be treated as a security strategy, not just an economic aspiration. Eastern Congo already trades extensively with Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi, but almost entirely informally.

This informality is not benign. It sustains armed groups, incentivises smuggling, and deprives states of revenue. Integrating eastern Congo into formal East African Community trade frameworks would create legal stakeholders in stability and reduce the profitability of violence.

Third, disarmament and reintegration programmes must be reimagined. For many combatants, war is not an ideological project but a livelihood.

Disarming fighters without providing credible economic alternatives is not peacebuilding; it is wishful thinking.

Livelihoods, land access, trauma healing, and community reintegration must be central, not peripheral, to post-conflict strategy.

There is also a regional responsibility that cannot be evaded. Instability in eastern Congo does not remain within Congo’s borders.

Refugee flows, illicit trade, and armed movements inevitably spill over into neighbouring states.

For Uganda and the wider Great Lakes region, stability in Congo is not charity or altruism; it is enlightened self-interest.

This is why regional interventions, when undertaken at the invitation of the Congolese state, must be understood as part of a broader stabilisation effort—one that combines security operations with infrastructure, administration, and economic normalisation. Military action without governance reform will not endure. Governance reform without security will not take root.

Finally, peace in eastern Congo will not be delivered by elite negotiations alone. Dialogue has its place, but dialogue divorced from material change becomes ritual. Peace will emerge when violence is no longer profitable, when informal war economies are dismantled, and when the state, supported by the region, reclaims its role as guarantor of security and opportunity.

The question, then, is not whether peace is possible in eastern Congo. It is whether regional and international actors are prepared to confront the uncomfortable reality that peace requires restructuring incentives, not merely managing symptoms.

The writer is a lawyer