Looking grim: North Kivu

The talk over the last few weeks has been about the fighting in North Kivu (what marks the boundary between fighting and war?). The deadline set by President Kabila for General Nkunda to reintegrate his forces into the national army passed more than a month ago, and everyone expected a major army offensive. Then a series of unexpected events provided a small measure of skeptical hope:

- the Rwandan foreign minister Charles Murigande showed up in Kinshasa in a bid to avoid an escalation of the crisis into a broader conflict;
- President Kabila visited the White House;
- the US State Department suddenly became concerned with the situation, and dispatched a senior advisor for conflict resolution to North Kivu;
- the Congolese and Rwandan governments signed a pact in Nairobi to deal with Rwandan Hutu rebels in DRC.

Now, after a new upsurge in the fighting, General Kayembe, head of the Congolese Army, says war is inevitable. The UN military commander calls it a phase of "constraint". The UN is in a tight spot: it has a mandate to support the Congolese army, but as a result it is seen to be taking sides, and will therefore become a target itself.

Meanwhile, the number of IDPs in North Kivu has reached 800,000, of which 375,000 since last December alone.