Just when you thought the circus had left town, President Félix Tshisekedi is building a bigger tent. Fresh off his humiliation begging the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to bankroll a handful of immigrants from the US, the Congolese ruler is now reportedly in talks with Washington to welcome 1,100 Afghan refugees. Yes, you read that correctly.
Let’s review the math: Zero resettlement plan, zero budget, zero functional state institutions; and now, potentially 1,100 new arrivals, what could go wrong?
Congo is already a graveyard. Armed groups roam freely; millions are internally displaced. Hundreds of thousands of Congolese languish in refugee camps in neighboring countries, unable to return home because the state cannot guarantee their safety. Villages burn while the army watches from a distance. The situation is so dire that the United Nations calls it one of the world’s most neglected crises.
So, what does Tshisekedi do? He looks at this powder keg and says, “You know what would help? One thousand more people, many of whom are fleeing a generation of war, with no prospect of integration.”
No one is blaming Afghan refugees for fleeing the Taliban. But dropping them into the eastern Congo is madness. One reason is that many of these people have military training, and without much prospect of finding a decent job, their next option will be to join other desperate combatants in an already boiling cauldron. Tshisekedi might as well pour gasoline on a fire and call it rain.
Why would a president do something so obviously self-destructive? Two reasons, mainly.
One is that Tshisekedi takes Congolese people for fools. He calculates that even while the east burns and the capital starve for basic services, he can distract, confuse, and exhaust his people into submission, making them accept that 40,000 new arrivals that no one will cater for are a good idea.
The other is that the real prize is not humanitarian. It is American support for his constitutional change. Tshisekedi is desperate to secure a third term, the constitution says no, and the opposition is daring him to tamper with the top law. But by positioning himself as a “solution” to the US’ Afghan resettlement headache, Tshisekedi is trying to buy a political insurance policy. He is saying to the US: “Look the other way when I change the constitution, and I will take your unwanted guests off your hands.”
The move is transactional and cynical. And it might pay off, even if one has to take into account the incompetence factor. Indeed, even if the IOM were to suddenly lose its mind and agree to fund this (they won’t), Tshisekedi’s government couldn’t resettle 1,100 people if its life depended on it. This regime cannot even register its own newborns reliably. It cannot feed its own schoolchildren. Its “refugee agency” is a skeleton crew with a broken printer.
Tshisekedi copies policies from functional states like a student copying answers from a calculus exam without knowing what algebra means. He sees a headline: “Germany welcomes 1 million Syrians.” He sees another: “Rwanda relocates stranded refugees from Libya.” He thinks: “I can do that.” He forgets that Germany and Rwanda have roads, hospitals, police, courts, and budgets for each policy they undertake. The DRC has potholes, weak institutions and unpaid civil servants.
The IOM refused to entertain Tshisekedi’s immigrant fantasy because they saw the disaster coming. Now, with 1,100 Afghans on the table, they are likely screening his calls entirely. And why wouldn’t they? The IOM knows dumping desperate people into a failed state is a death sentence.
Whatever happens from now on depends on the Congolese demanding that the government be transparent about its plans and the means to cater for those it receives. And hopefully the US will find out soon enough what a scammer the Congolese offer is.
ellenkampire