JENNA RUSSO, INTERNATIONAL PEACE INSTITUTE
The East African Community (EAC) deployed troops to one of its member states for the first time in June 2022. The deployment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a test of the regional body’s ability to respond to complex conflicts.
Already, the regional bloc has scored some victories. In early December 2022, after peace talks in Nairobi, Kenya, 53 of the more than 100 armed groups operating in the DRC agreed to a cease-fire.
The DRC, which joined the EAC in April 2022, has been trapped in cycles of violence for nearly three decades. The reasons include ethnic intolerance, illegal exploitation of the country’s vast natural resources and a Congolese elite that benefits from the chaos.
The EAC also includes Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, with its headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania.
The most recent wave of conflict comes after the reemergence of the armed group March 23 Movement, or M23. International forces drove the group out of the country in 2013. Its resurgence has led to heightened levels of violence and mass displacement.
The resurgence prompted the EAC to mobilize a regional force that could comprise up to 12,000 troops from member states. It operates under Kenyan command, with a six-month renewable mandate to support the DRC’s national forces in containing, defeating and eradicating negative forces in the restive eastern region.
This is the second time regional actors have deployed a military force to tamp down an M23 insurgency. After the armed group’s initial uprising in 2013, the 12-member International Conference on the Great Lakes Region proposed an intervention brigade. It was eventually brought under the umbrella of the peacekeeping mission, the U.N. Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It became known as the Force Intervention Brigade.
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