Day 173 - Virunga

This post is a significant first break from my biweekly routine of blog posts, and I believe it is for good reason that I do so. My free time in the evenings usually leads to me watching something on Netflix that seems interesting, be it a documentary or a generic American TV show. Last night however I decided to follow up on a suggestion to watch an interesting documentary about the case of the Mountain Gorilla in the biggest national park of eastern Congo, Virunga. The documentary, that lasted around two hours, captivated me and remained intriguing throughout. The documentary is an emotion evoking investigation into the reasons behind the poaching of some of the last mountain gorillas in the world. In this wild yet enchanted environment a small group of rangers, put their lives at risk daily to take care of orphan gorillas in collaboration with a Belgian conservationist against the prevailing issues regarding armed militias and foreign forces attempting to seize control of the area for the extraction of Congo’s natural resources. Beyond the heroic story of the park rangers attempting to protect these important mountain gorillas, the underling narrative of the movie was what provoked me to dedicate a post to the documentary. It was clear the idea of the movie was to highlight the different actors that are involved in the potential destruction of this national park. The M23 rebel group who today have seized control of much of this area, and SOCO international, an oil and gas extraction company that have vested interests in the area. Transnational interests, the potential for significant revenue caused an informal relationship between SOCO and the M23 rebel group, whom both wanted the Gorillas removed from the national park to enable oil and gas exploitation. The really interesting observation that I took from this documentary was: where is the Congolese government in all this? What role do they have in this conflict? And why is coverage of their position so obviously omitted from this documentary? 

Many interesting theories and concepts that I have learnt this quarter in my Political Geography class informed my analysis of this documentary, and allowed me to disentangle the different narratives and polities involved in this conflict. I would classify my analysis of this movie a modernist political economic analysis, trying to get at the different interests of these actors and what is fundamentally the foundation to this conflict (Agnew, 2012). A political theory that really interested me and that I believe applicable to this case is the idea of ‘Matrix Governance’ and ‘Cruciform Sovereignty’ proposed by Carmody (2009). This is the idea that in the ‘global north’ sovereignty is shared evenly between countries horizontally like in the example of the EU, whereas in the global south sovereignty is shared vertically where sovereignty is not exchanged for claims elsewhere, but is traded for aid. In their article they look at the case of the Chad-Cameroon and Sudanese oil pipelines and how Chad is a multi-scalar proxy conflict between western powers and China over access to oil. As with the Democratic Republic of Congo, the lure of oil contributed to rebel attempts to dislodge presidents Deby and Bashir of Chad and Sudan respectively. Although the case is not a mirror reflection of what has been happening in Congo, for me the theoretical insights provided by Carmody applies to that shown in ‘Virunga.’ Congolese sovereignty is consistently threatened by factions and rebels and interests from foreign sources. The control of the government is made out to be weak and ineffective by the documentary and the role of these other actors deemed to be significant. This is exactly what Agnew (1994) means when he criticizes international relations theory, how its umbrella ‘one size fits all’ nature overlooks the complexity within a country, and how states are not equal, that not all can exercise power over their territory and very few can actually be considered securely sovereign.

In addition to all this, there can also be links drawn between this case and Emily Yeh’s (2012) article on Transnational Environmentalism and the case of the Bengalese Tiger in the Himalayas. Briefly put, the article uses a post-modern take on the different actors contributing to fight against the poaching of the Bengal Tiger for its attractive pelts, an important cultural commodity to Tibetans. The article discusses the issue from the perspective of the Indian, Chinese government and the influence of foreign environmentalists and the Dalai Lama on changing inside cultural meanings (Carney, 2011) of Tibetans. Instead of having different actors putting at risk the endangered mammal in question, the actors in this article are attempting to save the Tiger and enforce conservationist wishes over those cultural. The interesting message with this article is, although China considers itself to be sovereign over Tibet, it was the least effectual actor to convince Tibetans to change their ways. Like the Congolese government, sovereignty is not effectively exercised over the region, and other actors, in this case the Dalai Lama, were more influential upon changing Tibetan cultural ways.

I would highly suggest the documentary to anybody whom is interested, it is highly critically acclaimed and for good reason. Whilst watching it, I’d be interested to know if people read the narratives and perceive the political situation in the Congo like I did.

Agnew, J. (1994). ‘The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory,’ Review of International Political Economy, 1, 1: 53-80.

Agnew, J. (2012) Making Political Geography, Maryland: Rowman and Littlfield.

P. Carmody, “Cruciform sovereignty, matrix governance and the scramble for Africa’s oil: insights from Chad and Sudan,” Political Geography, 28 (2009), 353-61

Carney, J. A. (2002) Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas, Harvard: University Press.

E. T. Yeh, “Transnational environmentalism and entanglements of sovereignty: the tiger campaign across the Himalayas,” Political Geography, 31 (2012), 408-18.