Editor's Note: This article was written by Stephen R. Weissman, Anthony W. Gambino, and the Enough Project's John Prendergast and Sasha Lezhnev. It originally appeared in Foreign Affairs as "Absent in Central Africa" on June 8, 2015.
Fifteen years ago, the United States, in concert with African regional organizations, helped facilitate political settlements of wars that killed millions of people in Central Africa. The overwhelming majority of victims were citizens of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where, beginning in 1996, the decay of President Mobutu Sese Seko’s corrupt and incompetent regime spawned what would become known as “Africa’s World War.” The conflict embroiled two successive Congolese governments, several African countries, and a jumble of armed groups. By 2002, however, the United States helped facilitate a peace accord that provided for the withdrawal of foreign forces and a democratic transition based on a new constitution and free elections. During the same period, U.S. and South African diplomacy, backed by states in the region, helped end a potentially genocidal civil war in neighboring Burundi by mediating a new democratic constitution…