Die Grenzen liberaler Intervention:: intermediäre Herrschaft in der Demokratischen Republik Kongo

Abstract

International interventions, whose aim is the fostering of peace and state building in conflict zones, are guided by ideas of a liberal police governmentality. However, in order to pursue their peace building and state building agendas on the ground, intervening actors depend upon the collaboration with local institutions. When such intermediaries of transnational rule do not share the agenda of liberal interventionism, intervening actors are confronted with the “paradox of intermediary rule”. By offering an analysis of the reform of the Congolese army in the district Ituri (Democratic Republic of Congo), this article demonstrates that the joint Peace Enforcement by international actors and the local army did not lead to the emergence of a peaceful liberal order. Instead, because of the dependence of international actors form local institutions (and interests), the intervening forces became accomplices in the (re-)production of an overly illiberal order of violence, indicating how the implementation of an international liberal police governmentality encountered its limits in the paradoxical interactions between national and international actors.