Browsing by Author "Ihalainen, Risto"

This thesis examines geography of war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Geography of war is part of political geography, but drawing from a multitude of disciplines including several sub-disciplines of geography and conflict studies. The principal aim of this thesis is to describe the last intensive phase of the conflict; the M23 insurgency in 2012 through a model developed in the field of geography of war for analysis of the intra-state Congo war of 1996–2000. The secondary objective of this thesis is to develop the aforementioned model, focused on push and pull factors of conflict, through inclusion of the concept of scale. The resulting combined conflict analysis will look at the last intensive conflict period from a spatial perspective as local, national, regional and international conflict. The conflict analysis itself is based on data drawn from media-articles and ample literature on the conflict. The media material consists of media reports compiled by the UN peacekeeping and stabilization mission (MONUSCO) including international and national print media, radio and television. The media material has been processed using theoretical text analysis methods. The primary root causes of the conflict identified by the media have been classified using the model of intra-state war and scale of the identified cause. The analyzed material has then been applied to the model of intra-state war creating a tool for spatial conflict analysis. The model does not aim to be perfect, but describes one possibility for conflict analysis. The analysis draws a collusive picture of the conflict. Through the model, it may be concluded that the conflict in eastern DRC is not driven by one primary driver, but it contains several smaller drivers on different spatial scales. The conflict itself is often portrayed through simplified discourses used by media to explain the phenomena and needed by different political entities and interest groups as basis of decision making. Some of the root causes are more frequent in media. Especially state fragility, natural resources and sexual exploitation as a weapon of war are dominating the public discourse. Mainstream discourses are parts of the conflict in eastern DRC, but without understanding the larger context, overemphasizing them may misguide policies. In order to respond efficiently to the root causes, strong but simple narratives need to be replaced by a holistic view of the conflict and the interrelation of multiple drivers behind it.