Peace deals signed in the White House tend to photograph well. Their survival depends on less telegenic things: monitoring, enforcement and a president who remembers they exist. The accord Donald Trump brokered between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda at the White House last December, and renewed in March, appears to be struggling on all three counts. The fighting has continued, most of the agreement remains unimplemented, and more than seven million people have been displaced by the worsening conflict, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, an American think-tank.
The deal’s fragility was on display this week in an exchange with Hariana Verás, a White House correspondent described as the first African journalist accredited to the White House. Mr Trump introduced her with faint praise. “She loves Africa, she always asks about Africa. She never talks about any other place,” he said. “Good job. Go ahead.”
Ms Verás began generously, telling him that of many administrations, “you are the only one who started to do something to end the 30-year war” in Congo. Then she turned to the present tense. “Rwanda is still violating,” she said, probing whether the president intended to do anything about the shattered arrangement.
“Yeah, we’re going to stop it, if there is a violation we know about it,” Mr Trump replied. “We ended the war with Congo and Rwanda, and they both signed it and both agreed, so, well look, I just heard about it a little while ago, if there’s a problem we’ll stop it.”
Ms Verás was not satisfied. “Mr. President, I just came from the DRC. I was there a month ago. I witnessed, again, Rwanda still killing a lot of Congolese,” she pressed. Mr Trump asked if she had witnessed it herself. “Yes, Mr. President,” she said. “And I have evidence.”
It was at this point that the president changed the subject. “How is Ebola going?” he asked—a pivot, as the New Republic noted, to a regional viral crisis aggravated by federal cuts earlier this year to the United States Agency for International Development.
“Oh, Ebola is under control,” Ms Verás answered. “I spoke with the director of the World Health Organization at the [United Nations], and he said it is under control. But still the country needs some help to fight Ebola. But still, the biggest problem is the war.” Mr Trump mumbled his assurance: “I’ll make sure it works out. That’s what I do. I make sure things work out.” Then he called on the next reporter.
The most revealing phrase in the exchange was not the deflection but the admission: “I just heard about it a little while ago.” The man who signed the peace deal appears to have learnt of its breach from a journalist, at the podium, months after the violations reportedly resumed. Agreements of this kind do not fail for want of signatures; they fail for want of follow-through, and follow-through is precisely the part of peacemaking that offers no ceremony.
None of this means the deal is beyond saving, and Mr Trump is right that his administration engaged where others did not. But a promise to “stop it” means little from a president who had, by his own account, only just noticed the problem. Seven million displaced people will judge the accord not by its signing but by whether anyone checks that it is kept.