Seventy-four years ago, the Belgian cartoonist, Georges Remi, sent the
popular children’s comic book character that he created, the 16-year-old
journalist named Tintin, to Congo with his companion dog, Milou. While on his visit to the colonized
territory, Tintin taught elementary arithmetic to Congolese children, helped
fix a broken train, and defended a school from a hungry leopard. Among his more noble achievements, however,
was the diffusion of tension between the fictional Babaoro and Hatouvou
ethnic groups.
After Tintin showed the Babaoro his video projection equipment, they
were filled with awe and made him their grand chief. But foreign thieves scheming to get a hold of
Congo’s diamond wealth viewed Tintin with suspicion: with his sharp journalistic
skills, he would doubtlessly uncover their plans. To counter this, they manipulated the
Hatouvou chief into viewing the Babaoro as a threat to his people, leading him
to start a war to kill the Babaoro – along with Tintin. When the Hatouvou attacked, however, the
young Belgian once again impressed them with his technological wonders and they
also became filled with awe and called off their assault.
This story was set in 1930. Two years before, in 1928, the Belgian
colonial administration in Congo began a program of land redistribution in the
eastern region of Kivu. Indigenous
ethnic groups such as the Hunde and Nyanga were pushed off their lands to make
room for Rwandan Hutu and Tutsi, who were relocated to Kivu in order to provide
a steady labour supply for white settlers’ plantations, also cultivated on
redistributed land. Far from bringing
interethnic harmony to Congo, as Tintin did, Belgian policies sowed the seeds
of destruction in the region. The newly
dispossessed began developing much animosity for the recent immigrants, the
legacy of which the Congolese are still living out, in its full horror.
“Before they ever crack open ‘The Heart of
Darkness’”, comments Norimitsu Onishi, “many French speakers first
encounter Congo by reading Tintin.” In the broader Western world, it appears, no
encounter takes place at all. In August
1998, the Second Congolese War began in the Kivus and soon engulfed much of the
country as foreign armies joined a myriad of armed groups in the fighting. In May 2001, reports emerged estimating that
as many as 2.5 million Congolese had perished as a result of the war and that
the fighting showed no sign of abating.
On April 7, 2004, when the 10th anniversary
of the 1994 Rwandan genocide arrived, one question reverberated loudly within
the Western news media, which also became the title of an article published in
the Christian Science Monitor: “Would the world allow another genocide?” The opinion of Retired Lieutenant-General
Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian responsible for UN forces in Rwanda in 1994, was
often provided as an answer:
I still believe that if an
organisation decided to wipe out the 320 mountain gorillas there would be still
more of a reaction by the international community to curtail or to stop that
than there would be still today in attempting to protect thousands of human
beings being slaughtered in the same country.
Dallaire is right,
but it was unnecessary to cite his remarks to answer the question. Instead, events that unfolded in Congo the year
before were far more instructive. During
the first half of 2003, a steady flow of reports streamed out from humanitarian
organizations operating in Congo indicating that genocide was about to unfold
in the northeastern Ituri-region, where 50,000 Congolese had already lost their
lives since the war began. Some
prominent figures, such as Carla del Ponte, then chief prosecutor of the United
Nations (UN) International Criminal Court for Rwanda, even suggested that genocide
had perhaps already started. As the
massacres mounted, human rights organizations called for the deployment of a
special UN intervention force to the region, but it would not arrive until
June. Even then, the deployment was
meagre and a virtual consensus quickly developed among humanitarian workers in
the region that the killings would continue, as indeed they did. Fortunately, in the end, the massacres did
not escalate to the level of Rwanda in 1994, but they easily could have and, it
seems, the world would have allowed these to happen.
It
appears, however, that many current affairs commentators and journalists, such
the one who produced the article for the Monitor, are oblivious to much
of what has unfolded in Congo since 1998.
This study is therefore intended to cast some greatly needed light on
the Second Congolese War, to make sense of what can oftentimes appear to be a
hopelessly impenetrable conflict.
Constructing an account and providing an analysis of the war is a
challenge as there are few scholarly studies on the subject. As of this writing, The African Stakes of
the Congo War, edited by John F. Clark, remains the only attempt at
producing a comprehensive English volume on the war. Even so, it makes almost no mention of the
war and politics of the northeastern Ituri-region of Congo. When it comes to scholarly journals,
moreover, there is also a lack of adequate coverage of the war. As of April 2004, for instance, the Journal
of the Royal African Society had only published a total of three items on
the Second Congolese War, two of which were short briefings. As a result, this study of the war relies
heavily on newspaper and magazine articles, newswire services, and, most
importantly, reports from a variety of humanitarian organizations and research
institutes. Nevertheless, in combination
with the few scholarly sources available, it is possible to construct a
detailed picture and analysis of several important aspects of the conflict.
Section
II of this study, “Sowing the Seeds of Destruction”, will trace the historical roots
of the war from the colonial period to the eve of the war in 1998. Three points will be made: first, the Belgian colonial administration in
the Kivus sowed the seeds of future interethnic warfare by creating a
combustible social and political atmosphere through its policies; second, in
the post-colonial period, local political elites exacerbated interethnic
tensions - at times leading to violence - in their desire to acquire and hold
on to power; and third, the stability of eastern Congo is highly dependent on
the stability of neighbouring Burundi and Rwanda as it is the refugee flows
from these countries, particularly in 1993-4, that primarily contributed to the
almost continuous warfare in the Kivus since then.
Section
III, “The Second Congolese War”, will examine the war’s immediate causes and
several of its aspects. Four points will
be made: first, the threat of genocide against Congolese Tutsi provided Rwanda
with a legitimate reason for intervening in Congo; second, the Rally for
Congolese Democracy (RCD), the rebel organization that was created early in the
war in the name of defending the Tutsi, has in fact worsened their security
situation and further polarized relations between ethnic groups in the Kivu
region; third, the expansion of interethnic warfare in Ituri is a direct result
of the RCD’s fragmentation in 1999 and the competition for power between
unscrupulous politicians, sometimes supported by Uganda; and fourth, the reasons offered by Rwanda and
Uganda for their invasion of Congo, though legitimate, cannot explain their
prolonged occupation of large parts of the country.
Section
IV, “Ending the Second War”, will investigate the peace process that began with
the Lusaka Agreement of 1999 and international efforts at implementing an effective
humanitarian intervention since then.
Three points will be made: first,
the Lusaka Agreement was inadequate but could have succeeded in achieving a
ceasefire if it were assisted by an international intervening force mandated by
the UN; second, the agreement that was reached in 2002 at Sun City, South
Africa, calling for the creation of a transitional power-sharing government in
Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, would likely have achieved its purpose sooner –
thereby shortening the war and saving countless lives - if the UN had applied
(at least partial) economic sanctions on Rwanda and Uganda to compel them to
withdraw their forces from Congo; and third, the UN failed again in providing
much needed civilian protection by not intervening in a timely and adequate
manner in the northeastern Ituri region during the first half of 2003.
The
overarching conclusion of this study, found in section V, “Future Prospects”,
is that although the fighting in Congo has tapered off substantially since the
end of 2003, it continues in some regions and may flare up again. The transitional power-sharing government in
Kinshasa is far from becoming a fait accompli and could break-up if the
security situation in Congo degenerates.
In addition, if the United Nations continues to respond to the Congolese
War as it has since 1998, Congo’s chances of successfully transitioning to
peace will be significantly reduced.
Furthermore, the ongoing instability has two major reasons: first, the
various Congolese peace agreements, including the important one made at Sun
City, do not address the underlying sources of tensions in the Kivu region,
namely the antagonism between local ethnic groups; and second, many rebels in
the east will only seriously consider disarming when the political situations
in Burundi and, in particular, Rwanda, make it worthwhile for them to do
so.
Present day Rwanda and Burundi were first colonized by Germany. These two territories, known as
Ruanda-Urundi, were a part of German East Africa, which also included present
day Tanzania. During the Second World
War, Belgium occupied the territories and was formally given mandatory powers
over them by the League of Nations in 1921.
Even though the mandate required Belgium to treat Ruanda-Urundi as a
separate administrative entity, the territory was integrated into the Belgian
Congo by 1925. The Belgians then proceeded to interfere with
the norms of the indigenous population to suit colonial interests and also
instituted a damaging immigration policy.
Indeed, to provide a steady labour supply for Belgian settlers in
eastern Congo, large numbers of Rwandans – both Tutsi and Hutu – were moved
from their homelands and into the present day Kivus. Several ethnic groups, including the dominant
Hunde, Nyanga, and Nande, however, already populated the territory.
It should be noted that Rwandans are believed
to have first migrated to the North Kivu region beginning in the sixteenth
century by virtue of the extensions of the Rwandan Kingdom at the time. Yet, the great flow of Rwandans to Congo
during the colonial years had a far more profound effect on the region than
previous immigration. In a detailed
study of the Muvunyi-Kibadi area of the Masisi zone of North Kivu, Bucyalimwe
Mararo has carefully traced the effects of Belgian settlement policy on the
region.
Beginning in the late 1920s, whites and
Rwandans settled in the area in what Belgians dubbed “a dual colonization.” In 1928, the colonial administration created
the National Committee of Kivu (NCK), a chartered company that would oversee
the distribution of “vacant lands” – that is, lands already occupied by
‘indigenous’ groups - in the region. The
NCK allocated blocks of land for lease by whites, most of whom were pyrethrum
farmers, and declared that remaining land would be apportioned for Rwandan
settlement. In 1934, because of growing
public discontentment with colonial land policies, the Belgians instituted a
policy by which the NCK could only allocate territory with the approval of the
indigenous population; yet, in practice, this had little effect. The Hunde chief in the area, André Kalinda,
had been installed by the Belgians in 1921 and knew that the security of his
position of power depended on the colonial administration - he thus acquiesced
to the NCK’s wishes.
The first swath of land marked for Rwandans was
established in 1937 and encompassed over fifty thousand hectares. Muvunyi-Kibadi is located within the southern
section of this block, taking up some 33,600 hectares of land. Within the next two decades, then, an
estimated 6,000 Rwandan families immigrated to area, overtaking control of
large sections of territory from the indigenous population. To put this figure in perspective, it should
be noted that in 1983 the locality had a total population of some 41,631,
nearly 37,765 of whom were Rwandan Hutu and Tutsi, collectively known as the
Banyarwanda. As Banyarwanda presence in the area
increased, the indigenous population had a choice: leave, or stay and accept Banyarwanda
rule. The same process of political and social
change that took place in Muvunyi-Kibadi was repeated across the Masisi zone
and other parts of North Kivu; by 1954, some 170,000 Banyarwanda had settled in
the region. Furthermore, this flow of
Banyarwanda into Congo dramatically increased in 1959, as a result of the
Rwandan muyaga massacres, which pitted Hutu against Tutsi; over the next
few years, some 130,000 Rwandans fled their homes, many of them taking refuge
in the Kivu region.
As fervent nationalism
swept Congo in the late fifties and the breakaway from Belgium became
inevitable, Hunde elites in North Kivu saw an opportunity to marginalize the
Banyarwanda in the post-independence period.
If the Belgian colonials had elevated the Banyarwanda to a powerful and
oppressive position, their reasoning followed, independence would provide the
‘indigenous’ population a chance to regain authority. As such, Chief André Kalinda’s son, Albert
Kalinda, sought to have three chieftaincies in the region endorse a petition
demanding that, being foreigners, the Banyarwanda be excluded from national
elections planned for 1960. Kalinda’s
attempt was unsuccessful, however, as the chiefs refused to lend their support,
citing that many Banyarwanda had lived in North Kivu long before Belgium
instituted its migration policies. This view was solidified with a regional
decree, passed in November 1959, which stipulated that the Banyarwanda would
also be allowed to run for the region’s seats in the forthcoming national
elections. Furthermore, in March 1960, a
similar decree was passed nationally that opened elections for all levels of
government to the Banyarwanda. When
Congo became independent in 1960, the Banyarwanda thus gained a large number of
seats in local politics. In Masisi, more
or less in proportion to their demography, they won 80 percent of elected seats
in the local council. But this situation
was soon to change.
Beginning in 1957, a slew
of political parties emerged within Congo, espousing particular conceptions of
a future independent government. The
debate soon became divided along a general line between federalists, headed by
Joseph Kasavubu (who became the first president), and those favoring a centralized
government, led by Patrice Lumumba (who became the first prime minister). On the eve of Congolese independence, a
constitution known as the Fundamental Law was introduced, written to satisfy
both camps by creating a central government but also calling for the creation
of provincial governments. Following this, Hunde, Nyanga, and Nande
representatives of North Kivu petitioned for the creation of a province by the
same name and the removal of the Banyarwanda’s political rights, something that
the Banyarwanda opposed, naturally. The
petitioners argued in turn, however, that the Banyarwanda objected to the
creation of the province because they intended to eventually have the region
secede and merge with Rwanda.
Nevertheless, in August 1962, the province of North Kivu was created and
the Hunde, Nyanga, and Nande acquired almost full political control.
During the same period, Hunde elites in
Muvunyi-Kibadi began a process of marginalization against the Banyarwanda. Assisted by their acquisition of provincial
power, Hunde elites succeeded in removing Banyarwanda from local administrative
positions, replacing them with members of their own ethnic group. In 1964, local elections were held in the
Masisi zone and the Banyarwanda achieved an overwhelming win, not surprising
given their majority status in the area.
The North Kivutian governor, who apparently despised the Banyarwanda,
nullified the election results, however, further escalating interethnic
tensions.
While this was unfolding in North Kivu, in
Kinshasa, Congo’s first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, was dismissed by
President Joseph Kasavubu, who assumed power in his place. In reaction, an insurrection against the new
leadership, led by Pierre Mulele, began in the eastern Kwilu region. Government forces attacked the rebel fighters
and the fighting soon spread to the Kivus, which - in combination with the high
level of local interethnic tensions - led to a violent crackdown against the
Banyarwanda, who had initiated their own rebellion against the provincial
administration. This chapter in Congo’s
post-independence civil war, known as the Kanyarwanda, lasted until 1965, at
which point the Banyarwanda fighters were defeated. The same year, furthermore, a young army
chief named Joseph Desiré Mobutu, known later as Mobutu Sese Seko, staged a
coup and emerged as Congo’s president.
During the next fifteen years, then, the Hunde
succeeded in maintaining almost exclusive power in North Kivu. In their new position of dominance, Hunde
elites in Masisi proceeded to retake as much land as they could from the
Banyarwanda. Even in this
socio-political climate, however, the national government managed to pass a new
law in January 1972 that stipulated that all Banyarwanda who were residing
within Congo prior to June 30, 1960 (Independence Day), would be considered
Congolese nationals.
This was a reflection of a widespread pattern of Mobutist patron-client
relationships across Congo. Seeking to
maintain power and order in Congo’s various provinces, Mobutu established local
clients that would carry out his directives.
These clients would often consist of elite sectors of a particular
ethnic group and, in North Kivu, Mobutu found the Banyarwanda who, being in
desperate need of support, served his interests as repayment.
Barred from political life during this period,
the Banyarwanda sought – and achieved – a measurable success in business, a
development that Hunde elites viewed with displeasure. Indeed, the need to seek out and forge
connections with government officials in Kinshasa in order to be successful in
business also garnered the Banyarwanda a less visible form of political power. For instance, Mobutu’s chief of staff,
Bisengina Rwema, had close connections with the Tutsi Banyarwanda during the
70s and early 80s, once even turning over a large land concession in Masisi to
them. But when Rwena - who over time
became a key supporter of the Tutsi within Mobutu’s government - died, the
Banyarwanda’s situation changed. In June
1981 the Citizenship Law was repealed, thereon preventing the Banyarwanda from
running or voting in political leadership races. Furthermore, ethnic divisions in North Kivu
over the years led to the formation of local ethnically based political
organizations known as mutualités.
These organizations usually served the land interests of the ethnic
groups they represented; in the case of the Banyarwanda, the Mutuelle des Agriculteurs de Virunga (MAGRIVI) was used to protect Tutsi land
holdings and provide security for the Hutu. The MAGRIVI also became an important organ of
dissent and protest for the Banyarwanda, providing them with the forum and
structure for pursuing organized action.
Hutu peasants, for instance, began to refuse to accept Hunde authority
in their respective localities by refusing to pay taxes and forming their own
tribunals to resolve disputes. This
development led to several violent confrontations between Hunde authorities and
the Banyarwanda, but the former could not restore control over several of the
protesting jurisdictions.
In 1991, with growing opposition to and
pressure on the Mobutu regime, a Sovereign National Conference was held in
Congo – then called Zaire. As Georges
Nzongola-Ntalaja notes, the idea of a national conference became particularly
popular after one was held in Benin a few months before the Congolese
event. In Benin, the popular conference
managed to remove the then dictator Matthieu Kerekou from power and instituted
a formal change in the national government. The Congolese conference, then, brought
together some 2,800 representatives from different segments and ethnic groups
of society. Moreover, the conference
proceedings, which lasted eight months because of interruption by Mobutu’s
regime, were broadcast across the country on television and radio. The goal of the conference was to allow
participants to investigate their country’s past and determine the reason for
Congo’s failed nation-building after independence. In addition, conference delegates sought to
workout and present a detailed plan for the future: everything from what kind
of governmental structures and institutions the Congolese wanted to see in
their country to writing a new draft constitution for the democratic transition
that was to take place.
Of all the delegates representing Masisi at the
conference, none were Tutsi or Hutu.
Indeed, the Banyarwanda were excluded from attending the conference by
Hunde elites who did not want to allow them the chance to voice their concerns
over North Kivutian politics and, critically, their citizenship question. Moreover, while the conference faced many
obstacles, one clear general message that emerged from it was that political
authority had to be decentralized and democratized while maintaining the unity
of the country. As such, local elections
for local governments were to take place in the various provinces, including
North Kivu. The local elites there,
though, had no interest in giving up their power; given that the Banyarwanda
constituted a large majority in the Masisi zone (as is still the case) Nyanga
and Hunde leaders believed that they would likely not win in democratic
elections. Realizing that a large
majority of Banyarwanda were Hutu, however, Hunde leaders found it expedient to
ally with Tutsi elites who, being more interested in their own ethnically-based
power than that of the Banyarwanda as a whole, willingly collaborated to ensure
that the Hutu were excluded from power.
The alliance lasted for a short while, though. In the tense socio-political environment of
the time, large-scale fighting broke-out in March 1993 as Nyanga militants
killed several Hutu peasants. The goal
of Hunde and Nyanga elites directing the violence became to cleanse large
sections of North Kivu of Banyarwanda, thereby ensuring a consolidation of
‘indigenous’ power. As such, the
Hunde-Tutsi alliance collapsed and the Tutsi joined the Hutu in securing mutual
interests in the war, which saw dramatic success in Muvunyi-Kibadi. In this locality, Hutu and Tutsi leaders
replaced Hunde politicians and in some instances Hunde land was even
overtaken. Attempting to quell the
situation, Kinshasa intervened in the region and succeeded in establishing some
temporary stability.
By the end of 1993, the situation in the Kivus became dramatically more complicated
as Burundian refugees streamed into eastern Congo. To understand the effect that this large flow
of foreigners would have on the Kivus, it is necessary to briefly examine
Burundi’s turbulent history and politics.
Burundi consists of two major ethnic groups, the Hutu and Tutsi, making
up roughly 85 and 14 percent of the population, respectively. But after independence in 1962, Burundi’s
politics became effectively controlled by Tutsi elites and the Tutsi-dominated
military, leading to many confrontations with Hutu groups vying for power. In 1972, some Hutu groups staged a major
violent uprising against the Tutsi government of Michel Micombero that resulted
in an atrocious repression of the Hutu population. Relations between the two ethnic groups
continued to worsen over the next decade and a half and in 1988 the military
once again launched a massive assault on the Hutu, killing several thousands.
The year before, however, Major Pierre Buyoya, a Tutsi, led a military coup,
assumed the presidency and promised to hold democratic elections. In June 1993, the country’s first democratic
elections were indeed held and the Burundi Democratic Front
party led by Melchoir Ndadaye, a Hutu, won the election with around two thirds
of the vote while Buyoya received the remaining support. As he had promised earlier, Buyoya stepped
down from power and Ndadaye was allowed to form his government, which
incorporated several Tutsi ministers.
Certain army factions were displeased with the new power distribution,
however, and assassinated Ndadaye in October. The killing sparked major riots and attacks
on Tutsi civilians by elements within the enraged Hutu population, which the
military used as a pretext for another brutal repression. By March 1994, around 50,000 Burundians had
been killed in the fighting and some 300,000 Hutu and Tutsi – consisting of
innocent civilians and rebels - took refuge in neighbouring territories,
including the Kivus. The
situation in the Kivus had thus become far more delicate: a new interethnic war
had exported itself from Burundi and was exacerbating the region’s existing
tensions. The Kivus exploded, however,
during the summer and fall of 1994, when thousands of Rwandans poured into the
area as a result of their country’s genocide.
The history and politics of Rwanda are also
worthwhile examining briefly in order to adequately understand the devastating
effect that the refugee flow into Congo would have. Rwanda consists of similar proportions of
Hutu and Tutsi as in Burundi and during the colonial years the Tutsi dominated
the local administration. The
overwhelmingly dominant position of the Tutsi within Rwanda (and Burundi) prior
to independence was largely a result of Belgian policies in the region. When Belgians arrived in Ruanda-Urundi, they
soon turned the Tutsi minority into their local clients who would allow them to
control the indigenous population by proxy.
According to colonial views, the Tutsi had “nothing of the negro” as
they were “gifted with a vivacious intelligence” and held a “refinement of
feelings”, making them “natural-born leader[s], capable of extreme self-control
and of calculated goodwill.” The Hutu,
on the other hand, were “extroverts who like to laugh and lead a simple life”
and were therefore not worthy of education and could not hold positions of
power. Indeed, the Catholic Church, which was
largely responsible for education, consistently favoured the Tutsi over the
Hutu in school admissions. In the case
of one school, at the time of independence there were 279 Tutsi and 143 Hutu
enrolled; when one considers these figures in light of the ethnic proportions
in Rwanda, it is possible to see how the Hutu were highly marginalized.
As with Burundi, Rwanda experienced a tense
post-independence period but, unlike the former, the Hutu acquired power in
Rwanda after a major uprising in 1959 and resisted insurrection attempts by
Tutsi groups in 1963 (Rwanda became independent in July 1962). The Hutu maintained power over the next three
decades and in 1990, a Rwandan Tutsi-dominated group, the Rwandan Patriotic
Front (RPF), launched a war against the Hutu government. As the situation deteriorated in Rwanda,
extremist elements within the ruling government devised a plan to eradicate the
Tutsi from the country. The pretext
necessary to begin the genocide came on April 6, 1994, when the plane carrying
the Rwandan president was shot down as it approached the airport in Kigali,
Rwanda’s capital. Over the following
three months, it is generally estimated that some 800,000 Tutsi and moderate
Hutu were slaughtered. The killings,
however, provided the RPF with the opportunity to invade Rwanda and overthrow
the sitting government, something that it achieved in July. During this period, then, large numbers of
Tutsi and Hutu civilians fled to North and South Kivu. But when the Hutu government in Kigali was
overthrown, its members went into exile in the Kivus as well and became
intermingled with the general civilian refugee population. Moreover, members of the army (Forces
Armées Rwandaises, FAR) and militias, including the notorious Interahamwe
(responsible for many of the killings), also joined the refugees in Congolese
camps.
The largest concentrations of refugee camps
were located at Goma, in North Kivu, and Bukavu and Uvira, in South Kivu, with
cumulative populations of 724,202, 318,645, and 67,544, respectively. Within these massive camps, former Rwandan
Hutu government officials maintained much of their regime’s structure and formed
a government in exile, intent on returning to Rwanda. Indeed, well armed and in no mood to
reconcile with the large Tutsi population sharing the space with them, these
Hutu overtook control of the camps.
Food, clothing, and medical supplies delivered by humanitarian
organizations insistent on maintaining an apolitical character to their work
were quickly seized by Hutu militias within the camps and used to benefit
efforts to reconstruct and maintain their offensive fighting capabilities.
The exiled Hutu then regrouped into several
militias, including a renewed Interahamwe and the Army for the Liberation of
Rwanda (ALIR),
and began spreading their anti-Tutsi ideology in the Kivus. The extremism that accompanied certain
elements within the Hutu refugee flow, furthermore, turned the Kivus into a
three-way conflict zone. Now, the
‘indigenous’ Hunde and Nyanga were fighting against both the Hutu and Tutsi,
who were viewed as undesired Banyarwanda, while the Tutsi and Hutu – newly
arrived and old - were fighting against each other. Moreover, as Gerard Prunier notes,
For the recently arrived Hutu from Rwanda this
was a good political opportunity. By
allying themselves with the local [Congolese] Hutu, they could gain entrance
into Kivu society and carve out for themselves a kind of ‘Hutuland’ which could
be either a base for the reconquest of Rwanda or, if that failed, a new Rwanda
outside the old one.
Indeed, in this new phase of the Kivutian war, the Hutu clearly
dominated the fighting and drove thousands of Hunde and Tutsi into Rwanda as
refugees. Most of the war had so far
taken place in North Kivu, but it soon spread to South Kivu as a major exiled
Burundian Hutu rebel group joined ALIR in attacking the local Tutsi population.
Tutsi from the Rwandan and Burundian regions are believed to have
immigrated to the South Kivu area beginning in the eighteenth century. In 1960, after thousands of Rwandan refugees
crossed into Congo as a result of the 1959 muyaga massacres, these Tutsi
– then numbering 59,233 according to the Belgian colonial census - identified
themselves as the Banyamulenge, as they lived predominantly on the Mulenge
Hills;
the Banyamulenge did not want to be mistaken for the new arrivals, who, being
refugees, had no land and political rights.
While their relations with other ethnic groups in the region had been
rather stable before 1960, after independence tensions developed. The roots of the tensions lay in the Mulelist
rebellion that was supported by many local groups, such as the Hunde, but
opposed by the Banyamulenge, who fought alongside the national army to suppress
it; relations with other local ethnic groups thus soured considerably. Furthermore, as with the Banyarwanda of North
Kivu, the Banyamulenge had a similar experience with respect to land and
political rights. The 1981 Citizenship
Law noted earlier also prevented the Banyamulenge from voting and running in
elections and, by consequence, they were also not allowed to own land.
Beginning in 1995, ALIR and the Interahamwe
rebel groups began a war against the Banyamulenge. In 1996, they also received help from the
Front for Defense of Democracy (FDD), an exiled Burundian Hutu group aiming to
overthrown the Tutsi-led military government back home that came to power via a
coup in July of the same year (the National Liberation Front, FNL, another
Burundian Hutu rebel group, also became involved in fighting in eastern Congo,
but little is known about its role in this period). The situation in South Kivu was deteriorating
quickly and the Rwandan government began to have genuine concerns that a second
genocide, this time against the Banyamulenge Tutsi, was about to unfold in
Congo. Kigali appealed to President
Mobutu to stop the militias but the Congolese military (then known as the Forces
Armées Zairoises, FAZ) joined the fight against the Banyamulenge
instead. Indeed, in September and
October 1996, the UN reported that dozens of Banyamulenge were killed by the
military and local ethnic militias and that over a thousand fled to
Rwanda. The development that would have
dramatic consequences for Congo, however, came on October 7, when the Deputy
Governor of South Kivu – adding to the momentum of the increasingly violent conflict
– announced that all 300,000 Banyamulenge in the province had to leave within
seven days “or be treated as rebels and face all-out
war.”
Given this
rapidly degenerating situation in the Kivus, Rwanda decided that it had to
intervene and prevent another Tutsi massacre.
Kigali formed an alliance with Banyamulenge fighters and jointly
attacked ALIR, the Interahamwe, as well as Mobutu’s military (FAZ) on Congolese
soil. The attacking Rwandan forces (the
Rwandan Patriotic Army, RPA), however, quickly found that there was little
resistance to their advance from the Congolese military. Indeed, these were the last days of the
Mobutu regime, which was crumbling under the force of its own corrupt and inept
governance. The underpaid and
unmotivated Congolese soldiers led to the view in Kigali that an opportunity
had emerged for the installation of a new regime in Kinshasa. But Kigali also realized that it was walking
on thin ice. While it correctly
calculated that the ‘guilt’ felt by the international community for not
stopping the 1994 genocide would give it the freedom to invade eastern Congo in
the name of defending the local Tutsi population, it also knew that pursuing
regime change by a full-scale invasion would be taking things too far. Thus, the search began for a viable Congolese
rebel movement that would carry out the regime change by proxy.
After Lumumba had been overthrown in 1960,
several ‘Lumumbist’ rebellions began in Congo.
A young supporter of Lumumba’s politics, Laurent Kabila, led one such
revolt with the help of Che Guevara in the mid-60s but soon failed and
retreated to the jungles of eastern Congo and western Tanzania, where he
remained largely out of view, with minor exceptions. One such exception occurred, for instance, in
1975 when he kidnapped several students working for anthropologist Jane Goodall
in Tanzania. But generally, he ceased
his revolutionary activities and sustained himself and the remnants of his
movement through mineral smuggling.
Kigali viewed Kabila as an ideal leader for the
insurrection given his long, albeit ineffective, experience as a rebel and his
lacking of a “political base” in Congo, which would ensure that after acquiring
power he would have to remain loyal to his foreign sponsors to preserve
it. Indeed, as a condition of the
collaboration, Kabila was required to place several Tutsi into the ranks of the
government and army and also permit Rwanda’s military or its Banyamulenge proxy
to operate as units of the Congolese military in the Kivus. With Rwandan backing, then, Kabila formed the
Alliance of Forces for the Democratic Liberation of the Congo (AFDL) to make a
drive for power in Kinshasa. The AFDL
was initially composed of five groups, including a Banyamulenge militia and Mai
Mai warriors (see “Second Congolese War” below). The rebellion began while Mobutu was
receiving cancer treatment in Europe in the early months of 1996 and within
weeks of having started its major push across the country, the AFDL managed to
gain control over large sections of the country. By May 1997, the rebels succeeded in their
mission, overtaking Kinshasa in a disorderly manner, while Mobutu found refuge
in Morocco, where he would die within months.
The AFDL’s war against Mobutu’s government
enjoyed a fair amount of support among the Congolese people as decades of
corruption under the dictatorial regime had effectively suppressed hopes for a
bright future after independence. It is
estimated that Mobutu, following in the footsteps of King Leopold II of Belgium
of a century before, accumulated a personal wealth of some four billion
dollars. To show for it, Mobutu built mansions across the country and,
like Leopold, he also built himself several elaborate properties in
Europe. One of these, in southern
France, cost $5.2 million and, ironically, was built at Roquebrune Cap Martin,
just a short distance from Cap Ferrat, where Leopold had built for himself an
equally scandalous villa with wealth stolen from Congo.
The 1991 Sovereign National Conference,
mentioned earlier, also played an important role in providing the philosophical
underpinnings of public support for the AFDL rebellion. The conference’s proceedings and the draft
constitution that came out of it crystallized and promulgated the view that the
Congolese had the responsibility to rise up against any government that
unlawfully acquired and held on to power.
Thus, unlike Congolese public opinion of the Second War, which began
less than two years later, in August 1998, the Congolese saw the First War as a
step towards fulfilling their aspirations for better times. As Jermain McCalpin writes, “Kabila’s
‘revolution’ brought with it high expectations among the people for both
political freedom and economic improvement.” It is important to note, however, that
widespread support for the revolution did not translate into sustained support
for Kabila’s governing regime.
To be sure, the AFDL rebellion was extremely
violent and member militias engaged in horrendous violence against
civilians. The AFDL, as it encompassed
Tutsi Banyamulenge fighters, sought revenge against the Hutu by launching
devastating attacks on Hutu refugee camps in eastern Congo. As Fiona Terry of Médecins Sans
Frontières explains,
The refugees initially fled west but their path
was blocked by advancing [AFDL] troops, and most were routed back to
Rwanda. Those from Bukavu and Uvira,
however, were pursued west and were attacked on numerous occasions as aid
organizations attempted to assist them.
Hundreds of thousands died or disappeared.
In addition, the
climate of war that engulfed Congo in the early months of 1996 and lasted for
well over a year, created a humanitarian crisis in many parts of the country,
particularly in the east. Large sections
of the population suffered from malnutrition, starvation and disease. The suffering endured by the Congolese and
refugees from neighbouring countries during the rebellion would not end with
the AFDL’s victory, however. Within 14
months, another far more devastating war would begin.
While Kabila’s ascension
to power was accompanied by public expectations that he would bring the country
to order, the corruption and mismanagement pervasive in the previous regime
continued on. Indeed, instead of
focusing on building democracy and tending to the devastated economy, Kabila
sought primarily to secure his own position by banning all opposing political
parties. As Osita Ofoaku explains,
however, this did not bother the AFDL’s sponsors:
Rwanda and Uganda were likely to support
any ‘friendly’ government in Congo.
Owing to their narrow fixation on security, they did not actively
encourage the Kabila regime to implement democratic reform. Nor can either
government boast strong democratic credentials.
The approval they have received from Western governments and
multilateral NGOs is primarily a function of their commitment to free market
economic reform and their ability to maintain internal stability.
Furthermore, even after the AFDL victory, Rwanda and Uganda had little
desire to disengage from Congo politically.
Instead, they sought to create and maintain a zone of influence in
eastern Congo, ostensibly to ensure continued stability along border areas and
the safety of the Banyamulenge. They did
this by demanding that Kabila place Tutsi figures in top military and
government positions and allow Rwandan forces to operate within the Congolese
military. The first army chief of staff,
foreign minister, and chief of national security were therefore all Tutsi, the
first two being from Rwanda while the third was Ugandan. The public, however, viewed the placement of
foreigners in high ranks of the government with much distrust, leading to
questions about who was really in power in Kinshasa. Additionally, Kabila’s own corruption and
mismanagement of the country’s affairs added to his quickly declining
popularity among Congolese. Indeed, his
support within the country resided primarily with the Banyamulenge, Katangans,
and young male rebel fighters (some
just over twelve years of age), known as the kadogos (the little ones),
who joined the AFDL as it swept across the country in 1996-7. After Kabila came to power, most Congolese
tended to support the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDSP) led
by Étienne Tshisekedi. Tshisekedi had
been one of Mobutu’s most vocal critics and his party had long maintained a
policy of non-violence and regularly denounced the AFDL’s violent drive for
power. In a poll conducted in 1997,
moreover, Congolese overwhelmingly stated that they wanted Kabila to engage in
dialogue with the UDSP and forge a new democratic path for the country. The response from the Kabila regime was to
denounce Tshisekedi as an “enemy of the people.”
In the east, meanwhile,
Rwanda continued to experience attacks from Hutu insurgents along its Congolese
border, something that Kabila appears to have been unable or unwilling to stop. All this was thus interpreted by Kigali as a
signal that yet a new regime had to be installed in Kinshasa. As tensions with his former sponsors mounted,
Kabila also began to suspect that a regime-change policy had in fact been
adopted in Kigali and Kampala. He
reacted by attempting to garner backing for his regime from foreign governments
and local armed groups and then proceeded to disentangle his government from his
former sponsors’ leash. Kabila thus
traveled to several African countries and, perhaps seeking to reconnect old
ties, even visited Fidel Castro in Cuba, to gauge international support. He then shifted his attention to quickly
building a local power base by actively supporting the ex-FAR, Interahamwe, and
Mai Mai militias (to be discussed below) in the Kivu region, counting on them
to act as an effective first barrier of defense against any invasion from the
east. Having secured alternate support
for his regime, then, Kabila was ready to cleanse his government of Rwandan
officials. In the summer of 1998,
Kabila sacked his Tutsi first army chief, James Kabarebe, as well as other
Kigali-installed Tutsi government officials, such as Foreign Minister Bizima
Karaha, who would soon join a new rebellion against Kinshasa. This was followed in late July by Kabila’s
order expelling all foreign troops from the country, namely Rwandan units
operating as part of the Congolese military in the east. While many Congolese, who felt Kabila was too
much of a pawn of foreign interests, saw this as a positive development, it
precipitated drastic action by Rwanda and Uganda within a few days.
On August 2, 1998, the 10th
brigade of the Congolese National Army (FAC), based
in eastern Congo and heavily represented by Banyamulenge soldiers, broke away
and joined the 12th brigade in an uprising against the Kabila regime
in several major cities in the region, including Goma. Various eyewitness reports reveal that on the
same day Rwandan soldiers crossed over into Congo to join the fighting,
although Kigali has denied the claim.
Seeing the rebellion unfold from Kinshasa, Kabila ordered the immediate
disarmament of all Tutsi soldiers serving in the FAC, an operation that soon
escalated into violence against all Tutsi, including civilians, in the capital
region. Then on August 4, a contingent
of 150 Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers flew across the Congo to the Kitona
military base, located just south of the Cabinda enclave of Angola. The base held over 10,000 former soldiers,
once belonging to Mobutu’s Zairian Armed Forces (FAZ), who were being subjected
to a ‘re-education’ policy in order to be eventually integrated into the new
Congolese military. This program, however, was particularly
dehumanizing and made the soldiers even more resolute in their opposition to
Kabila. As such, Rwandan and Ugandan
troops, led by James Kabarebe, sought to lead these disgruntled former soldiers
into an insurrection against Kinshasa.
Back in the east, meanwhile, Arthur Zahidi Ngoma was declared on local radio to be the new leader of the
Banyamulenge uprising, which led Kabila’s Tutsi ministers, who had been
assigned to their posts by Kigali, to join the rebellion. The uprising progressed quickly within the
first two weeks as the FAC was too weak to provide effective resistance. Within this short period, the rebels managed
to gain control of the power plant providing electricity to Kinshasa, promptly
cutting service to the capital. Meanwhile, in Kivu, disaffected Congolese
politicians began forming a united political wing for the rebellion. On August 16, it was announced that Bizima
Karaha, Kabila’s former foreign minister, would be the coordinator of the new
political organization and on August 20, the group was christened as the
Congolese Democratic Coalition, soon renamed the Congolese Rally for Democracy
(RCD). The highest position within the
RCD went to Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, a University professor who had been
teaching in Tanzania but returned from exile to participate in the
insurrection.
By this time, the Ugandan-Rwandan attack on
Kinshasa was threatening the capital, but Kabila was ready. Having succeeded in forging international
alliances in the preceding months, Kabila received military support from
Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Chad. On
August 23, Angolan forces began attacking the Kitona base from Cabinda,
followed by an airlift of 600 soldiers to Kinshasa from Zimbabwe. Three days later, a Tutsi rebel force led an
attack on Kinshasa’s international airport, some 25 kilometers from the city,
but was successfully repelled. This was
an indication of the status of the rebellion on various points along the
advancing front: having experienced an initial lightning-fast advance across
the country, the insurrection was now checked by the FAC and foreign
forces. It is at around this time that
soldiers belonging to the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) crossed by
ground into the Congo for the first time in the Second War. At a South African Development Community
conference in Durban on September 2, Ugandan officials openly admitted to the
presence of their forces in the Congo but argued that they were there to create
a buffer zone against the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a rebel group based
in northeastern Congo intent on overthrowing Yoweri Museveni’s ruling regime in
Kampala.
In staging his defense against the RCD, Rwanda,
and Uganda, Kabila did not only enlist the support of other foreign governments
but, as noted earlier, he also sought to ally himself with local insurgency
groups. By mid-September the RCD
experienced a major assault from Mai Mai militias, armed and supplied by the
Kabila government. The Mai Mai are
unique in that they are a coalition of fighters belonging to various ethnic
groups indigenous to the Kivus, such as the Nande, Hunde, and Nyanga,
traditionally pitted against ‘foreigners’, such as the Banyarwanda. They have operated as separate entities in
North Kivu and South Kivu and an understanding of their respective internal
structures has remained rather elusive to outside observers since the group
first emerged in the immediate post-independence period. The Mai Mai have maintained a mystical
profile, however, as some warriors claim to hold special magical
characteristics that make them invisible.
The Mai Mai were involved in clashes with government forces after Kabila
took over in May 1997 but when the second war broke out, they allied with
Kinshasa against Rwanda and Uganda, which were viewed as supporters of the
Banyarwanda. On September 14, the Mai
Mai attacked RCD rebels at Goma in what turned into a very bloody battle. This marked the beginning of the Mai Mai versus
RCD dimension of the war in the Kivus, which continues to the present day.
Two other major rebel groups that Kabila
strongly allied himself with were the ALIR, as noted above, and the FDD. Just as Uganda sought to carve out a buffer
zone along its Congolese border, Burundi had taken control of a narrow piece of
land in South Kivu that ran along its border.
Believing the area’s diamond mines to be threatened by Burundian forces,
however, Kabila began supporting the ALIR and FDD to establish and maintain his
reach into the Katangan diamond area. As
such, the two rebel groups clashed with the Burundian army, which allied itself
with Rwanda and the RCD as well as South Kivutian Mai Mai fighters based in the
Fizi-Baraka area. As noted above, at the start of the war the
Mai Mai and RCD were enemies yet they were also both allied with the Burundian
army against the FDD and ALIR. The
apparent contradiction stems for the nature of the Mai Mai, whose fighters are
so loosely tied together that some factions, given their geographic location,
often fight alongside ‘official’ enemies.
While Rwanda had a proxy force in Congo with the RCD,
Uganda did not have a similar arrangement initially. Within a short period of time, however, it
was able to establish for itself two proxy rebel organizations. First, in November 1998, it created another anti-Kabila
movement, named the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC), which began in
Gbadolite and has since been led by a businessman named Jean-Paul Bemba, whose
father was a close ally of Mobutu. The
reasoning behind the conception of this organization was that since the RCD was
rather unpopular with the Congolese, Bemba’s local roots would elicit more
public support.
Following this, a split occurred within the RCD
coalition in May 1999: the RCD’s original president, Professor Ernest Wamba dia
Wamba, had a fall out with the organization over the aims of the rebellion and
moved, along with his followers, to Kisangani.
The new faction, known as RCD-ML (or RCD-K/ML), received support from
Uganda, a development which had significant implications for the relationship
between the two major foreign sponsors of the war. Indeed, beginning on August 14 and lasting to
the 17th, a major clash between Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers played out in
Kisangani, which killed some 400 troops and 200 civilians.
The various parties to the fighting were now well
entrenched and the war became a part of everyday life for many Congolese. This was particularly true of those living in
the Kivus, under the authority of the RCD, based in Goma. The organization played a major role in
complicating the conflict in the east and deserves a comprehensive treatment.
The Goma-based RCD has been the main operational unit of the rebellion
in eastern Congo and with outside support it has taken over governance of the
region from the authorities in Kinshasa.
During the war, the RCD played a major role in virtually all aspects of
security, trade, resource use and social service administration in North Kivu,
yet it did all this in a corrupt, authoritarian fashion, reminiscent of the
Mobutu regime. Now that the fighting has
significantly reduced in the Kivus and that the RCD has joined the new
transitional government in Kinshasa, its role in the region remains unclear. Certainly, the organization still has
authority over much of the area, but central government control is slowly being
reestablished. Nevertheless, it is
worthwhile to more closely examine the emergence of the group and the
motivations of individuals involved in it to learn more about the Kivutian interethnic
war. Furthermore, an investigation of
the organization’s structure and the manner in which it functioned – and
likely still functions - can reveal much
about the volatile state of ethno-politics in the region.
From the beginning, the
RCD has been viewed by serious observers as being a proxy of outside interests,
particularly Rwanda. The figure to
emerge as the organization’s leader in the first few weeks was Ernest Wamba dia
Wamba, a professor of political science from the University of Dar es Salaam,
who returned to his homeland to help overthrow Kabila. Wamba, though born in Congo, received his
University education in the United States and once held a teaching stint at
Harvard. While in Tanzania, he developed
a close relationship with the former Tanzanian president, Julius Nyerere, who
carried out a socialist experiment in the country. As such, Wamba developed a social-democratic
orientation in his political outlook and has since envisioned a Congolese
society built on such principles in the post-Mobutu era.
Wamba believes that the 1994
Rwandan genocide was his “road to Damascus.” The mass killings that took place there that
summer provided him with the impetus to become committed to never allowing such
horrors to unfold in the region again.
But when the AFDL rebellion began, Wamba was weary: he had heard many
“reports of [Kabila’s] activities in the bush, stories of his authoritarian
style, [and] arbitrary punishments [and] executions.” The AFDL, keenly seeking out intellectuals
who would provide and defend the political justifications for the uprising,
sent a delegation to Tanzania to recruit Wamba, but it returned without
success. Indeed, as shown, once in power
Kabila quickly proved that his regime would not be much different than Mobutu’s,
with the same old corrupt and dictatorial ways prevailing. And, as Kabila’s relationship with Rwanda
deteriorated and the new regime took on an increasingly belligerent position
towards Congolese Tutsi resulting in the emergence of a “real threat of
genocide”, Wamba claims that he had to take action: “There was a great sense of
urgency: [Kabila’s] dictatorship had to be stopped before it became too
established.” Thus, when the new rebellion began in 1998,
Wamba saw his opportunity to become involved.
After deciding to join the
uprising, Wamba immediately sought to engage other prominent Congolese
intellectuals into the RCD cause. He
thus contacted Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, another well-known Congolese
professor, and requested that he join the movement. Like Wamba, Nzongola-Ntalaja had been
advocating political change for Congo from exile while teaching at several
universities in the United States. Yet,
when Wamba’s call came from Kigali, Nzongola-Ntalaja became suspicious of
Rwandan involvement in the rebellion.
When he called Wamba back a few days later, a Rwandan commander answered
the phone and tried to legitimize the rebellion by claiming that it was
indigenously directed. This, and the
well-known record of Rwandan intervention in Congo, led Nzongola-Ntalaja to
believe that the rebellion was in fact “guided from outside”. Indeed, right from the beginning, the RCD has
suffered from a lack legitimacy; over the years of the war, few Congolese civil
society groups chose to join or otherwise support the organization and, as will
be shown below, some Banyamulenge Tutsi who were supposedly dependent on the
RCD for protection themselves turned against the organization in 2002.
During the first few days of the
rebellion, the RCD maintained that there was no Rwandan involvement, with its
first president, Arthur Ngoma, claiming that the movement was “a struggle of
the Congolese people.” But very quickly virtually all serious
observers of the region discounted that assertion. Even Ngoma, upset at being replaced by Wamba
a few weeks after the RCD’s formation, bitterly denounced the organization as
being Kigali’s pawn. While Wamba had
serious hopes of democratizing Congo, he was but one man in an organization heavily
dependent on Rwandan support. And when
Wamba maintained his focus on winning the rebellion against Kabila even after
the rebels had been checked by Congolese and foreign forces in late 1998, the
Rwandan directors behind the scenes sought to instead turn the RCD into a tool
for the facilitation of resource extraction.
This conflict of interest in large part led to the RCD split, resulting
in the Goma and Kisangani (ML) factions.
Nevertheless, what were the
original intentions of the RCD leadership?
At the inaugural meeting of the RCD on August 12, 1998, the group
presented a Political Declaration that outlined their main grievances
and objectives. First, the group
recognized “the continued pauperization of the population due to pillaging of
public funds by … Kabila” and “the confiscation of the peoples [sic] through
Mr. Kabila’s dominant autocratic practices and that of his group…” Their
prescription for these ills was to replace the prevailing dictatorship with
“good governance” that would respect human rights. Furthermore, the RCD stated that it would
seek to “Combat tribalism, ethnic nepotism, corruption, arbitrariness, and
general impunity” and work for the “eradication of misery of the people.” In relation to its neighbours, moreover, the
RCD asserted that it would never “let Congolese territory to serve as base
[sic] for destabilization of neighbouring countries.” In September 1998, Jacques Depelchin, an
academic and RCD intellectual also coming from the University of Dar Es Salaam,
worked to gain international support for the RCD’s plans in eastern Congo. Expanding on the Political Declaration
in New York, he explained that the group was fighting against Kabila’s
continuation of Mobutu’s practices, namely “using the bank like his personal
kitty, concentration of power in the hands of one ethnic group, corruption,
refusing to open the democratic process, [and] refusing to allow other
political forces to participate.” The actual details of any future popular
democracy in Congo remained elusive but in a 1999 interview, Professor Wamba
explained that he envisioned that the Congo would resemble “South Africa, where
the democratic directives reflect the dynamism of the social movement, not just
the existence of more than one political party.” That is, freely organized social movements
such as “trade unions” and “renters’ associations” would guide the country’s
politics under a “one person, one vote” system committed to “nonracialism”. By the time Wamba made these remarks,
however, the RCD had already split in two, and Wamba found himself in the
weaker (ML) faction.
Nevertheless, achieving such
democratic ideals was from the beginning a tall task, particularly given that
the RCD itself was and remains a most undemocratic organization, composed of
many former AFDL members. At the onset,
the most dominant group within the RCD was composed of the Banyamulenge Tutsi,
who were closely connected with the Rwandan military. The positions of secretary-general, chief of
the justice department, chief of internal security, and chief of external relations
were all occupied by Banyamulenge elites. The Banyamulenge, as noted, are primarily
from South Kivu and their high degree of representation within the RCD, which
is based in Goma, North Kivu, was resented by locals. Furthermore, their focus has been much less
about democratizing the Congo than about defending themselves against rebel
groups such as ALIR and the Interahamwe, who united under the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR) in 2001. By allying
themselves with Kigali and working in Rwanda’s interests, these elite Tutsi in
the RCD in effect served to increase the vulnerability of the broader Congolese
Tutsi community to attacks and marginalization as the Hunde, Nande, and Nyanga
communities in the region found one more reason to view them as traitors. Nevertheless, the other major group within
the RCD consisted of Mobutu era figures, such as former ministers and officers
of the defunct FAZ. Along with the
academics mentioned above, the RCD thus had a rather mixed composition of activists
who often clashed in their aims and ideologies. This soon became evident when Vincent de
Paul Lunda Bululu, a former Mobutist, gained the prime minister’s post of the
RCD and soon quarrelled with Wamba. As a
result of this, under Rwandan pressure, in May 1999 Wamba was removed from his
post and the more pliable Emile Ilunga was installed as RCD president.
The RCD established itself in the
Kivus by essentially absorbing all existing government bureaucracies in the
area, employing these to satisfy its own narrow ends. The rich natural wealth of the region was
quickly controlled by the RCD, providing the organization with millions of
dollars of revenue, which made its way into the pockets of various RCD elites. Moreover,
before joining the transitional government in 2003, the RCD regularly
increased taxes but income generated from this was misappropriated. Indeed, in the spirit of Mobutu’ kleptocracy,
this clique at the top of the RCD hierarchy began using public money to sustain
lavish lifestyles, which included elaborate mansions in Rwanda and South
Africa. Thus, from the beginning of the rebellion,
the RCD devoted little money to the upkeep of social and other public
services. For instance, some 80 percent
of North Kivutian schools were operated not by the ‘state’ – that is, the RCD -
but by local churches. Similarly, only
about a third of the province’s health service jurisdictions were handled by
the RCD; the rest were often “outsourced” to foreign humanitarian agencies.
On security matters as well the RCD
failed to be effective, allowing the region to degenerate into a chaotic battle
between various armed militias, which seriously endangered civilian lives. Even Hutu FDLR attacks at times elicited no
reaction from the RCD; when one Rwandan commander operating in the region under
RCD cover was asked why the local population is not protected from the Hutu
militia, he replied: “They are our brothers, do you think we can kill them?” As Mountaga Diallo, a former MONUC (United
Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo; see “Ending
the Second War”) commander, notes, “there was a kind of ‘osmosis’ between RCD
and Rwandan troops … Oftentimes, RCD troops were effectively under the control
of Rwanda” and vice-versa. As a result, the local Kivutian population
became extremely resentful of the RCD, which was – and still is - viewed as an
invading foreign force not motivated by Congolese interests.
The general public’s opposition to
the RCD led the organization’s elite to maintain power by intervening in local
chief successions and developing “ethnic patronage networks”, leading to more
interethnic conflict. First, the RCD’s hold on the region relies
heavily on its management of chief or Bami succession in various
localities across the rural parts of North Kivu. Just as the European colonials had employed
local chiefs as clients in maintaining their control over Congo, as seen in the
case of André Kalinda in Masisi, the RCD began scheming to ensure that pliable
chiefs, friendly to the organization, would replace those who offered
resistance to RCD rule. The process of
chief succession is a complex one that often involves disputes resolved through
power struggles and thus the RCD was able to provide favoured chiefs with the
necessary backing to emerge victorious.
An instance of such interference in the traditional institution occurred
in the case of Chief Jean-Bosco Butsiti, of Tutsi lineage, who depended on RCD
support in maintaining his position as chief within a majority-Hunde area. Furthermore, the RCD’s meddling in the chief
succession processes has not only led to an increase in interethnic tensions
but its legacy will continue to wreak havoc on the region in subsequent years. As Dennis Tull comments, “In the event of a
[complete] departure of the RCD, fierce contestation struggles will doubtless
resume as they will elsewhere in Kivu.”
The second, and most important, source
of the RCD’s support comes from ethnic patronage networks that often cross over
standard ethnic cleavages. For instance,
the RCD incubated a strong relationship with a Hutu-led nongovernmental
organization known as All for Peace and Development (APD). The APD was created in October 1998 and is
strongly connected to Rwandan military.
The APD played a dual role to serve Rwanda’s interests: first, it worked
to repatriate Hutu refugees in Congo back to Rwanda and second, it forcibly
repatriated Congolese Tutsi taking refuge in Rwanda. By the early summer of 2002, the APD had resettled
some 9,500 such refugees into the Masisi area. The US Committee for Refugees reported (USCR)
that in August of the same year, Rwandan government officials and RCD
representatives visited the Rwandan refugee camps holding the Congolese Tutsi,
informing them that “peace, land, and humanitarian assistance awaited” those
who returned to Congo. This was then
followed by another wave of forced resettlement under the guise of the APD in
September and October of that year, which involved thousands of refugees. According to the testimony of one such
refugee,
RCD-Goma officials came to
the camp and used all sorts of tricks to try to convince us to pack our bags
and return to North Kivu. They knew that
I did not believe their lies. Eventually, I was told that my name was on
a list and that I faced trouble in the future if I did not return. This
scared me, but I held my ground. Many that did go back returned a few
weeks later and told me that the trouble we fled is still there and getting
worse.
Some observers
believe that the reasoning behind the APD managed repatriations was that the
RCD wanted to build a large base of Tutsi in North Kivu who could be recruited
into its military unit, the Local Defence Forces (LDF). In addition, the USCR reported that
on several occasions after
the forced repatriations … were underway, the same boats that ferried refugees
from Kibuye to Goma across Lake Kivu during daylight were heard returning at
night and departing before sunrise the following morning. International
observers in Rwanda widely believe that boats moving under the cover of
darkness transported troops, cattle, and other military support material from
Kibuye to DRC.
Many North
Kivutians have perceived the APD as a kind of reincarnation of MAGRIVI. Recall that MAGRIVI was used in the 70s and
80s to protect Tutsi lands and provide security for the Hutu in Masisi; in the
more recent Tutsi versus Hutu ethno-politics, the APD worked to make space in
Masisi for repatriated Tutsi while ‘protecting’ the Hutu refugees by sending
them back to Rwanda. Furthermore, while
the underlying Tutsi-Hutu link in the RCD-APD collaboration appears odd on the
surface, it provides important insight into the nature of the interethnic conflict
in the region. As Tull notes, “it simply
underscores the fact that the role of ethnicity is contingent on political
context.” Nevertheless, this large influx of Tutsi in
the Masisi region, combined with the widely held view that the RCD is an
occupation force, has contributed much towards the resentment held by North
Kivutian Hunde, Nyanga, and Hutu towards the broader Tutsi community.
Furthermore, Universities in the
area have become major nodes of dissent against the RCD and the Tutsi, who are
seen as a fifth-column. In South Kivu as
well, the prominence of Banyamulenge in the RCD has led some members of
indigenous groups such as the Bashi to reject the organization’s presence. Throughout 2000 and 2001, civil society
groups across the Kivus held several strikes, embodying highly anti-Tutsi
rhetoric, in which entire cities and towns were more or less shut down.
In reaction to all this, the RCD first
sought to coerce prominent members of civil society into accepting patronage
appointments but when this strategy failed, it established in 2001 the
Commission for National Reconciliation.
This attempt at appeasing the population also failed, however, as some
major ethnic groups were not represented in the Commission. For example, as an RCD member pointed out,
South Kivu’s delegation was composed of “four [] Banyamulenge, five Bashi, and
just one Muvira.” He asked rhetorically,
“Can the fact of ignoring the Barega, who are the second largest group in the
province, and also the Babembe, the Bafulero, the Batembo … can this encourage
national reconciliation?” And so yet another scheme was concocted: in
late September 2001 the Inter-Kivutian Dialogue (IKD) was organized. Clearly concerned about the kind of dialogue that
would take place at the event, though, the RCD determined who would be allowed
to participate and prevented many key issues, such as citizenship, land
ownership laws and the authority of the RCD itself, from being discussed. Undeniably, given the experience of the
Banyamulenge, the RCD may have valid reasons to be concerned about discussion
in the IKD regarding the former’s status in South Kivu. But the heavy-handed and callously
authoritarian manner in which it has gone about in managing interethnic
tensions in the province has only served to worsen the situation.
Indeed, in a remarkable development
that highlights the complexity of the local situation, in early 2002, some
Banyamulenge launched an insurrection against their supposed protector, the RCD. The mutiny was led by Patrick Masunzu, a
Banyamulenge commander in the RCD, who believed that the organization’s lack of
transparency and predominant interest in extracting natural wealth – not
protecting local Tutsi – was working against Banyamulenge interests. As a result, his rebel movement began
fighting alongside the Babembe and other local ethnic militias that had been
antagonistic to the Banyamulenge in the past.
To be sure, this last aspect was a temporary alliance of convenience and
the Babembe continue to view the broader Banyamulenge community with hostility.
Since
coming to power in the Kivus, the RCD has dramatically exacerbated interethnic
tensions. Locals correctly view the
organization as a Rwandan puppet that gives highly disproportionate power to
the Tutsi community. The ‘indigenous’
Hunde, Nande, Nyanga, and Babembe ethnic groups have for a long time viewed the
Tutsi in eastern Congo as ‘foreigners’.
Far from resolving this damaging perception, the RCD has only served to
reinforce it, further polarizing tensions.
The organization, though from the start backed by Kigali, was founded on
enlightened principles of accountability and interethnic solidarity; but within
a year, it became clear that the organization would not deliver on any of its
promises. The situation in the Kivus
remains volatile and extremely complicated.
Without a carefully managed reconciliation program that would accompany
a complete dismantling of the RCD and the emergence of an authentic Kivutian
government – all very tall tasks - the Kivus will continue on their present
course.
The
situation in eastern and northeastern Congo started becoming increasingly
entangled as rebel movements developed rivalries between each other and also
experienced much infighting. There were
several reasons for the antagonistic nature of relations between rebel groups
but much had to do with the control and exploitation of natural resources. For instance, yet another faction, named
RCD-National (RCD-N), led by Roger Lumbala, who split away from RCD-Goma,
emerged in the northeast. It appears
that the main reason for this split was not over political or philosophical
differences as such but simply for control of diamond mines in the
northeast. Of all the rebel groups,
however, the Kisangani-based RCD-ML (that later moved to Bunia) experienced the
most infighting. The RCD-ML’s infighting
and fragmentation acquired a potent ethnic dimension as faction leaders worked
to garner support from the Hema and Lendu communities in the Kisangani area and
then in Ituri. By 1999, as a result,
relations between the Hema and Lendu communities deteriorated gravely, leading
to ethnically targeted violence. Indeed,
the history of the Hema and Lendu in Congo, while having some important
differences, also has interesting similarities to the Tutsi-Hutu history of
Rwanda.
The Orientale Province of northeastern
Congo is divided into four districts, one of which is Ituri. The Ituri district itself is divided into
five territories, including Djugu and Irumu.
Within these two districts, which have an estimated population of two
million, the Hema and Lendu constitute about 150,000 and 750,000 people,
respectively. Each group, moreover, may
be divided into sub-groups based on geographic origination and linguistic
variation. Thus, the Hema of the north
are known as the Gegere while the Hema of the south are called the
Banyoro. In recent years, the rivalry between
these two Hema sub-groups has increased, showing that the Hema-Lendu conflict
does not simply pit one homogenous group against another. As for the Lendu, southern members of the
group are known as Ngiti while those of the north retain the Lendu name. Unlike the Hema, there is a rather strong
cohesion and sense of brotherhood within the Lendu community.
Anthropologists classify the Hema as a
Nilotic people that over a few centuries migrated to their current territory,
which was already populated by the Lendu, a Bantu people. Some unscrupulous politicians have thus tried
to argue that the Nilotic-Bantu (or ‘Hamitic’-Bantu) antagonism between the
Hema and Lendu cannot be escaped due to primordial chasms. Nevertheless, another ethnic group, the Alur,
also arrived in the Ituri area at around the same time as the Hema but each
dealt with the Lendu differently. Ironic
in light of the recent situation, the Alur proceeded to push the Lendu off
their lands while the Hema slowly mixed-in and shared the territory. There were rivalries and tensions between
some Hema and Lendu though. As the Hema
tended to be pastoralist, they were always searching for more grazing lands, an
activity that clashed with the Lendu’s agriculturalist way of life.
The colonial experience, however, had
a significant effect on Hema-Lendu relations.
Just as Belgians mythologized that the Tutsi were superior to the Hutu
in Ruanda-Urundi, they similarly pushed the racist view that the Hema were
superior to the Lendu. As such, they
favoured the Hema in the same manner as they did the Tutsi. For instance, Catholic missionaries sought to
primarily educate the Hema, analogous to a policy that they followed in Rwanda
with the Tutsi. As well, Belgian
colonialists employed the Hema in superior positions, such as overseers at
plantations and mines operated by the Lendu.
In time, like the Tutsi in Rwanda, the Hema came to dominate affairs in
the Ituri region and tensions with the Lendu were increasingly aggravated. In 1911, just a couple of decades into the
Belgian colonization of Congo, for instance, Lendu fighters attacked and killed
a Hema chief after a dispute.
The advent of Congolese independence
continued the rise of the Hema into the elite class of local society. As they were formally educated, the Hema were
quickly able to take over the public administration of the Ituri province from
the Belgians. After Mobutu emerged as
Congo’s leader and began to develop localized power bases across the country,
he formed a patron-client relationship with Hema elites, thereby ensuring their
continued hold on power. These
developments further exacerbated tensions with the Lendu and led to a number of
major episodes of violence between the two groups, most notably in 1966, 1973,
1990, and 1993, with the underlying conflict generally revolving around the
Lendu’s rejection of Hema dominance within the district’s public
administration.
Relations between the majority of Hema
and Lendu, however, would not degenerate into the kind of violent clashes
characterizing the current conflict if not for the manipulation of tensions by
local politicians. It is reported, for
instance, that some 95 percent of Hema in the Djugu district have calm
relations with the Lendu. Furthermore,
accounts from humanitarian organizations in the area state that today – in
contradiction to standard characterizations - only some five percent of Hema
own ranches for grazing, ten percent operate various businesses, and the
remainder sustain themselves through agriculture, much like their Lendu
counterparts. Thus, as one observer put it, “the squabble
for power between the Hema and Lendu is firstly the business of elites, not of
the ordinary people, who here as elsewhere in the sub-region, are turned into
pawns by an unscrupulous and illegitimate intelligentsia.”
In the Second War, this unscrupulous
and illegitimate intelligentsia was composed of the various rebel leaders and
foreign interests who actively drew the Hema and Lendu into battle against each
other. The leader of RCD-ML, Professor
Wamba, was challenged by Mbusa Nyamwisi, a Nande. The Nande are a people of North Kivutian
origin who arrived in the Ituri region relatively recently and are thus
labelled “non-originaires.”
Certain elites within the Nande community, such as Nyamwisi, are
considered to constitute the main challenge to Hema elitism in Ituri and, as a
result, tensions between the two groups has increased in recent years, adding
yet another strand to the complex web of interethnic antagonisms in the
northeast. Nonetheless, in their
struggle for the leadership of RCD-ML, Wamba and Nyamwisi appealed to the Lendu
and Hema for support, respectively. With
Ugandan backing, furthermore, Nyamwisi was able to oust Wamba and overtake the
leadership of the organization. As soon
as he acquired power, however, Nyamwisi moved his headquarters from Kisangani
to Bunia, the Ituri capital, dropped his ties with the Hema, and began to
establish a support base among the much larger Lendu community.
The switch of power bases had major consequences. In April 2002, a movement known as the Union
of Congolese Patriots (UPC), composed primarily of Hema, launched an
ideological attack on RCD-ML, accusing it of betraying Ituri’s interests. RCD-ML’s alignment with the Lendu, moreover,
would not only cause tensions with Ituri’s Hema population, but it also led to
strain within RCD-ML itself as the movement’s defense minister, Thomas Lubanga,
was a Hema. This led Nyamwisi, soon
enough, to try to replace Lubanga with Jean Pierre Molondo Lopondo, something
that the former resisted. On a trip to
Kampala in June 2002, however, Ugandan authorities took Lubanga and his
assistants into custody and sent them to Kinshasa, where they were all placed
under house arrest. In return, Lubanga’s
supporters in Ituri kidnapped the Minister of Human Rights of Kinshasa the following
month and succeeded in swapping him for Lubanga’s release. Upon his return to Ituri, Lubanga and RCD-ML
factions loyal to him joined the UPC, with Lubanga emerging as the
organization’s leader.
It is thus possible to see how the war that began in
the Kivus in 1998, soon spread to Ituri as a result of fragmentation within the
RCD and the Ugandan desire for local proxies in the war. By 2002, the fighting in Ituri acquired a
distinct interethnic character that intensified beginning in the latter half of
that year, a development that will be examined closely in the context of the
local peace process later in this study.
The
Illegal Extraction of Natural Resources
Rwanda invaded
Congo in August 1998 for two reasons: first, to stop attacks launched against
its territory by Hutu rebel groups based in the Kivus and, second, to prevent
genocide of the Banyamulenge Tutsi living primarily in the northern edge of
South Kivu. As already shown, these were
genuine concerns, but the prolonged presence of Rwandan forces in large swaths
of eastern Congo suggests that Kigali soon found other reasons for remaining
engaged in the war. The case of Uganda’s
involvement in the war is similar, furthermore.
As with Rwanda, it provided
security of its borders and the provision of security for the Banyamulenge as
the primary reasons for its intervention in Congo.
Uganda’s border-security concerns arise from
attacks launched against its territory by rebel groups having bases in
Congo. Just as Laurent Kabila was unable
to prevent the Interahamwe and ex-FAR elements from launching attacks against
Rwanda from the Kivus, he was unable to stop the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF)
from carrying out insurgencies against Uganda from northeastern Congo. The ADF is composed of rebels – numbering 600
to 1,000 - belonging to the former National Army for the Liberation of Uganda,
militants of the Muslim Tabliq sect, and even Rwandan Hutu génocidaires. Along with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)
and the West Nile Bank Front (WNBF), the ADF represents a series of exiled
Ugandan rebel groups intent on overthrowing the regime of Yoweri Museveni. Importantly, however, the biggest threat to
Museveni’s regime comes not from the ADF but from the LRA, which is based in
southern Sudan. Since the late 80s, the
Ugandan military has been fighting against the LRA and finding itself unable to
extend decisive government control over the northern part of the country. As recently as February 2004, the LRA
launched an assault on a displaced persons camp near the northern town of Lira,
killing 192 people. In spite of this,
Museveni’s official reasons for war indicate a primary concern with the ADF,
which began its attacks in late 1996.
The ADF has been responsible for some serious
attacks in western Uganda, with particularly vicious ones taking place in the
months prior to the outbreak of the Second Congolese War. In June 1998, for example, the ADF defeated a
Ugandan military unit near Fort Portal and proceeded to set a school dormitory
ablaze, killing some 40 students. Following this attack, Museveni appointed
Brigadier James Kazini as responsible for the Ugandan military operations
against the ADF. Kazini launched a
massive assault on the ADF, destroying two of the group’s camps and closely
monitoring the zone along the Congolese border.
Nevertheless, the ADF struck again in early August, at the beginning of
the war, killing 13 people in the town of Kasese.
There are thus valid grounds for Uganda’s
security concerns along its Congolese border.
But as John Clark notes, the nature of Uganda’s intervention and the
justifications provided for it, do not withstand scrutiny. First, while the Museveni regime claimed to
be concerned with rebel activity along its border, by 1999 Ugandan military
forces were fighting in Congolese territory up to 1,000 kilometers from the
frontier. When pressed to explain this,
Kampala argued that to ensure long-term security of its borders, a new
leadership would have to be installed in Kinshasa that would effectively reign
in the ADF. Clark comments, however,
that “It is extremely doubtful whether any successor to Kabila would be able to
exercise effective control over the country’s eastern reaches, and it is quite
possible that s/he would have little sympathy for Uganda’s security concerns.” Indeed, similar reasoning to Uganda’s was
employed by Rwanda to justify its support for the overthrow of Mobutu by
Kabila; within months, however, Kabila fell out of favour with his former
sponsors. Second, according to Clark,
under a Kinshasa-Kampala security treaty signed in April 1998, Ugandan forces
“could certainly have crossed the Congo-Uganda frontier in pursuit of rebels …
without engaging in all-out war against Kabila.” All this strongly suggests, therefore, that
while the ADF threat did elicit genuine security concerns, it soon ceased to be
one of the primary reasons for intervention.
The second major reason offered by Uganda for
invading the Congo was to assist Rwanda in preventing a second genocide from
occurring against Banyamulenge Tutsi.
While Uganda may have provided some significant military backing to the
Rwandan military during the opening months of the Second War, within a year, it
was clear that Uganda was doing nothing to help improve the circumstances of
the Banyamulenge. Indeed, by August
1999, Ugandan forces clashed with their supposed Rwandan allies in Kisangani
and from then until their complete withdrawal from Congo in May 2003, they
remained confined to the northeast, which is not home to any significant
Banyamulenge community. As with Rwanda,
therefore, Uganda’s stated reasons for its long involvement in the Second War
do not pass scrutiny.
Congo
is extremely rich in natural resources like diamonds, gold, and coltan. As such, Rwanda’s and Uganda’s prolonged
presence in Congo has elicited considerable international attention regarding
their possible illegal extraction of natural wealth. The subject thus became the raison d’être
of a United Nations Expert Panel, which produced three important reports. Indeed, what all the investigations made
absolutely clear is that there was overwhelming evidence that Rwanda and Uganda
played a leading role in resource extraction, which was financially rewarding
for the governing elites of both countries.
Moreover, while resource extraction may not have been a key motivator
for Rwanda’s and Uganda’s initial decision to intervene in Congo, it certainly
remained a major reason for the long occupation of the territory that ensued,
thereby prolonging the war. In addition, while Rwandan and Ugandan forces
withdrew from Congo in the fall of 2002 and spring of 2003 respectively, they
have maintained their rebel proxies that have continued the plundering.
Rwanda’s extraction of natural wealth
from the eastern Congo was in fact a continuation of the plunder it undertook
when it participated in the First Congolese War in 1996, which brought Laurent
Kabila to power. In return for assistance
in overthrowing the Mobutu regime, Kabila entered into several contracts with
foreign companies. During that period
and the months between the wars, Rwanda and Uganda, built up much of the
resource extraction infrastructure that would be used in the Second War. The system of infrastructure developed at
that time was quite formidable: it included financial institutions,
transportation networks, and extraction companies, all working together to
plunder Congo’s natural wealth. The
financial centre of Rwanda’s extraction operation which emerged during the
Kabila rebellion is the Banque de commerece, du developpement et d’industrie
(BCDI). Profits derived from resource
extraction were channelled to Rwanda and to the AFDL war effort via this
bank. For instance, the UN Expert Panel
traced a $3.5 million payment from a diamond company named MIBA
to COMIEX,
a company owned at the time by Kabila, from funds stored in a BCDI
account. Furthermore, the transportation
network employed in the extraction was the same one that was used to supply
AFDL forces. Cargo flights carrying
military equipment from Rwanda and Uganda to airstrips in eastern Congo
returned home with large quantities of gold and coffee as well as businessmen
seeking trading opportunities for stolen diamonds.
When war broke out once again in
August 1998, a phase of active “mass-scale looting”, as the Panel put it,
began, when “minerals, agricultural and forest products, and livestock” were
extracted from occupied areas. Soldiers
from Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi as well as from the RCD all participated in
this plunder. One mining company based
in Kivu, SOMINKI,
had its large stockpiles of coltan drained by Rwandan soldiers working
hand-in-hand with the RCD. Documents
provided to the UN Panel reveal that in one case the RCD admitted removing
quantities of coltan and cassiterite totalling $722,482. During the six months spanning from November
1998 to April 1999, it is estimated that the RPA and RCD illegally transferred
up to 1,500 tons of coltan and 3,000 tons of cassiterite to Rwanda. Illegal extraction operations were also
taking place in the northeastern region, particularly in Équateur Province,
where Jean-Paul Bemba’s MLC worked with Ugandan soldiers to seize whatever
quantities of coffee they could get their hands on.
In
addition to straight looting of resources, the first twelve months of the war
also involved large-scale bank robberies by rebel groups. In the northeast, Bemba ordered MLC fighters
to take all funds held in banks in towns overtaken by the advancing rebellion. From just one branch in Gemena belonging to
the Banque commerciale du Congo, Bemba’s forces acquired some
$600,000. In the Kivu region, Rwandan
soldiers did much the same, even stealing from a local branch of the central
bank, which had recently received a deposit to pay civil servants. Funds from this robbery, estimated to have
been at least a million dollars, were placed in a hotel room for several days,
until an RCD official reportedly picked up the bags of cash and transferred
them to Rwanda by air.
In
the background to the active looting that occurred during the first year of the
rebellion, the Panel identified a “systematic and systemic exploitation” of
Congo’s natural wealth by presenting the case of DARA-Forest’s operations in
the Ituri region. Having failed to
acquire a concession from Kinshasa in March 1998, the Ugandan-Thai company
succeeded in winning a license from the Ugandan allied RCD-ML, which gained
control of the area during the Second War.
Timber harvested by DARA, in contravention of Congolese logging
legislation, was then illegally transported to Uganda, where it usually sold
for far lower prices than comparable Ugandan forest products. From there, the timber would be shipped to
other parts of the world, including Belgium, Switzerland, and the United
States. Furthermore, DARA-Forest was
also involved in the extraction of diamonds and coltan found in its concession
area. Additionally, trucks supposedly carrying
lumber to Uganda were reported to also be holding quantities of coltan and
cassiterite.
In
addition to extracting natural wealth, Ugandan forces also sought to dump
Ugandan goods in northeastern Congo.
Using intimidation tactics, Ugandan soldiers forced shops in several
towns to close, allowing the foreign occupiers to acquire a large degree of
control over the local economy. Indeed,
when Panel investigators visited the northeastern Congolese towns of Bunia and
Gbadolite, large numbers of goods on sale were found to have come from Uganda. A similar situation was reported in the Kivus
as well, where local shops were found stocked with goods originating in
Rwanda. As might be assumed, all such
imports were usually brought into Congo without any tariffs, generating little
money for the local RCD administration to spend on social services. Furthermore, the Panel also discovered that
foreign soldiers sought to gain control over independent farmers in the
area. Coffee producers, for example,
were required to sell their product in special bags sold to them by buyers
allied with Ugandan and Rwandan forces.
Without these bags, farmers would have to sell their coffee at a reduced
price, thereby incurring a substantial loss.
Farmers were also prevented from shipping their products to other
countries, such as the Central African Republic, given the high level of
control exercised by occupying forces and rebel groups. As the Panel noted in its report, “this
translates into a de facto monopoly” for foreign armies and their local
proxies.
So
far, evidence of foreign forces being involved in Congo’s plunder has been
summarized; but it would be misleading to leave the matter there and not draw
out the links between government officials in Kigali and Kampala and the
resource extraction taking place on the ground.
With respect to Rwanda, the plunder in the Kivu region has been linked
to the highest levels of government. For
instance, a major diamond and gold dealer named Ali Hussein is reported to have
met many times during negotiations with a Rwandan civil servant who was
believed to have a direct connection with President Paul Kagame back in
Kigali. Rwanda’s high-ranking military
official, Colonel James Kabarebe, also worked to ensure that transportation
services were provided for resources extraction. Moreover, a businesswoman named Aziza Kulsuma
Gulamali acquired a high level of control over coltan deposits in the Kivus
through her close links with Paul Kagame’s regime in Kigali. Officials in the RCD told the Panel that
Gulamali’s business in the region could bring the rebel organization up to a
million dollars a month in revenue.
In
the case of Uganda, furthermore, the Panel identified the retired Major General
Salim Saleh
as well as his wife, Jovia Akandwanaho, as key figures in the plunder. General Saleh is the brother of Uganda’s
president, Yoweri Museveni, and played a major role in various aspects of
Uganda’s operations in northeastern Congo.
He cultivated a reciprocal relationship with the RCD-ML elites,
including Mbusa Nyamwisi. The Ugandan
General ensured these individuals’ safety and, in return, they looked after his
resource extraction schemes in the region, which included diamond and gold
concerns. General Saleh was assisted in
all this by his first in command, Brigadier General James Kazini, who directly
oversaw all Ugandan military operations in northeastern Congo. As with General Saleh, Kazini had also
fostered a close relationship with Nyamwisi, Bemba, and Roger Lumbala of the
RCD-N. The Panel reported that together,
these rebel leaders “facilitated [Kazini’s] illegal dealings in diamonds,
coltan, timber, counterfeit currency, gold and coffee, and imports of goods and
merchandise in Équateur and Orientale Provinces.”
Some
of the most instructive evidence exposing Rwanda’s and Uganda’s illegal
extraction of Congolese resources comes in the form of export figures supplied
by the respective governments to the Panel.
In the case of Uganda, gold export figures were found to be higher than
production numbers, suggesting that the surplus gold came from Congo. Ugandan figures also showed that the country
experienced a dramatic increase in gold exports in the mid- to late-90s. In 1995, Uganda’s gold exports totalled some
$23 million while by 1997, the figure had jumped to $105 million. Furthermore, several international
organizations
reported that Uganda exported diamonds from 1998 to 2001 yet, as the Panel
noted, “Uganda has no known diamond production.” The picture painted by Rwandan and Burundian
figures is much the same. While Rwanda
does not itself have any known diamond production, statistics compiled for the
Panel from disparate sources show that Rwanda exported irregular, yet sizeable,
quantities of diamonds from 1997 to 2000.
Burundi also does not have any diamond production yet, in 1998, the year
the Second War broke out, it suddenly began exporting the precious
mineral. Export figures of other
countries – Angola, Zimbabwe, and Namibia - involved in the Congolese war were
also examined but revealed insufficient discrepancies for concern.
The raw profit to be derived from
exploitation of Congolese natural wealth by neighbouring countries played a
major role in the continuation of the war.
Indeed, in examining the defence expenditure figures of countries
involved in resource extraction, the Panel found that sums allocated were
significantly lower than monies actually spent.
In Rwanda, the government officially budgeted around $70 million for all
aspects of defence in fiscal 2000, but realistic cost estimates of its operation
in Congo suggest that the actual figure was much higher. An estimate by the Panel of aircraft
transport costs for Rwanda in Congo produced a figure of $21.6 million a year,
just under a third of all military expenses.
Furthermore, the Panel also calculated that the roughly 25,000 Rwandan
soldiers that were in operation in Congo at any given time required some $30
million just for salaries. If soldiers
in Rwanda not involved in Congo were also taken into account, almost another
$12 million would be necessary for paycheques.
Summing these numbers up produces a figure of around $63 million, 90% of
the military budget, all spent on just salaries and air transport. Costs of weapons, training, ground transport,
and other equipment would have to be all paid for with the remaining $7 million,
a possibility military experts interviewed by the Panel rejected.
The
Ugandan picture is less clear. Expenses
on defence in fiscal 2000 totalled around $110 million. Some $43.4 million of that figure is
estimated to have paid the salaries of its 50,000 soldiers, roughly a fifth of
which were operating in Congo.
Transportation costs per year were estimated by the Panel to amount to
about $13 million which, added with salary costs, totals about $57 million. Although the UN panel could not provide a break
down estimate of other military expenses, it noted that some analysts estimate
that Uganda overspent on its military forces by some $16 million in 2000.
In spite of profits gained from
resource extraction, Mungbalemwe Koyame and John Clark argue that the Rwandan
and Ugandan economies did not experience any benefits. An examination of Rwanda’s GDP reveals that
while average growth in 1996 and 1997 was 14.3 percent, from 1998 to 2000 - the
first three years of the Second War – GDP growth dropped to an average of 6.9
percent. As already noted, export
figures provided to the Panel by Rwanda reveal that it was exporting more of
some natural resources than it produced, meaning that the 6.9 percent figure is
lower than the actual. In their careful
assessment of the Panel report, Koyame and Clark note, however, that if profits
from such exports had been reinvested in the Rwandan economy, the GDP figure
would have reflected the growth that would have resulted. This suggests that the top Rwandan players
involved in resource extraction, some of whom were identified above, kept much
of the stolen wealth for themselves and for financing of the continued military
occupation, which allowed them to acquire even more wealth.
As
with Rwanda, profits reaped by Uganda appear to have been primarily directed at
the military elite. The Panel, however,
posited that the “Ugandan economy benefited from the conflict through the
re-exportation economy,” which “allowed an increase in the defence budget.” The re-exportation economy – involving
repackaging of Congolese natural resources as Ugandan products – improved
Uganda’s balance of payments, which “in turn gave multilateral donors,
especially [the] IMF … more confidence in the Ugandan economy.” Additionally, the illegal exportation
increased the Ugandan treasury’s monthly revenue by an estimate $60 million a
year, a substantial sum equal to more than half of official defence
expenditures. Koyame and Clark criticize
the Panel’s assessment of major benefits to Uganda’s economy, however, writing
that it “is not supported by general economic data…”
That is, while exports averaged at $597 million per year between 1995 and 1997,
they dropped to an average of $467 million from 1998 to 2000. Although Uganda, as noted above, did not
include accurate diamond and gold export figures in its official figures,
products such as timber and coltan were re-exported and recorded in official
statistics supplied to the Panel.
Moreover, Koyame and Clark also note that between the two aforementioned
years, the average current account deficit increased from $319 million to $535
million. They thus conclude that “the
overall health of the Ugandan economy” experienced no improvement as a result
of “war profits.” This view appears to be valid given the data
available: the benefits of profits from illegal resource extraction benefited
at most the military establishment and its elite.
Although
there was little benefit to the Rwandan and Ugandan economies, the RPA’s and
UPDF’s involvement in illegal natural wealth extraction from Congo appears to
have played a major role in keeping the two foreign forces from
withdrawing. The abovementioned
therefore goes some way in explaining the difficulty in ending the war, a discussion
of which follows.
On 22 June 1999, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in
Congo, Darioush Bayandor, wrote an opinion piece in the International Herald Tribune titled “Look Away From Kosovo to See the
Crisis in Central Africa.” Indeed, since
the beginning of the year, the world’s attention was focused on the
humanitarian crisis in the Balkans; beginning in March, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) carried out a massive bombing campaign against Kosovo and Serbia, which
ended on June 10, after Serbian forces pulled out of Kosovo. While NATO member states and the western
media cheered the “success” of the “humanitarian”
intervention, the war in eastern Congo, barely a year old, had already claimed
the lives of thousands of people and led to the internal displacement of
700,000 more. As Bayandor noted at the
time, UN humanitarian organizations with programs in Congo had so far been
severely under funded as an appeal for $26 million launched six months before
“could not be funded beyond 60 percent.”
As alarming as it was, the situation in Congo nevertheless failed to
elicit more concern from the international community. The matter of bringing the war to an end was
instead dealt with through an all-African peace process, which achieved a
cease-fire agreement at Lusaka, Zambia, on July 10, 1999.
The Lusaka Accords called for a ceasefire between
warring parties and the formation of a 90-day Congolese political dialogue that
would lead to the eventual establishment of a new transitional power-sharing
government. The Accords were highly
inadequate, however. While a myriad of
rebel groups and national armies, each with particular interests, had joined
the fighting over the previous year, the Lusaka agreement was only signed by
the six intervening states. As such, it
did not include the predominantly Hutu FDLR (made up of ex-FAR and Interahamwe
rebels), the Mai Mai, the MLC, the FDD and, of course, the two main RCD
factions. In the case of the last,
during the Lusaka negotiations, both RCDs claimed to have wanted to sign the
agreement but that they would only do so if the other faction did not,
resulting in neither one signing it.
Moreover, without an enforcement mechanism, the ceasefire deal offered
little reason for Rwanda and Uganda to pull out of the war, as it was in fact
the war that was most profitable for them.
As Kevin C. Dunn remarks, “few of the combatants actually wanted peace
to thrive. They had too much invested in
the war, and their own economies were linked to the draining of Congo’s
resources.” The only parties that were fairly serious
about achieving peace were some of the states that intervened in Kabila’s
defense. Having stopped the rebellion’s
advance, thereby confining it to the east, and having rather limited
opportunities to participate in the plunder of Congolese diamonds and gold,
Angola and Namibia began pressuring Kabila to make peace. (Moreover, Angolan
interest in Congolese natural wealth was far less than those of Rwanda and
Uganda as its territory is rich in diamonds as well.) But Kabila never intended on respecting the
ceasefire and as soon as it was signed, he denounced the terms of the agreement
as flawed and continued to wage war. As
such, just over a week after the Accords were signed, rebel groups announced
that they had resumed their westward advance, acquiring even more territory. The Lusaka Accords would not produce peace
within the subsequent period because the agreement failed to include all
warring parties – a formidable task, to be sure – and account for their varied
interests. As long as the FDLR continued
to fight, Rwanda would remain engaged, and as long as Rwanda and Uganda were
not pressured – diplomatically and economically – by the international
community to withdraw from Congo, they would continue their plundering.
Nevertheless,
in a surprising development in early August, Jean-Paul Bemba signed-onto the
Lusaka Accords on behalf of the MLC, stating the he was committed to “the
establishment of real democracy” in Congo and that the political dialogue
called for in the Accords would lead Kabila to “leave his presidential seat
peacefully.” Yet, three days later, Bemba accused Kinshasa
of dropping 18 bombs on two towns under the control of his MLC, killing some
500 soldiers and civilians. Kinshasa denied carrying out the attack,
which could not be confirmed by independent journalists, but the episode
revealed once again the deep climate of distrust and uncertainty that the
Lusaka ceasefire deal tried to overcome.
Apparently
attempting to grab onto the momentum provided by the MLC’s acquiescence to the
ceasefire, the next day, the UN Security Council authorized the deployment of
90 “military liaison personnel” to facilitate the implementation of the
Accords. Given the large numbers of
rebel movements, the risk of their further fragmentation, and their
geographical spread, the UN deployment was more of a fig leaf than anything
else, however. The peace process largely
remained an African driven initiative, led by Zambian President Frederick
Chiluba and South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, who continued their attempts at drawing
in holdouts to the Lusaka agreement.
Prospects for peace appeared to increase substantially by the end of
August as a result of their efforts, when both RCD factions agreed to sign the
Accords despite their antagonism for each other. While UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was
quick to praise the development, the Security Council made no contribution to
the implementation of the peace plan; the Lusaka Accords would receive no
additional international support beyond empty words of encouragement. This led President Chiluba to travel to New York
and address the Council, expressing his deep concern that the world body had
accumulated a disappointing record of inaction in dealing with African affairs:
“There is a perception that the United Nations, and in particular the Security
Council, is usually slow and reluctant to support peace efforts in Africa,” he
candidly remarked. Canada’s Ambassador to the UN, Robert Fowler, responded by
praising the Zambian leader’s peace efforts and the American counterpart at the
time, Peter Burleigh, called for a “hard-headed evaluation of the security
situation” in Congo before increased UN involvement in bringing peace to the
conflict. In other words, Chiluba’s
point was understood, but serious action by the Council would not be
forthcoming. This was indeed confirmed in November, when
the Security Council voted unanimously to authorize equipping 500 UN military
observers for deployment in Congo at a later date as the UN Organization
Mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC), which would remain on the
ground until March 2000. Dissatisfied by this meagre contribution by
the international community and seeing the Lusaka agreement slowly unravelling,
African ambassadors to the Security Council expressed anger at the intervention
plan, to which the Dutch Ambassador, Peter Van Walsum, replied that it was a
“myth that it was the ‘dilly-dallying’ of the Security Council that had killed
the Lusaka agreement.”
The following month, in
January 2000, the United States convened a special session of the Council to
deal with the Congolese crisis. Kofi
Anan announced the proposed expansion plan for MONUC, known as Phase II, which
would include some 5,500 military observers and 3,400 soldiers. Lowering expectations before the conference,
however, the US Ambassador to the UN, Richard Holbrooke, said that the time had
still not come for military intervention.
“We have dragged our feet, and we don’t apologize for it,” he asserted
bluntly. Two weeks after the conference, at which
seven African leaders appealed for international assistance in ensuring the success
of the Lusaka accords, the United States introduced a resolution to the
Security Council calling for the formation of Annan’s proposed MONUC assemblage
but specified that it would not support deployment until all fighting had
stopped. As many observers had explained at the time,
however, such a condition was highly unlikely to occur since there were some
factions, such as the ex-FAR and Interahamwe, that had not signed onto the
agreement and had no apparent interest in doing so. Moreover, organizations such as the RCD had
split many times and some small factions, intent on securing natural wealth for
themselves and immune to international pressure because of their elusiveness,
also had little incentive in seeing an end to the fighting.
Nevertheless, on 24 February
2000, the Security Council approved a 5,537-person strong MONUC (Phase II) -
made up of observers and soldiers - that would only be deployed when
Secretary-General Annan deemed the situation in Congo sufficiently safe for the
mission. The force, whose mission was extended to
August 31, would operate under Chapter VII of the UN Charter and was thus
authorized to use force to protect UN personnel and civilians “under imminent
threat of physical violence” (in reality, however, once on the ground MONUC
applied its authority to use force in a very narrow manner, providing little
security for civilians). Ambassador
Holbrooke congratulated the Council on approving the mission, announcing that a
“critical step” had been taken to bring about “a peace [the Congo] so
desperately needs”, though the United States refrained from contributing any
soldiers to the operation. In his
address to the Council before the vote, Canadian Ambassador Fowler noted that
“There are few places in the world where civilians are more in need of
protection than in the [Congo]. In
situations as grave as this, there is an imperative to act and to do what is
possible to relieve the suffering of the beleaguered people of the DRC.” Yet, by mid-April, MONUC was still not deployed. Instead, the Security Council announced that
it would send half its members to Congo to discuss “concrete ways”, as
Ambassador Fowler put it, of enforcing the Lusaka accords. All this was happening, it should be noted,
while a UN official told the press that the “humanitarian situation in the
eastern Congo was reported as dire, with civilians being targeted by all
parties to the conflict.”
The Security Council mission
to the Central African region took place between the 4th and 8th of
May and its findings were presented in New York on May 17. The head of the delegation, Ambassador
Holbrooke, insisted that the Lusaka Accords were still the best basis for peace
and said that MONUC needed to be deployed as soon as possible. He also noted that natural resource
extraction was in part responsible for the continuation of the war and he thus
openly supported the creation of a UN Expert Panel for further investigation
into the matter. Moreover, he reported that in the presence of
the visiting UN delegation, Rwanda and Uganda signed an agreement on May 8 to
have each of their forces retreat to at least 100 km from the key city of
Kisangani, thus allowing MONUC personnel to enter it.
In spite of all this, by the
end of May, MONUC was still waiting to be deployed and the whole mission was
now suffering from an image problem: some 300 UN peacekeepers serving in Sierra
Leone had just been taken hostage by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF),
evoking memories of the ten Belgian soldiers that were killed in Rwanda during
the onset of the 1994 genocide. An American official commented: “The shadow
is huge and it’s really going to require a correct response in Sierra Leone to
unlock deployment in the Congo.” Similarly, Dutch Ambassador Van Walsum
wondered in front of the Security Council: “how do we sell this information to
the international public … that feels that Africa is falling apart?” Knowing that MONUC was not going to be
deployed, the Rwandan Colonel, James Kabarebe, shown above to have personal
involvement in illegal resource extraction, claimed that “We need someone to
bail us out of the problem of the Congo,” as if 40,000 Rwandan soldiers were
stuck in the neighbouring country against Kigali’s wishes. Indeed, Colonel Kabarebe correctly understood
that Security Council member states did not want MONUC soldiers to have to
confront foreign military forces in eastern Congo and he thus proceeded to
delay the mission’s deployment.
Secretary-General Annan, quite likely recognizing Rwanda’s scheme,
called on the Council to consider using force against foreign armies under
Chapter VII in early June.
The
Council, however, did not heed Annan’s request as Rwandan and Ugandan forces
once again clashed in Kisangani, resulting in the deaths of as many as 600
civilians and injury of another 3,000. At the same time, the Council condemned
President Kabila for shutting down the office of the mediator who was
responsible for coordinating talks -
known as the Inter-Congolese Dialogue - between Congo’s warring parties and
civil society groups, as called-for in the Lusaka Accords. The mediator, former Botswana President
Ketumile Masire, had his offices in Kinshasa closed by police after Kabila
declared that he was biased and thus not fit for the position. The dialogue that Masire was charged with
facilitating was meant to lead to a national consensus on a new government for
the country, a prospect that Kabila clearly did not care for as its fulfilment
would have required him to negotiate with rebel and civil society groups, which
would lead to plans for democratic elections.
At the
end of June 2000, nonetheless, four months after MONUC’s Phase II had been
approved by the Security Council, it remained inactive. Furthermore, President Kabila stated in
mid-July that he did not see the need for UN forces in the country; he said at
the time that the UN forces “shine in their laziness here and … do not know
what to do on the territory they are supposed to defend.”
Indeed, apart from wanting to stay away from the Inter-Congolese Dialogue that
would follow MONUC’s entry into Congo, Kabila appeared to have been genuinely
frustrated by the lack of international pressure on Uganda and, particularly,
Rwanda to pull out from the country. In
any case, the lack of support from Kinshasa for MONUC meant that the mission’s
next phase of deployment would once again be delayed. It was not until August 24, six months after
the UN force was expanded, that Kabila provided written confirmation that MONUC
would be allowed to deploy freely across the country. With MONUC’s expiry date quickly approaching
on August 31, however, the Security Council extended the mission for another 45
days. But by mid-September, fighting had once again
picked-up in eastern Congo, leaving little hope that MONUC would be
deployed. As such, only 245 troops
belonging to MONUC were on the ground in Congo by mid-October, at which point
the Security Council decided to maintain the small presence for the following
two months. The Council called once
again on the warring parties to end the fighting but applied little pressure on
Uganda and Rwanda, while squaring most of the blame on Kabila. It should be recalled, here, that there has
always been a broad consensus that three of the major belligerents in the war,
the MLC and the two RCD-factions, have from the beginning of the fighting been
heavily influenced - oftentimes directed - by their foreign patrons. Adequate international pressure on Uganda and
Rwanda, therefore, could have produced the desired ceasefire, thereby providing
a strong incentive for Kabila to also stop fighting.
In late
November 2000, the UN reported that some 16 million Congolese had their lives
severely disrupted by “hunger, disease, homelessness, and abuse” as a result of
the previous 28 months of almost continuous warfare. A report by the International Rescue
Committee estimated, furthermore, that some 600,000 children died in the same
period because of the fighting. The UN
also added that the international community had once again failed to provide
adequate humanitarian funding in 2000, with only $43.6 million provided out of
the $71.4 million called for. In the shadow of this news, the Security
Council continued its debate about what to do next in Congo, with
Secretary-General Annan requesting the deployment of another 500 observers; the
nearly 5,000 other soldiers making up MONUC would not be sent. Moreover, in what was characterized by the
media as “unusually blunt”, in late December the Security Council finally
explicitly demanded that Rwanda and Uganda remove their respective forces from
Congo. Trying to take advantage of the
new momentum, the Congolese Ambassador to the UN quickly produced a letter,
delivered to the Council, calling for the institution of sanctions against the
two countries until they complied with the UN’s demands. The request was ignored.
The new
year, which seemed to provide few signs of hope for an end to the fighting,
took on a dramatic twist as President Laurent Kabila was shot by one of his own
bodyguards on January 16, 2001. (The
assassin was later identified as Rachidi Kasereka, a kadogo, who had
helped Kabila acquire power in 1997.)
While much confusion over Kabila’s fate emerged in the days after the shooting,
it became clear by the end of January that he had indeed been killed and that
his son, 29-year old Joseph Kabila, would assume the Congolese presidency. The young Kabila immediately sought to
distance himself from his father’s policy towards the war that was seen by many
observers – wrongly, to be sure - as being either the main or sole reason for
the failure of the Lusaka Accords. The
new president’s more lenient and flexible position in dealing with warring
parties opposed to his government was immediately hailed in the west, with
French President Jacques Chirac announcing that France had “taken note of
Joseph Kabila’s openness through his first declarations.” Moreover, while on a visit to New York, Paul
Kagame told the UN that “one can give [Kabila] the benefit of the doubt that
maybe he can do better than his father.”
But Kagame, still trying to portray the RPA’s occupation of large parts
of eastern Congo as merely a defensive operation, added: “I don’t think the
exploitation of resources of Congo is a core issue … [It] has been done by
other people for decades.”
Nevertheless,
for reasons that are not quite clear, fighting in the country more or less
ceased once Joseph Kabila was declared President. In mid-February, the UN’s undersecretary
general for peacekeeping operations, Jean-Marie Guhénno, reported that “On the
field, we have seen that there have been no significant violations of the
cease-fire for more than three weeks.”
Finally, the conditions that the UN had adamantly insisted on before
deploying MONUC Phase II had become a reality.
Yet, instead of sending the almost 5,000 soldiers and observers that had
not been deployed to Congo, Guhénno announced a plan to reduce the force to
around 3,000, which would apparently allow it to arrive in Congo faster: “We
felt that we had to exploit that window of opportunity,” he said. But in contradiction to this, Guhénno pointed
out at the same time that it was unknown when Phase II would in fact be
deployed: “It’s too early to tell you that the lights are all green.” It is thus not too difficult to see why, as
noted above, many African leaders have complained that the UN regularly
neglects African crises. Indeed, upon
hearing the news, the Zimbabwean foreign minister, Stanislaus Mudenge, criticized
the shrunken force as a reflection of the insincerity of the UN’s intervention
plans in the region. On March 29, then, after another month and a
half of wrangling, the UN began deploying the 3,000-strong MONUC forces – made
up of 500 observers and 2,500 soldiers to protect them - to Congo, seeking “to
guarantee disengagement,” though less than half of the force was actually sent.
Two weeks later,
nonetheless, the UN Expert Panel established to investigate the extraction of
natural wealth from Congo, released its report calling for partial sanctions to
be placed on Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi for their plundering activities in
Congo, action that Kabila’s government immediately endorsed, but ultimately
failed to be implemented by the Security Council. (Specifically, the Panel recommended that the “Security Council should immediately declare a temporary embargo
on the import or export of coltan, niobium, pyrochlore, cassiterite, timber,
gold and diamonds from or to Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda until those countries’
involvement in the exploitation of the natural resources of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo is made clear and declared so by the Security Council.”) Unsurprisingly, the UN Panel’s report
infuriated Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni, who promptly rejected its findings;
Museveni responded by arguing that “Genocide, terrorism and disenfranchising
the Congolese people are causes of [the war], not minerals.” On April 30, as a result of his irritation
with the report, Museveni announced that he was withdrawing from the Lusaka
Accords, though still committed to pulling-out Ugandan forces from Congo.
By
mid-May, with only 1,300 MONUC soldiers and observers deployed across the
country and reports that as many as 2.5 million people had perhaps been killed
since the war began in August 1998 making the news, Kabila told the
international press that “The commitment [from the United Nations] is not what
we really expected. The commitment is
lacking in terms of personnel and resources.”
He thus proposed that MONUC be expanded to 20,000 personnel, a request
to which the Security Council gave no serious consideration in the subsequent
period. Instead, the Council once again sent a
delegation – this time totalling twelve Ambassadors – to the Great Lakes region
to “monitor the implementation” of the Lusaka agreement. During their visit later in May, the
delegation’s leader, French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte - demonstrating
either the Council’s lack of understanding of the conflict or its callous
manipulation of the factual record - reported from Zambia that in the past “the
bad guy was Laurent Desiré Kabila. And
so others [the rebels] appeared, naturally, as the good guys. Now the good guy is [Joseph] Kabila, and so
the others are really destabilized.” Apart from the uselessness of such notions as
“bad guy” and “good guy” in discussion of the various political actors involved
in the Congolese war – all parties played a part in derailing the peace process
– Levitte’s comments reveal the less than productive role of the Security
Council in ending the war. As discussed
previously, the RCD has never been more than a proxy of foreign interests and
it was almost from the beginning heavily involved in natural resource
extraction along with Rwandan soldiers, who oftentimes worked within the
organization. Yet, despite evidence from
an UN investigative panel substantiating this, through its actions the Council
stubbornly held on to the position that the RCD deserved little blame for the
ongoing fighting, thereby declining proposals for sanctions against its Rwandan
patron. Only after Joseph Kabila emerged
as the new Congolese leader did the Council’s position towards Kinshasa change,
as evidenced by Levitte’s remarks, but it still resisted the imposition of an
embargo – broad or of certain goods - from Rwanda and Uganda. As a substitute for hard action, the Council
merely called on the RCD to demilitarize the key city of Kisangani, a request
that was promptly rejected by the organization to no consequence. Without a comprehensive UN policy towards
putting an end to the Congo war, it was only a matter of time before fighting
would resume. Indeed, by mid-July 2001,
several clashes in eastern Congo led the MONUC commander, General Mountaga
Diallo, to report that “things are intensifying” to the point where the resumed
fighting “threatens to derail the peace process…”
Nonetheless, the Lusaka
Accords mediator, Ketumile Masire, announced a few weeks later in August that
he was progressing steadily in bringing together the various warring parties
for the much-awaited Inter-Congolese Dialogue, which he believed would take
place in less “than six months”. As things played out, the dialogue conference
began sooner rather than later, on October 15 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The new
darling of the west, Joseph Kabila, however, decided to not participate
personally as the Accords required of the Congolese president. His foreign minister claimed instead that the
Congolese leader would only show up “when the real dialogue starts”, whatever
that meant. Unsurprisingly,
representatives of rebel groups present at the talks became very upset upon
hearing the news; Jean-Paul Bemba, the MLC leader, initially claimed that he
would also not take part, but then changed his mind. Even so, this first phase of the Dialogue
failed within a few days when Congolese government officials walked out of the
talks without providing much explanation.
When asked who was to blame for the failure of the talks in an interview
a couple of weeks later, Kabila replied that “we are all to blame.” Outside observers, especially some in the
European Union, which committed US$1.8 million towards the talks, became
sceptical, however, suspecting, in sharp contrast to views held at the
beginning of the year, that Kabila was quite content in keeping the conflict
alive at the behest of foreign interests. This view was reinforced when the UN Expert
Panel investigating resource extraction in Congo released its second report in
November 2001 showing that Zimbabwe had struck several lucrative business deals
in the mining sector with the late Laurent Kabila, which at times involved its
military; Kabila was now under pressure to keep the old business schemes alive,
it was thus believed.
Despite the initial failure
at Addis Ababa, before returning to their respective homes, parties involved in
the talks tentatively agreed to make a second attempt at the inter-Congolese
dialogue, this time in South Africa early in 2002. The UN Security Council followed this
development by unanimously passing a resolution on 9 November 2001 again
calling on all foreign countries to withdraw from Congolese soil, but yet again
failed to increase the odds this would happen by imposing sanctions, as called
for by the UN Panel report. Instead of following
the Panel’s clear recommendations, the Council asked the Panel to produce yet
another report with more policy recommendations. Sure enough, the resolution failed to produce any
results as by early December the UN Special Representative to Congo reported
that a reinforcement of up to 2,000 Rwandan soldiers had entered parts of
Orientale, South Kivu, and Katanga provinces.
When asked about the deployment, a Rwandan government spokesman rejected
the report and asserted that “If anything, we have been scaling down the number
of our troops in the Congo.” Echoing this development, Uganda also began
redeploying its forces in parts of eastern Congo by early December, claiming to
be restoring order to chaotic sectors of the territory.
In January 2002, Burundi
announced that it had agreed to withdraw its forces from Congo in return for an
end to Kinshasa’s support for the FDD, which acted as a proxy against foreign
armies in the east. As noted earlier,
the Burundian military had been deployed in parts of southeastern Congo to
provide a security buffer along its border zone. A parallel peace process aimed at ending
Burundi’s 11-year civil war continued as the Congolese peace process unfolded;
the two wars were indeed inexorably linked.
As long as the FDD continued receiving support from Kinshasa and found
for itself in Congo a lawless territorial base that could be used as a staging
ground for launching attacks against Burundi, it would have little incentive to
give up its arms and join the power-sharing government in Bujumbura that had
been brokered by Nelson Mandela in 2001.
In any case, likely
motivated by the agreement with Burundi, Kinshasa asked the UN Security Council
to form an independent inquiry to determine the legitimacy of Rwanda’s and
Uganda’s claimed reasons for occupation of eastern Congo. Kabila specified that within two months “the
commission should establish the truth and make a report to the
secretary-general of the United Nations.”
The request was not heeded.
On 25 February, 2002, the next chapter in the
Inter-Congolese Dialogue began at Sun City, South Africa. Preparations for these talks were underway
since the break-up of the Addis Ababa talks in October, however, which included
a UN-sponsored conference in Abuja, Nigeria. At that conference, the government, the MLC,
and the RCD determined the composition of the various other delegations – made
up of civil society and armed groups - that would attend Sun City. The civil society groups rejected the Abuja
initiative, however, as the Lusaka Accords called for each group to establish
its own delegation without interference.
The prospect of Sun City failing even before it began led the Belgian
government to intervene and hold separate preparatory talks in Brussels, which
was not attended by the MLC nor the RCD.
The parties that did attend, though, agreed to accept Joseph Kabila as
president as long as transition to a new government would occur within thirty
months of an agreement.
When the Sun City talks
finally opened, delegation sizes of civil society groups continued to impede
progress for some ten days, until the mediating team under Ketumile Masire
increased each delegation to 68, causing the overall number of participants at
the talks to reach 366. This initial
difficulty was an indication of the generally discouraging prospects for the
conference. As the International Crisis
Group (ICG) noted in its assessment of the talks, “RCD-Goma and the MLC had
gone to Sun City with one common priority: replacing Kabila as leader during
the transition period, while the government went there with its aim of
validating Kabila’s presidency.” This sharp clash of interests was further
aggravated when fighting erupted as Rwandan and RCD forces entered the town of
Moliro in Katanga while the Sun City talks were underway. In reaction to this, the UN Security Council
unanimously passed a resolution demanding Rwanda and the RCD to direct their
forces to leave the town immediately and also called on the belligerents to
make a similar exit from Kisangani, which had been reoccupied. Once the Rwandan and RCD forces left Moliro,
however, the Congolese military entered the town as Kabila sought to reassert
his negotiating power at the conference, leading Rwanda and the RCD to maintain
their armed presence in Kisangani.
With little progress made
during the first five weeks of the talks, the Congolese government announced in
early April that it was “ready to share power with the rebels at all levels
except the presidential post” and that the presidency would be determined by
elections to be held in two years. Kinshasa’s position was accepted by the MLC
but rejected outright by the RCD, which maintained that it would not recognize
Kabila as president. This partially
positive development was accompanied by a proposal presented by South African
President Thabo Mbeki, which gave the RCD authority over the ministry of
defense, the power to organize national elections, and the vice-presidency,
among other perks. This was immediately
rejected by Kinshasa and the MLC, who together proposed reducing the power
conferred to the RCD by Mbeki. As the
RCD was seen as nothing more than a Rwandan puppet, the joint Kinshasa-MLC
proposal received wide support from civil society groups at the talks.
In the end, the Sun City
agreement gave RCD-Goma the presidency of the 425-member National Assembly and
assigned the MLC’s Jean-Paul Bemba to the Prime Minister’s position. Moreover, the RCD-ML and RCD-N supported the
agreement as it allowed – in principle - for the integration of their forces
into the new Congolese army. Even a Mai
Mai faction was given one deputy ministerial position in the new
government. Calling the deal “a joke”,
however, the RCD announced that it would not acquiesce to the new governing
scheme. In response, Bemba publicly
stated in Kampala that “we beg the RCD to accept [the] agreement”, and made it
clear that the RCD would be allowed to opt into the new government in the
future. Indeed, one of the four new
Congolese vice-presidencies was left open for the organization to fill.
While much was achieved at the talks, many
complicated and important matters were left unresolved. For instance, work on the Defense and Security
Commission – one of five commissions encompassing the dialogue - stalled early
on; the government had wanted to maintain the Congolese Armed Forces (FAC) as
it was, but the MLC and RCD wanted a full integration of their forces into the
FAC. Furthermore, as the ICG pointed out
at the time,
in reality, the agreement is completely
un-operational. The responsibilities of
each transitional body are ill-defined and consist of only a series of guiding
principles that are too vague to allow a real balance of power within the
executive … exactly how power-sharing would be divided between the defense
minister, the head of state, the prime minister and vice-prime minister remains
to be defined … The Sun City agreement is not rooted in a shared vision or a common
plan between its signatories. Simply
dividing up political posts and privileges is not enough to establish a ‘new
political order in Congo’.
In
addition, the agreement failed to take into account the local dimensions of the
war, particularly those in the east. The
root causes of interethnic antagonism in the Kivus – the skewed distribution of
land and power among ethnic groups – were left out of the talks. The legacy of almost a decade of fighting
between the Tutsi, Hutu, and Hunde and Nyanga communities was not dealt
with. Indeed, an inter-Kivutian dialogue
similar to the Inter-Congolese Dialogue would have been a good starting point
for handling the volatile situation in the east, but no move in such a direction
was made. The Sun City agreement did,
however, call for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to
deal with “political, economic, and social crimes committed from 1960 until
2003.” While the idea of such a
commission was good in principle, it appears that the period of crimes it would
be responsible for handling could render the project ineffective.
Nevertheless, after some three and
half years of war, the Sun City talks had produced a “framework agreement” that
could in time be developed to achieve a lasting peace. That the agreement was signed by 258 of the
366 delegates in attendance, with additional signatories joining in the
subsequent days and weeks, reflected this hope.
But as the UN’s envoy to the Congo, Amos Namaga Ngongi, noted at the
time, “In order to widen the consensus over the … agreement and smooth its
implementation, the accord … must include the RCD…” In a poll conducted in government-controlled
territory by a Congolese research firm
prior to the conclusion of the Sun City talks, 68 percent of those polled in
Kinshasa approved of a Kabila-Bemba-RCD power sharing scheme. Support in four other towns stood at 53
percent but it should be noted that a Kabila-Bemba power-sharing government
received around the same level of support - 54 percent - in those localities.
As such, the UN Security Council
moved to encourage Rwanda’s and RCD-Goma’s entry into the Sun City
agreement. In early May, French
Ambassador Levitte announced plans for a regional conference that would seek
RCD-Goma’s integration into the new proposed government and Rwandan and Ugandan
forces’ departure from Congolese soil. A few days later, however, the Rwandan
presidential advisor at the Inter-Congolese Dialogue, Patrick Mazimpaka, told
the press that Sun City “was a fraudulent agreement” and thus Kigali made no
moves towards troop withdrawal. Meanwhile, in Kisangani, an anti-Rwanda
faction splintered from RCD-Goma and sought to lead the local population via
radio announcements into an uprising against Rwandan forces in the area. According to Human Rights Watch, “A mob of
about a thousand youths responded, and attacked and killed at least three
people whom they identified as Rwandans.”
In retaliation, local RCD-Goma units went on a “rampage” in parts of the
city, “rounding up and summarily executing suspected backers of [the]
short-live mutiny.” This event, which marked the first
intensification of fighting after the conclusion of the Sun City talks,
increased the RCD’s and Rwanda’s isolation from the new international-Congolese
consensus on the future of the war-ravaged country. In late June, a prominent South Kivutian
civil society leader, Gervais Chirhalwira Nkunzimwami, ostensibly reflected
widespread Congolese opinion when he accused Rwandan President Kagame
personally for the ongoing fighting in the region.
Under pressure of continued calls
from the UN for Rwandan disengagement and, critically, further mediation by
regional African leaders, Kinshasa and Rwanda finally signed a peace agreement
on July 30 in Pretoria, South Africa.
The Pretoria Agreement committed Kinshasa to the “process of tracking
down and disarming the Interahamwe and ex-FAR within the territory of the DRC
under its control” while Kigali would “withdraw its troops [numbering anywhere
between 20,000 and 40,000] from the DRC territory” within 90 days. Uganda now had an image problem: as it was
the only invading country (note that Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Chad were
invited to send forces to Congo by the Laurent Kabila government) left without
a disengagement agreement with Kinshasa it looked like a clear
belligerent. On September 6, as a
result, it signed the Luanda Agreement under Angolan mediation. Similar to the deal struck with Rwanda, the
Agreement called for the withdrawal of Ugandan forces from Congo within 100
days.
In mid-September, the Congolese
foreign minister, Leonard She Okitundu, asked that the UN verify the Rwandan
pullout. In a clear message to Rwanda,
he added that “we should not simply play to the audience by pulling the troops in
broad daylight and bringing them back at night.” By October 5, Rwanda claimed to have
concluded the withdrawal of its forces from Congo with partial MONUC
confirmation but the possibility of Rwandan forces returning to Congo remained. Indeed, a couple of weeks later, Kigali said
it was ready and willing to redeploy its troops due to an increase in fighting
that emerged in eastern Congo as a result of the power-vacuum created by the
Rwandan Patriotic Army’s (RPA) pullout.
At the same time, however, Rwanda was once again painted in poor light
when the third instalment of the UN Panel Report investigating resource
extraction in Congo was released in mid-October. Kagame was yet again infuriated by the
allegations and his office asserted that the report “simply recycles
unsubstantiated allegations and blatant falsehoods.” In this political atmosphere, Kigali could
not redeploy its forces but as an editorial in the Washington Post
pointed out at the time, foreign forces had “not really left the Congo” as they
maintained “networks to continue the plunder.” In the case of Rwanda, the network it kept in
eastern Congo was operationally dependent on its proxy, RCD-Goma; the
achievement of a viable peace in the east, therefore, was still largely
predicated on the integration of the RCD into the transitional government in
Kinshasa.
In early December 2002, while
negotiations with the RCD progressed, eyewitness reports attesting to the
presence of Rwandan troops in eastern Congo surfaced, prompting MONUC to send a
delegation to the region to investigate the matter. At the same time, the UN Security Council
approved a plan to increase MONUC’s strength by some 3,000 personnel (to a
total of 8,700) in order to facilitate its monitoring activity of foreign
forces. Of the 23,760 Rwandan soldiers that Kigali
admitted were present in Congo, 20,941 were confirmed by MONUC to have
withdrawn. While Rwanda claimed that the
difference of 2,819 represented soldiers who did not formally pull-out as they
were transferred to training or leave after the Pretoria Agreement, MONUC
proceeded to send observers to areas where RPA units were spotted, thereby
applying pressure on Kigali to live up to the terms of the peace deal.
Further complicating matters during
this time frame, human rights groups reported that Congolese government forces
had killed some 100 civilians in the town of Ankoro, Kantaga, during a clash
with Mai Mai militias, whose position in the peace process remained amorphous
as the organization maintained a rather fluid structure. But in spite of such destabilizing
developments, the Kinshasa government signed a new comprehensive peace deal
with all major rebel groups, including RCD-Goma, in the wee hours of December
17 in Pretoria, under ongoing mediation by South Africa and the Senegalese UN
envoy, Mustapha Niasse. It is
instructive to recall, as noted earlier, that at the conclusion of the Sun City
talks, Kinshasa and the MLC offered RCD-Goma the presidency of the national assembly
and one vice-presidential post. In
finally signing the agreement with Kinshasa, the RCD simply accepted the terms
of the offer made at Sun City in April; it essentially gained nothing from
holding out of a peace deal with Kinshasa for nearly eight months. This confirmed the view of many regional
observers who had suspected that the RCD’s refusal to make peace with Kinshasa
earlier in the year – and perhaps in previous years – was due to Rwanda’s
strong influence in the organization. As
a result of Kigali’s peace agreement with Kinshasa in July, the subsequent
pullout of its forces from Congo, the entry of MONUC personnel into the eastern
region, and yet another UN report condemning the Rwandan army’s plundering
activities, Rwanda’s influence on the RCD had somewhat diminished and the organization
was now willing to bargain with the government.
The new peace agreement that
finally brought the RCD into the transitional Congolese government dramatically
increased prospects for calm in 2003, but the new year opened with major
fighting in South Kivu between the RCD and Mai Mai militias, resulting in 8,500
Congolese taking refuge in Burundi. Though claiming to be national resistance
fighters, these Mai Mai were in actuality primarily interested in acquiring
control of mines in southeastern Congo.
Though they had been supported by Kinshasa as a proxy force against the
RCD in the past and were thus seen as allies of the Congolese government, the
RCD’s integration into the transitional government did not end the Mai Mai’s
fight against the organization. This
situation highlighted the ongoing potential for destabilization in the east as
groups such as the Mai Mai and the FDLR were outside of the peace process and
had little interest in ending their fight.
Preparations for the transitional
government continued under the leadership of UN Envoy Niasse, nevertheless,
with all parties to the peace deal agreeing to the formation of a neutral
multinational force, numbering between 600 and 1000 soldiers, to provide
security for the forthcoming transitional government in Kinshasa. Security in most of the country had
significantly improved from previous years of almost continuous fighting but,
as will be shown with below, the situation in the northeastern district of
Ituri deteriorated during the first-half of 2003. In the Kivus, meanwhile, UN officials held
talks with FDLR leaders to try to convince them to have their Congo-based
fighters – numbering around 15,000 – to turn in their arms and return to Rwanda
after some nine years in exile. (Upon
their return to Rwanda, repatriated Hutus are placed in re-education camps run
by the government for 45 days, after which they are free to return to their
home villages.)
Given the UN’s weak mandate,
though, the ongoing process of demilitarization and repatriation of rebel
forces remains to the present-day entirely voluntary. Convincing FDLR fighters to drop their
weapons and return to Rwanda has been a difficult task as the current RPF
government in Kigali, led by Paul Kagame, is seen by the rebels as authoritarian
and imposing minority-Tutsi control over the Hutu-majority. One FDLR official, Jean Gubossisse, responded
to the suggestion by a UN official that he return to his homeland by asking:
“But how can you guarantee the security of our people in Rwanda when political
dissidents are in prison or fleeing for their lives?” Gubossisse was undoubtedly referring to the
arrest of Pasteur Bizimungu by Rwandan authorities the previous year. Bizimungu, a Hutu who helped the RPF come to
power in 1994 and then became Rwanda’s president, had a fall out with the RPF
over its crackdown on opposition parties and other policies, thus resigning
from the government in March 2000 in protest.
He went on to start his own opposition party a few months later but was
arrested in April 2002 on grounds that he was “spreading harmful propaganda
against the state.” This particular incident is reflective of the
general state of affairs in Rwanda, where the RPF has virtually monopolized
power since 1994. Until the RPF
seriously liberalizes and democratizes, thereby allowing for real political
dissent, the FDLR will have a strong incentive to remain in Congo. Moreover, the same outlook applies to the
demilitarization and repatriation of Burundian Hutu rebels, who remain active
in South Kivu. (The internal politics of
Rwanda and Burundi and their implications for a viable peace in Congo will be
further discussed below; see “Future Prospects”.)
Although the repatriation program
run by the UN progressed slowly, on July 15, in Kinshasa, the parties to the
transitional government - save RCD-Goma - were sworn in. The RCD did not send its officials to take
part in the ceremony because it did not want them to “consecrate a new
dictatorship” by pledging allegiance to President Kabila, though the
organization remained a part of the new government. Nevertheless, all the major rebel
organizations arrived in the capital with large security entourages and, as it
would provide an easy escape route should things fall out of order, they set-up
their offices along the Congo River.
Indeed, in 1997 the river provided the remnants of the Mobutu regime
with a convenient exit – a speedboat ride to Congo-Brazzaville on the north
shore - when AFDL rebels arrived in Kinshasa.
The new Prime Minister, Jean-Paul Bemba, however, stationed his
helicopter beside the MLC’s offices, presumably preferring to flee by air –
much like Mobutu’s Prime Minister, Likulia Bolongo, had escaped the capital by
helicopter in 1997. Despite the uncertain future, in July 2003 chances
for peace in Congo were higher than ever, though the Kivus remained volatile
and the war in the northeast showed no signs of abating.
Despite Kampala’s September 6, 2002, pledge in Luanda
to withdraw its forces from northeastern Congo within 100 days, thousands of
UPDF soldiers remained in the region over the next eight months. As a consequence of this, the political
situation in Ituri became drastically more complicated and tense, leading to a
major escalation of interethnic violence.
The Luanda Agreement called for the creation of the Ituri Pacification
Commission (IPC), a regional dialogue initiative aimed at bringing about peace
and the establishment of a viable local government to replace Ugandan and rebel
authority in the area. The IPC, to have
convened in Bunia 20 days after the agreement’s signing, was composed of 177
members, mostly belonging to Iturian civil society groups, but also included
representatives of the Congolese, Angolan, and Ugandan governments in addition
to two MONUC officials. Upon hearing of Kampala’s participation in
the IPC, however, Kigali became infuriated: Uganda had gained a role within the
local peace process to further its interests in the region whereas Rwanda had
not only been kept out of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue but there was also no
counterpart pacification commission in the Kivus that it could take part
in. Tensions between the two countries
thus escalated and Kigali began looking for ways to subvert Ugandan authority
and influence in Ituri.
Furthermore, the IPC did not
allow for the participation of various rebel groups, including the
Hema-dominated Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), led by Thomas Lubanga, who
became the de facto chief administrator of Ituri after his group overtook Bunia
from RCD-ML – with Ugandan support - earlier in the year (see “The War Engulfs
Ituri”). Realizing that the IPC meant
the end of his power in the region, Lubanga had little incentive to allow the
Commission’s work to proceed and thus chose to continue fighting, thereby
severing his group’s alliance with Uganda.
But also during this time, Lubanga’s position of leadership among the
Hema was being challenged by a southern Hema (Banyoro), Chief Kahwa Mandro. When Lubanga, a northern Hema (Gegere), was
kidnapped by Ugandan authorities and handed over to Kinshasa a few months
before, it was Kahwa who managed the hostage exchange that secured his release. Yet, Kahwa retained a somewhat marginal
position within the Hema community, while Lubanga received the bulk of
attention, enabling him to maintain his prominence in the region. In November, therefore, Kahwa formed his own
rebel organization, the Congolese Party for Unity and Saving Integrity (PUSIC),
to challenge the UPC. Kahwa managed to
win over many of the UPC’s Banyoro fighters and then sought to extend the
organization’s base of support to other Iturian communities, including the
Lendu and Alur. His plan was to unify
the people of Ituri under a common vision for the future in order to subvert
intrusion into the region’s affairs by Kinshasa, which was allocated ten seats
in the IPC. As such, he soon created an
alliance of ethnically based armed groups under the Front for Provincial
Integrity in Ituri (FIPI) umbrella.
The new alliance consisted of Alur, Lugbara and Lendu based rebel organizations
and was also collectively armed and trained by RCD-ML.
(Recall that RCD-ML, led by Mbusa Nyamwisi, had been fighting the UPC since the
latter splintered from it following the Sun City talks.) Towards the end of the
year, then, the alliance had launched a joint assault on Lubanga’s UPC, which
was now isolated, weakened and desperately looking for assistance.
This was indeed the ideal
scenario for Rwanda, which was annoyed with the IPC, as noted above. Rwanda thus began arming and training the UPC
covertly and managed to have its proxy, RCD-Goma, become involved in providing
assistance as well. The war between FIPI/RCD-ML and the UPC
widened when the MLC and RCD-N joined the fighting on the UPC’s side, more in
the form of an alignment than of an alliance.
The motivations of the MLC and RCD-N were simple: they wanted to acquire
as many gold and diamond mines in Ituri as possible before the IPC convened and
established interim authority over the district. The tables had now turned in the UPC’s favour
and the group launched a devastating attack on FIPI and RCD-ML, almost
destroying the latter. On December 31,
under Ugandan pressure, the MLC, RCD-N, and RCD-ML signed a ceasefire, but the
UPC refused to stop fighting. Instead,
the UPC solidified its relationship with RCD-Goma by signing a formal alliance
with the organization a few days later, on January 6, 2003.
The powerful UPC attack on FIPI also had the effect of
destabilizing the Iturian rebel alliance during the first few weeks of the new
year. The various ethnically based
militias under the leadership of Chief Kahwa started pursuing their own agendas
and falling into conflict with each other, further aggravating the region’s
ethnic cleavages. Moreover, Kampala was
worried that the UPC’s alliance with RCD-Goma and Rwanda would threaten its
influence in Ituri and it thus began supporting the Lendu militias within FIPI
to fight against its former ally. These Lendu-dominated
militias – the Front for National Integration (FNI) and the Patriotic Force of
Resistance in Ituri (FRPI) - received arms and training from Uganda and began a
new round of warfare against the Hema-controlled UPC. The Hema versus Lendu aspect of the Iturian
war had now taken on a particularly salient intensity, prompting regional
observers to warn of possible genocide, as will be shown below.
Nevertheless, by early March
Uganda had managed to strike a deal with a UPC commander who created a splinter
faction named the Armed Forces for the Congo (FAPC)
with 3,000 of his fighters and launched a mutiny against the rest of the UPC in
Bunia. The assault was shattering for
the UPC and Lubanga, who fled to Rwanda after being injured in the fighting. The defeat of the UPC, though, complicated
the situation further as rival militias – the Lendu-dominated FNI and FRPI and
the Hema-dominated PUSIC – moved into Bunia to claim control of Ituri. While Ugandan forces occupying the city
maintained some order, the situation in rural Ituri continued to degenerate as
militia-battles persisted. The
elimination of the UPC as a credible force and the new – and to be sure,
temporary - stability in Bunia, however, finally allowed for the beginning of
the IPC, almost eight months after it was intended to start.
The IPC met for ten days in
early April and succeeded in forming a district assembly of 32 elected members,
establishing an executive body and, critically, creating a mechanism for
dialogue between militias. But the new
Iturian administration – to remain in place at least until the transitional
government in Kinshasa took hold – had no resources to maintain security if
Ugandan forces withdrew from the area, as Kampala was under increasing
international pressure to do. Indeed,
reflecting the major rift that had emerged between Uganda and Rwanda since
their cooperation in the early days of the war, Kagame’s National Security
Advisor, Emmanuel Ndahiro, asserted in March 2003 that the UPDF was
collaborating with Rwandan Hutu rebels in Congo, thereby creating a “direct
threat” to the country’s security. Ndahiro’s allegations could not be confirmed
or challenged by MONUC as the mission was understaffed to properly monitor the
northeast, but the complaint served as an indication that if Uganda did not
withdraw soon, Rwanda would re-deploy its forces in Congo.
Given this situation, the
IPC sought to have MONUC keep the peace between competing rebels, a task that
the UN mission accepted without ensuring that it could in fact carry it
out. Just over 700 of its soldiers were
in Bunia – a city of 340,000 - at the time and given their limited mandate of keeping,
not making, peace, MONUC was simply not a viable alternative to the
UPDF. As the ICG notes,
MONUC’s leaders wanted a political success in
Ituri to prove that they would be capable of supporting the Congolese
transition without help from external facilitators such as South Africa. The UN appears to have intentionally misled
the IPC on its capacity to deliver a security mechanism in order to demonstrate
its ability to manage a political negotiation and clinch a political deal,
however unimplementable.
Perhaps
MONUC officials believed that the UN Security Council would quickly authorize and
deploy more forces to help the mission fulfill its responsibilities. But as will be shown below, despite a steady
rise of disturbing developments in Ituri and warnings of impending large-scale
massacres from a slew of respected humanitarian organizations and observers
during the first half of 2003, the Security Council and the broader
international community – notwithstanding the usual rhetoric expressing grave
concern - reacted with little sense of urgency, typifying the UN’s abysmal
record of inaction towards the Congolese war since 1998. When Uganda pulled out in early May,
therefore, the PUSIC and FNI/FRPI militias began fighting each other for
control of the local capital, with violence regularly acquiring ethnic
overtones.
During the first few months of 2003, several
developments in Ituri focused international attention on the region and raised
fears of possible large-scale ethnically targeted massacres. In sharp contrast to the decrease in violence
in the Kivus, the Ituri district continued to be ravaged by interethnic
warfare, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 50,000 civilians (1999-2003)
and the displacement of 500,000 more, many of whom took refuge in camps rather
reminiscent of those along Congo’s eastern border in the aftermath of the 1994
Rwandan genocide.
Early
in the year, MONUC reported that allegations pertaining to acts of cannibalism
in Ituri by fighters belonging to the MLC and RCD-N were true. (Desperate to clean its image, MLC leader
Jean-Paul Bemba reacted to the revelation by putting 27 of his fighters on
trial in an MLC-operated court in Gbadolite and making the process open to
journalists and MONUC officials. But the
government in Kinshasa rejected the court’s authority, prevented journalists
from leaving the capital to cover the case, and initiated proceedings against
the group at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.) Further adding to concerns
in Ituri, on April 7 MONUC observers uncovered some 20 mass graves containing
nearly 1,000 bodies in the Drodo area of the district. Eyewitness reports indicated that the victims
were killed in attacks launched by Lendu fighters (likely belonging to the FNI)
allied with Uganda. Confusion remained
over whether the UPDF had participated in the slaughter but a Bunia-based aid
worker attested that Ugandan soldiers were present in the Drodo area.
The
next day, the New York-based International Rescue Committee (IRC) released a
report estimating that perhaps as many as 4.7 million people had died as a
result of the four and a half year long Congolese war. The IRC survey did not extend to Ituri, however, as the region was
deemed too insecure for its staff to visit due to ongoing interethnic
clashes. The following month, moreover, Oxfam
raised more concerns regarding the situation in Ituri, pointing out that
civilians were vulnerable to intensified fighting by rebel groups - which began
when Uganda pulled its forces out of Congo on May 7 - and were beginning to run
out of food and drinkable water. It
further pointed out that the 700 Congolese police officers in the area – half
of whom were not armed – and the rather small MONUC presence in Bunia were
ineffective. Indeed, MONUC was busier
trying to protect its own personnel in the region than helping civilians as two
of its observers had just been brutally killed along with two Red Cross
officials. In late May, furthermore,
Carla Del Ponte, then prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda, pointed out that the ‘Hema versus Lendu’ conflict in Ituri could be
categorized as genocide while a senior UN relief coordinator, Carolyn McAskie,
said that she saw “shades of Rwanda in 1994” in the fighting. At about the same time,
another mass grave was found in Bunia by UN observers, this time containing
some 280 mutilated and possibly cannibalized bodies.
While
such disturbing developments and warnings mounted through the first half of the
year, the UN slowly worked to assemble a special “Rapid Deployment Force” for
Bunia that could be deployed within ten days of being authorized by the
Security Council. Initially, France was
the only country to make a contribution – of about a 1,000 soldiers - to the
new force but refused to send them to Congo without the participation of other
countries. By May 30, however, Britain,
Germany, Italy and South Africa, among others, also pledged to contribute some
forces, enabling the Council to authorize a three-month deployment of the
Interim Emergency Multinational Force (also known as Operation Artemis), which
consisted of 1,400 troops. The United States Department of State
spokesman, Richard Boucher, told the press that “the force is critical to
stabilizing the region” but no American troops were offered for the mission. The new deployment was intended to work
closely with MONUC but also benefited from a more explicit Chapter VII mandate
to “contribute to the safety of the civilian population.” It is important to note, however, that the
new mission was restricted to the town of Bunia and that some 150,000 refugees
in all likelihood confronted with fighting in nearby rural areas remained
outside of its mandate. Furthermore,
revealing the volatility of the local situation, fighting began outside the UN
Mission’s Bunia-headquarters after the first hundred soldiers arrived; all they
could do was wait inside the building until it stopped.
There
was a broad consensus among humanitarian observers that given its small size
the new UN mission could only provide very limited security in Bunia and that
the existing MONUC deployment in other parts of northeastern Congo would fail
to prevent mass killings by rival ethnically-based militias. As one priest working in the area for a long
time, Father Jan Mol, argued at the time, UN forces “must demilitarize the
whole of Ituri province because that’s where the warlords are. They must take guns away from everyone who is
not part of a regular army.” Moreover, while the world press had arguably
paid little attention to the growing risk of large-scale massacres in the
months leading to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, there was a noticeable rise in
international interest in the Congo conflict by June. For instance, the military historian, Gwynne
Dyer, argued in several newspapers that the war could be ended with the
deployment of 40,000 to 50,000 troops under a strong UN mandate to use force in
peacemaking if necessary. But no such thing would be forthcoming. The French Brigadier-General leading the new mission
announced that he would protect the civilian population but also made it clear
that he would not demilitarize the rival Hema and Lendu militias waging war on
each other in Bunia. The Ituri mission, scheduled to last until
the end of August, was therefore nothing more than a small band-aid for a very
large wound. This view was further
confirmed by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which published a report in July
accusing the UN of being utterly ineffective.
It pointed out that since Operation Artemis had started in early June,
“the population of Bunia and surrounding areas has yet to receive any real
protection.”
Recognizing the dismal performance
of UN forces, Secretary-General Annan proposed augmenting the mission by
another 2,100 soldiers (thereby bringing the total MONUC deployment to 10,800)
which would allow for the replacement of the French-led mission to Bunia with
another force totalling 3,800. The
American Ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, initially resisted the new
MONUC proposal but acquiesced by mid-July. The mission was thus named MONUC II (also
known as the ‘Ituri Brigade’) and was supported by a more robust Chapter VII
mandate to “use all necessary means” to protect civilians “in Bunia and its
environs and eventually, as the situation permits, in other parts of Ituri.” On September 1, the first of the MONUC II
forces – consisting of 1,200 Bangladeshi soldiers supported by Indian attack
helicopters – took over control of Bunia from French forces. And within weeks, nearly 5,000 UN forces were
deployed across Ituri, which finally helped decrease clashes between
militias. With the reduction of violence
in Ituri, moreover, the interim government that emerged from the work of the
Pacification Commission began to slowly restore governmental authority in the
district. But in early 2004, the Union
of Congolese Patriots (UPC), which had been put out of business as a result of
fighting in 2003, re-emerged under the leadership of Bosco Ntaganda, a former
UPC commander. The new UPC then launched
a series of attacks against MONUC forces in Ituri (killing one MONUC soldier in
February), reportedly as revenge for MONUC’s arrest of two of the
organization’s members.
The abovementioned should make it
clear that the UN failed miserably in adequately intervening to help bring the
Second Congolese War to an end. It
appears that the so-called international community believed that allowing the
war to play itself out was better than providing meaningful intervention that
could have saved countless lives. The
prospect that Congo will be better assisted by the UN in the future as it
struggles to maintain peace across its vast territory remains unlikely.
Despite the
progress made by the national peace process and its Iturian counterpart and the
increased deployment of MONUC forces across eastern Congo, the Second War
continues. In late January 2004,
eyewitness reports emerged alleging that a Lendu militia had massacred some 200
civilians on a boat at Lake Albert, close to the Ugandan border. A team of MONUC officials sent to confirm the
incident, however, came under fire from the UPC and was forced to cancel its
mission.
The following month, in February, the new Congolese military, composed of
former rebels, confirmed that a Mai Mai militia had killed a hundred civilians
in Katanga. Indeed, only one Mai Mai faction took part in
the Inter-Congolese Dialogue and joined the transitional government; other
factions therefore have little to gain by laying their weapons down. In late March, moreover, a coup attempt was
carried out in Kinshasa but failed after a brief exchange of fire.
Congo remains an extremely weak
state. Control of territory in the
country’s far eastern reaches remains largely in the hands of former rebels,
now ostensibly taking orders from the capital, though the extent to which this
is in fact the case is unclear. Whatever
lull in fighting exists as of this writing is surely temporary, as the
achievements of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue, though significant, ultimately
failed to deal with the roots of the Kivutian war. As shown, conflict in the Kivus had much to
do with the marginalization of the Banyarwanda population that was formalized
through the 1981 Citizenship Law. Then
in 1998, RCD-Goma emerged and turned the tables around in favour of the
Banyamulenge Tutsi, but the Hutu remained disadvantaged. This continued marginalization of the Hutu
community – Kivutian and Rwandan refugee – in Congo by RCD-Goma only increased
their hostility towards the Tutsi and hardened the resolve of Hutu rebels
belonging to the FDLR, which remains active.
Indeed, in mid-April 2004, the RPA reported that the FDLR attacked a
Rwandan village close to the Congolese border. The Kivus are in much need of a forum for
dialogue and political action, similar to the Ituri Pacification Commission or
a local version of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue, in order to give the various
local ethnic groups an opportunity to voice their concerns in a constructive
environment.
The
politics of the Kivus, however, are also intertwined to a significant extent
with the situations in Rwanda and Burundi.
While a discussion of these countries’ politics is beyond the scope of
this study, some notes follow. After the
1994 genocide that targeted the Tutsi and moderate Hutu, the new RPF government
that emerged acquired an extremely authoritarian character. It intimidated the opposition to the point
where none of the eight parties legally allowed to exist dare offer any significant
criticism of government policies. A
similar treatment has been given by the RPF to Rwanda’s media agencies,
resulting in several editors and journalists going into exile for running
stories critical of the ruling regime in local newspapers. The RPF’s authoritarianism – today led by
Paul Kagame, a Tutsi - is also evident in the way it has gone about dealing
with crimes committed during and after the 1994 genocide by its own soldiers,
as the group fought for power. When the
former chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court for Rwanda (ICT-R)
announced that she would investigate these crimes in addition to those
committed by the Hutu government that carried out the genocide, the RPF refused
to cooperate. Furthermore, since 1994,
the government has held in its prisons over a hundred thousand people –
overwhelmingly Hutu – suspected of taking part in the genocide. With the ICT-R’s mandate restricted to
handling high-government officials responsible for the killings and the
country’s courts unable to process the extraordinary number of suspects, the
RPF has instituted community-based courts, known as gacaca. The courts are based on a traditional Rwandan
dispute resolution scheme, but they are by law only allowed to handle crimes
that occurred between October 1990 and December 1994. Many of the RPF’s crimes, however, were
committed after 1994, leading to the perception within the Rwandan Hutu
community – local and exiled - that ‘Tutsi’ crimes are being excused.
Reconciliation
in Rwanda still has a long way to go, therefore. As long as the RPF maintains its current
authoritarian policies, the FDLR will likely find it worthwhile to continue
fighting Kigali from eastern Congo. This
will, of course, continue to destabilize the region and reinforce the
insecurity of the Banyamulenge community that, in turn, will give the RCD the
reason to continue its operations in the Kivus.
But the FDLR is not the only foreign rebel group destabilizing the
region. In late 2003, the FDD joined a
power-sharing government in Burundi but its smaller counterpart, the National
Liberation Front (FNL),
led by Agathon Rwasa, continues to operate in South Kivu and has so far been
resistant to making peace with the Burundian government. The Burundian civil war, which began in 1993,
is thus another question mark on the road to peace in Congo. If the FNL can be persuaded to follow the
FDD’s lead and join the government in Bujumbura, stability in South Kivu will
likely increase significantly. But even
then, if the Burundian war flares up again for other reasons, Congo will
undoubtedly be adversely affected.
While
resolving the situation in the Kivus is critical to ensuring peace in Congo,
the power-sharing government in Kinshasa also has many tough hurdles to
surmount in the coming months leading to democratic elections in 2005, as
called for by the Inter-Congolese Dialogue.
Fortunately, the UN’s Special Representative to Congo, William Swing,
announced in Kinshasa in January 2004 that he found the local situation permissible
for the forthcoming elections. But coup attempts, such as the one mentioned
above, could seriously undermine plans.
It is absolutely critical that the elections go on as scheduled as their
delay could give one of the various rebel groups forming the transitional
government an excuse to announce its departure from the peace process. The two RCDs and the MLC maintain their
forces in the east and northeast and would certainly be ready to re-deploy
them, should it be seen as expedient.
Certainly, there are solid grounds for concerns that this could
happen. During the first few months of
2004, the transitional government in Kinshasa
became increasingly factionalised when it began discussing substantial matters,
such as the final composition of the national armed forces. The establishment of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, to deal with the countless crimes committed from
1960 to 2003, also remains a major challenge for the new government.
The
chances that Swing’s assessment will hold true over the next year can be
greatly increased by a responsive UN. As
shown in some detail in this study, over the course of the war, the UN
repeatedly delayed deployment of MONUC forces into Congo. Even when MONUC was finally deployed, it was
highly inadequate in ending the fighting or providing reliable protection for
civilians. Without a doubt, many
flare-ups will occur in eastern Congo in the coming period and, should it be
necessary, the UN must be ready and willing to rapidly deploy
reinforcements for MONUC so that it may fulfill its mission to keep the
peace. Failure to do so may result in
fighting spreading to other parts of the country, the consequences of which
could be disastrous to the peace process.
When the strong possibility of genocide in Ituri emerged during the
first half of 2003, the UN was slow to act but, fortunately, killings on the
scale of Rwanda in 1994 failed to materialize.
Things may not pan out similarly in such instances in the future,
however.
It
is a disheartening scenario when the study of a six year long war that may have
claimed the lives of nearly five million people cannot end with a genuine
expression of optimism. The Great Lakes
region of Africa in which eastern Congo finds itself remains a most troubled
part of the world. The Western public
first came to know Congo at the end of the nineteenth Century as a result of
the adventures of David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley into the ‘Dark
Continent’. By the beginning of the
twentieth Century, however, due to the work of several human rights activists,
Westerners learned of the horrors inflicted on the Congolese by Belgian King
Leopold II’s megalomaniacal machinations.
Today, as the twenty-first Century begins, the world once again hears of
Congo’s horrors – but only barely, because of scant coverage in the mainstream
news media. This study can hopefully
play a small part in rectifying this problem.
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