Africa

by Guy Arnold

  By 2001, after three years of war, the government, with the aid of Angola and Zimbabwe, controlled the west of the country, about a third altogether, while the north, east and south-east were in the hands of the rebels supported by Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. Kabila said that no peace process could be implemented unless all foreign forces withdrew unconditionally. Neither Museveni nor Kagame would agree to this and the latter in particular was concerned that the Hutu enemies of the Tutsis would use bases in Congo from which to attack Rwanda under his rule. As long as Kabila refused to address Rwanda’s security concerns there would be a stalemate. However, on 16 January Kabila was assassinated by a member of his presidential bodyguard. He was succeeded as president by his son Joseph who showed himself to be more flexible than his father. Following his inauguration as President, Joseph Kabila went on an overseas tour to France, Belgium and the United States. He also met Paul Kagame of Rwanda and the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In March he met ex-president of Botswana Quett Masire, the chairman of the peace process whose efforts to end the war had been blocked by Laurent Kabila.

  In April 2001 the United Nations published a report that condemned the ‘looting’ of DRC that had been carried out by the leaders of Rwanda and Uganda and their associates. The main thrust of the report suggested that the countries intervening on behalf of the rebels were less concerned with their stated reasons for intervention – their security – than they were determined to profit by the exploitation of DRC’s resources. The report noted how the Rwandans and Ugandans had stripped those parts of DRC, which they occupied, of large amounts of its most precious minerals – diamonds, copper, cobalt, gold, coltan – as well as timber and ivory. The coltan in particular was required as a component in the manufacture of delicate, sophisticated goods such as mobile phones and US fighter aircraft. The report also noted that about one-third of the 12,000 elephants in the Garamba national park had been slaughtered over four years for their ivory. On the other hand, it glossed over the activities of Kabila’s allies – Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe – despite their equally voracious efforts in stripping the country of resources. Their depredations were ‘legal’ because they had been sanctioned to help themselves by way of payment for their assistance.

  In April 2001 Joseph Kabila allowed UN monitors into the country to patrol the front line between government and rebel forces. Masire was able to resuscitate the peace process in May. Kabila met Kagame and assured him that Interahamwe attacks on Rwanda from DRC would be stopped and that the rebel Hutus would be disarmed. On 12 May Security Council ambassadors visited the country and recognized Kabila as the formal head of state and referred to the RCD and MLC organizations as rebels: it was an important step in legitimizing Kabila’s position. Kabila lifted restrictions on opposition activities (Tshisekedi had already returned to Kinshasa in late April). He also took steps to open up the economy: the Congolese franc was floated, commercial courts replaced military tribunals and the control of diamond trading was relaxed. As a result there were indications from the donor community that it would be prepared to consider new flows of aid and perhaps a moratorium on interest payments on DRC’s US$14 billion debt. Namibia now withdrew its 1,800 troops from DRC. Yet, despite these encouraging developments, heavy fighting erupted in Rwanda over May and June when Hutu extremists crossed the border into Rwanda and Burundi. These Hutu activities rebounded upon the RCD, which was revealed as quite unable to control them. After talks in November, it was agreed to hold further talks in Sun City, South Africa, in January 2002. Meanwhile no less than 443 political groups had registered with the government though exactly what role they would eventually be permitted to play was not clear. Joseph Kabila’s position was far from strong. He had no real power base, had been brought up in Tanzania and spoke little French or Lingala. He was dependent upon the Angolans, whose principal concern was to deny Savimbi and UNITA bases in DRC, and Zimbabwe, which appeared to regard DRC first and foremost as a source of wealth. Although considerable improvements or reforms had been initiated under the second Kabila during 2001, the government had little control over the economy. Inflation, which had stood at 554 per cent in 2000, remained extremely high and it was essential to find money to pay the armed forces.

  In January 2002 representatives of the government and the various rebel groups met at Sun City to continue the Inter-Congolese National Dialogue (ICND) to establish a broadly representative transitional government to bring an end to the war and prepare the country for elections. These new peace moves faced a setback in March when RCD forces seized Moliro on the Zambia/Tanzania border, causing the Kinshasa government to quit the talks in Sun City. The UN condemned the RCD action and when its forces had given up Moliro the talks were resumed. Half an accord was reached in April because, despite pressure from South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, Kinshasa excluded the RCD and entered into an accord only with the MLC, which was led by Jean-Pierre Bemba and backed by Uganda. The Kinshasa government hoped to isolate the RCD and its Hutu supporters and that way limit the war to the eastern region. Quett Masire, the chairman, criticized the agreement and the Rwandans were furious with the result that by the end of April Rwanda was sending troop reinforcements across the border to the RCD. A brutal massacre was carried out by members of the RCD in Kisangani in May and served both to demonstrate the unreliability of the RCD and their Hutu backers and suggest that Kabila’s decision to isolate them may have been the correct one. Meanwhile, the withdrawal of the Ugandans in the north-east was followed by heavy tribal fighting, prompting the Rwandans to argue that any withdrawal of their forces would leave a vacuum that would lead to increased ethnic violence. The stalling of the peace process led the UN to extend the mandate for its mission in DRC (MONUC) and increase the numbers of their monitors. The position of the Kinshasa government was strengthened when it received substantial restructuring loans: US$750 million from the IMF, US$410 million from the World Bank and US$44 million (grant) from the IDA. Following considerable South African pressure, negotiations between the Kinshasa government and the RCD were resumed and an agreement was reached on 30 July in Pretoria between President Kagame of Rwanda and President Kabila of DRC. Kinshasa undertook to disarm, arrest or repatriate the Hutu rebels in the Congo and in return Rwanda agreed to withdraw its 22,000 troops. The Rwandans remained nervous at leaving the territory on their border under the control of the RCD.

  There was considerable doubt as to whether this peace deal would hold; after four years of fighting in which a number of peace deals had been overthrown no one was sanguine. An estimated 2.5 million Congolese were reckoned to have died, mainly of starvation and disease, by the time this accord was signed in Pretoria. Sceptics pointed out the difficulties: after four years of warfare in a region that at the best of times is difficult to control, there were endless confrontations taking place. The RCD rebels faced a number of enemies as well as splits in their own ranks. The Mai-Mai fighters control swaths of the countryside and the local people, who had suffered extensively at the hands of these different groups held them in fear or contempt. A key figure in this complex situation was the leader of the second-largest rebel faction, the MLC, Jean-Pierre Bemba who enjoyed the support of Uganda. Although he promised to come over to the government side in 2001 he had yet to do so in July 2002. He had earlier made a fortune during the heyday of Mobutu’s kleptocracy. Unlike other wars, this in the Congo was well, if illegally, financed, reflecting the country’s vast wealth that is its real attraction. Laurent Kabila obtained aid from Angola and Zimbabwe by promising diamond concessions to senior generals. Mineral concessions were also the big attraction on the rebel side with coltan, gold, diamonds, timber and coffee the chief rewards. Both sides in the conflict resorted to extreme brutality including rape and torture, and the war did immense damage to the environment. The Rwandan insistence that it stay to ensure that the Interahamwe did not return to Rwanda was less than convincing and they were suspected of wanting to annex parts of eastern Congo. Nonetheless, on 17 Sept
ember the Rwandans began to withdraw their troops and the last 2,000 Zimbabwean troops also began to leave. The Kinshasa government banned the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda whose purpose was to represent the interests of Hutu exiles in DRC. On 10 September the DRC and Uganda signed a separate agreement and Ugandan troops then began to withdraw from the north-east of the country. By early October most of the foreign troops had left the DRC.

  Unfortunately for DRC, the withdrawing forces had left behind networks to continue plundering the wealth of the country. A second UN report of October 2002 revealed the existence of criminal cartels working with corrupt DRC government officials to perpetuate the pillaging that had been started by their armies. The report to the UN Security Council named 54 people, including senior military and political officials in Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe and DRC itself, as the leaders of new ‘elite networks’ to exploit the country’s minerals, timber and wildlife. Emmerson Mnangagwa, the speaker of Zimbabwe’s Parliament and President Mugabe’s preferred successor, was named as the key strategist for the Zimbabwean branch of this network. Other senior figures named included the Rwandan army chief-of-staff, James Kabarebe, the DRC Minister of the Presidency, Augustin Katumba Mwanke, and the Ugandan army chief-of-staff, Maj.-Gen. James Kazini. The report said: ‘The looting that was previously conducted by the armies themselves has been replaced by organized systems of embezzlement, tax fraud, extortion, the use of stock options as kickbacks and diversion of state funds.’ The report named 29 companies as well as the 54 individuals involved in the pillaging, spread from Africa to Belgium to the United States. The accusations were devastating yet wholly unsurprising.11

  The security position declined in October when pro-government militias took advantage of the withdrawal of Rwandan and Ugandan troops; the town of Uvira on Lake Tanganyika fell to the Mai-Mai opposition militia until it was recaptured six days later by RCD troops. As thousands of refugees fled the renewed fighting, Kabila and Kagame met under the auspices of President Mbeki to review the July peace accord and discuss a power-sharing agreement. In November representatives of the movements engaged in the war met in Pretoria to negotiate a shared transitional government. This laid down that Kabila should be the president of DRC for two years and should be assisted by four vice-presidents representing the RCD, the MLC, unarmed opposition parties and the governing party. Democratic elections would be held at the end of this period.

  The great powers most seriously concerned with Africa – the United States, Britain and France – repeatedly demonstrated their unwillingness to intervene to uphold the values they preach: democracy, human rights and peace. They stayed resolutely on the sidelines during the four years of the ‘African Great War’ although this would not have been so reprehensible had they not also been involved on the periphery. It took the UN Security Council nearly two years to June 2000 before it accused Rwanda and Uganda of aggression in the Congo and ordered them, under Resolution 1304, to withdraw. Meanwhile, and despite their non-democratic credentials, ‘Uganda and Rwanda continue to obtain US foreign aid and loans from the Bretton Woods institutions. Given the punishment administered to Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait and the billions of dollars spent in the Balkans to stop Serb aggression against other national groups, the people of the Congo cannot but feel bitter about the double standards in international response to aggression and state-sponsored terrorism.’12 According to an independent publication in Kampala, ‘The interests of the people of DRC never featured anywhere on the agenda. The Lusaka agreement treated Rwanda and Uganda with kid gloves. It was only when their armies turned their guns on each other, and in the process killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of DRC civilians, that the world woke up to the carnage in Kisangani.’13 Throughout the Congo war the main interest of the United States and other Western powers has been to maintain access to the resources of DRC, to sell their weapons of war and to support their useful allies – Uganda and Rwanda, which act as conduits for the extraction of DRC resources. As perhaps the Congo’s leading intellectual-activist, Nzongola-Ntalaja is worth quoting once more: ‘Having prevented UN action to stop the genocide (Rwanda in 1994), US policy makers and other major players in world politics feel so guilty with respect to Rwanda that they seem prepared to let the Tutsi-dominated regime there get away with murder. Add to this the seal of approval granted to Museveni and Kagame as two of Africa’s “new breed of leaders”, and you understand why they feel so bold in taking actions such as invading the Congo.’14

  The Final Act of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue was signed in Sun City on 3 April 2003. It included the All-inclusive Agreement on the Transition in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which provided for peace and reunification of the country. By the time this was signed there had been five years of war and possibly three million people had died. The signatories included 24 Congolese leaders, the most significant of whom were Leonard She Okitundu for DRC, Adolphe Onusumba for the RCD and Olivier Kamitatu for the MLC. The signing was in the presence of President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, the leaders of Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana as well as the facilitator, Sir Ketumile Masire and a Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General. Whether the agreements would in fact bring in an era of peace remained to be seen. The event was overshadowed by news of renewed fighting in eastern Congo and the absence from the ceremony of President Kabila and the leader of the MLC, Jean-Pierre Bemba, although both had made clear their support. On 5 April Joseph Kabila was sworn in as the ‘new’ President of DRC. The Agreement provided for the post of president and four vice-presidents, a transitional government composed of 36 ministers and 25 vice-ministers and a national assembly, the posts to be distributed among the parties to the agreement according to an agreed formula. The Agreement also provided for the first democratic elections in the Congo since 1960. Three days after the signing of the agreement a large number of civilians were massacred in eastern Congo as a result of inter-ethnic violence. And there was little sign that either Rwanda or Uganda intended to retire from their involvement in the country. The agreement represented the concerted effort of Congo’s neighbours to bring about a peace, especially on the part of South Africa and Botswana. The problems faced by the Congo were enormous, not least the habit of disintegration that had set in with the assistance of the country’s predatory neighbours.

  It seemed likely during the first half of 2003 that while the Agreement might apply reasonably successfully to the greater part of the country, collapse or at least ongoing ethnic violence in the east would provide an excuse for all those who sought to undermine the Agreement. One assessment of the situation held out little hope for a peaceful settlement in the east: ‘Eastern Congo seems to be the epitome of a hollowed-out state succumbing to the violent assaults of private actors such as ethnic militias, warlords and military-commercial syndicates. While the economic function of local warfare and its interconnection with global markets is clearly at work, “war as a continuation of economics by other means” is just one aspect underlying the current state of Congolese affairs.’15 It is easier for a weak centralized state to operate through patronage rather than structures that will be ignored. In 2003 Kabila hardly commanded any structures in eastern Congo and was unlikely to find much assistance in establishing them, either from the various local interest groups or from the region’s two neighbours, Rwanda and Uganda, whose continuing involvement seems unlikely to be curtailed in the foreseeable future.

  As though to emphasize just how complex any peace in the Congo would be, the withdrawal of Rwandan troops was immediately followed by an eruption of fierce fighting between two of the region’s ethnic groups, the Lendu and Hema. The existing UN Mission in the Congo was quite inadequate to deal with the situation and France signalled its willingness to lead a peacekeeping force with a substantial number of its own troops. Britain’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair, then announced that Britain would be willing to contribute to such a force. At the time the UN mission, MONUC, had a total of 3,800 troops in the Congo and of th
ese only 700 were in Bunia where the fighting was taking place. By the end of May 2003, a French-led UN mission had been agreed, with British participation but, as the Lendu survivor of a Hema massacre said: ‘I am pessimistic. People have been coming here, white and black, from all over the world, but they never bring peace.’16 The UN, criticized for its ineffectiveness, complained that it only had a small force to patrol an area the size of Sierra Leone. In New York, the French argued for a mission that would allow their troops to open fire to protect civilians. Rwanda and Uganda opposed the French proposals. The general savagery of the massacres that occurred suggested that either an overwhelming peacekeeping force should be provided for the area, and that seemed unlikely, or that the conflict continue long enough to threaten the entire peace process with its transitional government. Even so, perhaps representing an advance, the European Union announced its first military mission outside the continent of Europe on 4 June, which was to send to the Congo a 1,400-strong peace keeping force comprising French, Belgian and British troops. The EU force would replace 750 UN peacekeepers from Uruguay and its mandate was to run to September. Whether an EU force comprised principally of troops from the three former colonial powers would be well or badly received and sufficient in numbers to impose a lasting peace remained to be seen. No UN operation in the Congo since 1960 has either distinguished itself or solved the problems on the ground. Perhaps, but only perhaps, an EU operation could do better. While a spokesman for the European Commission conceded that the risks were high, Glenys Kinnock, the international development spokeswoman in the European parliament for the British Labour Party, said: ‘This is a positive step with the EU pulling together on an important security issue: the need to avoid the danger of genocide in Congo. It will set an important precedent because we are always being told to react in areas where we are the major donor.’