Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe

by Gerard Prunier

  21. His tenure as Mobutu’s prime minister in the early 1990s had been so bad that his nickname among Kinshasa’s populace was Ndunda Bololo, “bitter vegetable.”

  22. J. C. Willame, Congo: Nouvelle crise dans les Grands Lacs, Geneva, writenet report, August 1998.

  23. IRIN Bulletin, no. 482 (August 18, 1998). Tschisekedi was biding his time, both because he did not like Kabila and because Z’ahidi Ngoma had mentioned in public that the “UDPS should be part of the future government.”

  24. His father had just made him acting army chief of staff.

  25. IRIN Bulletin, no. 484 (August 20, 1998).

  26. The reason for his hesitation was that he had among his forces large numbers of ex-FAZ who were broadly sympathetic to the anti-Kabila movement. But once the MPLA swung its weight against it he had to follow, because since UNITA and FLEC still backed what was left of Lissouba’s forces he could not afford to do without luanda’s full support. As for Museveni, his threat was largely rhetorical since he did not have the means to intervene that far from his border.

  27. An average of three planes a day landed at Kitona from Goma between August 5 and 21. But the Rwandese army could not match the equipment and firepower of the FAA, who killed over seven hundred of their enemies in three days of fighting. Telephone interview with eyewitness Corinne Dufka, March 1999.

  28. I later heard in Washington a persistent (but uncorroborated) rumor according to which they had been hired courtesy of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. In any case the whole operation was monitored by two U.S. navy surveillance warships anchored just outside the harbor of Banana. Le Soir, September 19, 1998; interviews with DIA personnel, Washington, DC, October 1999. As for the FAA, they waited and let the Rwandese expeditionary force reembark, probably to avoid antagonizing Washington by crushing them.

  29. This poses the still unanswered question of whether the logistics of the evacuation were improvised or had been discussed beforehand between UNITA and the Rwandese. Other defeated rebel or RPA troops also transited through Brazzaville, where both Sassou-Nguesso and his Angolan protectors looked the other way as they were passing through.

  30. See de Villers, Omasombo, and Kennes, Guerre et politique, 26–31. This desperate attempt at taking Ndjili Airport even as the main force was being evacuated had to do with two things: first, the bedraggled bands that entered Kinshasa on the 26th were mainly not Rwandese but rather ex-FAZ from Kitona who were fleeing forward more than they were attacking; second, it seemed that Kabarebe had gotten rid of them by promising to pick them up by plane if they could take Ndjili. The promised planes never materialized and Kabarebe’s main force left western Congo by the morning of August 29.

  31. For garish descriptions of the street massacres, see “Kinshasa Mobs Torch Retreating Rebels,” Times (London), August 28, 1998; “Comment Kabila s’est fait chasseur de Tutsi,” Libération, August 28, 1998; “Les rebelles congolais sont pourchassés dans les rues de Kinshasa,” Le Monde, August 29, 1998. For a more complex analysis of the mobs’ motivations, see Adrien de Mun, “Les Kinois ont participé à la chasse aux rebelles,” La Croix, September 5, 1998.

  32. SWB/RTBF, August 27, 1998.

  33. Both sides had been lobbing accusations of genocide and/or ethnic cleansing at each other on an almost routine basis since the first days of the war, whether it was Wamba dia Wamba accusing Kabila of “intended genocide” (SWB/RFI, August 13, 1998) or the same Yerodia Ndombasi saying that the rebels “want to exterminate the Bantu authochtones” (SWB/RTNC, August 27, 1998). Tutsi living in Belgium later sued Yerodia Ndombasi for these utterances.

  34. About two thousand invading troops remained trapped in the western Congo, half of them Rwandese and half belonging to the 23rd and 31st UPDF battalions under Brig. Ivan Koreta. These were elite troops of the Ugandan army who had been trained by U.S. instructors as part of the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI). The Americans repatriated the UPDF force discreetly in September but later barred Uganda from further participation in ACRI.

  35. IRIN Bulletin, no. 492 (September 1, 1998).

  36. Leaving behind a total body count of 7,731 victims. REC report, October 30, 1998.

  37. This was partly due to an unfortunate off-the-cuff remark from Cooperation Minister Charles Josselin, who had said in early August, “Kabila is perhaps not fit to be the president of a continent-sized country.” François Soudan, “RD Congo: Les dessous de la guerre,” Jeune Afrique, September 1, 1998. Arthur Z’Ahidi Ngoma later praised France’s “understanding” of the situation. Le Figaro, August 18, 1998. When two French diplomats were expelled from Kinshasa, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin was spurred to state the obvious by denying any support for the rebels. SWB/RFI, August 19, 1998.

  38. “Angola’s Endless Wars,” Economist, September 25, 1999.

  39. Washington, Moscow, and Lisbon.

  40. Lettres d’Angola, no. 16 (April 1998). The incident was hurriedly ascribed to a “mechanical failure” and the promised Commission of Inquiry never reported its conclusions.

  41. Nord-Sud Export, November 6, 1998. “Ben Ben” was the brother of Elias Salupeto Pena, who had been murdered by the MPLA in Luanda in 1992. His death was ascribed to “acute malaria.”

  42. For further details of the MPLA’s extermination of UNITA cadres from May 1997 onwards, see Francois Misser’s article in New African, “Stumbling towards Peace,” May 1998.

  43. For example, Savimbi’s status was supposed to allow him to travel and speak freely, but the UN sanctions prohibited him from doing so.

  44. Since mid-1996 half a dozen mining companies (the Australian Ashton, the Brazilian Oudebrechts, the South African De Beers, the Russian Alrosa, the Canadian Diamond Works) had invested over $400 million in the Angolan diamond industry. Africa Analysis, January 23, 1998. They immediately expanded their operations to the Kwango valley as it came under MPLA control.

  45. Libération, June 18, 1998.

  46. USIA transcript of Susan Rice’s speech in Luanda on October 29, 1998.

  47. Interview with Radio France Internationale on August 30, 1998.

  48. SWB/Radio Nacional de Angola, July 20, 22, and 25, 1998; Le Monde, September 2, 1998.

  49. Interview with a U.S. State Department specialist, Washington, DC, October 1999.

  50. Interview with EU Special Envoy Aldo Ajello, Brussels, February 1999. To try to sway dos Santos much was made in Kigali and Kampala of alleged diamond dealings on UNITA’s behalf by Kabila’s entourage.

  51. La Lettre du Continent, August 27, 1998. The late Michel Pacary was well known for his role in the illegal financing of the Gaullist political party RPR, which eventually brought him to face the courts. He was also a lobbyist for FLEC and a personal friend of Z’Ahidi Ngoma, whom he had known when he worked at UNESCO in Paris.

  52. Interview with a CIA operative, Washington, DC, October 1999.

  53. The joke notwithstanding, this rough attitude might have played a part in the later sidelining of De Matos by the president.

  54. Particularly since they enjoyed Washington’s support.

  55. After several sour exchanges and reciprocal visits the Angolan government ended up asking for international sanctions against South Africa for failing to stop arm flows to UNITA. IRIN, September 15, 1998.

  56. Six people were killed, scores wounded, and eight hundred arrested. SAPA News Agency, Johannesburg, January 22, 1998.

  57. After the war of independence in 1980 Mugabe promised to resettle 162,000 families in five years. Fifteen years later only 70,000 families had benefited from the program, but the 270 biggest farms had gone to the ruling elite. “Buying the Farm,” Africa Confidential 38, no. 24 (December 15, 1998); various interviews with Zimbabwe specialist Daniel Compagnon, Paris, 2000.

  58. “Zimbabwe: Poorer and Angrier,” Economist, August 15, 1998.

  59. Jakkie Potgieter from the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies estimated that Zimbabwe had a $200 million stake in Kabila’s regime, mostly d
ue to war loans in 1996–1997 and later to emergency financial support for the faltering regime. Business Day (South Africa), August 21, 1998.

  60. Zimbabwe was still smarting from the situation at the end of the war in Mozambique, where Harare did all the hard military work in support of FRELIMO only to see South African companies get all the lucrative reconstruction contracts after the conflict was over.

  61. ZDI is a government-owned military products company which was created with British and South African help during the period of Ian Smith’s minority regime (1965–1979), when Rhodesia had to fight the nationalist guerrillas with its own means. It was later developed with French and Chinese help by the ZANU regime after 1980.

  62. “Zimbabwe: Cap sur l’ex-Zaïre,” La Lettre de l’Océan Indien, October 11, 1997.

  63. The Kapushi zinc mines that were being discussed had been promised to Anglo-American. This riled both the South African giant and some of its mining allies. See Donald McNeil Jr., “Congo Exiles Group Seeks Kabila’s Ouster,” New York Times, September 2, 1998; “Zimbabwe/Congo: Les mines au coeur de l’alliance,” La Lettre de l’Océan Indien, September 5, 1998.

  64. SWB/SAPA News Agency, August 20, 1998. There were only three South African security operatives in Goma, but they had come there as part of Foreign Affairs Minister Alfred Nzo’s and Defense Minister Joe Modise’s visiting delegation to Rwanda and Uganda.

  65. SWB/Radio Harare, August 20, 1998.

  66. See chapter 3.

  67. Its per capita income of $1,890 put it among the middle-income economies.

  68. Defense spending had reached $90 million in 1998, that is, over 10 percent of the total budget. Nord Sud Export, January 26, 2001.

  69. Former South African Ambassador to the DRC (1999–2006) Sisa Ngombane later told me, “This was the wisest decision we ever took.” Interview in Pretoria, November 2007.

  70. See G. Prunier, “Rebel Movements and Proxy Warfare: Uganda, Sudan and the Congo (1986–1999),” African Affairs 103, no. 412 (2004): 359–383.

  71. For these developments, see chapter 3.

  72. Interview with Seth Sendashonga, Nairobi, April 1998.

  73. See Peter Strandberg, “With the Rebels in the Congo,” New African, February 1999.

  74. See IRIN Bulletin, no. 501 (September 12–14, 1998). Khartoum countered Ugandan accusations of military intervention on the Kindu front by saying that UPDF troops were fighting alongside SPLA forces in El Jebeleyn and Torit. While it was true that Kampala was providing logistical support to the Sudanese rebels, Ugandan troops were not involved directly on the battlefield. But just in case, both countries denied everything.

  75. I will discuss more fully Tripoli and Ndjamena’s reasons for coming into the war in the next section. For the moment let me just say that Libya’s involvement was largely motivated by Colonel Gaddaffi’s larger-than-life diplomatic delusions, while Chad was in the game only because Sudan needed a proxy and President Idris Deby could not refuse anything to the men in Khartoum who had put him in power, with French help, in 1990.

  76. As early as late August Kagame was declaring to the French journalist François Soudan (Jeune Afrique, September 1, 1998), “Interahamwe militiamen are trained by Kabila and are receiving a military formation in Kamina and in the Garamba National Park.” Later, Kagame’s first admission that RPA troops were indeed fighting in the Congo (November 6, 1998) was accompanied by a statement saying that they were there “specifically to ensure our national security.” Libération, November 7–8, 1998.

  77. ALIR was the new name under which the ex-FAR and former Interahamwe reorganized in the Congo. See Rémy Ourdan, “Les combats s’intensifient dans la région des Grands Lacs,” Le Monde, January 4–5, 1998; Laurent Bijard, “Les Hutus ressortent les machettes,” Le Nouvel Observateur, January 22–28, 1998; Vincent Hugueux, “Rwanda: La guerre sans fin,” L’Express, February 5, 1998.

  78. “Any trust that had been built between Tutsi and Hutu is waning. You can see it at receptions, they avoid eye contact, even among ministers.” Alan Thompson, “The Killing Continues,” New African, May 1998.

  79. The RPF Congress held in Kigali on February 14–16, 1998, had made him president of the Party in addition to his positions as vice president and minister of defense.

  80. What made the execution even worse than its timing was the fact that at least one of the victims (Silas Munyagishali) and possibly two others (Déogratias Bizimana and Egide Gatanazi) were known to be innocent and to have been lumped together with the guilty parties for reasons of political vengeance. Interviews with Rwandese political refugees, Nairobi, May 1998.

  81. For a short assessment of Sendashonga’s position at the time and of his murder, see the appendix.

  82. For an evaluation of the situation in mid-1998, see “Rwanda: North West Nightmare, Africa Confidential 39, no. 15 (July 24, 1998).

  83. Author’s interview with a high-ranking member of a European Secret Service (not France’s!) who carried out a mission of evaluation in Rwanda for his government in mid-1998.

  84. Clinton’s apology for his neglect during the genocide was only proper. But it was coming too late and at the wrong time. It was perceived by the RPF akazu as a tool with which to manipulate U.S. support.

  85. The Ethio-Eritrean war and Kigali’s failure at mediation seriously damaged the U.S. discourse on the “new African leaders.” The later Rwanda-Uganda military confrontation in Kisangani in 1999 finally put paid to that rhetoric.

  86. IRIN Bulletin, no. 475 (August 6, 1998).

  87. It was at the same time that hijacked aircraft flew Brig. Ivan Koreta and his men to Kitona.

  88. John F. Clark, “Explaining Ugandan Intervention in Congo: Evidence and Interpretations,” Journal of Modern African Studies 39, no. 2 (2000): 261–287.

  89. This is, for example, a fundamentally different situation from that of Burundi in 1996, whose fragility indeed precipitated Kagame’s decision to move into Zaire.

  90. Agence France Presse, Kampala, January 31, 1997.

  91. See, for example, the description of the joint UPDF-SPLA operation carried out inside southern Sudan in early April 1997, killing 153 and taking 210 prisoners, followed a few days later by another battle wherein sixty Sudanese soldiers and sixty-eight LRA fighters were killed. New Vision, April 12 and 18, 1997. By mid-1998 there were over 170,000 IDPs in northern Uganda.

  92. See New Vision, November 14, 1997; interviews with UPDf officers in Bundibungyo, March 1998.

  93. In a conversation with visiting Dutch Deputy Prime Minister Hans van Mierle on January 17, 1998.

  94. These were a gaggle of WBNLF, SPLA deserters, ex-FAZ, and Sudanese soldiers cut off by the March 1997 joint UPDF-SPLA operation on Yei. But contrary to what Kagame claimed at the time, there were no Interahamwe; even if there had been, it would have been quite beyond the power of Laurent-Désiré Kabila to “train” them in that isolated wilderness.

  95. In terms of political philosophy Museveni was in favor of rebels fighting their own battles rather than foreign armies taking on the brunt of their struggle. This difference of philosophy was later to resurface devastatingly in the Congo, where Kigali simply wanted to kick Kabila out and put a puppet government in Kinshasa while Museveni was hoping to foster a friendly but home-grown Congolese movement.

  96. La Lettre de l’Océan Indien, August 29, 1998.

  97. Crespo Sebunya, “Uganda: Trouble in the Army,” New African, october 1997.

  98. La Lettre de l’Océan Indien, June 13, 1998. None of these cases led to prosecution.

  99. Even that did cause trouble since it increased the clashes between the Upe section of the Karimojong tribe (to which government Security Adviser David Pulkol belonged) and the hostile Pian clan, which did not get any benefit from the gold mining. Author’s field notes, Karamoja, November 1997.

  100. Branch Energy Uganda Ltd. was a subsidiary of Heritage Oil and Gas run by former SAS officer Tony Buckingham, a close associate of Executive Outco
me’s Eben Barlow. In December 1996 Branch Energy received a 4,800-square kilomter oil research permit on the shores of Lake Albert, where TOTAL, Petrofina, and UGWEC had previously made rather desultory attempts at oil exploration.

  101. This probably had to do with the postgenocide survival syndrome, whereby most Tutsi of military age felt that they had to stick together, no matter what. There was no such feeling among Ugandans. Similarly, the Rwandese Congo Desk made sure that a thick slice of the pie would go to Defense. Again there was nothing comparable in Kampala.

  102. Institute for Security Studies expert Jackkie Potgieter, quoted in Afrique Express, April 29, 1999. Ndola was used as a transshipment point for UNITA fuel coming from abroad into Zambia.

  103. It also led the Congolese government to express strong reservations about Chiluba’s neutrality in acting as a peacemaker. These reservations were most likely groundless: the Zambian regime wanted both to make money with UNITA and to ingratiate itself with the donors by brokering a peace deal in the DRC, never acknowledging the contradiction between the two.