3 Beatrice Umutesi, Fuir ou Mourir au Zaire (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000), 95.
4 Prunier, Africa’s World War, 26, quoting UNHCR field notes.
5 Johan de Smedt, “Child Marriages in Rwandan Refugee Camps,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 68, no. 2 (1998): 211–237.
6 Umutesi, Fuir ou Mourir au Zaire, 93, 94.
7 Breaking the Cycle: Calls for Action in the Rwandese Refugee Camps in Tanzania and Zaire, Doctors Without Borders, November 10, 1994, http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/article.cfm?id=1465.
8 John Eriksson, “Synthesis Report” of the International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience, Danish International Development Assistance, March 1996, 29, quoted by Fiona Terry, Condemned to Repeat? The Paradox of Humanitarian Action (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 175.
9 Umutesi, Fuir ou Mourir au Zaire, 88.
10 Terry, Condemned to Repeat? 186, 187.
11 Ibid., 204, 205.
12 Ibid., 190.
13 Author’s off-the-record interview with a UN official, New York, July 2007.
14 Kurt Mills, “Refugee Return from Zaire to Rwanda: The Role of UNHCR,” in War and Peace in Zaire/Congo: Analyzing and Evaluating Intervention, 1996–1997, ed. Howard Adelman and Govind C. Rao (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2004), 163–185; Final Report of the United Nations Technical Mission on the Security Situation in the Rwandan Refugee Camps in Zaire, 1994, www.grandslacs.net/doc/2745.pdf.
15 Boutroue, Missed Opportunities, 62–64.
16 Quoted by Boutroue, Missed Opportunities, 31, 32.
17 Terry, Condemned to Repeat? 171.
18 Boutroue, Missed Opportunities.
19 Rwanda/Zaire: Rearming with Impunity, Human Rights Watch Arms Project, May 1995.
20 The Great Lakes region of Africa consists of the countries located around lakes in the Great Rift Valley. The region is loosely defined but usually includes Uganda, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Kenya, and Tanzania.
21 Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 279n139.
22 Agence France-Presse, Brussels, October 29, 1996.
23 Quoted by Simon Massey, “Operation Assurance: The Greatest Humanitarian Intervention that Never Happened,” Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, February 15, 1998, jha.ac/1998/02/15/operation-assurance-the-greatest-intervention-that-never-happened.
24 Ibid.
CHAPTER 3
1 Stephen Kinzer, A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons, 2008), 254.
2 Philip Gourevitch, “After Genocide,” Transition 72 (1996): 188.
3 Kinzer, A Thousand Hills, 232.
4 Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: A History of the Genocide (London: Hurst & Co., 1997), 62.
5 Richard Grant, “Paul Kagame: Rwanda’s Redeemer or Ruthless Dictator?” Daily Telegraph (London), July 22, 2010.
6 “When Kagame Turned 50,” New Times (Kigali), October 25, 2007.
7 Author’s interview with Andrew Mwenda, New Haven, Connecticut, March 2010.
8 Author’s interview with former RPF soldier, Nairobi, July 2007.
9 Author’s telephone interview with U.S. intelligence officer, June 2009.
10 Steve Vogel, “Student of Warfare Graduates on Battlefields of Rwanda; Rebel Leader Ran a Textbook Operation,” Washington Post, August 25, 1994.
11 Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 62.
12 Filip Reyntjens, La Guerre des Grands Lacs (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), 52; Report of the Joint Mission Charged with Investigating Allegations of Massacres and Other Human Rights Violations Occurring in Eastern Zaire (Now Democratic Republic of the Congo) Since September 1996, United Nations General Assembly, A/51/942, July 2, 1997, 17, 18.
13 Quoted in the film Afrique en morceaux (1999), directed by Jihan El Tahran.
14 Peter Rosenblum, “Irrational Exuberance: The Clinton Administration in Africa,” Current History (May 2002): 197.
15 The Ugandan rebels included the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a brutal rebel group that initially drew support from the Acholi community of northern Uganda, who had made up a large part of Milton Obote’s army and had been marginalized after Museveni’s arrival in power. The LRA were not yet active in Zaire, but several other Ugandan rebel groups were, with support from both Mobutu and the Khartoum government. Shortly afterwards, Sudanese intelligence operatives based out of northeastern Zaire helped create the West Nile Bank Liberation Front (WNBLF), made up of former partisans and soldiers close to former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. In addition, Sudan lent support to several other rebel groups, including two small Ugandan Islamist organizations, the Tabliq and the Uganda Muslim Liberation Army (UMLA), both of which claimed to be outraged by the alleged massacre of Muslims at the hands of Museveni. To complicate the picture further, there was also a group of leaders from the Baganda community, the Allied Democratic Movement (ADM), who attacked Museveni for continuing to repress the kingdom of Baganda, the largest precolonial monarchy in the region, and also began to recruit soldiers. As neither ADM nor UMLA had significant grassroots support, the Sudanese put them in contact with remnants of the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (NALU), a rebel militia based among the Konjo ethnic community in the Ruwenzori Mountains of western Uganda, who had felt marginalized from Uganda politics since the colonial era. Together, these three groups formed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
16 “Congo Rebels Were Museveni’s Idea,” Monitor (Kampala), June 1, 1999.
17 “Supplementary Report of the Monitoring Mechanism on Sanctions Against UNITA,” Security Council Document S/2001/966, October 8, 2001.
18 The figure for displaced people comes from the UN consolidated appeal for Angola, January–December 1996; military expenditure information comes from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
19 Matthew Hart, “How to Steal a Diamond,” Atlantic Monthly, March 1999.
20 Author’s interview with Rwandan intelligence official, South Africa, January 2009.
21 Author’s interview with Don Steinberg, former U.S. ambassador to Angola, New York, June 2007.
22 “Kabila Shouts Down Museveni,” Monitor (Kampala), June 2, 1999.
23 Thabo Mbeki, “Statement on Behalf of the African National Congress, on the Occasion of the Adoption by the Constitutional Assembly of‘The Republic of South Africa Constitution Bill 1996.’”
CHAPTER 4
1 Author’s interview with human rights activist, Bukavu, March 2008.
2 BBC monitoring of Voix du Zaire newscast, October 9, 1996. His comments about six days were made off air to one of the international journalists.
3 See, for example, his submission to the Goma peace conference in 2008: “Reaction de Monsieur Lwabanji Lwasi Ngabo, Vice-Gouverneur Honoraire du Sud Kivu, à la declaration du porte parole des Banyamulenge à la conference de Goma,” January 15, 2008.
4 Much of this chapter is based on the author’s interview with Serukiza, Kinshasa, November 2007. He passed away not long afterwards from complications from cancer.
5 Isidore Ndaywel, Histoire Générale du Congo: De l’héritage ancien à la République démocratique (Paris: Duculot, 1998), 382–383 (my translation). Also see Koen Vlassenroot, “Citizenship, Identity Formation and Conflict in South Kivu: The Case of the Banyamulenge,” Review of African Political Economy 29, nos. 93–94 (2002): 499–515.
6 I owe this insight to Mauro DeLorenzo, who studied the Banyamulenge for his doctoral dissertation at Oxford University.
7 Historians of Rwanda also record emigrations from southern Rwanda toward Congo around this time. Catherine Newbury, The Cohesion of Oppression: Clientship and Ethnicity in Rwanda, 1860–1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 48–49.
8 Lazare Sebitereko Rukundwa, “Justice and Righteousness in Matthean Theology and Its Relevance to the Banyamulenge
Community,” PhD thesis, University of Pretoria, November 2005, 317.
9 Ibid., 292.
10 Ibid., 129.
11 Quoted by Cosma Wilungula, Le Maquis Kabila, Fizi 1967–1986 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997), 24 (my translation).
12 Manassé Ruhimbika, Les Banyamulenge entre deux guerres (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), 25.
13 Leslie Crawford, “Hutus See France as Their Saviour,” Financial Times (London), June 27, 1994.
14 Anzuluni Bembe, the president of the national assembly and himself a Bembe from South Kivu, authored the decree, implying that the Banyamulenge were Rwandan immigrants who had fraudulently acquired Congolese citizenship.
15 Haut Conseil de la République, Parlement de Transition, “Resolution sur les réfugiés et population déplacés dans les regions du Nord et du Sud-Kivu,” signed in Kinshasa, April 28, 1995.
16 Letter from the Commissaire de Zone d’Uvira, October 26, 1995, quoted by Ruhimbika, Les Banyamulenge, 32.
17 A group of Banyamulenge leaders, led by Dugu wa Mulenge, their only provincial parliamentarian, wrote to denounce this recruitment of Banyamulenge. The estimates for the number of Banyamulenge in the RPF come from Ruhimbika, Les Banyamulenge (300) and Serukiza (1,000).
CHAPTER 5
1 Much of this chapter is based on the author’s interview with Deogratias Bugera, Johannesburg, April 2008. Thomas Ntiratimana, Bugera’s former chief of staff, also provided helpful information.
2 Author’s interview with former AFDL member, Kinshasa, November 2007.
3 The exact size is a matter of contention. According to Brooke Grundfest Schoepf and Claude Schoepf, “Gender, Land, and Hunger in Eastern Zaire,” in African Food Systems in Crisis, vol. 2, Contending with Change, ed. Rebecca Huss-Ashmore and Solomon H. Katz, Food and Nutrition in History and Anthropology, vol. 7 (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1990), King Leopold ceded 12 million hectares, or 46,000 square miles, to the National Committee for the Kivus, a state agency, but that was soon reduced to 300,000 hectares, which is a tenth of the size of Belgium.
4 Séverin Mugangu, “Les politiques legislatives congolaise et rwandaise relatives aux refugiés et émigrés rwandais,” in Exilé, réfugiés et deplacés en Afrique Centrale et orientale, ed. André Guichaoua (Paris: Karthala, 2004), 639.
5 Paul Mathieu and Mafikiri Tsongo, “Enjeux fonciers, déplacements de population et escalades conflictuelles (1930–1995),” in Conflits et guerres au Kivu et dans la région des grands lacs: Entre tensions locales et escalade régionale, ed. P. Mathieu and Jean-Claude Willame, Cahiers Africains 39 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), 20–25.
6 Jean-Pierre Pabanel, “La question de la nationalité au Kivu,” Politique Africaine (1993): 41, 43.
7 There was no effort to implement the law until 1989, when the government began to identify voters. This process provoked violence—Banyarwanda in Masisi burned down registration booths.
8 The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Zaire put the figure at 3,000, while Amnesty International suggested it could be as high as 7,000, citing humanitarian officials Roberto Garretón, UN Special Rapporteur, Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Zaire, December 23, 1994, paragraph 90; Amnesty International, Zaire: Violence Against Democracy, September 16, 1993.
9 Bugera was in touch with two leading Rwandan officers who were coordinating these operations, Major Jack Nziza and Colonel Kayumba Nyamwasa, both of whom would play major roles in the subsequent Rwandan invasion of the Congo.
10 Joel Boutroue, Missed Opportunities: The Role of the International Community in the Return of the Rwandan Refugees from Eastern Zaire, July 1994–December 1996, Rosemarie Rogers Working Paper 1, Inter-University Committee on International Migration, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 1998.
11 This was later confirmed by documents they recovered after they had captured the refugee camps.
12 Anonymous tract written by the Collective of Congolese Patriots (COPACO), dated February 10, 2000.
CHAPTER 6
1 Erik Kennes with Jean Omasombo, Essai biographique sur Laurent Désiré Kabila (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003), 29.
2 Ibid., 29.
3 Quoted by Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976, Envisioning Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 72.
4 Kennes, Essai biographique, 72.
5 Ernesto “Che” Guevara, The African Dream: The Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo, trans. Patrick Camiller (New York: Grove, 2000), 6.
6 Ibid., 86.
7 Ibid., 244.
8 William Galvez, Le rêve Africain de Che (Antwerp: EPO, 1998), 302, quoted by Kennes, Essai biographique, 174.
9 Wilungula Cosma, Le Maquis Kabila, Fizi 1967–1986 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997), 112; Kennes, Essai biographique, 264.
10 Kennes, Essai biographique, 302.
11 Jean-Baptiste Sondji, a hospital director in Kinshasa who went on to become health minister under Laurent Kabila, met with Kahinda Otafire, one of President Museveni’s point men on the Congo, in Brussels as early as 1993 to discuss regime change in his country. He spoke to Tshisekedi about Uganda’s proposal, but the opposition leader didn’t want to have anything to do with an armed insurrection. Patrick Karegeya confirmed this. Author’s interview with Jean-Baptiste Sondji, Kinshasa, February 2008.
12 Lemera is a town in South Kivu where the first AFDL training camp would be located. Coincidentally, the neighborhood in Kigali where some of the Congolese rebels were staying was also called Lemera.
CHAPTER 7
1 This description comes from Thomas Ntiratimana, chief of staff of Deo Bugera and later vice governor of South Kivu, whom I interviewed in Kinshasa, July 2006, as well as General Malik Kijege, a leading Munyamulenge commander, whom I interviewed in Kinshasa, November 2007.
2 “West ‘ Fooled’ by Banyamulenge,” Voix du Zaire, Bukavu, October 25, 1996.
3 Author’s interview with Bembe civil society activist, Baraka, March 2008.
4 Manassé Ruhimbika, Les Banyamulenge entre deux guerres (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), 47.
5 Ibid., 49.
6 Alex’s name has been changed to protect his identity.
7 See also Report of the Mapping Exercise Documenting the Most Serious Violations of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Committed Within the Territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Between March 1993 and June 2003, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, October 2010, 74. The death toll given by UN investigators was 152 for this incident.
8 Several days later, a German journalist ventured into the squalid camp on the Rwandan side of the border, to where the Tutsi survivors had fled. Amid the blue UNHCR tents, a wizened man approached him with a black book. Musafiri Mushambaro, the president of the Uvira community there, paged through the book, counting the dead: “Sange 20, Muturure 9, in Burugera 3, Lweba 89, Kamanyola 37.” He had 217 names in his book, all men. They were separated from their families, driven together, and shot, he said.
9 According to a UN report published in 2010, 101 people died that day in Abala. Report of the Mapping Exercise, 135.
CHAPTER 8
1 The information on Prosper Nabyolwa’s experiences stems from a series of interviews by the author with General Nabyolwa in Kinshasa in July 2005, December 2007, and July 2008.
2 “Declaration of the Population of South Kivu Following the ‘March of Anger, Protest and Denunciation Against the Aggression by Tutsi Rwandans of Which Zaire and Its People Have Become Victims,’” Bukavu, September 18, 1996, quoted by Olivier Lanotte, Guerres sans frontiers: De Joseph-Désiré Mobutu a Joseph Kabila (Brussels: GRIP, 2003), 42.
3 Demain le Congo, no. 244 (1997): 7, quoted by Isidore Ndaywel, Histoire Générale du Congo: De l’héritage ancien à la République démocratique (Paris: Duculot, 1998).
4 Author’s interviews with hospital staff, Lemera, March 2008; Amnesty International, Zaire: Violent Persecution by State and Armed Groups, Nov
ember 29, 1996, 5.
5 “A Hole in the Middle of Africa,” Economist, July 8, 1995.
6 Library of Congress, Country Study: Zaire, 1994, 312.
7 Crawford Young and Thomas Turner, The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 275.
8 Honoré Ngbanda Nzambo, Ainsi sonne le glas: Les derniers jours du Maréchal Mobutu (Paris: Editions Gideppe, 1998), 46 (my translation).
9 William Reno, “Sovereignty and Personal Rule in Zaire,” African Studies Quarterly 1, no. 3 (1997), www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v1/3/4.htm.
10 Author’s interview with General Prosper Nabyolwa in Kinshasa, December 2007.
11 Young and Turner, Rise and Decline, 259.
12 Michael G. Schatzberg, The Dialectics of Oppression in Zaire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 59.
13 Library of Congress, Zaire, 303.
14 Author’s interview with José Endundo, owner of a large aviation company, Kinshasa, December 2007.
15 Nzambo, Ainsi sonne le glas, 88.
16 Author’s interview with Deo Bugera, Johannesburg, March 2008.
17 Author’s interview with Patrick Karegeya, Dar es Salaam, January 2008.
18 “Plus jamais le Congo,” Observatoire de l’Afrique centrale 6, no. 10, March 4, 2003, www.obsac.com.
19 Cherif Ouazani, “James Kabarebe et la mémoire de la guerre de libération de l’AFDL,” Jeune Afrique Intelligent, April 29, 2002 (my translation).
20 When Joseph Kabila came to power in 2001, some of his closest military advisors were former Katangan Tigers.
21 Author’s interview with former FAR commander, Kinshasa, July 2009.
22 Stephen Smith, “L’Armada de mercenaires au Zaïre: Commandés par un Belge, 280 ‘affreux’ mènent la contre-offensive,” Libération, January 24, 1997; Philippe Chapleau and Francois Misser, Mercenaires S.A. (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1998), Chapter 6.
Dancing in the Glory of Monsters Page 41
