CHAPTER 15
1 Author’s interview with Arnaud Zajtmann, former BBC correspondent, Kinshasa, May 2009.
2 Jean-Pierre Bemba, Le choix de la liberté (Gbadolite, D. R. Congo: Editions Venus, 2002), 241.
3 Author’s interview with Thomas Luhaka, Kinshasa, May 2009.
4 Christopher Clapham, ed., African Guerrillas (Oxford: James Currey; Kampala: Fountain; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 5.
5 Bemba himself insists that he was shipping fish through Uganda to Europe on his airline, but many others maintain that it was weapons on the flights, and that they were going from Kampala to the Angolan warlord Jonas Savimbi in exchange for diamonds.
6 Bemba, Le choix de la liberté, 10.
7 Author’s interview with Colonel Shaban Bantariza, Kampala, December 2007.
8 Bemba, Le choix de la liberté, 35–36.
9 Author’s interview with a friend of Bemba’s, who wished to remain anonymous, Kinshasa, June 2008.
10 Author’s interview with a former MLC commander who wished to remain anonymous, Kinshasa, November 2007.
11 Author’s interview with José Endundo, Kinshasa, November 2007.
12 This was the case for an attack on Basankusu in 1999, which the Ugandans did not want to carry out.
13 Author’s interview with François Mwamba, Kinshasa, November 2007.
14 Author’s interviews with Thomas Luhaka and François Mwamba, Kinshasa, November 2007.
15 Tatiana Caryannis, Elections in the Congo: The Bemba Surprise, United States Institute of Peace Special Report, February 2008, 7.
16 The second exception was Katanga, the home province of Joseph Kabila, which voted overwhelmingly for him.
17 Ituri: “Covered in Blood”: Ethnically Targeted Violence in Northeastern DR Congo, Human Rights Watch report, July 7, 2003, 32.
18 Author’s interview with MLC leader, Kinshasa, November 2007.
19 Ibid.
20 Ernesto “Che” Guevara, The African Dream: The Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo, trans. Patrick Camiller (New York: Grove, 2000), 227.
CHAPTER 16
1 V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River (London: Vintage, 1989), 27.
2 UN Security Council, Report of the Inter-Agency Mission to Kisangani, S/2000/ 1153, December 4, 2000, paragraph 51.
3 Author’s interview with Shaban Bantariza, Kampala, February 2008.
4 The commander of the army was Fred Rwigyema, who was one of thirty soldiers who had begun the NRM rebellion with Museveni; the head of medical services was Peter Bayingana, while the head of military police was Sam Kaka; the best man at Kagame’s wedding was Aronda Nyakairima, who later became the commander of the Ugandan army.
5 Author’s interview with Colonel James Mujira, acting head of Military Intelligence, Kampala, February 2008.
6 Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 174.
7 Other sources confirm that Kisase was killed by Rwandans, perhaps on Kabila’s prodding. A former member of his bodyguard told me that Rwandan security agents had tipped him off regarding the ambush, sparing his life. Gérard Prunier also has an account in his book based on two separate insider accounts, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 403n112.
8 Charles Onyango-Obbo, “Kabila Shouts Down Museveni,” Monitor (Kampala), June 2, 1999. The Ugandans were inspired by their own experience. Museveni’s rebellion had originally come to power in 1980, backed by the Tanzanian army, which was intent on overthrowing Idi Amin’s dictatorship. When the Tanzanians withdrew, the Ugandan alliance that had been put in place had no internal cohesion, and they broke into factions, forcing Museveni to return to the bush. During his second attempt, Museveni had little external support and over six years of guerrilla warfare was forced to develop grassroots support and strong internal organization. It was this second experience that convinced Museveni, at least on a theoretical level, that too much external influence would cause the rebellion to fail.
9 Author’s interview with presidential advisor, Kigali, February 2008.
10 Author’s interview with Wamba dia Wamba, Kinshasa, November 2007.
11 Author’s interview with Ugandan journalist, Kampala, February 2008.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Levi Ochieng, “Machtpoker am grossen Fluss,” Die Tageszeitung, June 22, 1999 (my translation).
15 Report of the United Nations Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, S/2001/ 357, United Nations, April 12, 2001, 21.
16 Lara Santoro, “Behind the Congo War: Diamonds,” Christian Science Monitor, August 16, 1998.
17 Prunier, Africa’s World War, 215.
18 Author’s interview with Kisangani resident, June 2004.
19 Author’s interview with MLC leader who was in Kisangani at the time, Kinshasa, June 2009.
20 The “bunch of rebels” is a reference to the Lord’s Resistance Army, who had displaced almost a million people in northern Uganda.
21 Author’s interview with Levi Ochieng, Ugandan journalist in Kisangani at the time, Nairobi, June 2007.
22 Author’s interview with Thomas Luhaka, Kinshasa, November 2007.
23 This section is based on the author’s interview with Pastor Philippe, Kisangani, June 2004.
24 Prunier, Africa’s World War, 240. The students, who had been born in Uganda, were protesting against having to take exams in French, a language they did not speak.
25 David Kibirige, “UPDF Commanders Hooligans,” Monitor (Kampala), June 11, 2000.
CHAPTER 17
1 Richard Brennen et al., “Mortality in the Congo: A Nationwide Survey,” Lancet 367, no. 9504 (January 2006): 44–51.
2 Roberts’s methodology has been questioned by other researchers, although most concur with his broad conclusions. The initial two studies carried out only surveyed a small, random sample of health zones, raising questions about how representative the study was. Also, the baseline of mortality from 1998, with which they were comparing their results, had not been firmly established.
3 For Rwanda, this included the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), the Mudundu 40, as well as several semi-independent local militias affiliated with the RCD, such as Governor Eugene Serufuli’s Local Defense Force in North Kivu and Governor Xavier Chiribanya’s militia in South Kivu. For Uganda, this included the Patriotic Resistance Forces of Ituri (FRPI), the National and Integrationist Front (FNI), the Congolese Revolutionary Movement (MRC), the Movement for the Liberation of the Congo (MLC), and the Congolese Rally for Democracy-National (RCD-N). The Congolese government was allied to half a dozen Mai-Mai groups, ranging from 8,000 strong to just several hundred, spread throughout the Kivus.
4 This section is based on the author’s interviews with residents, Kasika, March 2008. The events have been corroborated by interviews conducted by the United Nations Mapping Team in 2008 and 2009 in Kasika, 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, 176. Numerous Congolese NGOs also documented the massacre; their reports include Massacres de Kasika au sud-Kivu, CADDHOM, 1998; Report of 20 November 1998, COJESKI, 1998; Report of January 1999, COJESKI, 1999; and Jean Migabo Kalere, Génocide au Congo? Analyse des massacres des populations civiles, Broederlijk Delen, 2002. See also Ambroise Bulambo, Mourir au Kivu: Du génocide tutsi aux massacres dans l’est du Congo RCD (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001).
5 Interviews with residents, Kasika.
6 His name has been changed to protect his identity.
7 Author’s interview with Patrice, Kasika, March 2008.
8 His name has been cha
nged to protect his identity.
9 Author’s interview, Bukavu, March 2008.
10 Report of the Mapping Exercise, 176.
11 This section is based on the author’s interviews in Kilungutwe, March 2008.
12 George Lerner, “Activist: Rape of Women, Girls a Weapon of War in Congo,” CNN, October 30, 2009, edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/10/24/amanpour .congo.rape.documentary/index.html; Demographic and Health Survey, 2007, Ministry of Development and Ministry of Health, Democratic Republic of Congo, August 2008; Kirsten Johnson et al., “Association of Sexual Violence and Human Rights Violations with Physical and Mental Health in Territories of the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo,” Journal of the American Medical Association 304, no. 5 (August 2010): 553–562.
13 Author’s interview with Benjamin Serukiza, Kinshasa, November 2007.
14 “Interview with Julius Nyerere,” PBS Newshour, December 27, 1996.
15 Tatiana Carayannis and Herbert Weiss, “Reconstructing the Congo,” Journal of International Affairs 58, no. 1 (2004): 134.
CHAPTER 18
1 This description of events is according to the author’s interviews with Jean Mbuyu, the national security advisor; Edy Kapend, Kabila’s military advisor; and Mwenze Kongolo, minister of interior, Kinshasa, June 2009.
2 Author’s interview with a former aide to Kabila, who wished to remain anonymous, Kinshasa, November 2007.
3 The roll call gave a good idea of who had power around the president at the time: Gaetan Kakudji, the interior minister who had been Kabila’s representative in Europe during the 1980s; the oil minister Victor Mpoyo, the president’s éminence grise for financial deals with multinationals; Yerodia Ndombasi, the eccentric education minister who had known Mzee since his early rebel days; and Edy Kapend, the young military advisor with close links to Angola.
4 Author’s interview with Didier Mumengi, Kinshasa, November 2007.
5 Herbert Weiss, War and Peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Current African Issues no. 22 (Uppsala, Sweden: Nordiska Afrikaninstitutet, 2000), 15.
6 Gauthiers de Villers and Jean-Claude Willame, Republique democratique du Congo: Chronique politique d’un entre-deux-guerres, octobre 1996–juillet 1998, Cahiers Africains 35 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998), 233.
7 Interview with Mumengi.
8 International Monetary Fund, Country Report No 01/123, July 2001, 29.
9 Addendum to the United Nations Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of DR Congo, S/2001/1072, United Nations, November 10, 2001, paragraphs 67–68.
10 Author’s interview with Jean Mbuyu, Kinshasa, June 2009.
11 Author’s interview with Jean-Bosco Ndayikengurukiye, Bujumbura, May 2009.
12 International Crisis Group, Scramble for the Congo: Anatomy of an Ugly War, Africa Report no. 26, December 20, 2000, 52.
13 Author’s interview with Colonel Maurice Gateretse, Bujumbura, March 2008.
14 Karl Vick, “Desperate Battle Defines Congo’s Warlike Peace,” Washington Post, January 2, 2001.
15 Interview with Ndayikengurukiye.
16 Interview with Mbuyu.
17 Vick, “Desperate Battle.”
18 International Crisis Group, Scramble for the Congo, 64.
19 Interview with Kabila aide, Kinshasa, June 2009.
20 Interview with two separate Kabila aides, Kinshasa, June 2009.
21 Interview with Mumengi.
22 This description of events is according to my interviews with Jean Mbuyu, the national security advisor, and Edy Kapend, Kabila’s military advisor, Kinshasa, June 2009.
23 Stephen Smith and Antoine Glaser, “Ces enfants soldats qui out tué Kabila,” Le Monde (Paris), February 9, 2001.
24 This tale is recited frequently in Kinshasa. See also Norimitsu Onishi, “Slain Congo Leader Buried to Pomp and Confusion,” New York Times, January 24, 2001.
25 State Department Report on Human Rights Practices, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2001; author’s interview with former kadogo, Kinshasa, October 2007.
26 Smith and Glaser, “Ces enfants soldats.”
27 Interview with Mbuyu.
28 Author’s telephone interview with former Rwandan security official, June 2010.
29 “ Kabila cherche à vendre ses pierres,” La Lettre du Continent, August 24, 2000; “Dropping Kabila,” Africa Confidential 41, no. 20, October 13, 2000, quoted in Gérard Prunier, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 253nn152, 153.
30 Marie-France Cros, “L’assassinat de Kabila: Un quasi-témoin parle,” La Libre Belgique, December 24, 2001.
31 Norimitsu Onishi, “Suspects by the Score and, Oh, Such Digressions!” New York Times, April 21, 2001.
CHAPTER 19
1 Author’s interview with Mwenze Kongolo, Kinshasa, July 2009.
2 Richard Morais, “Friends in High Places,” Forbes, August 10, 1998.
3 Author’s interview with Gécamines official, Kinshasa, July 2009.
4 Andrew Maykuth, “Outside Mining Firms Find Zaire an Untapped Vein,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 11, 1997.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 “Huge Fortunes at Stake in Zaire,” Business Times (Johannesburg), April 20, 1997; author’s interview with former American Mineral Fields executive, Cape Town, February 2008.
8 Author’s interview with Lundin executive, Cape Town, February 2008.
9 Maykuth, “Outside Mining Firms.”
10 These companies were not alone. A Canadian company, First Quantum, was also reported to have given a multimillion-dollar advance to the rebels in return for a concession before they arrived in Kinshasa.
11 James G. Stewart, Corporate War Crimes: Prosecuting the Pillage of Natural Resources (New York: Open Society Justice Initiative, 2010), 33–36.
12 Ludo de Witte, The Assassination of Lumumba, trans. Ann Wright and Renée Fenby (London: Verso, 2001), 31.
13 “Demands and Derailment,” Africa Energy & Mining, May 21, 1997.
14 Special Commission Charged with Examining the Validity of Economic and Financial Conventions Concluded During the Wars of 1996–1997 and 1998: The Lutundula Report , National Assembly of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, February 26, 2006, 35.
15 Author’s interview with Mabi Mulumba, Kinshasa, December 2007.
16 Author’s interview with former presidential advisor, Kinshasa, November 2007.
17 Ibid.
18 Lutundula Report, 32–33.
19 The commander of the armed forces was General Vitalis Zvinavashe and the minister of defense Sidney Sekeramayi.
20 Author’s interview with businessman in Paris, February 2008.
21 “Rautenbach Denies Murder Allegation,” South African Press Agency, December 16, 1999.
22 Author’s interview with Gécamines official, Kinshasa, July 2009.
23 Report of the United Nations Panel on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, United Nations, October 8, 2002, 11; Gérard Prunier, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 218.
24 Author’s off-the-record telephone interview with a mining executive, May 2009.
25 Confidential South African intelligence report in the author’s possession.
26 Report of the United Nations Panel on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, United Nations, April 12, 2001, 33.
27 International Monetary Fund, Democratic Republic of the Congo: Selected Issues and Statistical Appendix, Country Report 1/123, July 2001, 16.
28 Author’s interview with Jean Mbuyu, Kinshasa, November 2007; author’s interview with Mwenze Kongolo, Kinshasa, May 2009.
29 Confidential industry intelligence report on Billy Rautenbach, August 10, 2000.
&nbs
p; 30 Ibid.
31 Cliff Taylor, “Congo Wealth Lures Africa’s Power-Players,” Independent (London), October 31, 1998; Michael Nest, “Ambitions, Profits and Loss: Zimbabwean Economic Involvement in the DRC,” African Affairs 100, no. 400 (2001): 484.
32 Report of the United Nations Panel, 8.
33 Martin Meredith, Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe (New York: PublicAffairs, 2002), 142.
34 Author’s interview with mining officials, Kinshasa, May 2009. There are, unfortunately, almost no legal safeguards in the Congo to prevent such transfer pricing.
35 Author’s interview with Dona Kampata, Kinshasa, July 2009.
36 Prunier, Africa’s World War, 239.
37 His name has been changed to protect his identity.
38 This section is based on several interviews with the pilot in the Eastern Congo, March 2008.
39 The UN panel of experts that was researching the illegal exploitation of natural resources in the Congo at the time was given similar information regarding how long it took to fly the stockpiles to Kigali.
40 According to Global Witness, a kilo of tin was being sold for $6 in Goma in 1998, when the world coltan price was hovering around $60 per kilo of refined tantalum. Coltan sold in Goma usually included around 20 to 40 percent tantalum. See Didier de Failly, “Coltan: Pour comprendre ...,” in L’Afrique des Grands Lacs: Annuaire 2000–2001 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), 13, and “ Under-Mining Peace,” Global Witness (June 2005): 28.
41 Report of the United Nations Panel, 8.
42 Gauthiers de Villers with Jean Omasombo and Erik Kennes, Republique democratique du Congo: Guerre et politique: Les trente derniers mois de L. D. Kabila, août 1998–janvier 2001 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), 114–115.
43 Author’s interview with Benjamin Serukiza, former RCD vice governor of South Kivu and a prominent member of the Banyamulenge community, Kinshasa, October 2007.
44 Jeroen Cuvulier and Tim Raeymaekers, Supporting the War Economy in the DRC: European Companies and the Coltan Trade, International Peace Information Service (IPIS), January 2002, 8.
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