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

by Gerard Prunier

  Why was this situation a “partial” illustration of his remark? Because even if the general drift was correctly analyzed, there was by now a difference in the role distribution: Zimbabwe had completely dropped out of the game, Uganda was limiting its proxy activities to the Ituri region immediately adjacent to its border, and it was Kinshasa that had now burst to the fore, taking a major proxy role in the struggle for the eastern Congo. The only outside actor still fully involved was Rwanda, which could not afford to back off. During the night of October 15–16 seven trucks full of RPA soldiers crossed into South Kivu by way of the Ruzizi 2 border post in Burundi and joined the RCD-G troops on the other side. In Walungu and Kabare supposed Interahamwe groups (in fact RPA in civilian clothes who had been left behind) attacked the Mayi Mayi. Both sides were completely disingenuous: Vital Kamerhe, Kinshasa’s general commissioner for the Great Lakes, condemned the Rwandese for having left troops behind107 while at the same time denying any responsibility for the Mayi Mayi attacks. RCD-G authorities denied that the Rwandese army was helping them, but they broke off relations with the government, accusing it of sponsoring the Mayi Mayi offensive. Kigali declared that it was “ex-FAR and Interahamwe fighting in Uvira, not Mayi Mayi.”108 On October 19 the RCD-G retook Uvira and said it was now ready to talk again to Kinshasa. Since the beginning of the month 13,000 Congolese and 11,000 Burundian refugees had crossed the border into Tanzania to flee the fighting. Kigali and Kinshasa, the final key actors, had tested each other’s resolve; they could now go back to the negotiating table.

  On October 25 what was going to be the final session of the Congolese peace talks restarted in Pretoria. Desirous to draw the international community’s attention away from its recent Mayi Mayi power play, Kinshasa tried to do a bit of DDRRR by attempting to disarm the FDLR forces in Kamina and send them back to Rwanda. It managed to “treat” 674 of them before the situation exploded.109 But the dynamics of conflict management (one hesitates to use the word peace) had acquired enough momentum so that, to borrow Kofi Annan’s expression, there was no more danger of “falling off the bicycle.”

  On December 17, 2002, an “all-inclusive Peace Agreement” was signed in Pretoria. The war had formally ended, leaving the violence that continued unabated as “residual” and “illegitimate.”

  What were the provisions of the Agreement? Joseph Kabila would remain as interim president. There would be four vice presidents, one belonging to the government, one to the RCD-G, one to the MLC, and one from the civil society. The government would keep 22 of 120 senators, 94 of 500 MPs, seven ministerial posts out of 36, and 4 vice ministerial positions out of 25. The rest would be apportioned between the RCD-G (22 senators, 94 MPs, 7 ministers, and 4 vice ministers), MLC, and civil society (exactly the same numbers). Some of the lesser forces, such as the RCD-ML and the RCD-N, got smaller portions, and the Mayi-Mayi got 4 senators, 10 MPs, 2 ministers, and 2 vice ministers. The whole exercise, necessary as it was to stop major organized violence, reeked of rewards for crime coupled with pork barrel politics. In the words of the specialized French African affairs newsletter La Lettre du Continent (January 1, 2003), “The whole of the Inter-Congolese ‘political dialogue’ seems to have resulted only in a vast programme of sharing out the jobs.” In an equally severe diagnosis, another specialized publication wrote, “The Inter-Congolese Dialogue leaves only minor positions to civil society and the non-armed opposition. This results in offering to the Congolese population in the guise of government a coalition of people who looted their own country, of predatory rebels and of corrupt civil servants.”110 Another comment remarked that the Agreement did not display “the slightest concerns for political legitimacy, ethnic balance or regional equilibrium.”111 All of these were true. But the war had ended. Sort of.

  The economy: slowly crawling out of the abyss

  Getting the economy back on its legs was the other Herculean task Joseph Kabila had to undertake upon assuming power.112 The country was in ruins, from every point of view. There were around 2.3 million IDPs scattered to the four corners of the country (with peaks in the eastern provinces) and 326,000 refugees abroad. In addition, due to all the other conflicts surrounding the DRC, it had become home to over 360,000 refugees from seven different countries, with the Angolans representing over half of those.113 From a level of $630 in 1980, per capita income had fallen so low that it was now hard to measure, various sources giving figures between $78 and $88. This put the DRC squarely at the bottom of the African pile, lower even than Ethiopia; Somalia was perhaps the only country in comparable economic distress.114 Because of an unrealistic fixed exchange rate that made imports impossible, food imports had diminished by 50 percent in 2000 while domestic food production was dropping at the same time. As a result, in a country where agriculture had never been a problem, 64 percent of the population was now underfed and probably more than 33 percent were malnourished.115 Up to 3.5 million people had died, perhaps 90 percent of them from these “collateral effects” of the war.116 GNP had shrunk by 40 percent in the past ten years (it was −11.4 percent during 2000 alone), exports had dropped by 45 percent since 1997, inflation had shot up to 520 percent, and banking was dead, with a 200 percent rate of interest but no cash left to loan out.117 At the time of Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s assassination, the Congolese franc, whose parity was fixed at 50 to the dollar, actually traded at 200, while the external debt had reached astronomical proportions ($13.5 billion, according to Kinshasa; $16 billion, according to the World Bank), completely blocking any hope of repayment or further loans unless a major rescheduling could be arranged.

  Faced with this there were two priorities for the government: straighten out the mining industry, which was the only available short- to medium-term source of cash, and try to cut some of the parasitical costs. As early as May 4, 2001, the regime had come out with a new diamond-mining decree embodying a number of commonsense measures: liberalization of licensing, reserved for Congolese only, with a minimum sales figure; no direct exports by unlicensed producers; and compulsory expertise. This was very much needed since smuggling was still widespread. The Antwerp Diamond Office reported that in August 2001 it had received $61 million in contraband stones, as opposed to $24 million in legal ones.118 The minimum buying rule was hard to enforce, and by early 2002 only three of the licensed counters had achieved their legal monthly minimum of $3.5 million.119 As a necessary corollary to the mining reforms the Congolese franc was allowed to float, and it immediately shot up to 300 to the dollar.120 The recovery of official diamond exports was staggering: by late 2002 they had reached $396 million, a 44 percent increase over the preceding year. Then fuel prices were left free and climbed 400 percent in a week,121 but transport became available again.

  Once the time of the emergency measures was past, the regime issued a full new mining code which embodied 163 new modifications. It was both tight enough to control foreign interests (the state reserved itself a minimum 5 percent participation in any new project, and there would be no more case-by-case contract negotiations with separate companies) and liberal enough to please both the national operators and the IMF (granting mining rights became much more simple, custom tariffs were standardized, a special forex rate was introduced to benefit mining concerns).122 Almost immediately a medium-size foreign company, Australian Anvil Mining, decided to make the first new outside investment in the DRC since the war began.123

  In parallel with these developments the government was desperately trying to clean up the administrative environment, where economic operators had to function. On August 7, 2001, Joseph Kabila received a report on the performance of the DRC’s fifty-two parastatals, and on August 9 he fired forty-nine of the managers. Two of the organizations that had been vetted positively were not parastatals but rather economic branches of the government: Post and Telecom and the Office of Management of Public Debt. Among the parastatals proper, only MIBA’s Jean-Claude Okoto kept his job. It was difficult to find replacements: the newly picked Gécamines
CEO, Munga Yumba, was arrested for corruption less than two months later. Some of the parastatals were closed outright. Another report, this time on public service salaries, unearthed new horrors: the state was paying 21,652 “ghost workers” who altogether cost it $619,000 each month. Bad as it was, this was still only a monthly average of $28.59 per worker, ghost or real. Some of the “salaries” at the bottom of the paying scale were discovered to be as low as $2 per month, not much of a material incentive for hard work.124 In addition, salaries were in arrears by eight to ten months. In rebel areas no salaries had been paid for the past thirty-seven months.125 Not that the private sector was doing much better: Gécamines, for example, had a $170 million salary backlog for its 24,000 ernployees.126 In such circumstances the incentive for civil servants to develop private rackets of their own was considerable. In November 2001 a government report described the conditions of Congo River commerce as “catastrophic.” There were no fewer than fourteen different entities “controlling” the river traffic and stealing everything they could. After a police inquiry only four were allowed to remain in place.127 In a similar vein, fourteen division chiefs of the Finance Ministry were fired in Equateur after a direct check by the minister himself found them guilty of stealing $308,000 worth of civil servants’ salaries.128

  Slowly, the donor community, which had been keeping the Zaire/Congo at arm’s length for the past fifteen years, began to stir. The Belgians were the first ones to move, Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt going to Kinshasa on June 26, 2001, with a 20 million emergency aid package in spite of fairly strong opposition at home.129 A month later Kinshasa went to the Paris donors’ meeting asking for a modest $156 million; it got $240 million. The World Bank and the IMF started discussing between themselves how to arrange for a relay credit of $800 million to pay the DRC arrears, as the only way to clear the old credit logjam that had accumulated. IMF Managing Director Horst Köhler summed up the situation from the donors’ point of view when he declared on May 3, 2002, “The DRC has instituted budgetary discipline and tackled exchange rate and price distortions in the economy. The Central Bank has conducted a prudent monetary policy. And there have been important improvements in the judicial and regulatory environment. As a result hyperinflation and the free fall in the value of currency have come to an end.” Such good behavior deserved a reward: on June 13 the IMF gave $750 million toward a Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility program. Because at the same time Belgium, South Africa, France, and Sweden had disbursed $522 million to pick up Congo’s IMF tab and the World Bank had given $450 million, everything was now ready for including the DRC into an HIPC program.130 In September the Club of Paris proceeded to reschedule $8.98 billion of the debt,131 which brought debt service down to $380 million between 2002 and 2005. The Congo could now breathe more freely. The relief was such that even “small” problems, such as a $50 million “hole” in the Central Bank accounts132 or the February 17, 2003, firing of respected finance minister Freddy Matungulu Mbuyamu, did not cause too much of an uproar.133

  The Congo was reemerging. Everything seemed to be going in the right direction. Except in the eastern provinces, where, paradoxically, the peace agreement had made things worse.

  The eastern sore: the continental conflict shrinks into sub-regional anarchy

  In a candid moment, RCD-G leader Azarias Ruberwa had called the eastern Congo “the thermometer of peace.”134 He was right, but he did not see that the approach of peace would be in itself a fever factor, sending everybody scrambling for positions. An important factor in those frenzied movements was the desire to position oneself vis-à-vis the various illegal economic interests that had been developed in the east over the past three years.135 There was an implicit feeling that, even if “peace” was achieved, it could be years before the eastern Congo would actually fall under Kinshasa’s full control. And in the meantime there would be a lot of money to be made for those state or nonstate actors who would know how to position themselves strategically.

  On the very day of Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s assassination the rebels announced their final “unification” under the Front de Libération du Congo (FLC) label. Wamba, who had never been very enthusiastic about the idea, had criticized it before its proclamation when he had declared to the Ugandan press, “It is easy to talk of unity between us. But what I see is more of us struggling for positions rather than any discussion of issues.”136 In January 2001 he strongly opposed the FLC as being simply a tool of Kampala to control the rebel movement through their man Bemba. Three days after Kabila’s murder Ngiti and Lendu warriors attacked Bunia, killing about one hundred Hema. The next day the Hema militia took revenge on Lendu civilians, killing over twenty-five.137 There was nothing that the FLC could do. Instead it was the FLC that had broken up between MLC and the RCD-ML faction now fully in the hands of Mbusa Nyamwisi. On Museveni’s orders Kazini and the UPDF expeditionary corps sided with Bemba and eventually forced him out of Beni.138 The FLC was in bad shape even before it managed to fully get off the ground. But by then everybody was fighting everybody else: FDD Burundian rebels supported by Zimbabwe attacked RCD-G units reinforced by the Rwandese in South Kivu;139 Mayi Mayi groups were fighting RPA and RCD-G forces in both Kivus; Mayi Mayi groups were at times fighting each other;140 and the FAC together with Mayi Mayi forces had attacked RCD-G and RPA units in Pania and Mutembo, north of Mbuji-Mayi.141 As the prospect of peace negotiations grew closer, the scramble for military positions in the still openly contested east accelerated. And with nine “organized” guerrilla movements plus at least seven or eight Mayi Mayi groups, all of which kept fluctuating to maximize their short-term tactical gains, the situation quickly reached a peak of violence and confusion.

  By mid-August 2001 Bemba threw in the towel and agreed to withdraw to Equateur. He and Mbusa agreed that his zone would extend to Bumba in the east, leaving Mbusa’s RCD-ML in control of the area from Butembo to Isiro. The in-between zone of Aketi-Buta-Bambesa-Niangara-Dungu remained undefined and was soon to be the scene of fierce fighting between Mbusa’s forces and Roger Lumbala’s, who had found a job as a proxy for the MLC. The ALIR II-FDD occupation of Fizi and the attack on Kindu (both in October 2001) were part of the jockeying for position before the “serious” peace conversations started.

  But it was the northeastern situation that was the worst, because of three factors: (1) the Ugandans desperately wanted to keep a foothold in the area and did not know whom to back in order to achieve this; (2) the Ituri conflict acted as a violence multiplier; and (3) Mbusa Nyamwisi had decided to ally himself with both Kampala and Kinshasa to push Bemba aside. For this he used the fact that Kazini and Salim Saleh had lost a lot when the FLC was created because, in exchange for his political engagement, Bemba had taken out a large slice of the UPDF officers’ benefits. Mbusa Nyamwisi offered more, and he swung them to his side. Then, by mid-October 2001, Mbusa was in Kinshasa, offering his services. He got money to distribute among the various Mayi Mayi groups in North Kivu and Province Orientale. Since Kabila rightly considered Bemba to be the main danger he agreed to follow Mbusa in drifting toward a rapprochement with Uganda.142 Their common fear of Kigali finally cemented the deal. Fueled by a struggle for gold and diamonds, based on the desire to marginalize Bemba and to isolate Kigali, the war in the northeast could now restart. The U.S. NGO Refugees International was right to call it “a slow-motion holocaust” but wrong to say that it had “no political or strategic rationale.” Simply, the nature of the rationale was so cold-bloodedly commercial that few observers dared to believe it. The cynicism of the UPDF and RCD-ML operators was particularly horrible because their strategy, rather noxious in itself, had the added drawback of playing itself out on the background of the Ituri conflict, that is, of a politically septic environment where “outside” elements immediately acquired an enormous “inside” dimension, producing large “unintended” massacres.143