71. The long-serving former foreign affairs minister had previously been demoted to minister without portfolio in the President’s Office. But he was still trying to reorganize the MDR to change it from its forced rubber-stamp role back into the real political party it had once been. This was not deemed acceptable by RPF stalwarts.
72. If the first accusation may have been right, the second was politically motivated. There again the “kinglet of the Hutu,” as Rwigiema was desultorily called in RPF extremist circles, was mainly “guilty” of having acquired an independent political base.
73. Daily Nation (Nairobi), January 8, 2000. Sebarenzi was indeed popular, both among Tutsi survivors and moderate Hutu. This was the cause of his downfall.
74. Imboni, February 2000. One of the articles joked, “By now some people are so scared of the DMI (Directorate of Military Intelligence) that they are afraid to dream.” As if to prove that point, three Imboni journalists were later arrested for putting together “a politically obscene publication.”
75. The “Gahini mafia” were Protestant Tutsi from the eastern part of the country (Kibungo, Mutara, and Byumba) who were entrusted with 80 percent of the top political and administrative jobs. As for the old expression akazu, it was by then again in common popular use, among both Tutsi and Hutu.
76. Interview with one of President Museveni’s top advisers, Kampala, September 2000.
77. La Lettre de l’Océan Indien, July 24, 1999; interviews in Kampala, September 2000. The first attempt took place at Salim’s Kampala home and the second at Minakuru (Gulu district). In the highly personalized East African context, such events, far from being anecdotal, acquire considerable political significance.
78. Ali Hussein was the brother of an associate of Naim Khanafer, the former “king of diamond smuggling” in late Mobutu Zaire. Prime Minister Kengo had tried to expel him from Kinshasa in 1995, but he failed because Khanafer enjoyed Baramoto’s and Nzimbi’s protection. Later his network was subdivided into two branches, that of Ali Hussein, who worked with the Rwandese, and that of “Khalil,” Mohamed Hassan, and “Talal,” who worked for Salim Saleh’s Victoria Enterprises Group. See the report by Pierre Lumbi’s Observatoire Gouvernance-Transparence, Guerre en RDC: Ses enjeux économiques, intérêts et acteurs, Kinshasa, April 18, 2000. Both branches of the Khanafer network collaborated in Antwerp through common subsidiaries.
79. Here again I am deeply indebted to my friend Peter Tygesen and his precious knowledge of the Kisangani mining scene. Interview, Paris, October 2000.
80. The UPDF had built up its forces during the past few days in anticipation of a showdown. But the Rwandese were quicker and, as in 1999, fought better. Interviews with UPDF officers who took part in the battle, Kampala, September 2000.
81. IRIN Bulletin, no. 923. (May 15, 2000).
83. IRIN Bulletin, no. 920 (May 10, 2000).
82. That fear was aggravated by the fact that Bemba had recruited a battalion of Banyamulenge hostile to Kigali and the RCD-G, with whom they had previously served. Interview with a pro-FRF Munyamulenge former fighter, Kampala, september 2000.
84. Colonel Semakula, talking to Africa 1, in BBC/SWB, May 19, 2000. This was the beginning of a long series of so-called evacuations, wherein the RPA used the RCD-G as an “independent” proxy.
85. ICRC and UN estimates a week after the fighting was over. Neither the RPA nor the UPDF ever precisely acknowledged their military losses. There was one Rwandese political victim, Maj. Wilson Rutaysire, the former head of the Rwandan Office of Information, who was shot by his friends because he opposed the war with Uganda.
86. Interview in New African, July/August 2000.
87. The Rwandese victory was again hollow from the mining point of view because the small mines of the Kisangani basin were scattered over a vast area and remained out of their reach. In November 2000 Kigali sent the RCD-G north in an attempt at reaching the Banalia zone and occupying the mines, but their men were stopped by a combined RCD-N-MLC force at Kondolole and beaten back to Kisangani. Interview with Roger Lumbala, Paris, March 2001.
88. International Rescue Committee, Mortality Survey in Eastern DRC, Bukavu, June 2000. Roberts’s findings have been criticized on the basis of having too small a sample (1,011 households with 7,339 people). But his methodology is serious, and, even if his results are to be considered as an order of magnitude rather than a precise figure, the overall result is the same.
89. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 1999/2000, 2000.
90. Bjorn Willum, “Foreign Aid to Rwanda: Purely Beneficial or Contributing to War?” PhD diss., University of Copenhagen, 2001.
91. Letter dated 28 February 2000 from the Chairman of the Panel of Experts established by the Security Council pursuant to Resolution 1237 (1999) addressed to the Chairman of the Security Council Committee established pursuant to Resolution 864 (1993) concerning the situation in Angola (henceforth referred to by the name of its panel chairman, Robert Fowler, as the Fowler Report).
92. IRIN Bulletin, no. 990 (August 16, 2000).
93. United Nations, Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, New York, April 2001. The report was dismissed by Kigali and Kampala as “French-inspired” because of the nationality of the panel’s chairperson. This accusation is not serious since there were people of several nationalities on the panel, including a U.S. citizen. A later updated report produced under the chairmanship of the Egyptian Mahmood Kassem, though it tended to delve more deeply into the looting carried out by the Zimbabweans, did not invalidate the first set of conclusions concerning Rwanda and Uganda.
94. See, for example, C. André and L. Lozolele, The European Union’s Aid Policy towards Countries Involved in the Congo War: Lever for Peace or Incitement to war? Brussels, Réseau Européen Congo, May 2001.
95. IRIN Bulletin, no. 879 (March 10, 2000).
96. Quoted in Willum, “Foreign Aid to Rwanda,” 105.
97. United Kingdom, Department for International Development, Rwanda: A Country Strategy Paper, September 1999, 3.
98. Reuters dispatch, Kigali, February 8, 1999.
99. In fact, the exact amounts were $35.5 million (1997) and $29.8 million (1998). The two amounts were in complete contradiction, both with total Rwandese exports to Belgium ($4 million/year) and with total registered Rwandese gold exports ($9.8 million). See UK Economist Intelligence Unit, Rwanda Country Profile, 2001, 27.
100. Sénat de Belgique, Commission d’Enquête Parlementaire, “Grands Lacs,” Compterendu de l’audition du ler mars 2002. The point about the separate bookkeeping was confirmed by the next report of the UN panel on illegal exploitation of Congolese resources (October 2002).
101. Reuters dispatch, Kampala, May 12, 2000. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries program had enabled Kampala to reduce its debt service from 27 percent of its budget in 1997–1998 to 11 percent in 2000–2001. In comparison, Defense stood at 30 percent. La Lettre de l’Ocean Indien, April 1, 2000.
102. IRIN Bulletin, no. 786 (October 25, 1999).
103. For the facts, see Madeleine Kalb, The Congo Cables (New York: Macmillan, 1985). For the (well-articulated) myth, see Katete Orwa, The Congo Betrayal: The UN-US and Lumumba (Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau, 1985).
104. MONUC stands for Mission des Nations Unies au Congo. Congolese popular wits soon turned it into “Monique,” because “like a beautiful woman it does nothing and costs a lot of money.”
105. IRIN Bulletin, no. 828 (December 22, 1999).
106. The deployment was authorized on February 24 by Resolution 1,291 with a rentarive budget of $200 million for the first six months.
107. IRIN interview, Kampala, March 22, 2000.
108. New Vision, March 24, 2000.
109. It was exactly the same for the Ugandan-backed MLC, but they were clever enough not to say it out loud.
110. IRIN Bulletin, no. 933 (M
ay 29, 2000).
111. IRIN Bulletin, no. 974 (July 25, 2000).
112. “Congo: A Snub from Kabila,” Economist, August 19, 2000.
113. La Lettre du Continent, August 24, 2000.
114. Le Monde, August 25, 2000.
115. Le Monde, August 26,2000. The story of the midnight telephone call from dos Santos was told to me by a French businessman who had unrestricted access to the Futungo Palace (Paris, November 2000).
116. IRIN Bulletin, no. 983 (August 7, 2000).
117. IRIN Bulletin, no. 998 (August 28, 2000).
118. IRIN Bulletin, no. 1, 049 (November 9, 2000). This Gaddafi initiative was linked to his plan for replacing the OAU with a new organization (today’s African Union), over which he hoped to have ulrimare control due to his financial clout.
119. IRIN Bulletin, no. 1,050 (November 10, 2000). During October, twenty-one of the thirty-two flights for which MONUC had asked for clearance were canceled by the government.
120. Radio Television Nationale Congolaise, in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (henceforth BBC/SWB), November 28, 2000. The RTNC reported only the storming out of Kagame and Museveni, not the reason for their sudden departure, which I learned during an interview in Kampala with a member of the Ugandan delegation (January 2001).
121. It most likely was not, and Laurent-Désité Kabila’s assassin probably managed to flee to Brazzaville, where his trail went cold. Private information from a businessman based in the Republic of Congo.
122. La Chaine Info (Paris), in BBC/SWB, January 16, 2001.
123. ZBC Radio (Harare) and Libyan TV (Tripoli), in BBC/SWB, January 17, 2001. Chamulesso later recanted, prerending that he had made a mistake and that Kabila was only wounded.
124. IRIN Press dispatch, Nairobi, January 17, 2001.
125. ZBC Radio, in BBC/SWB, January 18, 2001.
126. RTNC/Kinshasa, in BBC/SWB, January 17, 2001.
127. RTNC/Kinshasa, in BBC/SWB, January 18, 2001.
128. Stephen Smith and Antoine Glaser, “Ces enfants-soldats qui ont tué Kabila,” Le Monde, February 10, 2001.
129. For a good discussion of the account itself and of the criticisms it drew, see G. de Villers, Jean Omasombo, and Erik Kennes, Guerre et politique: Les trente derniers mois de L. D. Kabila (août 1998–janvier 2001) (Tervuren, Belgium: CEDAF, 2001), 320–323.
130. This is the position adopted by Pierre Bigras at his website, www.obsac.com (February 5–11,2001).
131. This is hinted at in F. Ryckmans, “Joseph Kabila, un mois après,” Politique, no. 20 (March–April 2001): 50–53.
132. This is the position of C. Braeckman, Les nouveaux prédateurs: Politique des puissances en Afrique Centrale (Paris: Fayard, 2003), 113–124. But since that author’s general thesis is that Central Africa is the locus of the vast geopolitical designs of foreign powers, it is logical that she would see the president’s murder as fitting within that pattern.
133. Upon Kabila’s death French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine commented, “He was quite unbelievable, he looked like a character out of Star Wars.”
134. See chapter 4.
135. Interview with several former AFDL officers, Kampala, January 2001, and Nairobi, October 2001.
136. For a general treatment of the child soldiers phenomenon in Central Africa, see Hervé Cheuzeville, Kadogo: Enfants des guerres d’Afrique Centrale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003), particularly 173–296, which deal with the DRC. See also Amnesty International, DRC: Children at War, London, September 2003.
137. AIDS started as a regional pandemic during the late 1970s, spreading at first when the Tanzanian army advancing into Uganda to overthrow Idi Amin went through Karagwe and Rakaï, which were perhaps the two “original” AIDS regions.
138. See chapter 2.
139. I am indebted for that insight to Lieve Joris, who first mentioned it to me in early 1999 in Paris while talking about the death of a kadogo who served under the Munyamulenge officer who later became the hero of her “real-life novel” L’heure des rebelles (Arles: Actes Sud, 2007). She knew the man to be a ruthless fighter. But when he came home splattered with the blood of his thirteen-year-old aide who had been shot next to him in an ambush, he was crying.
140. Smith and Glaser, “Ces enfants-soldats qui ont tué Kabila.”
141. See chapter 5.
142. His social climbing was achieved through the South Kivu NGO network during the 1990s, and he had always kept a very sharp ear for Kivutian popular moods. Interview with his uncle Aristide Bambaga Chahihabwa, Kampala, January 2001.
143. The Rwandese president placed very high hopes on Masasu because he had a Tutsi mother and had worked for the RPF during the anti-Habyarimana war. During his face-to-face meeting with Kabila in Eldoret on June 2, Kagame asked the Congolese president, who had recently freed Masasu, to give him back an important position in the FAC. Interview with a Ugandan ESO agent, Kampala, November 2000.
144. It is at this point that some observers see possible Rwandese input in the murder plot because certain politicians, such as Patient Mwendanga, who were later to play secessionist politics in South Kivu with Kigali’s support, were part of Masasu Nindaga’s network. Interview with Kivutian exiles, Washington, DC, October 2003.
145. See CODHO, Rapport succinct sur la persécutions dont sont victimes les ressortissants des provinces du Nord Kivu, Sud Kivu et Maniema à Kinshasa, Kinshasa, December 30, 2000, quoted in de Villers et al., Guerre et politique, 325, and Amnesty International communiqué, January 9, 2001.
146. After Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s assassination RCD-G tried to cash in on Masasu’s personal aura by digging up his body and organizing a solemn reburial in Bukavu. The local population was not impressed and stoned the funeral convoy. Misna website, April 17, 2001.
147. Radio Television Nationale Congolaise/Kinshasa, in BBC/SWB, December 16, 2000.
148. IRIN Bulletin, no. 1,076 (December 19, 2000). The story of these inhuman orders was gathered by humanitarian workers taking care of the boys after they fled to Zambia.
149. Ibid.
150. I am referring here to Tony Hodges’s brilliant characterization of the Angolan regime’s evolution used in the title of his book Angola: From Afro-Stalinism to Petro-Diamond Capitalism (Oxford: James Currey, 2001).
151. In August 2001 he was charged with conspiring to overthrow President Joseph Kabila.
152. La lettre du Continent, August 24,2000. The fact that the president kept diamonds in his office was well known; after he was shot one of his assistants, Annie Kalumbo, quickly sneaked into his office and stole a bag containing several thousand dollars worth of gems. See www.obsac.com, October 14–20,2002. She was later caught and tried.
153. Africa Confidential 41, no. 20 (October 13, 2000).
154. In another apocryphal story the Lebanese and Kabila had all been killed because of a gangland-like settling of accounts between diamond traffickers. As for Colette Braeckman (Les Nouveaux prédateurs, 112), she mistakes the whole murdered Khanafer family, children included, for “a commando” supposedly in charge of killing L. D. Kabila.
155. The suspicion could have been true since four of the murder victims (Mohamed Khanafer and his three sons) were close blood relatives of Naïm Khanafer, the old Zaire “diamond king.” But six of the victims were younger than eighteen, including three young children. AFP dispatch from Aynatta in Lebanon, March 9, 2001. Mwenze Kongolo said they had been shot by soldiers who thought them responsible for the president’s assassination and called the massacre “an unfortunate incident.” Associated Press dispatch, Kinshasa, March 7,2001.
156. A postassassination communiqué by the CNRD claiming that it had been behind the president’s killing was simply an effort to revive a dead movement and to claim posthumous vengeance for Kisase Ngandu. This is the only point where Smith and Glaser got it wrong: the group of kadogo who organized Kabila’s murder had nothing to do with either Uganda or the ghost of the CNRD.
157. Confidential information give
n by two independent sources, one Angolan and one French, Paris, February and March 2001.
158. This was noted in the International Crisis Group report From Kabila to Kabila: Prospects for Peace in the Congo, Nairobi/Brussels, March 2001, note 47. It was confirmed to me by the above-mentioned Angolan source and by a highranking member of Mzee’s entourage (who later managed to fit nicely in Joseph Kabila’s circle of close advisers).
159. Interview with Antoine Rozés, Paris, February 6, 2001. Kapend added that the Zimbabweans would not like it either.
160. Kapend also had a politically loaded past: he had been in charge of Governor Kyungu wa Kumwanza’s security during the expulsion of the Kasaïan Baluba from Shaba (Karanga) in 1992–1994.
Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe Page 67