Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe
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110. Nord-Sud Export, November 8, 2002.
111. Obsac website, December 17, 2002.
112. The best overview of the situation can be found in the March 22, 2002, Nord-Sud Export special report on the state of the DRC economy.
113. Office of Foreign Disasters Assistance, Annual Report, Washington, Dc, May 22, 2002.
114. World Bank, African Economic Indicators, Washington, DC, 2003, 33.
115. Fao report, quoted in IRIN dispatch, October 25, 2001.
116. International Rescue Committee, Mortality in the DRC, Washington, DC, [third report], April 2003.
117. World Bank communiqué, Paris, July 3, 2001.
118. CID Bulletin, October 15–25, 2001.
119. The three (IDI, Primogen, and Tofen) were all Israeli. IDI had fallen back in the common lot and was not operating as a monopoly any more. The first counter to be fined for nonperformance was Top International, which had to pay $796,952 in April 2002. Africa Mining Intelligence, April 17, 2002.
120. But by July it had climbed back down to 210, reflecting a growing confidence in the economic stabilization.
121. IRIN Bulletin, no. 1,191 (June 1, 2001).
122. Africa Mining Intelligence, July 3, 2002.
123. Africa Mining Intelligence, July 17, 2002. This was the Dikulushi copper mining project, which implied about $20 million in new investment.
124. IRIN Bulletin, no. 1,268 (September 18, 2001).
125. This later developed into a major political row, since, to boost its position at the negotiating table, Kinshasa decided to start paying civil servants’ salaries in rebel areas. The MLC promptly confiscated the first instalment and the RCD-G refused the money. The public relations benefit for Kinshasa was considerable.
126. Africa Mining Intelligence, February 6, 2002. In July 2002 Gécamines started negotiating with the unions to lay off 10,000 of its now largely redundant 24,000 workforce. Africa Mining Intelligence, July 17, 2002.
127. ONATRA, the police, OFIDA (customs), and DGM (migrations). African Press Agency dispatch, November 15, 2001. Some of those asked to leave had to be threatened with physical force to make them go.
128. Réseau Européen Congo Report, January 21, 2002.
129. By late 2001 the situation had improved sufficiently for a whole group of fédération des Entreprises de Belgique companies to attend the Kikwit meeting at which their work in rebel-held areas was discussed. Joseph Kabila magnanimously declared, “The last three years, we should forget them.” Africa Mining Intelligence, September 26, 2001.
130. Nord-Sud Export, June 21, 2002. By then money was coming in in reasonable quantities: the Ninth European Union FED program had earmarked 120 million for the Congo and discussions were under way to untangle the DRC mess at the BAD, whose Congolese debts arrears of $813 milion represented 60 percent of the Bank’s liabilities and therefore had to be dealt with to avoid its possible collapse into insolvency.
131. The Club of Paris held between $9 billion and $10.2 billion of the total Congolese debt, depending on whether a global figure of $12.47 billion or $14.3 billion was adopted (the difference came from the calculation of the arrears). See Prosper Mamimami Kabare, Dette extérieure de la RDC: Encours, gestion et perspectives d’annulation, Kinshasa, FODEX, September 2002.
132. Nord-Sud Export, December 20, 2002.
133. Matungulu was sacrificed to appease the old Kabilist hard core, which accused him of having refused money to Zimbabwe (Harare had taken to claiming $1.8 billion from Kinshasa since the beginning of 2003), of not disbursing funds for extrabudgetary military expenses, and of not using recently acquired monies to reimburse the internal debt. This last accusation was silly because Matungulu was contractually obliged to use these funds for ADB and World Bank reimbursements. But Yerodia Ndombasi and the comités du Pouvoir Populaire (CPP) kept attacking “international capitalism,” for which the finance minister seemed to be the local symbol. They also agitated against the Pretoria Agreement, which they called “a sellout.” This led President Kabila to eventually disband the CPP on March 8, 2003.
134. IRIN Bulletin, no. 1,148 (April 3, 2001).
135. From that point of view the first Report of the UN Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of National Resources in the DRC (April 2001) was a major political breakthrough. The history of the struggle to prevent or modify its publication, due not to the African names named but rather to those of their European and American business partners, would in itself deserve an article.
136. New Vision, August 18, 2000. This sadly realistic observation could have later been used as a commentary on the results of the Pretoria peace process.
137. For an overview of the Ituri up to late 2003, see G. Prunier, “The ‘Ethnic’ Conflict in the Ituri District,” in J. P. Chrétien and R. Banegas, eds., The Recurring Great Lakes Crisis (London: Hurst, 2007), 180–204.
138. Radio France Internationale, in BBC/SWB, June 11, 2001.
139. Net Press dispatch, Bujumbura, March 31, 2001. Mugabe’s idea was to deflect the war from the Congo and take it to Rwanda and Burundi. It was the same policy that led to the ALIR I attack on northern Rwanda in May–June 2001.
140. The Rwandese DMI had done a fairly good job of turning around several Mayi Mayi groups. Some, like the Mudundu 40 movement, had become regular allies of Kigali.
141. RTNC-Goma, in BBC/SWB, April 4, 2001.
142. La Libre Belgique, January 9, 2002.
143. For an evaluation of this contagion phenomenon, see Human Rights Watch Africa, Ituri: Covered in Blood, Washington, DC, July 2003; Prunier, “The ‘ethnic’ conflict in the Ituri District.”
144. The question of their citizenship, which had been one of the key pretexts of the war, was bound to resurface in any kind of in-depth inter-Congolese dialogue.
145. IRIN dispatch, April 2, 2002.
146. Mbusa’s main lieutenant, Sylvain Mbuki, was killed along with eleven of his men in Mbigi, between Butembo and Kanyabayonga. New Vision, December 11, 2001.
147. Réseau Européen Congo report, November 29, 2001.
148. International Crisis Group, The Kivus: Forgotten Crucible of the Congo Conflict, Brussels, January 2003.
Chapter 9
1. Angola was aiming for a daily oil production of one million barrels in 2003 and has over $15 billion of assessed diamond reserves. Nord-Sud Export, September 20, 2002.
2. By February 2002 UNITA was already in desperate straits. Even if the story according to which Savimbi was located by U.S. GPS tracking of his satellite telephone is true (there are strong doubts because during the guerrilla leader’s last few days his phone battery was dead), this was only a marginal factor: Savimbi was defeated and on the run, desperately trying to take refuge in Zambia. Confidential interview, Addis-Ababa, November 2002.
3. International Crisis Group, Dealing with Savimbi’s Ghost: The Security and Humanitarian Challenges in Angola, Brussels, February 2003, 5. Most of the war’s vanquished are still languishing to this day.
4. President dos Santos quoted in Economic Intelligence Unit, Angola Country Profile, 2006, 6.
5. The German advocacy NGO Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik could already call its December 1998 study of Zimbabwe A Conflict Study of a Country without Direction.
6. In December 2000, three hundred Zimbabwean soldiers had been court-martialled for refusing to serve in the Congo. Financial Gazette (Harare), January 11, 2001. The popular singer and former freedom fighter Thomas Mapfumo, who was sharply critical of the war on his 1999 album Chamurorwa, was eventually forced to leave the country.
7. Financial Gazette (Harare), February 13, 2003. This later remained the official position of the Zimbabwean authorities. In December 2003, during a conference on the Great Lakes conflict held in Dar-es-Salaam, I was still taken to task by representatives of the Harare government for having suggested that the Zimbabwean intervention in the Congo had had economic motives. They offered instead a purely legalistic explanation linked with
the respect of SADC rules on aggrieved national sovereignty.
8. This is the expression used in a UN report (October 2002) which was published soon after.
9. Herald (Harare), August 24, 2002.
10. Zimbabwe Independent, August 9, 2002. Between 1982 and 1992 Zimbabwe sent fifteen thousand soldiers to Mozambique to help the government fight the RENAM a insurgency.
11. Both CNDD-FDD and FNL guerrillas still have important rear bases in the DRC.
12. For a clear analysis of the Agreement and its consequences, see International Crisis Group, Burundi: Ni guerre, ni paix, Brussels, December 2000.
13. Jean-Bosco Ndayikengurukiye and Pierre Nkurunziza for the CNDD-FDD, Agathon Rwasa and Cossan Kabura for the FNL. Both organizations were split between “moderate” and “radical” wings, the difference being largely due to the degree of proximity to the fighters on the ground. The leaders who had been abroad for too long, like Ndayikengurukiye, who was Kabila’s man in Lubumbashi, tended to be rejected by the more aggressive rank and file.
14. Alain Mugabarabona replaced Cossan Kabura as the head of FNL. But he failed to displace Agathon Rwasa, who retreated, especially after he was wounded by his rivals in May 2002, into an increasingly convoluted mystical world wherein the Hutu symbolically took the place of the Babylon-suffering Jews in the Old Testament. Many radical Hutu followed Rwasa and his righthand man, Pasteur Habimana, into their flight from reality. Conversations with René Lemarchand, Dar-es-Salaam, December 2003.
15. For an interesting retrospective view of this period, see Augustin N sanze, Le Burundi contemporain: L’Etat-Nation en question (1956–2002) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003), 61–149, as well as the works by M. Manirakiza Nsanze refers to.
16. For a reflection on this geopolitical interface between central-Sahelian Africa and the Great Lakes, see Gérard Prunier, “Les Grands Lacs ont-ils coulé jusqu’en Afrique Centrale?” Enjeux (Yaoundé), no. 17 (October–December 2003).
17. Economist, April 24, 1999.
18. Including Nelson Mandela.
19. On the Sudan-Uganda conflict in the Congo, see Gérard Prunier, “Rebel Movements and Proxy Warfare: Uganda, Sudan and the Congo (1986–1999),” African Affairs 103, no. 412 (2004): 359–383.
20. Parasse is a Central African Republic Sara while Kolingba is a Central African Republic Yakoma. In both cases transborder electoral support came from fellow tribesmen of a different nationality.
21. The motivation was tactical: Bemba needed Bangui’s support to fly in supplies and to truck in fuel. It was also political: a number of rival Mobutists, including Jean Séti Yale and General Baramoto, were trying to turn Patasse against him to replace him at the head of the Equateur-based guerrilla group.
22. IRIN dispatch, Nairobi, June 19, 200l.
23. La lettre de l’Océan Indien, May 26, 2001.
24. See “Tarnished Victory,” Economist, March 17, 2001; “Ungracious Winner,” Africa Confidential 42, no. 7 (April 6, 2001).
25. La lettre de l’Océan Indien, April 21, 200l.
26. “Sommet rwando-ougandais à Londres pour éviter la guerre,” Le Monde, November 6, 2001; “Kagame, Museveni in Peace Meeting,” IRIN dispatch, Nairobi, November 6, 200l.
27. The Congo conflict was estimated to cost $60 million/year. Institute of Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2001–2002, London, 2002.
28. New Vision, February 25, 2002. This renewed northern threat was soon to develop into the major security nightmare of the Ugandan regime.
29. Fifty-six percent of Uganda’s recurrent expenditure budget and 100 percent of its development budget were financed by foreign aid. At the beginning of 2002 Denmark slashed $3.2 million from its aid package as a warning, specifically linking this reduction with Kampala’s military expenditure and the Congo war. New Vision, February 6, 2002.
30. Museveni’s attitude often strangely echoed the White Man’s Burden outlook of yesteryear. When the first UN Report on the Illegal Exploitation of Congolese Resources put Uganda on the spot, his instinctive reaction was to pour scorn on the Congo: “They say we are there to get gold and diamonds. But for me, each time I have been there, I have only seen people eating monkeys and caterpillars.”
31. For a lucid debunking of that typically Congolese myth, see René Lefort, “Les ennemis rapprochés du Congo,” Libération, August 1, 2003.
32. For a historical and political treatment of the Ituri horror, see Gérard Prunier, “The ‘Ethnic’ Conflict in Iruri District,” in J. P. Chrétien and R. Banegas, eds., The Recurring Great Lakes Crisis (London: Hursr, 2008), 180–204.
33. Actually, in several cases Kigali tried to “recycle” exactly the same guerrilla groups (ADF remnants, the FUNA of Taban Amin, bits and pieces of UNRF II) that Khartoum had used in the past. Rwanda’s problem was that these organizations, never very strong in the first place, had by then largely degenerated into banditry.
34. By 2003 there were 50,000 deaths and 500,000 IDPs and cannibalism was a common practice. The best description of this human rights catastrophe can be found in Human Rights Watch Africa, Ituri: Covered in Blood: Ethnically Targeted Violence in North-Eastern Congo, New York, July 2003.
35. AP dispatch, Dar-es-Salaam, February 10, 2003.
36. New Vision, March 12, 2003.
37. The People’s Redemption Army was a very shadowy outfit; in its only verified fight against it, the Ugandan army said it had killed three and captured twenty-two. New Vision, March 19, 2003. But Kigali protested that they were “people who have been paid money to pretend they are rebels with the aim of tarnishing our government.” New Times (Kigali), March 24–26, 2003.
38. The Porter Commission was set up as a counterweight to the UN panel on the illegal exploitation of Congolese resources. Its conclusions were only a partial exoneration of Ugandan government activity in the Congo. New Vision, May 15,2003.
39. By then the Lendu FNI and “Commander” Jerome Kakwavu Bokonde’s multiethnic FAPC in Mahagi. When Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan denounced this criminal association during a trip to East Africa, she was rebuked indignantly by the Ugandan authorities. IRIN dispatch, Kampala, October 22, 2003.
40. New Vision, June 4, 2003.
41. IRIN dipatch, Kampala, October 28,2003.
42. Press conference, Washington, DC, November 14,2003.
43. In a particularly rough display of gallows humor, many of the big new houses built in Kigali during the past four or five years were nicknamed “vive le génocide” (long live the genocide) since all the owners were Tutsi.
44. While it was extremely difficult to verify the number of RPA troops left behind after October 2002, it does not seem to have been very large (probably around four thousand) because Kigali’s strategy was increasingly to train local militias rather than to fight directly. The exceptions had to do with technical personnel. Interview with diplomatic sources, Dar-es-Salaam, December 2003.
45. Tous Pout le Développement was entirely made up of local Hutu, many of them former members of MAGRIVI, the pro-Kigali network during the 1990–1994 war. Thus the old “Hutu Power” supporters remained at the service of the Rwandese regime, even if it was now Tutsi-led.
46. Fot detailed (even if partisan) information on these new networks of Rwandese influence in the Congo, see ASADHO, Rapport sur les manoeuvres en couts dans l’Est et le Nord-Est de la RDC, Kinshasa, August 2003; Observatoire Gouvernance Transparence, Le Rwanda plante le decor d’une nouvelle guerre d’agression à l’Est de la RDC, Kinshasa, September 2003.
47. The means employed could be a bit rough. One of Bizimungu’s assistants, Gratien Munyarubuga, was shot dead by “persons unknown” after visiting the former president at home. See Human Rights Watch Africa report, New York, January 13, 2002.
48. IRIN dispatch, Nairobi, April 25, 2002; Le Monde, May 21,2002.
49. IRIN Press dispatch, Kigali, June 8, 2004.
50. Amnesty International communiqué, April 24, 2003.
51. Eco
nomist, May 31,2003.
52. PSD, Parti Libéral, the Islamic Party, and the tiny Parti Syndical Rwandais. East African, July 7, 2003.
53. IRIN dispatch, Nairobi, August 8, 2003.
54. “President Uses Memory of Genocide to Win Votes,” Guardian, August 25, 2003.
55. Voting was done by putting one’s fingerprint opposite the name of the candidate of one’s choice. When “wrong” votes were inadvertently forgotten they could always be canceled by the simple process of putting a second fingerprint in front of another box, thereby nullifying the ballot. Interview with the journalist Jean-Philippe Rémy, an eyewitness, on August 31, 2003. The international observers were not fooled, but they gave a passing verdict anyway. See “Kagame Won, a Little Too Well,” Economist, August 30, 2003.