Congo-Kinshasa: A Call for American Action

Save the Congo (London)

Eric Miller

28 March 2011

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We are reminded in light of the ongoing crises in Libya and Japan that American leadership in the world is still indispensible. American hegemony may be in decline and the world order may be shifting to a multi-polar system, but for now – and for the next few decades – the leadership of men and women in both ends of the Pennsylvania Avenue in tackling the world’s ailments is critical to saving lives and safeguarding human rights and human dignity of the world’s less fortunate. We at Save the Congo wish to remind the United States and its people that there is another tragedy still unfolding that has not been in newspaper headlines: the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The world has largely failed to notice the Congo—the world’s largest failed state, “rape capital of the world,” and home to the most lethal conflict since the Second World War. To address many of the Congo’s ailments, we must first debunk many of the myths surrounding the Congo Wars. If there is to be any hope of bringing peace to the Congo, there must be understanding.

The first and most common misunderstanding about the Congo Wars is that they were primarily civil wars. In truth, the Congo Wars were both primarily state-on-state wars. The First Congo War (1996-1997) was an inter-state war between Rwanda and the former government of Zaire. Rwanda used proxy Congolese militia forces to install a puppet government in Kinshasa and portray its invasion as a civil war. Armies of Uganda, Angola and Burundi aided Rwanda. This act of aggression was illegal under the UN Charter but was largely overlooked by the international community out of sympathy for Rwanda and loathing for the dictatorial and kleptocratic government of Zaire under former President Joseph Mobutu. Mobutu, until the early 1990s had been the darling of the west, the US was even instrumental in bring him to power and sustaining his 32 year rule.  Rwanda invaded Zaire to purge members of the Rwandan paramilitary organization responsible for the Rwandan Genocide, the Interahamwe, who had fled in 1994 to  eastern Congo, Mobutu had been ally of the former Habyarimana regime. These forces were surrounded by two million refugees, and feared retaliation by the new Rwandan government. Rwanda had – and still has – legitimate security concerns in the Congo, but this does not justify its actions or its allies’, as outlined by the UN Mapping Report published in October 2010.

The Second Congo War (1998-2003), the largest war in modern African history, was kicked off when newly installed President Laurent-Désiré Kabila decided to exercise sovereignty over his country’s borders by expelling his former Rwandan and Ugandan patrons. A modern parallel would be if Hamid Karzai had expelled American and NATO forces from Afghanistan soon after the initial invasion. In response, Rwanda orchestrated a rebellion in the Congo’s eastern provinces by creating a new proxy militia, the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD), and launching a sneak attack on the capital of Kinshasa by hijacking a group of cargo planes in Goma and flying them 2000 kilometers to Kitona, near the Atlantic Ocean. This rearguard offensive failed due to Angola’s timely intervention. The Congo then enlisted the help of Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Chad, and to a lesser extent Sudan to wage war against Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and their proxy militia forces, the RCD and Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC).

For Angola, intervening to save Laurent Kabila was a matter of national security: Angola feared it would loose control of its enclave, Cabinda (where Angola derives much of its oil wealth) if an unsympathetic government took power in Kinshasa, in addition the Congo be used once again as a staging ground for UNITA to continue its decades long civil war against Angola. Namibia joined largely to second Angola; Mugabe, and his generals, saw the Congo wars as an opportunity to enrich themselves. The Congo also armed its own proxy forces, the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), the successors to the Interahamwe and former Rwandan military. The Congo also armed the Mai Mai, tribal militias who can be considered like the Mujahedeen, who the US armed during the Cold War to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Over the course of the war, Rwandan, Ugandan, and proxy forces occupied over half of the Congo, a country the size of Western Europe or US east of Mississippi River. This occupation led to a complete brake down in Congolese society followed by systemic human rights abuses, gang rape, arbitrary massacres and other atrocities . The Second Congo War has become to be known as Africa’s Great War.

Due to the complexity of the conflict, the shifting nature of the alliances, the number of actors, and the West’s general ignorance of African politics, it was simpler for Western media to deem the conflict a civil war, an ethnic conflict, a tribal conflict, another African war over resources, or simply anarchy. War is an expensive enterprise, so during the Cold War, African governments and militias turned to Washington or Moscow for funding. After the Cold War, conflicts had to become self-financing, leading to the pillaging of the Congo’s vast mineral wealth. This same pattern was repeated throughout Africa and led to Paul Collier’s explanation of civil war as “greed and grievance.” An alternate view to “greed” as a driver is that grievances lead to rebellion, requiring money earned usually through illegal means, and over time the pursuit of wealth becomes the objective itself. To call the Congo Wars “wars of resources” would be like calling the wars in Afghanistan wars over heroin. There are certainly warlords in the Congo and Afghanistan purely motivated by greed, but this ignores the political context.

All warring parties in the Second Congo War ignored every standard of international humanitarian law. Rape was not only endemic, but a tool of war used to terrorize, punish and humiliate the population into submission and to displace residents for occupation and sometimes to illegal extract the Congo’s resources to finance their military campaigns. There is some debate into the exact number of deaths in the Second Congo War, most put the figure between 2.8 million to five million dead.

The Second Congo War ended three years after the Lusaka ceasefire accord; and two years after the puzzling assassination of the Laurent Kabila, who was replaced by his son Joseph Kabila, 28 at the time. Laurent Kabila was an impediment to the peace process; he openly mocked the UN mediator and was an old-school communist, which did not endear him to Washington. His son Joseph Kabila was more practical and less ideological, and turned to the Bush administration in 2001 for help. After years of negotiation, a transitional power-sharing government was drawn up and the invading armies as well as the Congo’s allies left in 2003. To oversee the peace process, the UN sent a poorly armed, undermanned force – MONUSCO (formerly MONUC) – to the Congo. This peacekeeping mission’s mandate and forces have been modified repeatedly in response to crisis after crisis for the last eleven years.

Although the formal war ended, Rwanda maintained a proxy militia force inside the Congo. Rwanda’s replacement for the RCD was the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), formerly led by renegade general Laurent Nkunda. This force is comprised of Banyamulenge (Congolese ethnic Tutsis) and, at times, members of Rwanda’s military pretending to be members of the CNDP. The CNDP’s stated purposes are to protect the Congolese’s ethnic Tutsi population and eliminate the FDLR, a group that downplays the Rwandan genocide, claims to originate as the real voice of the Hutu people in Rwanda, and wants peace in Rwanda but under a coalition government. It should also be noted that only a small percentage of FDLR fighters took part in the actual genocide since seventeen years have passed, however long enough for a new generation to be indoctrinated into the FDLR’s radical campaign.

For the Rwandan government, it is an unpalatable option to open negotiations with the FDLR to form a power-sharing government. Indeed, the Rwandan government under President Paul Kagame has used the specter of the FDLR to silence internal dissent and crack down on opposition as inciting genocide. The government of Rwanda has even accused Paul Rusesabagina (the real hero of Hotel Rwanda and a patron of Save the Congo) of being a member of the FDLR. Disarming the FDLR will eliminate any future justification for Rwanda to reinvade the Congo or support a proxy force to that end. Make no mistake: the FDLR is a real threat to Rwanda’s security. Militarily, its forces – numbering between 3,000 and 6,000 troops – are no match for Rwanda’s powerful Spartan army, but its members, particularly in the diaspora, can disseminate propaganda to Rwanda’s 85% Hutu population to incite a rebellion. The proxy war between the DRC and Rwanda nearly led to an open war during the end of 2008-early 2009. Without the restraining influence of Western governments there would have certainly have been a Third Congo War, hence the importance on removing the destabilizing influence of these militia forces from the equation.

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