Virunga National Park: Explaining Conservation Amidst Chaos

A thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University A S In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree POLT Master of Arts • H3T- In

Political Science

by

Sean Everett Harris

San Francisco, California

August 2016 Copyright by Sean Everett Harris 2016 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read Virunga National Park: Conservation Amidst Chaos by Sean

Everett Harris, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in

Political Science at San Francisco State University.

Jami^Martel, PhD Professor Virunga National Park: Explaining Conservation Amidst Chaos

Sean Everett Harris San Francisco, California August 2016

This thesis investigates the way in which a mid-level government agency of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a failed state, was able to successfully achieve conservation goals in a post-war context in the 1990s and first decades of the 21st century. This thesis argues that the agency, the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation, was able to meet its strategic goals through a tactical approach to social and political issues. This thesis argues that the agency began to provide governance—specifically, public service provisioning, security, and agenda setting—for the region. I suggest the case offers insights into alter-states, with governance provided by an entity other than the central state apparatus of that given territory.

I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis.

fl- IA<^ . S ^ Z o ( (3 Date ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to acknowledge my committee members, Professor Nicole Watts and Professor

James Martel. The amount of editing Professor Watts did for me was perhaps inhumane of me to ask of one woman. She provided pointed criticism where necessary and encouragement on exactly the days that were filled with discouragement. By recommending specific texts for me to read, namely Foucault’s Security, Territory, and

Population lectures, Professor Martel gave this paper the theoretical soul for which it had been wanting. I also want to acknowledge my dear friend Kenneth Sexauer, who not only edited each version of each chapter before I sent them to Professors Watts and Martel, but providing a sounding board for my arguments as I developed them. Lastly, I also must acknowledge the numerous faculty and staff of SFSU as well as my family who, though not mentioned here by name, gave me guidance, support, and the relief of friendship along the way.

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Introduction...... 1

Section 1: Research Puzzle - Besieged Park as Conservation Oasis...... 4

Section 2: The State-in-Society Approach and the Melange Model...... 8

Section 3: Tracking the Three Shifts in Virunga...... 10

Section 4: Methodology...... 13

Section 5: Thesis Organization...... 14

Chapter 2: Literature Review...... 16

Section 1: Conceptualizing State Failure (in the Developing World)...... 18

Section 2: Governance Solutions to State Failure ...... 25

Section 3: Conservation in Troubled areas: the Revolving door of Conflict and Environmental Degradation...... 33

Section 4: (Towards a Theory of) Green Peacemaking and Sustainable Governance...... 37

Section 5: Summing up the State Failure and Conflict Resolution Literature in the Context of Virunga National Park ...... 43

Chapter 3: Effects of State Failure on Conservation in Virunga National Park...... 45

Section 1: The Flora and Fauna of Virunga National Park...... 45

Section 2: Applying State Failure Theory to the Democratic Republic of the Congo -1996 to the Present...... 49

Section 3: The Rwandan Genocide and the Refugee Crisis in the Eastern DRC Effects on Virunga...... 53

Section 4: Foreign Correspondents in Post-Bellum Virunga ...... 58 Section 5: Embattled Virunga Fights back: Rebels on Retreat Double Down...... 61

Chapter 4: Conservation and Conflict in the Eastern Congolese Melange ...... 66

Section 1: Migdal’s Concept of the Melange...... 72

Section 2: Social Grouping in the Eastern Congo...... 77

Section 3: Dividing Lines in the Eastern Congolese Melange ...... 96

Chapter 5: Virunga National Park’s State-building Tactics and Conservation Strategy 102

Section 1: The Leveraging of Virunga National Park’s Symbolic Importance... 104

Section 2: Developing Sustainable Industries in Virunga National Park: Tourism, Fishing, and Agro-Industry...... 109

Section 3: Providing Governance in Virunga National Park...... 115

Section 4: Tactical Governance Enables Conservation Goals in Virunga National P ark ...... 120

Chapter 6: Conclusions and Implications 123

References...... 131 Chapter 1: Introduction

In 1993, fleeing the violence of the Rwandan genocide, refugees began to enter the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) through North Kivu, a province far to the east of the capital city of the DRC, Kinshasa (Steams 2012). Parc National des Virunga

(Virunga National Park) sat at what was the epicenter of the conflict, and while not completely insulated from the fighting, park staff was able to both maintain a semblance of order and expand its conservation efforts. As early as 1988, in conflicts that preceded the genocide, anti-Rwandan rebels began operating in and near the park (Prunier 2009,

25). In the aftermath of the genocide, the strain on the park vastly increased, with hundreds of thousands of refugees camping in and around the park from 1993 to 1996

(Prunier 2009, 25). On October 27, 2007, more than a decade after the genocide, Congres national pour la defense du peuple or National Congress for the Defense of the People

(CNDP) rebels seized the headquarters of the park (CNN 2008, Rosen 2014). Because of the violence in and around the park forced park rangers, off and on, to hide in the jungles of the park, often for months at a time. This because even being associated with the national government meant death at the hands of anti-government rebels.

Despite the violence and subsequent refugee crisis, park leaders have been able to push forward with conservation efforts. That the park has been able to effectively recuperate operations is critical due to its high value as a home to nearly a third of the roughly 900 remaining silverback gorillas in the world, with nearly 250 silverbacks living 2

in the park itself (Jenkins 2008). In the first decade of the new century, despite the sporadic activity of armed groups in the park (10 gorillas were killed by rebels since

2007), the population of gorillas in the park increased by almost 20 percent (Jenkins

2008). Additionally, the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN), or the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation, the Congolese ministry tasked with the management of all national parks in the DRC, has been able to decrease charcoal smuggling in the park (Virunga 2016). The illicit charcoal trade had reached a high point in the years (1995-2000) following the Rwandan Genocide in large part due to the subsequent refugee crisis in the Eastern Congo. However, because of a perceivably stabilizing environment in the first decade of the new millennium—and despite the continued presence of active rebel groups—Virunga has seen tourism rise from zero visitors in 2008 to over 3,000 in 2011, bringing with them revenue and legitimacy for the park (Natasegara 2014).1

Additionally, park authorities have been able to stave off a prospective venture by

SOCO international, a British petroleum company that bought a concession from the

Kinshasa government to conduct explorations within and around the park for oil.2 This

1 That there are two parks, Parc National des Volcans (Volcanoes National Park) in Rwanda and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in Uganda, that are conjoined with Virunga forming a large swath o f territory that serves as a refuge for roughly 450 total gorillas. Additionally, there is Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda that is home to the remaining mountain gorillas. These three parks, similarly exposed to instability as Virunga was, serve as excellent comparisons to Virunga in-so-far as they offer examples of other agencies have dealt with relative instability and have managed to return to a functional state. There is much to be said on this subject, which will be thoroughly covered in Section One of Chapter Four. 2 That the Kinshasa government sold a concession to SOCO to look for oil within the land marked for conservation demonstrates the lack of the government’s commitment to the law. This is a clear example of what Foucault conceived of as government agencies being parts of shifting alliances, rather than singular entities all working together for a unified goal. In one comer there stands SOCO and the Kinshasa 3

battle with SOCO is ongoing, with Congolese park authorities still fighting the company as well as the Congolese government in Kinshasa over the legality of such a venture. That the park has been able to successfully protect the gorillas, decrease harmful charcoal smuggling, and defend itself from the threat of an oil operation opening within its territory further indicates that it has not succumbed to the breakdown of governance of the DRC.

Following the genocide, the DRC and its regional neighbors, specifically Uganda,

Burundi and Rwanda, entered a state of all out war. This explosion of violence became referred to as Africa’s World War and was primarily fought in the Eastern Region of the

DRC, with, for a time, eight national armies operating on the ground in the country simultaneously. Several other governments involved themselves financially or through air support (Prunier 2009).3 During this time, the DRC, normally resting on the edge of disaster, fell into chaos. By 2005, the number of Africans dead in the several wars born out of the Rwandan genocide was estimated to be upwards of 4 million, with millions more wounded, displaced, or missing (Prunier 2009, xxxvi). The wars also saw the end of

President Joseph Mobutu’s rule as well as the death of Laurent-Desire Kabila, his successor.

government, in the other: the ICCN, the Virunga Foundation and a hodgepodge o f international conservation nonprofits. 3 Eight countries were directly involved with ground forces in the war, with several others involved themselves through close air support or through aiding the ground forces of belligerent countries with close air support. 4

While the goal of the armies was the control of Kinshasa, the capital city of the

DRC, the impact in terms of physical violence was most prominent in the eastern provinces of South and North Kivu due to their close proximity to belligerent countries.

Historically, the sheer distance between the provinces of North and South Kivu and the central government in Kinshasa has led to the then Zairian, now Congolese, state apparatus having difficulty with administrative penetration in the Kivu Provinces.4

Because of this, the central government was hardly able to even muster a response while an estimated 15,000 people died in violence with another 250,000 more displaced in the

North Kivu region in 1993 alone (Steams 2012).

Section 1: Research Puzzle - Besieged Park as Conservation Oasis

A park successfully implementing conservation efforts while sitting the heart one of the most violent conflicts since WWII appears paradoxical; however, there is an explanation. Given the anomaly of a positive outcome in such a maelstrom of violence, this thesis answers the question of how a conservation agency has been able to re­ establish its capacity to govern despite such high levels of instability. More conceptually, this thesis asks how a government agency can combat governance breakdown, even when the state that ostensibly subsumes it is part of the cause for its failure.

4 From 1971 until May of 1997, the country now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo was retitled Zaire. 5

I argue that the success of conservation efforts within the park is attributable to recent, highly impactful, shifts in local state-society relations. The relationships between local political bodies (the UN “blue helmets”, the park authority’s rangers, rebel militias,

Congolese armed forces, Rwandan armed forces, Ugandan armed forces, as well as NGO personnel) have shifted, producing a change in the political order of the region so as to positively affect the park’s chances of survival. I further argue that the retooled tactics of the ICCN in Virunga National Park have contributed to the reshaping of the contours in national Congolese and regional Central African politics. Further, these changes are part of a tactical retreat by the central Congolese government in terms of providing governance to those residing in the power vacuum of the Eastern Congo where no party has been able to establish a monopoly of violence, in an intra-state sovereignty bargain. I argue in the fifth chapter that this tactical retreat is part of a larger strategy aimed at the eventual expansion of Congolese state authority to the region. While this seems counter­ intuitive, that the state authorities would retreat in order to re-establish its power, as I show in the fourth chapter, state authorities have been retreating for numerous reasons.

Namely, Joseph Kabila, the president of the DRC at the time, concluded that because of his forces operational inability to persevere in face of the enduring opposition the region, to rely on presence of the UN peacekeeping mission in the region. This decision primarily functioned to prop up the image of Congolese state there. Additionally, internal divisions within the army have created an atmosphere of distrust between leaders in the central government and the armed forces. In the fourth chapter, I examine the events and 6

underlying dynamics of the decisions made by all relevant actors in the region as regards the strategy of the Congolese central government in the Eastern Congo.

How was a conservation agency able to re-establish its capacity to govern despite state failure? I argue that the park authority’s ability to successfully establish and meet conservation benchmarks is the result of three main changes. First, there was a shift in the governing strategies of the ICCN. More specifically, the ICCN began efforts to generate public goods as an effort to both promote its mission of conservation as well as work towards stabilizing the region, which in turn would reinforce the efforts towards the former goal. Second, the high symbolic importance of Virunga produced nationalist pride internally to the DRC and a flagship conservation park to rally around for the international conservation community. That Virunga has such a profound symbolic resonance in the hearts and minds of both conservationists and patriotic Congolese has enabled the agency to draw support from international donors. In addition, the park stands as a rallying symbol of a tattered Congolese nation, which pushes the rangers of the park to continue working in the face of life-threatening danger every single day.

Third, the surge in the ecotourism economy of and around the park has demonstrated an element of financial independence typically not associated with a conservation agency, strengthening the ICCN’s ability to secure financial support from not only non-profit agencies but also from private venture capital.

These three shifts came about as a direct result of the changes in the balance of power within the Congolese state and the society of Eastern Congo, which at the time of 7

writing are still ongoing. Complicating any analysis, alliances between the Rwandan,

Burundian, Ugandan, and other states in the region continuously shifted during this time frame. The 1990s were very impactful for the region surrounding the DRC. During those ten years, both Rwanda and the DRC experienced violent regime change. While policy decisions made in Kinshasa obviously impact the situation of Virunga National Park, the politics of Kigali also have a non-negligible effect on the fate of Virunga. This is because of the sheer proximity of Virunga to the Rwandan-Congolese border. The park territory literally butts up against Rwanda, so when Rwanda coughs, Virunga catches a cold. I argue the processes, events and details, elucidated herein are only one aspect of the larger struggle by the Congolese government to achieve power consolidation in the face of resistance from not only rebel militias, but also incursions by, depending on the year, the

Rwandan and Ugandan governments.

It must be noted that if park authorities were to exclusively pursue the provision of public goods, greater leveraging of the symbolic importance of the park, or the development of a Eco-tourism sector, these changes would not happen. While the increase in governing capacity was impossible without increased financial support, the financial support would be of little use if the shifts in governance had not taken place.

Likewise, without the boosts in the nationalistic morale of the park rangers, the park, even with new governance strategies and ample funding, would have been unable to attain results with a listless group of (potentially unpaid) rangers. As such, I argue that each element of the shift in state-society relations observed above is necessary but 8

insufficient on its own - and taken together have huge impacts for the conservation efforts as well as greater politics in the Eastern Congo-Great Lakes region.

Section 2: The State-in-Society Approach and the Melange Model

In approaching Virunga, I have adapted the state-in-society approach elucidated by Joel Migdal. Migdal advocated for scholarship that focused on the actions of the state in society, rather than formal legalisms (Migdal 2001, 47). Such an approach is particularly apt given the precarious existence of the state in the DRC. Migdal’s approach depicts society as a “melange of social organizations,” within which “various formations...offer individuals strategies of personal survival and, for some, strategies of upward mobility” (Migdal 2001, 49). One source of the effectiveness of this approach as applied to the question of a conservation agency providing public goods amidst governmental failure lies in its recognition of the limited reach of state institutions in any given society.

Migdal argues that groups within the melange seek to influence social control, which essentially means to set the rules for society (Migdal 2001, 57). This axiom informs my study of DRC and the Eastern Great Lakes region, which is home to an array of civil society advocacy groups, vigilante sub-state (rebel) groups, national governments

(mostly represented by their armies), state and supra-state agencies (the ICCN and UN, among others). This model is applicable to the Eastern Great Lakes region because of the 9

huge and convoluted melange of social groups briefly listed above. The recent tumultuous history of the region over the past two decades, with governments overthrown, populations exterminated and millions of people displaced, demonstrates the gravity of the struggle between these groups. With the miscellany of nearby national government, a large number of anti-government rebel militias, and a government agency with its rangers “in the trenches” (Migdal 2001, 117), all engaged in a struggle for regional dominance, Virunga and the conflicts surrounding its continued existence serves to showcase the activities of competing social groups within a Migdalian melange.

Specifically, the melange model offers this study of Virunga a way to analytically separate the ICCN from its parent, the Congolese government. While it is a ministry of the Congolese government, in many ways the ICCN’s staff conducts the operations of the ministry as if it were a discrete entity. Migdal is very adamant that the state is not a unitary body; in this, he argues state agencies can pull in different directions than the executive office dictates (Migdal 2001). The ICCN’s challenge of the Congolese government on legal grounds regarding a petroleum company’s (SOCO) operations within Virunga showcases the separation between the agency’s interests and the central government’s interests. 10

Section 3: Tracking the Three Shifts in Virunga

I argue that the staff of the ICCN has pursued three tactics that have contributed to a shift in the state-society relations in the area surrounding Virunga National Park.

These three tactics are (1) governance provisioning, (2) appealing to nationalism and international conservation interests through the symbolic value of Virunga, and (3) agenda setting in terms of economic development demonstrate a massive shift in the balance between state-society relations in Virunga. One major consequence of these tactics was the displacement of rebels in the region, leaving them with fewer options in terms of income and navigation through the park than they had in prior decades.

These three tactics, and the following shifts in the balance of social forces began in July of 2007. First, newly appointed leaders of the ICCN began instituting governance provisioning programs to the park following a change in leadership. In 2007, the

Kinshasa Government implicated Honore Mushenzi, the former Chief Warden of

Virunga, and numerous park officials in being complicit with the illegal charcoal trade and killing seven gorillas on July 22. This led to a swift crackdown from the government that saw the officials arrested and the position of Chief Warden given to Emmanuel de

Merode, a white member of the Belgian royalty, who has committed his life to the conservation of African environs and wildlife.

This shift towards governance provisioning further catalyzed a change in the nature of the ICCN itself. Prior to this shift, the ICCN was a highly corrupt agency that 11

was not only taking part in the illicit extractive economy that ballooned following the

Rwandan genocide and the two Congo wars, but did so against its explicit mission of environmental conservation. The agency actively policed the territory, built hydroelectric power plants, and ran schools and public health clinics. In the documentary Virunga,

Chief Warden Emmanuel de Merode stated that by providing public goods, the park authorities were working to reshape the political environment such that would be conducive to the protection of the species and environs living in the park. In short, this shift in leadership was an important factor in producing a park defined by greatly improved governance practices.

The leveraging of the Congolese nationalism of Virunga’s rangers as well as the flagship status of the park in the eyes of international donor groups has given the ICCN both local and international support that has greatly increased its capacity to fulfill its mission. In this, Virunga has become integral to what I argue is a resurgent Congolese nationalism. Following this process, the park began to offer governance in a bid to incentivize the people living around it in order to stabilize the community to further its capacity for long-term conservation. In becoming such a effective force, I argue the

ICCN has been able to simultaneously legitimize itself as a governing institution among the local populations as well as the park rangers upon whom it relies to uphold its policies. The resultant morale boost among the rangers of Virunga, from what was essentially very good public relations, has enabled the ICCN to more aggressively engage poachers and resource smugglers with more support from the local community. 12

Virunga also relies on legitimacy in order to generate international goodwill as a symbol of efforts towards environmental protection. I argue the park has come to hold a symbolic place in the eyes of conservation organizations in the war against environmental degradation. Unlike some similar parks in Africa, the park receives special logistical and financial support, in part, because of its addition to the UNESCO World Heritage

Endangered Sites list in 1994 (UNESCO 2016). This international symbolic importance has enabled de Merode and the other staff of the ICCN to gamer the international support his administration has received, without such support the park authorities would not have had the legitimacy or logistical ability to undertake the expansive governance projects and economic development initiatives that they have. As a result of the above two factors the park has been able to gain huge financial and logistical support from a plethora of conservation non-profits from around North America and Europe. Financial security is paramount because, as a ministry of the government, the ICCN receives no funding from the Congolese government in Kinshasa. Thus, financial viability has always been a hugely limiting factor in the efforts of the park. As mentioned above, with de Merode as director of the park, in addition to his directorship of WildlifeDirect and Virunga

Alliance, the park has been able to secure funding that is frequent, secure, and legitimate in the eyes of the rangers, Congolese, and potential visitors. 13

Section 4: Methodology

This paper is a qualitative study of the political development of Virunga National

Park. In researching this park and the political melange that surrounds it, I use sources such as NGO reports, documents from the Virunga online archive, UN documents, as well as an array of research papers and scholarly books.

This study has three main limitations. First, there is the difficulty of retrieving reliable, accurate, and timely information on the region - especially researching from afar. Second, compounding the first limitation, I have not been to, either prior to this project or in researching it, the region and thus am completely reliant on the observations of others. To alleviate these limitations as best as possible, I have sought out as wide of an array of sources from both African and European scholars, to limit bias wherever possible. Third, I do not speak or read French, in which many reports and government documents regarding the DRC are written, and thus I was unable to access this area of knowledge from which this study very may well have benefitted.

I have relied extensively on reports published by the Usalama Project of the Rift

Valley Institute. As such, this paper is a meta-analysis, synthesizing pre-existing analysis of the political situation of the Congo and the region surrounding Virunga National Park with a different contextual framework to provide new insights to questions of political development and state-in-society relations. 14

Section 5: Thesis Organization Organization

This thesis is divided into five chapters. The second chapter introduces three literatures: state failure, governance in the absence of strong state institutions, and the challenges political conflict poses to conservation. These three literatures all provide insights and analytic tools that enable thorough and informed consideration of the question of the park authorities of Virunga’s recent success. The third chapter provides an overview of the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as well as the historical conditions of Virunga National Park. By developing a working understanding to the conflict, this thesis seeks to accurately represent the region’s history rather than build a nicely packaged narrative that reinforces arguments put forth in any subset of the literature. The fourth chapter develops an anthropology of the state and society of the

Eastern Congo, as pertains to Virunga. This chapter specifically argues that the

Congolese state, as it subsumes the ICCN, is engaged in capacity building. While this analysis centers on the ICCN, this in no way implies that the government centered in

Kinshasa is unimportant in Congolese politics or in terms of regional politics in Central

Africa. Indeed, as will be discussed in Chapter Four, the government in Kinshasa (which is fast becoming - Kabila’s) is playing a game of chess with the Ugandan and Rwandan governments. Chapter Five seeks to explain how Virunga has been stable even in the war-ravaged context of the DRC. I analyze three processes that are vital to the renewed success of the park. First, the chapter explores the leadership transition and the 15

subsequent legitimization of Virunga as well as the nationalism that Virunga is re- instilling in its park rangers. Second, the chapter analyzes the symbolic importance of

Virunga to international conservation organizations as well as the way in which these organizations enable Virunga to operate so effectively. Finally, the chapter examines the ways in which ecotourism has shaped the decisions made by the park authorities as well as its prospects for the region. 16

Chapter 2: Literature Review

The topic of a conservation park caught in the middle of an ongoing political conflict sits at the juncture of two distinct literatures. These two bodies of literature are (1) the struggle for good governance in failed states and (2) conservation amongst conflict.

Considered separately, neither literature provides the analytic tools to properly consider the problem posed by Virunga in the DRC. Further, the overlap between these two literatures has recently given way to a third literature, that of green governance. The green governance literature, in essence, posits that environmentalism can serve as a peace building mechanism (Conca and Dabelko 2002).

This chapter introduces the literature in a fashion that moves from the more general research on state failure and governance to the scholarship focused on situations such as Virunga’s in four sections. The first section opens broadly, with the concept of state failure considered and defined. This section elaborates on scholar’s understanding of the causal chains that lay behind the frequency of state failure in the developing, post­ colonial world. The second section covers governance, governance failure, and governance in areas of state failure. The section provides an assessment of what constitutes governance, and then explains how it is understood that governments fail to provide governance - both insofar as what this looks like, and the causes thereof. This second section, finally, introduces hybrid governance and public-private partnerships, 17

two parts of one possible solution to the problems of chronic weak statehood and governance failure in the developing world.

The literature on state failure and governance that I cover herein is applicable to all cases of state failure and inadequate governance. However the literature covered on conservation as relates to poor governance and state failure is equally necessary for this thesis in order to understand the case of Virunga, as it is not only within a failed state but also tasked with conservation. To do this, in the third section, I review the relevant literature on the effect of war on state level conservation efforts. Specifically, I review the positive feedback loop that can develop between conflict and environmental degradation

(Dudley et al. 2002; Conca and Dabelko 2002; Homer-Dixon 1993; Collier and Hoeffler

1998). Additionally, in the fourth section, I consider the proposed solutions to this destructive revolving door of war and environmental catastrophe, ecotourism, as well as the proposals of scholars arguing in support of sustainable development in countries such as the DRC (Conca and Dabelko 2002; Ali 2007; Milburn 2012).

These bodies of scholarship help provide a clear understanding of the theories developed in regards to solving the problem of solving governance problems in failed states, conservation in troubled areas, and the intersections between the two in terms of the green governance literature. 18

Section 1: Conceptualizing State Failure (in the Developing World)

To understand state failure, one must understand what constitutes a state. Max

Weber isolates the tactics unique to the state in order to do so (Weber 1946). The tactic unique to the state, Weber concludes, is the use of legitimate violence (Weber 1946). In this, Weber determines that the state standing as the “sole source of the ‘right’ to use violence,” (Weber 1946, 78) is what sets it apart from other entities in social space. This definition of the state stands as an optimal jumping off point for a discussion of the literature on state failure, and governance failure further down the road.

Robert Rotberg (2003) attributes state failure to two factors. The first factor he identifies is internal violence that catalyzes the second, resultant, factor: failure to deliver public goods. Robert Bates similarly attributes state failure to the parallel develop of government employees that seek to profit from their position, rather than contribute to the delivery of public goods alongside a failure of government forces to maintain a

“monopoly over the means of coercion” (Bates 2008, 2). Both of these understandings of state failure rely on Weber’s assertion that the state is the only source of legitimated violence and that the loss of such legitimacy indicates failure.

There are, however, several theories as to composition of the causal chain that leads a country’s government to state failure. Sambanis and Hegre (2006) present strong evidence that impoverished countries are more likely to fail than their better off counterparts. According to their research, a larger population has a compounding effect 19

of poverty on the likelihood of state failure. Fearon and Laitin (2003) assert that a state’s sudden loss of a foreign benefactor, such as when the US and USSR stopped supporting governments at the end of the cold war, makes a domestic rebellion more likely.

However, Collier and Hoeffler (2004) argue that the United States and Soviet Union were equally involved in proxy rebellions as they were in propping up puppet governments.

Thus, casually, there is reason to believe that the end of the cold war, while it had numerous country level effects, had a neutral impact on the stock civil wars across the globe.

Sambanis (2001) argues that in countries without democratic institutions there is a higher likelihood that ethnic conflicts will cause a failure of state institutions. Azam and

Mesnard (2003), however, argue that ethnic conflicts have a heavy impact on shaping the forces that come to logger-heads after state failure, those divisions do not cause state failure in more cases than where they do not. That is unique historical and ethnic situation of each country “can be treated as an unobserved heterogeneity” which individual case studies, such as this one, are best suited to analyze and understand (Azam and Mesnard

2003, 456). Further, Bates (2008) concludes that there is only one universal effect of ethnicity and the ethnic makeup of a society in regards to state failure: When a state fails due to the explosion of ethnic tensions, it is typically because of an elite manufactured crisis leveraging ethnic tensions (Bates 2008; Sambanis 2001). However, this is only a vague conclusion, and Bates and others have called for further research into the role of a machinating elite class and ethnic rivalries in regards to failed states. 20

Often, as a result of the government failure or refusal to provide goods, challengers arise who begin to argue they can do the government’s job better (Crawford and Miscik 2010). Additionally, Collier and Hoeffler (2004) argue that states fail when they have both failed to deliver services, or otherwise marginalized a large enough population, to illicit a violent and fatal response from the population and have a weak enough grip on security that those same members of the population see an opportunity to defeat the state in direct, violent, conflict. This draws attention to the limit to the usefulness of data analysis, which is rather dependable, to predict state failure. The State

Failure Task Force uses hundreds of data points to predict if a state is likely to fail, and to what degree it is likely to do so. However, as Bob Bates so succinctly put it, “the Task

Force’s analysis focuses on prediction rather than explanation” (2008, 3).

Michael Mazaar (2014) asserts that the failed state paradigm was a result of the

United States opting to engage militarily in state building operations rather than commit to a drawback of military power. Mazaar asserts that the failed state paradigm was a direct result of U.S. foreign policy missteps. However, understanding the internal dynamics of a failed state is of overriding importance for this thesis as well as for any scholarship on the developing world, since it is the developing world that is most commonly affected by state failure regardless of the foreign policy of the United States.

This divergence in the political development of post-colonial countries from the development experience of their colonizing European cousins has led the former to develop chronic political schisms and fractures. While Jonathan Hill (2005) goes so far as 21

to argue that the entire failed state literature is a remnant of colonialism, describing the scholarship as an attempt at “Othering” African governments (Hill 2005, 147), his conclusions rely on miss readings of the failed state literature.

To be sure, these wounds from the past have played a definitive role in generating the high rate of state failure in developing world than states in the developed, western, world. These criticisms from Hill and Mazaar actually highlight the importance of continuing to study failed states in the developing world. Studying state failure does not mean imposing western standards on a developing world. Studying state failure as conceived herein means investigating the many ways a polity can develop and attempting to theorize ways to ease the tumultuous journey towards a stable and beneficial political order for the citizens of the country under investigation.

State failure as witnessed in the DRC and defined by Rotberg, Gates and Weber, is empirically measurable by social and economic indicators. The recent advances in data accumulation and analysis have enabled potent inquiries into cases such as Virunga.

Several indices exist that rank existing states based on their proximity to state collapse.

Two such indices are the Fragile States Index and the Index of State Weakness in the

Developing World. The former uses 12 indicators from three broad categories - social, economic, and political and military indicators, while the latter uses a basket of 20 indicators from four broad categories; economic, political, security, and social welfare

(Cite the indices). Essentially, these two indices separate out the discrete elements of proper governance (public goods) and then investigate to what extent the government is 22

providing them as such (good governance). With the military and security categories, the

indices check for, quite obviously, the ability of the government to enforce the laws, maintain the border, and vanquish any challengers. With the political category, the indices check that the population has a proper access to the political process, that the laws are both just and upheld, and little or no corruption. The economic categories measure economic productivity and average incomes of the population, to estimate both the industrial output as well as the level of income inequality in the country. Finally, the social categories measure the levels of unrest as well factors like education attainment and child mortality. What the indices are focusing on measuring is the delivery of political goods.

This directly supports Robert Rotberg’s understanding of state failure. Rotberg identifies political goods as “those intangible and hard to quantify claims that citizens once made on sovereigns and now make on states” (Rotberg 2003, 3). Much like

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Rotberg argues there is a hierarchy of political goods, with foundational goods such as security required for the development of “higher” political goods (which, at a certain point of one liberal democratic development, began to be discussed in terms of political rights) such as public participation and transparency

(Rotberg 2003). Thus, the higher on the hierarchy a public good or public service rests, the more precarious its delivery is.

According to Rotberg security is the foundation of all political goods (Rotberg

2003). This harkens back to Weber defining the state by its ability to monopolize the 23

legitimated use of violence (Weber 1946). As such, security is the foundational political good, without which the attempted provision of other political goods would be (and has demonstrably been shown to be) an exercise in futility. Beyond this, Rotberg identifies courts, access to the political process, the right to seek office, the right to dissent, are among the political rights that are protected by the well functioning state (Rotberg 2003).

These are the primary indications of a healthy functioning state, and the absence of such indicates either an ailing and anemic state or a kleptocratic regime.

In order to demonstrate the way an unfunded government agency can navigate state failure and intransigent war in pursuing not only conservation goals but also governance, it is important to define what constitutes a failed state. Rotberg provides a litany of attributes that he identifies as signaling the failure of a state. The list is as follows, in the order Rotberg gives them: (1) The presence of one or more armed rebel groups actively challenging government forces (the violence that spawns out of these rebellions is enduring, not brief and sporadic, in nature); (2) civil wars defined by struggles “rooted in ethnic, religious, linguistic, [or otherwise] intercommunal” tensions

(Rotberg 5); a failure by government forces to secure borders; (3) “the expression of official power limited to a capital city...:”5 (4) “regimes prey on their own constituents;” patronage and kleptocracy becomes the norm; (5) criminal violence increases, alongside a failure or complicit refusal on the part of the government to actively pursue criminals; (6) general failure or refusal of government to provide political goods (listed above); (7)

5 Regarding the placement o f a capital within its territory, Foucault writes, “[a] capital at the end o f an elongated and irregular territory would not be able to exercise all is necessary functions.” (Foucault 2004). 24

flawed, or otherwise corrupted, institutions; (8) “deteriorating or destroyed infrastructures;” (9) “The effective educational and health systems are privatized;” (10)

“corruption... in failed states [flourishes] on an unusually destructive scale;”6 (11)

“declining real national and per capita levels of annual GDP;” and (12) “regular food shortages and widespread hunger” (Rotberg 2003, 5-8).

To summarize, states fail when their governments are unable or unwilling to provide the basic goods that citizens typically expect of their governments (Rotberg

2003). One list compiled of all types of states, many of which broadly can be categorized as failed, is as follows: failed states, anarchic states, genocidal states, homicidal states, rogue or terrorist states, drug-influenced states, organized crime-influenced states, kleptocratic states, authoritarian states, garrison or national security states, totalitarian states, democratic rule of law states (Boas and Jennings 2005). The idea here is that the government is only failing the citizens, as in a kleptocracy, and in actuality providing great benefit for a select political elite (Boas and Jennings 2005). Nagan and Hammer, taking this logic to its conclusion, distinguish between 12 different types of state classifications, several of which can be understood broadly as failed states (Nagan and

Hammer 2004). In this, Nagan and Hammer posit that state failure for the many could mean success for the few, as in a kleptocratic state, or a organized-crime influenced state.

Nagan and Hammer’s thesis posits and conceptualization of state failure broadly as the

6 While corruption, the subversion of public funds and apparatuses for private interests, is a useful analytical tool to grapple with state failure, it is important to prevent such investigations from becoming overly moralizing from the vantage point of a comfortable chair in a Western university with a steady income and relatively secure opportunities abound. 25

state’s failure to provide at least security and basic access to the political process. In this,

Nagan and Hammer’s conclusions indicate outcomes matter more in defining state failure than intentionality.7

Because countries are often vast and relatively heterogeneous, it is not unusual for there to be more than one active challenge to the government’s authority. This is a major cause of the prevalence of enduring civil conflicts often witnessed in failed states.

Regarding this, Rotberg argues that “intercommunity enmity” is the genesis of the strife that tears down most countries that eventually fail (Rotberg 2003). This dynamic,

Rotberg posits, is very much a result of the way so many modem states were originally formed. Foreign colonial administrations scrabbled together various disparate, often warring, ethnic communities based on political expediency for the European home governments. Subsequently, upon decolonization, the borders drawn during colonization essentially remained the same (Rotberg 2003; Conrad and Stange 2013; Anderson 2006).8

Section 2: Governance Solutions to State Failure

Scholarship provides several competing definitions for governance, which are germane to the study of the DRC. In considering the question of governance, some authors focus on a return to pre-bellum governance with a state leading the way in

7 The same cannot be said of governance, as will be discussed in the section below. 8 Some authors take the relative nature of academic discourse very seriously, and posit that the entire concept o f “failed states” and the literature surrounding has its roots in post-imperial “racialized internationalist thought” (Gruffydd Jones 2013). 26

delivering political goods (Kraxberger 2012; Brinkerhoff 2005; Menkhaus 2014) while others indicate, typically with caution, the tendency of societies to revert to non- legalistic, traditional, methods of adjudication (Stremlau 2012). The former is evinced by the usage of the preposition “re” by Derick Brinkerhoff (2005) in both his title

“Rebuilding Governance in Failed State and Post-Conflict Societies: Core Concepts and

Cross-Cutting Themes” as well in his focus on the “reconstruction” of governance by focusing on the themes of “reconstituting legitimacy, re-establishing security, and rebuilding effectiveness.”9 Others seek to construct what Ken Menkhaus coined as “a functional failed state” (Menkhaus 2014). Menkhaus is primarily concerned with bridging the gap between when a state fails and when scholars can remove a state from that list. However, Thomas Risse (2013) argues that there are dissimilarities between conceptualizing strategies to return a failed state to its pre-failure status quo and theorizing a way forward that does not necessarily lead to a solution grounded in a strong central state authority. Additionally, the falling back on traditional law by Stremlau

(2012) does not actually indicate a way to solve state failure, but only represents an ad hoc, potentially palliative, measure.

Risse (2013), and Leise and Beisheim (2013) have demonstrated that governance in areas with little to no government penetration alliances of private interests, civil society groups and international supra-state agencies often work together to provide what appears very much similar to governance, but without a state. Risse’s work stands apart

9 Emphasis, in bold, all mine. 27

from the old school of thought in that while the latter focus on facilitating a movement to

an array of governance practices that develop in conjunction with the material conditions

of the failed state, rather than despite them. In this, Risse is rather is concerned with what enables governance in places where European models of governance and political development have been unsuccessful.

Because of their pivotal role in failed states, private actors are hugely important to

Risse’s conception of governance in the absence of a state. Regarding failed state societies, Risse cautions that the typical distinction made between the public and private spheres—that the governments provide governance and private businesses see to their profits without consideration of the other—is counter-productive to the pursuit of a solution (Risse 2013, 13). Risse advances the conception of public and private as perfectly discreet social arenas is “enormously problematic in areas of limited statehood”

(Risse 2013, pg. 13). This caution points to the need of scholars of governance, as well as those of state failure, to retool their understanding of governance to that of a hybrid effort with public and private actors working together to provide political goods typically understood to only reside within the realm of the state (public).

While governance and state building, as Dorussen (2005) argues, are typically intertwined, hybrid governance necessarily does not reinforce a centralizing state. Hybrid governance is the result of joint efforts by local level governments, civil society, and private interests. Hybrid governance is simultaneously localizing and globalizing as it draws local level administrators into collaboration with globe-spanning corporations and 28

governance entities such as the UN. Hybrid governance has been documented as

effectively providing that which typical state centric governance could not in struggling

countries around the world such as Georgia (Ginty 2013), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq,

Afghanistan and Lebanon (Jarstad and Belloni 2012), as well as most of the African continent (Meagher 2011; Andreasson 2011).

I rely heavily on Risse’s account of hybrid governance, which provides a totalizing look at the concept. Risse places definitional importance on the internationality of the group providing the governance. In this, Risse explains that when a private actor, the example he gives is the oil company BP in Angola, provides security, which is typically understood as a public good, the intention of that private actor determines whether the provision of such was an act of governance or otherwise. According to Risse, the case of BP in Angola is not an example of governance because BP’s intention was to simply protect their interests, not create a safe space for Angolan society to flourish

(Risse 2013, pg. 15). However, as Risse expounds on this he makes it clear this is not to imply rational self-interest on the part of private actors categorically cannot lead to governance. Governance does not necessarily need be altruistic. Admittedly, the question of intentionality is easily muddled. Risse writes, “the inherent intentionality of governance becomes problematic when applied to areas of limited statehood” (Risse

2013, pg. 15). In order to simplify, the above can be reduced to two axioms: (1) public goods provided to benefit the provider without consideration of the public does not 29

constitute governance, (2) public goods provided with the intention of benefiting the public so as to in turn benefit the provider constitutes governance.

Regarding the second axiom, Risse gives the example of a warlord instructing his private armed forces to provide public security for the residents of his area of influence, which would in turn enable the warlord a more pliable population (Risse 2013, pg. 16).

One could imagine BP instructing their privately hired mercenaries to protect Angolan villages in order to show their goodwill towards their hosts - this would be an example of, if somewhat weak, actual governance.

Michel Foucault also situates governance and sovereignty vis-a-vis intentionality.

In this, he distinguishes tactics of governance, or governmentality, from the pursuit of generating and maintaining sovereignty (Foucault 2007). Foucault argues the former is analogous to the actions of the shepherd, a figure that provides for the safety and sustenance of its flock, and further that the shepherd is connected to that group more so than to the land from which it derives its food. To the shepherd the land upon which its flock grazes is only a means to an end. In contradistinction to governance, Foucault argues sovereignty is primarily concerned with territorial control as an end in and of itself. In the case of the sovereign, population is treated more accurately as a verb: to populate, and is a means to the control of territories by way of signaling to other sovereign’s control (Foucault [1978-1979] 2004). This difference is very important when comparing the goals of the DRC state and the ICCN, as it helps draw distinction between 30

a ruling authority seeking control and a service-providing agency seeking, frankly, admirable goals.

In the same edited collection as Risse, Leise and Beisheim (2013) assert that hybrid groups that emulate what successful states are most successful in resuscitating governance. Leise and Beisheim’s work is entirely applicable to the topic at hand.

Specifically, Leise and Beisheim argue the importance of public agencies partnering with private corporations and enterprises in order to foster governance in areas of limited statehood.

Further, Leise and Beisheim conclude that the best type of non-state governance legally binds actors to rules and regulations created or supported by non-state governing units called public-private partnerships (PPPs). The importance of PPPs in governance is extremely important regarding Virunga, as the ICCN is part of one titled Virunga

Alliance. Leise and Beisheim support the notion that a hybrid governance, with private actors relying on public institutions (in this case, the law) to provide legitimacy to their pursuit of governance. These very same rules and regulations often replicate or reinforce, rather than supplant, preexisting government laws.

Liese and Beisheim argue that while PPPs typically “complement or supplement governmental regulation or services” in the developed/OECD world, they instead

“substitute in a situation of state failure” (Liese and Beisheim 2013, pg. 115). This is not to necessarily a criticism, but rather as recognition of the flexibility of public-private partnerships. Given the resources of businesses based in OECD countries and the 31

flexibility of agencies in failed states, in terms of limited push back from civil society and other agencies, PPPs have the potential to be highly effective change agents in their area of operation.

In evaluating the effectiveness of PPPs, Leise and Beisheim identify three ways providers of governance typically operate: through coercion, appeals to self-interest, and legitimating tactics (Leise and Beisheim 2013). Further, Leise and Beisheim distinguish different types of PPPs. The categories they identify are; service-providing partnerships, standard-setting partnerships, and knowledge-transfer partnerships. Herein, this paper is mostly concerned with service-providing partnerships that “distribute resources and services in areas of limited statehood” and rely on institutionalization for successful implementation (Leise and Beisheim 2013, pg. 130 & 137).10 Institutionalization is essentially the degree to which PPPs can dictate the course of action taken by third parties through precise legally obligations (Leise and Beisheim 2013, pg. 126; Abbott et al. 2000, pg. 401 & 412). Further, institutionalization depends on delegation, that is the ability of the PPP to depend on third party actors to correctly enforce rules established by the PPP (Leise and Beisheim 2013, pg. 126; Abbott et al. 2000, pg. 401).

Leise and Beisheim also conclude that PPPs that focus on capacity building, which consists of limiting the factors that inhibit the PPP from reaching its goals. While this conclusion is not backed up by existing data, capacity building “seems to have an effect on outcome and impact on the country level” (Leise and Beisheim 2013, 138). In

10 This focus is due to, as will be demonstrated in Chapter 5, the ICCN having elicited strong support from both international private and public partners. 32

regards to institutionalization however, the implications of Leise and Beisheim’s study

are more concrete: PPPs that “invest more resources in evaluating their governance

structures” are more likely to achieve “goals they have set for themselves regarding the provision of governance in areas of limited statehood” (Leise and Beisheim 2013, pg.

138).

Leise and Beisheim’s assert PPPs that conduct themselves professionally and transparently, and focus on creating, reinforcing and legitimating legally binding regulations are the most likely to achieve successful governance. This gets back to the point made above. It would appear that the groups that most replicate governments, insofar as they bind actors to obligations, are best able to govern. From this, it is a small stretch to posit that PPPs with a public agency as the face of the partnership could be successful.

Risse also concludes that, “public-private partnerships or even pure non-state forms of governance are becoming the rule rather than the exception” (Risse 2013, pg.

20). While I would caution the reader to take Risse’s conclusion here wholesale, in that he asserts these PPPs are becoming the rule; I would however assert that understanding the distinct nature of PPPs is important if one is to understand the governance in the

Eastern Congo and Virunga. 33

Section 3: Conservation in Troubled areas: the Revolving door o f Conflict and

Environmental Degradation

“Environmental problems are most combustible when they exacerbate existing social tensions based on class, region, or ethnicity. When such tensions are triggered in the absence or weakness of social institutions that otherwise could mediate disputes or in the context of ‘failing’ states, it is said, violent conflict may be triggered or worsened.” - Ken Conca and Goeffrey Dabelko (2002)

David Ehrenfeld, a conservation biologist, has argued that politics and the socio­ economic order of the planet have very real consequences the efforts of conservationists to protect and maintain a habitable planet (Ehrenfeld 2000). This section examines the literature regarding environmental protection in conservation in areas of conflict, investigating the solutions proposed as well as the identified trap doors in these proposals. This section is not intended to cover any of the practical issues regarding conservation; so, I focus on conservation outcomes rather than strategies. I thus address the political questions of conservation rather than the actual practical considerations of protecting species and environs.

More than four out of five conflicts in the second half of the twentieth century occurred within biodiversity hotspots (Milbum 2012; Hanson et al. 2009). Thus, it must be accepted that for better or worse conservation outcomes are inherently intertwined with the politics of specific regions and the regimes populating them. To be more specific, it has been observed that there is a potential for a downward spiraling feedback 34

loop between environmental degradation, state weakness and violent conflict (Dudley et

al. 2002; Conca and Dabelko 2002; Homer-Dixon 1993; Collier and Hoeffler 1998). The

failure to deliver the political good of conservation, and the failure to protect the territorially delineated wildernesses that make up conservation parks all represent the dangers of state failure facing conservation.

Paul Martin and Christine Szuter argued that no-man’s land areas, in addition to demilitarized zones (DMZs), have the capacity to act as zones of refuge for wildlife

(Martin and Szuter 1999). The best example of this phenomenon is the DMZ between

South and North Korea where plants and animals have been able to flourish not only despite, but as Ke Chung Kim (1997) argues due to, the presence of razor-wire and landmines. However, the nature of modern war, with the proliferation of chemical weapons, landmines, and guerilla warfare, has entirely eroded the positive impacts of war on wildlife populations (Dudley et al. 2002). This is especially pronounced in underdeveloped countries, in terms of democratic institutions and economic infrastructure, such as the DRC because of their lack of capacity to react to the adverse impacts of war in the post-bellum phase of reconstruction (Kanyamibwa 1998).

The creation of tracts of land with the “off-limits to hunters” sign at the gate in the middle of the 20th century has created a flash-point for local tensions, whether it be due to local people’s attempting to feed themselves or regional poachers attempting to secure a livelihood (Yawagiwa 2003). Rotshuizen and Smith identify three effects of war on conservation efforts: Poaching, population displacement, and the impact of aid and 35

conservation measures (Rotshuizen and Smith 2013, pg. 504). Each of these three factors

are the result of war’s inherently destabilizing effects on society. Additionally, military

personnel often, as was the case in the DRC in both Garamba and Virunga National Park,

cash in on the chaos, and take part in illicit resource smuggling (Dudley et al. 2002;

Plumptre et al. 2000). Finally, in terms of policy-making violent conflict has been shown to skew the concerns of both regional governments and international peace organizations

away from policies aimed at protecting environmental concerns and towards security and

stability, at whatever cost (Kanyamibwa 1998).

Further, as Rotshuizen and Smith (2013) and others (Hart et al. 1997; Conca and

Wallace 2009) demonstrate, post-bellum humanitarian assistance has been shown to have a negative effect on the environment as well. Money that is directed towards environmental programs is subject to extreme scrutiny, given that environmental policies are usually approached in times of relative peace. Unlike conservation aid, however, humanitarian aid is often rushed without thorough consideration to the possible net- negative impacts of the aid, due to the extreme circumstances in which such aid is typically distributed (Hart and Hart 1997; Fimbel and Fimbel 1997). As in the DRC (then called Zaire) during the Rwandan refugee crisis of 1993, humanitarian aid money was pumped in so as to support the refugees even while the pre-existing aid for environmental conservation was pulled out (Hart and Hart 1997; Fimbel and Fimbel 1997).11 This dynamic was shown to have the effect of putting extreme stress on the agencies in such

11 On the topic o f refugees, again, it must be noted that while refugees do have a negative impact on the environment their impact pales in comparison to the extractive methods taken by international mining and timber harvesting consortiums, among other industrial ventures as noted by Ken Conca (2015) 36

countries tasked with protecting the environment, as simultaneously their funding was cut

and refugees flooded into their parks, causing a proliferation of environmentally

damaging practices therein. Considering that Virunga sat at the geographical nexus of one of the worst refugee crises in modem history, the effects of refugees on conservation

is very important to this thesis.12

Not only does war make it harder on policy makers to preserve their commitment to a sustainable governance, but environmental problems have been shown to deepen a country’s potential for conflict. In their 2002 study, Collier and Hoeffler demonstrate that the likelihood of intrastate war is positively associated with the reliance of a country’s economy on the extraction of natural resources (Collier and Hoeffler 1998). Alongside this, there is a demonstrable causal relationship between environmental degradation and war, with the former causing the latter (Homer-Dixon et al. 1993). Thus, Dudley et al.

(2002) argue that the destruction of the environment due to war creates a reinforcing positive feedback between environmental degradation and civil strife in a given country.

Even in the event of a calming post-bellum period, Dudley et al. (2002) argue that the resultant development risks degradation of a country’s environment. Dirty industries, such as chemical processing, manufacturing, timber extraction, mining, and even tourism have all been associated with environmental destruction and pollution. However, while

Dudley et al. (2002) and others (Conca and Wallace 2009) assert development may cause

12 This will be considered again in chapter three, with a detailed report on the history of the Rwandan refugee crisis and the prevailing problem of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Congo. Additionally, the refugees and IDPs and their group dynamics as relates to the greater schema of Congolese society will be scrutinized in chapter four. 37

environmental degradation, this is to be understood more as a caution than a judgement.

Constructively, this cautionary conclusion is rather intended to highlight the need for truly restorative and sustainable reconstruction following a war, rather than simply an attempt to return to pre-bellum conditions.

Section 4: (Towards a Theory of) Green Peacemaking and Sustainable Governance

“Warfare is inherently destructive of sustainable development. States shall therefore respect international law providing protection for the environment in times of armed conflict and cooperate in its further development, as necessary.” - Rio Declaration, Principle 24 (1992).

“Peace, development and environmental protection are interdependent and indivisible.” - Rio Declaration, Principle 25 (1992).

The theoretical and practical response of conservationists to the dangers of state failure and intransigent intrastate conflict reveals much in regards to decisions made by the park staff of Virunga National Park. To begin to shed light on such, I review various post- bellum policies and procedures that have been successfully implemented in order to create a sustainable transition from war to peace. Further, I introduce and elaborate on the concept of ecotourism. Ecotourism is the practice of utilizing rare, charismatic, and often endangered, animals as well as breathtaking landscapes to draw tourists, thus generating 38

profit to fund the conservation thereof In conjunction with hybrid governance, the

facilitation of a developing ecotourism industry has a demonstrated calming effect on

otherwise intransigent violence (Ali 2007; Rotshuizen and Smith 2013). With the

literature on the dynamics of post-bellum conservation reviewed, the incentive structures

and social forces working on actors with ties to and stakes in conservation in Virunga

National Park will become clearer and more easily analyzed. It must be noted that beyond hybrid governance strategies and ecotourism there are other potential ways to go about mitigating conflict in zones of conservation, however these are the two methods I identify as having the most applicability to the case of Virunga.

Richard Milbum (2012) provides one of the strongest analyses of the connection between peacebuilding efforts and conservation strategies by linking conservation to potential development. Other scholars, such as Ken Conca and Geoffrey Dabelko (2002) as well as Saleem Ali (2007), argue that environmental concerns and conservation more generally, hold potential to actually generate conflict resolution. These scholars fit into the literature that has recently risen as a challenge to the common assumption that a pro­ conservation agenda necessarily begets conflict and hinders development (Bannon and

Collier 2003; Wennmann 2011; Collier et al. 2003).

Above, scholars, such as Collier and Hoeffler (1998), Homer-Dixon et al. (1993), and Dudley (2002), I reviewed as having asserted a negative relationship between environmental factors and conflict. Pessimistic in terms of the positive feedback loops between environmental degradation and levels of violent political conflict as covered 39

above. As such, theorists typically concerned with state security fixate on mitigating

environmental catastrophe to uphold, or shore up, a secure state (Conca and Dabelko

2002). This betrays a lack of vision. Conca and Dabelko, both with their gaze directed

over the horizon, invert this typical understanding of the relationship between security

and the environment. Most fundamentally, Conca and Dabelko challenge the

understanding of security that privileges the state’s security above and apart from peace.

Conca and Dabelko shift the conversation from one of environmental security to

one of environmental peacemaking. The former, roughly speaking, entails battening down the state’s hatches against climate change while the latter frames environmental issues as catalysts for bridging existing gaps between governments and groups at odds with one another. Rejecting the “counterproductive, zero-sum logic of national security,”

Conca instead pushes scholars to seek out, “triggers of peace that shared environmental problems might make available” (Conca 2002, 2-5).

More recently, Conca has theorized that regional governance is a better strategy than global initiatives for combating climate change and ecological deterioration (Conca

2012). In positing such, Conca argues that rather than the old model of international actors calling on individual governments for collective action, regional actors are able to model norms that in turn reify environmental protection at a community level (Conca

2012). One such example of regional action is the proliferation of so-called peace parks across much of the developing world. Virunga National Park, along with its conjoined 40

sibling parks, Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park

in Uganda, makes up one such park.

Conca argues that the benefits of such interagency cooperation are far reaching,

and go beyond simply benefiting conservation due to resource sharing and collaborative planning. As a result of the increased communication between conservation administrators of possibly warring or contending state apparatuses, there is a level of trust that develops and has a tendency to seep into other areas of diplomacy. Also, the ties built between conservationists of neighboring countries have been shown to hold up even when the countries end up at war, thus providing channels by which to communicate during times when typically there would be none (Conca 2012). Essentially, peace parks have a de-escalating effect on interstate conflicts. The effects of conservation parks on intrastate conflicts is less concretely understood and will be explored below.

What Conca and Dabelko assertion in Environmental Peacemaking that the danger that of potential environmental catastrophes can serve as a bridge between political actors with otherwise conflicting interests, is mirrored, and carried further, by

Richard Milburn when he calls for an “evolutionary step beyond sustainable development” (Milburn 2012). Milburn argues that ecological development would bolster both political as well as environmental stability in such a way that so-called sustainable development, as current trends demonstrate, is unable to due to its underlying frame as a crutch for continued expansion of capitalism (Milburn 2012). One such way that conservation can be pursued while also enabling security is to combat illegal wildlife 41

poaching, given that it simultaneously threatens animal extinction and has been

demonstrated to be used as a revenue source for insurgent and rebel militias (Milbum

2012). Creative solutions such as this are the defining features of environmental peacebuilding, solutions that benefit all parties involved and affected. Put succinctly, the peace through conservation thesis posits that given common environmental threats parties

in conflict typically will find pathways of cooperation, whether it be on the level of high politics or at the micro-level.

I focus here on the micro-level—the level of a regional conservation park.

Conservation parks, with their endangered forests, animals, and fragile bodies of water, have a symbolic significance. That is, they have the potential to appeal to the hearts and minds of all peoples. In fact, scholars have begun to position conservation parks within the environmental peacemaking literature as parks for peace, or Peace Parks (Ali ed.

2007; de Villiers 1999).

Ali, in line with Moffet (2009), argues that conservation parks must appeal to the self-interest of local players especially in the cases of conflicts funded by or over control of resources (Ali 2007b). What is more, Ali argues that conservation programs must be a level playing field between international donors and local peoples, which they historically have not been. However, international logistical facilitators, such as the UN, play a major part in conservation. They bring experience, equipment, and financial support that without which the vast majority of national conservation parks would be dead on arrival

(Ali 2007b). Further, this cannot mean a drastic decentralization of power and radical 42

redistribution of planning to local communities, because given current trends those local

communities, given their low place in the regional and global economy, would choose the

most immediate decision: extractive exploitation to turn a profit on the land. It is the role

of the peace park to offer a different way to benefit from the land while also preserving

its biodiversity.

There has accordingly been a shift in the peace through conservation literature.

Focusing on the need to bring along the local community, Luke Moffet (2009) has argued

that the only way forward with conservation in areas of resource smuggling and high

violence, the example he gives is actually Virunga, is if peace itself brings profit. Moffet

argues that when presented with legitimated means of livelihoods individuals involved in

illicit economies will practically always choose the legal route.

One method of subverting the material conditions that give rise to such illicit

economies is the fostering of ecotourism industries. According to Harold Goodwin

ecotourism is defined as, “travel for the purpose of enjoying undeveloped natural areas or

wildlife” (Goodwin 1996). Rosaleen Duffy puts a finer point on it saying ecotourism is,

“nature-based tourism that does not result in the negative environmental, economic and

social impacts that are associated with mass tourism” (Duffy 2002). That is, Duffy argues, the tourist that travels to the glacier but contributes to the pollution of the ocean is not an ecotourist.

As demonstrated above, scholars assert that ecotourism offers underdeveloped countries a double-edged sword: sustainable economic development in the form of the 43

establishment of a unique tourism industry along with conservation (Maekawa et al.

2013; Moffet 2009). However, I recognize two major limitations for the case at hand.

First, for ecotourism to work, it must be both easily accessible by the would-be tourists

(which is one reason why South America, specifically Costa Rica, has such a flourishing ecotourism industry), and second, the area must be perceived to be safe for tourists

(Kruger 2005).13 However, parks with a flagship species, like Virunga’s silverback gorillas, have a very high chance of successfully developing an ecotourism industry, all things equal (Kruger 2005).

Section 5: Summing up the State Failure and Conflict Resolution Literature in the

Context o f Virunga National Park

I rely on Rotberg (2003) and Nagan and Hammer’s (2004) understanding of state failure as the failure or refusal of a state entity to provide public services or security to the population that resides within that state’s borders. Risse (2013), Leise and Beisheim

(2013), among others, have demonstrated that a hybrid-govemance model is a viable path away from state failure in chronically failed state situations. In these failed states, environmental degradation is the norm (Milbum 2012). Ali (2007) argues that the mutually shared danger of environmental degradation among belligerents can diffuse conflicts, thus leading to the establishment of and collaboration on mutual conservation

13 There is more to be said of the limitations of ecotourism, which are less pragmatic and more theoretical. These will be covered in the concluding chapter. 44

goals between previously warring state apparatuses. Given that the causality of the

feedback loop between human violence and ecological destruction identified by Dudley,

et al. (2002) the creation of an economically viable conservation plan is paramount

(Moffett 2009). One method of creating such a profitable form of conservation is ecotourism (Goodwin 1996; Duffy 2002). 45

Chapter 3: Effects of State Failure on Conservation in Virunga National Park

This chapter will make evident the state failure of the Democratic Republic of the

Congo as well as the ability of the ICCN, a middling Congolese ministry of conservation,

to preside over a counter-intuitive governance program in the Eastern region of the

country despite obstructed by both the Congolese and other foreign militaries in addition to numerous rebel militias. To demonstrate this, the chapter showcases the aspects of

state and governance failure in the DRC in terms of the exceptionally low level of the government’s provision of public goods to the population. By reviewing such, this chapter contextualizes the question posed by this thesis of conservation and governance successes within the situation of state and governance failure, war, and little economic stability of the DRC.

Section 1: The Flora and Fauna o f Virunga National Park

Established by Prince Albert as Parc Albert, Virunga National Park, along with the environments and animals it contains, has “outstanding universal value” (UNESCO

2016c). The diversity of weather patterns within the park - with areas of Lake Edward receiving the least amount of rainfall out of any area in the DRC and areas of the Mount

Ruwenzori receiving the most - result in biological diversity that make the park’s 46

environmental value impossible to exaggerate, both in terms of medical and biological

research potential as well as the importance of the park to the ecological stability of the

region. The park is home to nearly 20,000 hippopotamuses, the highest concentration in

the world, in addition to numerous herds of elephants, and is the chosen winter retreat for

migrating birds from Siberia. Most critically, however, it is estimated that the park is

home to just over 480 of the roughly 800 silverback gorillas remaining alive in the world

(UNESCO 2016c)14. For 90 years in varying degrees of success, the ICCN has protected

these animals.

Following independence from Belgium in 1960, all elements of Congolese government-led activity dwindled due to the lack of indigenous leadership in the country.15 Thus, after decolonization the park’s conservation efforts initially flagged.

However, when Joseph Mobutu, a colonel in the Congolese army at the time of independence, assumed power in 1969, the park received special attention from the kleptocrat who considered it a “pet project” for a time, initially supporting conservationists’ efforts to maintain the park (Virunga National Park 2016). As a result, throughout the 1970s, tourism in the park soared, with nearly 6,500 tourists visiting per year (Virunga National Park 2016). However, while the profits from ecotourism can

14 The estimates on the population of the remaining wild silverback gorilla population varies, with some sources putting the number directly at 786 and some putting the number has high as 880. The fact that all sources agree on is that the population has been raising since the late 1980s (UNESCO 2016c).

15 At the time of independence from Belgium, there were 17 university graduates native to the Congo (Steams 2011). 47

potentially facilitate strong conservation efforts given proper policies, ample funding from high tourism rates and profits do not necessarily produce successful conservation efforts. Due to Mobutu’s inattentive attitude towards the park and conservation, the population of silverback gorillas almost halved in the two decades leading up to the

1980s (Harcourt and Fossey 1981). When, in the 1980s, challengers to Mobutu began operating in the East near Virunga, the park management’s ability to protect the park severely deteriorated (Mampilly 2011; Vlassenroot and Buscher 2009; Raeymaekers

2009). The gorillas of Virunga have since become another line on the long list of casualties in the internecine conflict that has roiled the Rift Valley for nearly three decades.

Recent national and regional political conflicts in the Rift Valley involving the

Congolese, Rwandan, Ugandan, Angolan governments along with their array of proxy rebellions, have stretched the social fabric of the region to its breaking point. These convoluted and interweaving wars, proxy wars and civil wars had devastating effects on conservation efforts in Virunga National Park. Due to its strategic location at the border of Rwanda and the DRC, the park became a vital staging ground, refuge, and open line of retreat in times of conflict (Sjostedt 2013). This is due to the relatively unpopulated 48

nature of the park, dense forests in which soldiers, rebels, and refugees alike can hide, and the lucrative mineral deposits in the park.16

To demonstrate the above, this chapter is broken into four sections. The first section provides a quick enumeration of the elements of state failure in the DRC in the past half-century, with specific focus on the most recent decade. Section two covers the

Rwandan Genocide, the concurrent refugee crisis in and around Virunga. This sections addresses the effects of the genocide in terms and governance failure, and practical concerns of conservation. The third section incorporates the accounts of two western journalists in their visits to the park to bring context providing a ground level insights in regards to the governance failures of the country. It is highly important to note that their visits occurred during times when the wars were officially over, but the fighting dragged on regardless.

16 Specifically, I will argue in Chapter Four that Joseph Kabila, president of the DRC since 2001, recognizes the locational and potential economic value o f the park and has, since late 2008, set the park up as a buffer zone between the DRC and his adversaries in the East. 49

Section 2: Applying State Failure Theory to the Democratic Republic of the

Congo: 1996 to the Present

In the years preceding the Rwandan genocide, the subsequent Congo Wars, and the various rebellions that carry on to the time of this writing, the Congolese government failed to maintain its status as the sole origins of legitimate violence, in other words the state had failed. As such, a majority of Congolese state agencies had succumbed to the failure and ceased providing the security and services promised by modem states. There was, however, an exception: the ICCN. This fourth section reviews both the effect of the failure of the Congolese state upon the Congolese economy and society, and the efforts of the ICCN to pursue conservation despite the government and governance breakdown in the region.

In 1996, the Congolese economy and labor market severely contracted. The rate of inflation was 750% (Steams 2011). The copper, diamond, coffee, palm oil, and tea production industries - vital for the commodity dependent Congolese economy - all were decreasing both production and exports (Steams 2011). Further, only 1 in 20 Congolese had a salaried job, a plurality of whom worked for the government on a salary of less than

$5 a month. Given the anemic state of its domestic economy, the Congolese government, unable to generate tax revenues, relied heavily on foreign aid to function (Stearns 2011).

When in 1997 the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire 50

(AFDL) led by Laurent-Desire Kabila, a Congolese leftist revolutionary returned from decades of exile in Tanzania, ousted Mobutu, they came to reside over a broken government and an economy at the tail end of a downward spiral. According to Jason

Steams, who led a UN investigation into the violence in Congo in 2008, the only money left in the Central Bank in Kinshasa when the AFDL finance ministers inspected was,

“[a] lonely fifty French franc note,” left “as an insult” (Steams 2011, 165).

Kabila came to power espousing a progressive program of reforms and redistributive politics. However, within a year of coming to power, Kabila restricted political activity (Prunier 2013). This attempt by Kabila to reign in a fractured political elite had effects that reverberated throughout the vast country. Restricting political activity, in this case, did more than quell political dissent, it stymied the nonprofit sector that had become the sole consistent provider of public goods in the country. During the decades of Mobutu’s rule, these nonprofit organizations had proliferated throughout the

DRC, offering some semblance of governance (Steams 2011).

Kabila’s ending of relief programs that millions of Congolese relied on further distanced huge swaths of the Congolese population from him. Following his erratic first few months in power, the World Bank called in the $14 billion debt Mobutu had amassed during his 30 years rule (Olsson and Fors 2004; Dizolele 2010). Not only was the new government broke; it was indebted in the service of its predecessor. As such, Kabila and his staff directed all efforts at consolidating control, not providing governance. The country suffered, with local communities in the East being subjected to ethnically fueled 51

massacres both during the AFDL’s surge westward across the country prior to Kabila coming to power, and then at the hands of the MLC, RCD and other rebel groups that came to power to oppose Kabila when he was unable to create situation of political hegemony. The violence was ethnically fueled at the local level (Stearns 2011). While ethnicity is an insufficient explanatory factor in the conflict as a whole, it goes far to help clarify the hyper-violent aspect of the various rebel movements in the region.

In most societies, there are numerous political structures and institutions with which people align themselves to seek opportunity and fulfillment. Individuals seek membership in groups to center their own understanding of their identity. In the DRC there were no legitimate institutions through which individuals could realize their aspirations. Even the army, often the employer of last resort in other countries, had become an institution staffed by extortionists and criminals (Prunier 2009). According to

Jason Steams, as the Congolese social structure broke down Congolese, and the

Rwandans residing in the eastern border region of the DRC, resorted to one of the most base and comprehensible metrics of defining identity: Ethnicity. That is, people began to structure their understanding of the world and the groups within which they place themselves because of the perceived ethnicities of themselves and those around them because all other such identities began to lose meaning in the face of the broken world surrounding them. Indeed, while it fails to tell the whole story, explaining the conflicts in terms of ethnic tensions provides an easy to follow narrative. 52

Kabila’s ousting of Mobutu had not brought political hegemony to the region. The continued high-political struggle for domination of Congolese politics affected the low- political struggle being waged by the ICCN to re-establish political stability in the Rift

Valley Region. When a new rebellion broke out less than five years after the ascension of

Kabila’s government to power in Kinshasa Kabila’s government faced an existential threat of its own. However, unlike in 1995, this time there were two separate proxy- rebellions, both at odds with one another (Prunier 2013). First, there was the Rally for

Congolese Democracy (RCD), assembled and supported by the Rwandan government, as was the AFDL that put Kabila into power in the first place and the Movement for the

Liberation of the Congo (MLC), which had the support of the Ugandan government.

Ugandan and Rwandan politicians, initially Kabila’s primary benefactors, had initiated plans to place a more malleable regime in power following Kabila’s expulsion of

Ugandan and Rwandan advisors from his government (Prunier 2013).

These new proxy-rebel groups, both the RCD and the MLC continued the legacy of committing massacres in the DRC (Steams 2011). Setting aside the ruminations on the motivations for the massacres, the Congolese government’s inability to put down these rebellions demonstrates that it failed to satisfy even the most fundamental qualifying aspect of a state: the monopoly of legitimate means of violence. Even following the integration of these two rebel groups, among others, into the Congolese armed forces in

2002, there remained an ever-shifting array of rebel groups operating in the East of the country (Kabamba 2010; Richards 2014). 53

As recently as November 2013, the M23 militia was operating openly against the

Congolese national army, the FARDC (Nangini et al 2014). If anything, the integration of rebel groups into the national army demonstrated to other would-be rebels that such a strategy to realize political aspirations could work for them as well, effectively reinforcing the incentive structure that had led to so many previous rebellions. While the

Congolese government also fails to satisfy every other aspect of a state, the inability of the government to even provide the fundamental public good of security demonstrates, without question, that from 1993 to the present it has failed to maintain the characteristics of a state.

Section 3: The Rwandan Genocide and the Refugee Crisis in the Eastern DRC

Effects on Virunga

The current cycle of violence began with the 1993 following the eruption of the

Rwandan genocide (Mackintosh 1997; Clark 1998; Reyntjens 1999). Following the genocide, with the refugees and various foreign and domestic rebellions that saw violence spill into the DRC and Virunga, the park was caught up in the middle protracted fighting between various governments, their proxy groups, and small local ‘defense’ forces with allegiance to only themselves (Prunier 2009). 54

While most historians and academics place the end of the genocide in July of

1994, the ramifications for the region (and Virunga) reverberated for decades after.

Nearly half a million refugees from Rwanda arrived in Virunga in 1994 alone. Two years later, the number of refugees in Goma, a city just south of the park, remained at nearly

750,000 (Steams 2012). The refugees naturally tended towards unsettled areas, setting up camps within and near the park perimeter (Prunier 2013). In March of 1996, the Zairian army, still at the command of an ailing and besieged Joseph Mobutu, met the AFDL rebel groups and their Rwandan allies in Nord Kivu and Sud Kivu - Virunga is situated in

Nord Kivu (Steams 2012). The wars generated by the Rwandan Genocide was unlike any modem Africa had seen. At its height it involved eight nations actively engaged in combat on the ground in the DRC, with several others engaged in aerial campaigns and funding belligerents. It is estimated the conflicts in the Congo resulted in between five and six million causalities as well as nearly three million more internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the one country alone (UNHCR 2015; Steams 2011; Prunier 2013;

Warroll 2015).

The effects of the war were not only drastic for conservation in Virunga National

Park, but catastrophic for the Congolese State. Already struggling to maintain control within its territory, with numerous internal disputes at the breaking point, the Congolese state crumbled under the combined weight of the millions of refugees and foreign troops pouring over its eastern border in the mid-1990s (Prunier 2009). By the time Laurent- 55

Desire Kabila took power in Kinshasa in May of 1997, the East had been subjected to nearly two years of intense violence and ethnic striation (Stearns 2011).

While Zairian (Congolese) army personnel engaged FDLR rebels supported by rebel and Rwandan army troops, the park rangers of Virunga and non-profit personnel worked to cope with the influx of refugees and the impact of various armed groups and their subsequent strain on the resources of the region. In 1995, Marc Languy, director of the World Wildlife Fund project in Virunga, reported that rebel militias fighting for either the overthrow of the Congolese or of the Rwandan government, were entering the park illegally to harvest wood for a burgeoning charcoal smuggling operation (Lovgren 2004).

The New York Times reported this operation, in addition to the importation of foodstuffs and weapons to rebels and refugees alike, was worth $250,000 a month to the rebel commanders, who sold the charcoal to the refugees in the surrounding area (Gettleman

2009). ICCN park rangers, even with their rocket propelled grenades, assault rifles and interceptor jeeps, were outgunned by, and thus unable to stop, the Congolese soldiers involved in the burgeoning illicit extractive economy within Virunga’s territory

(Huggins, Chenje, Mohamed-Katerere and Attere 2006). Thus, through the late 1990s, with the ongoing conflicts around the park, rangers were unable to prevent rampant deforestation and habitat encroachment on the gorilla populations of the Virunga

Mountains.

Rebels illegally exploiting the park's resources did not make up the entirety of the new human strain on the park’s authorities. By February of 1995 the 40,000 or so 56

refugees camping within the park were using between 579 and 772 tons of wood a month,

leading to a deforestation of an estimated 20,000 hectares (UNHCR 1995). By April of

the same year the range of land estimated to be deforested or otherwise affected by the

refugees rose to 790,000 hectares. By November an additional 300,000 hectares,

subjected to the refugees need for charcoal and living space, was consumed and

otherwise destroyed (UNHCR 1995). Not only was the park at risk from deforestation

because of the charcoal needs of the refugees; but the animals living in the park were

additionally exposed to the waste created by the influx of people living in it. The waste

was not only that created by the refugees, but also medical waste created by the NGOs

there to serve them (UNHCR 1995). Rotting waste in the jungle presented a huge threat

to the animals in the park; though especially to gorillas, which are liable to pick up

diseases carried by humans. In all of this, the besieged Zairian government did not

respond to the human suffering, environmental destruction, and moral disaster along its

eastern border (Pottier 1996). Even as recently as December 2015, UNESCO reported

nearly four million refugees in the DRC, of whom over two and a half million were

internally displaced persons. In addition to this, there were an estimated 150,000 refugees

from Rwanda and the Central African Republic (CAR) residing in the DRC as of March

2015 (UNHCR 2015).

The effects of the violence that spawned out of the Rwandan Genocide on the

conservationists, while dire, was in a way less disastrous than that experienced by the

Zairian government. Prior to the outbreak of violence in its eastern frontier, the 57

government was operating as an extractive venture for the benefit of Mobutu Sese Seko, which directly led to the doldrums that defined the Congolese economy both before and after Mobutu’s removal from power (Prunier 2009).

After 30 years of Mobutu’s inefficient rule, the government was unable to cope with the strain of the war (Gettleman 2012). In 1997, the AFDL, led by Laurent-Desire

Kabila, stormed Kinshasa by force forcing Mobutu to flee to Morocco, where he died months later from a pre-existing illness. Kabila, having ascended to the presidency by force riding a wave of Rwandan support, presided over the disintegrating polity that was the DRC for less than four years before being assassinated by his own bodyguard

(Prunier 2009). He was replaced, eight days after his death, by his son Joseph Kabila.

However, the weakness of the Congolese state goes beyond violent regime change. Since the inception of The Fragile States Index in 2005, the DRC has remained at the very bottom of the list, ranking as the second most fragile state in 2005 at its lowest and seventh most failed state in 2007 at its highest. Fragility, to the degree observed in the DRC, connotes failure of state institutions. The DRC, as of 2015, was ranked the fifth most fragile state on the planet. This rating reflects the failure in regards to the capacity of the Congolese state to provide even the most basic public goods. While it did move up three slots in ten years this does not represent any significant improvement in the state’s capacity but, rather, a worsening of the overall capacity of the world’s states. In 2005 the aggregated score, with a higher score meaning a higher likelihood of state failure, of the 58

DRC in the index was 105.3 rising to 109.7 in 2015 (Haken 2015). The status of the DRC as a failed state is well established.

The failure of the Zairian/Congolese state meant the further destabilization of the region - making things even more difficult for the rangers and staff of Virunga National

Park in terms of achieving conservation goals. However, because the Zairian government had its hands in the destabilization of the region before the post-genocide crisis, this meant only the loss of only a capricious ally for the park’s administration.

Section 4: Foreign Correspondents in Post-Bellum Virunga

What follows is two accounts of foreign observers of the response of ICCN officials to the war as it affected the park. These accounts illustrate the stress experienced by Virunga’s rangers both because of their perceived allegiance to an unpopular, and ultimately doomed, regime, as well as because of their struggle, and failure, to maintain the territorial integrity of the park during the succession of conflicts that carried on around it. Jeremy Schmidt (1999) traveled to the park in April of 1998, just eleven months after the end the second full-scale war in the DRC in a decade. Schmidt’s account demonstrates the effects of the overwhelming burden of the refugees, in terms of deforestation and human waste pollution, on both the park’s staff as well as its environs. 59

As Schmidt recounts, civil war forced Norbert Mushenzi, the former director of national parks in the DRC’s province of Nord Kivu, along with his staff, from the ICCN offices in the fall of 1996. Mushenzi, having spent several weeks in Goma, returned to the district offices in Rumangabo to find the park’s administrative offices to be riddled with bullet-holes, broken windows and emptied, presumably by rebels - though just as likely by DRC government soldiers, of computers and other valuable equipment.

After finding the offices of the ICCN abandoned with bullet holes in the walls in

Rumangabo, Mushenzi drove further into the interior of the park to Djomba. Here

Mushenzi found park rangers hiding in the dense forest. As the violence had approached, knowing their connection with the DRC government would likely lead to punishment, torture, or worse, the rangers buried all government issued weapons, uniforms, and so on, to flee into the forest. According to Schmidt, these rangers professed to be there to make sure the gorillas were safe. As the war raged on, all of the gorillas remained safe in the mist - for the time being. Even a year after these events when Schmidt himself visited the park he stayed in Goma, the major city of the Eastern Congo, and made trips during the day to the park, always leaving before dark. This was because the park remained in rebel control. In fact, as of 1998, the park in practice hardly existed. The ICCN was an administrative body exiled from its demarcated territory.

On April 19, 2002, the Sun City Agreement - the result of over nineteen months of the so-called Inter-Congolese Dialogue talks held in Sun City, South Africa - was signed by several of the factions that had been at war with one another within the DRC 60

(Economist Intelligence Unit 2003; Dizolele 2010). This agreement brought hope that the brutal wars in the Congo raging since 1996, together resulting in over 5 million causalities, were coming to a peaceful resolution.17 However, while the Ugandan backed

Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC) rebels agreed to sign, numerous other groups, such as the Rwandan backed Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratic (RCD) as well as several domestic Congolese rebel groups, refused. Even after the DRC saw its first elections in decades in 2006, the country was still embroiled in conflict.

Just after the Sun City Agreement went into effect, Paul Raffaele (2007) visited the park and Goma, the city closest to the park’s headquarters.18 Conditions had de- escalated from outright violence to simmering tension and distrust between various discrete groups; various rebel groups, 4,000 UN peacekeepers, Congolese Army personnel, and Rwandan Army troops. While visiting the park’s gorillas, Raffaele and his ranger guides came across Rwandan troops in the park. The conflict with Rwanda, a remnant of the chaos following the Rwandan genocide, was still affecting the park more than a decade later. Because of the danger of Rwandan Army troops in the park, Raffaele

17 The First Congo War lasted from 1996 to 1997 and saw the removal of Joseph Mobutu and the installation of Kabila as head of state, as well as the name of Zaire changed back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

1 8 An interesting aspect of Raffaele’s visit is the identity of his tour guide through Virunga National Park: Emmanuel de Merode. At this time, de Merode was still executive director of WildlifeDirect, a non-profit that supports conservation efforts throughout Africa. In 2003, de Merode married Louise Leakey, the daughter of the famed conservationist Richard Leakey— chairman of WildlifeDirect. Richard Leakey is according to Raffaele, “credited with saving Kenya’s elephants” (Raffaele 2007). As such, de Merode is positioned at the nexus of conservation in Africa. 61

reported that tourists wishing to see gorillas were unable to visit Virunga, but rather

visited Volcanoes National Park, just across the border in Rwanda. The annual revenue

potential is in the millions of dollars. Money that could be going to Virunga was instead

going elsewhere (Maekawa et al. 2013).

Section 5: Embattled Virunga Fights Back: Rebels on Retreat Double Down

As these developments illustrate, the effects of peaceful human conflict (politics)

and violent human conflict (war) on the gorilla populations of the Virunga Mountains has

been longstanding. Because of the civil war that followed decolonization and

independence from Belgium in the 1960s, biologists estimated that between 1960 and

1980 gorilla populations in the Virunga Mountains to have decreased by nearly 50 percent (Schmidt 1999, Harcourt and Fossey 1981, Harcourt 1983). Harcourt and Fossey

(1981) concluded that the main cause of the decrease in the gorilla population was human

encroachment and environmental disturbance. While the recent history of the DRC has made the Silverback Gorilla vulnerable, in addition to Virunga National Park, recent

developments indicate real advances in terms of animal protection. Most notably, as of

June 2015 the population of gorillas in the world has increased to 880 from a low of 254 in the early 1980s (Worrall 2015). In Virunga alone, the population of gorillas had increased to 480 by 2010, with an annual increase of 3.7%, a landmark for conservation 62

efforts and an indication that the new enforcement policies were working (Basu 2014).

The park’s administrative personnel continue to make advances in terms of conservation

efforts despite their constant struggle with rebels, corrupt Congolese army forces, and

armed forces from abroad, mostly Rwandan soldiers or Rwandan proxy forces.

In May of 2006 Paul Ngobobo became warden of the southern sector of the park,

the sector in which the gorillas reside and the illegal charcoal trade is hugely active. In

the months after his appointment to the post, Ngobobo enlisted the support of

international NGOs to pursue means by which to curb the smuggling of charcoal, namely

initiatives to finance alternative fuel sources and increase the pressure on park rangers to

arrest smugglers (Pepper 2008). This represented a threat to the entrenched interests that relied on the profit of the charcoal trade to supplement their funding. It is speculated that both rebels and Congolese army personnel are involved in the charcoal trade in the

Eastern Congo (Steams 2012; Steams 2013; Prunier 2009).

Following the official end of hostilities in the DRC, ICCN officials could not rely on the Congolese army for protection, despite ostensibly being two agencies of the same government. Army personnel even went so far as to harass the ICCN rangers and administrative and turned a blind eye when the gorillas of the park began to be used as leverage by rebels against the ICCN. On July 22, 2007, armed individuals stalked and killed four gorillas, three females and a male. The attackers shot the male seven times in the back with assault rifle rounds, and two females were “doused in petrol and set alit”

(de Merode 2011). Beyond the four killed on July 22, three other gorillas were killed 63

earlier in the month by unconfirmed assailants.19 Additionally, unknown assailants attacked Ngobobo on multiple occasions during his tenure as warden of the southern sector of the park. During one of his rounds in the towns surrounding the park, instructing villagers on ways to cut back on charcoal usage, he was approached by Congolese army regulars. The soldiers drew weapons on Ngobobo, forced him to kneel, tore his shirt off and flogged him - all in sight of the villagers (Stirton 2007). These events taken together make it clear that an intimidation campaign was underway.

The following month Ngobobo was transferred to a sector north of the gorilla refuge area. He said of the transfer, “What I have done was really upset the system. And for that, they have put my head on a tray” (Pepper 2008). The system Ngobobo was referring to, a black-market charcoal economy, began to crack in the months following the brutal month of July. Months after the brutal gorilla murders in July of 2007 mentioned above, in September, Laurent Nkunda led CNDP rebels in completely ousting the ICCN from Virunga - effectively exiling all staff and rangers from the park. Nkunda, a former general in the Congolese army, allegedly defected to protect his fellow Tutsi from persecution from the Hutus fleeing Rwanda in the wake of the genocide.

19 I use the word assailants and not hunters because the gorillas were killed by gun shot wounds to the head and left with no teeth, fur, or other body parts taken, as a warning to conservationists. Specifically, it has been assumed that these killings were a direct response to Ngobobo’s active pursuit of charcoal smugglers and his actions to bring a stop to the illegal felling of timber in the park for the illicit charcoal trade. Hunters would have removed the bodies as trophies to be sold. The killings were, thus, clearly meant as a warning. 64

According to Nkunda, he took the park to protect the gorillas from the Congolese army, which according to him was threatening them (Lovgren 2009). The reality was that by positioning itself in the park, CNDP forces had unhindered access to the forest, and thus charcoal, giving them a strategic staging ground from which to launch assaults on

Goma as well as a safe line of retreat if operations in the area turned sour.

Congolese authorities did no investigate or prosecute the 2007 murders of seven gorillas. At the end of 2007 the park was, once again, no longer accessible by park rangers because of a rebel takeover. The situation in the region was one of complete governance breakdown. However, the events in July of 2007 evidently had an impact on the government in Kinshasa, as they arrested then Chief Warden Honore Mashagiro.

Despite all of this, between 2003 and 2010, the years precisely when the DRC went from being an openly warring state to a state suffering from failed de-militarization efforts, the population of gorillas increased by 26 percent (Williams 2011). More broadly, from the absolute lowest recorded population of 254 in 1980, the gorilla population has increased to 480 recorded in Virunga National Park in 2011 (Sodhi et al 2011). Further, there have been increases in the elephant population in the park, though the numbers are less exact on this species in Virunga due to herds traveling between the park and the adjacent park Bwindi Impenetrable Park in neighboring Uganda (Sodhi et al 2011).

In addition to fauna-based successes, the park administration of Virunga has been able to lay groundwork for a conservation strategy that looks sustain itself for decades to 65

come, building a culture of conservation within the population that lives, eats, works and plays nears the park. By constructing a hydroelectric power plant in Mutwanga less than

20 miles from the park, which provided power for the households, the park administration is mindfully addressing the underlying cause of the deforestation that was rampant in the park in the early 2000s (Virunga 2016). Additionally, the ICCN runs a health center in Kabaya, which is located within the park itself. This health clinic has 25 beds and serves the population living near the park, or anyone who injured within it

(Virunga 2016). No major hospital, but some semblance of providing healthcare where none is otherwise provided by the state. And finally, the park administration now runs the

Virunga National Park Primary School, where students are, in addition to reading, writing, and basic arithmetic, taught the value of conservation and the role they can play to protect their environment and by extension themselves (Citation). The ability of the

ICCN to provision these three services - power, emergency medical services, and education - is impressive considering the context within which the agency operates. 66

Chapter 4: Conservation and Conflict in the Eastern Congolese Melange

“The ability [of states] to implement social policies and to mobilize the public, relates to the structure of society. There can be no understanding of state capabilities in the Third World without first comprehending the social structure of which states are only one part.” Joel Migdal (1988, 33-34).

“Don’t believe for one second that Rwanda supported us because they were our friends, or that they sympathized with Congolese Tutsi. They supported us because they needed us. And when they no longer needed us, they turned on us.” Usalama Project Interviewee #110, Bukavu. August 18, 2012. (Steams 2012).

This chapter develops a framework by which to examine the shifts in the structure

of social space in Virunga National Park and the Rift Valley Region. In doing so, this

chapter develops an anthropological snapshot of contemporary Eastern Congolese State

and Society. By reviewing the changing power structures of the Eastern Congo and the

role of the ICCN, I demonstrate that it has been able to leverage its position vis-a-vis the

Congolese state, relative to its relationship with international organizations such as the

UN, in order to secure a privileged position. This privileged position gives the ICCN

room to maneuver in terms of developing infrastructure and determining the development pattern in the region.

This chapter employs Joel Migdal’s State in Society framework to understand the

stmcture and dynamics of Congolese politics. That region that is alternatively referred to as the Eastern Congo, the Albertine Rift Valley, the Great Lakes Region, and the Congo 67

Basin is home to a large array of competing actors and ethnic groups with a resultant complex social dynamic.20 By using a framework that enables the differentiation and delineation between these discrete social groups, this chapter analyzes of the convoluted political situation of the Eastern Congo regarding such conflict’s effects on conservation there. To this end, this chapter deploys Migdal’s theory of the state-in-society melange and creates a working understanding of the social structures that make up the Eastern

Congo, the dynamics thereof and the resultant impact on the ICCN’s efforts to protect the environs of Virunga National Park (Migdal 2001). Applied to human societies, melange refers to the social groups that together make up, and contribute to the constant reshaping of, the structure of society (Migdal 2001).

This chapter unfolds in two sections. First, I review the applicability of Joseph

Migdal’s melange framework to the question posed of Virunga’s unusual success. In the second section, I elaborate upon the structure of the melange that makes of the DRC, with special attention given to the eastern-most region of the country. Further, also in the second section, I analyze the most prominent and influential groups and the effects of their actions on the daily life in the Eastern Congo, as well as their various connections and quarrels with one another.

I argue that the belligerents in the conflict that unfolded from the fallout of the

Rwandan Genocide and the ouster of Mobutu either belonged to the internationally backed pro-development camp or the small-scale rebel mining camp. In the former camp

20 As throughout this work, the part of the DRC wherein Virunga resides will be referred to as the Eastern Congo, and the larger region that includes the western border regions of Rwanda and Burundi, as well as the southern border region of Uganda, will be referred to as the Rift Valley region. 68

lies, the three parties, the UN, the ICCN and the government in Kinshasa. While each of these individual groups harbor some contending peripheral goals, their members agree on the fundamental priority of providing security in the Eastern Congo. In this, each group recognizes the necessary requirement of a stable and hegemonic political presence in the

Eastern Congo for their larger ambitions there. Until the region is secure, the three entities will be categorically unable to pursue their further ambitions there. While all three groups desire the same goal of security and development in general, when security and stability do come to the region their subsequent goals may conflict with one another.

At that time it is likely the alliances would again shift, as groups restructured their short­ term tactics to continue pursuing their long-term strategic interests.

In opposition to this, there is the array of rebel militias who serve to benefit from continued instability in the region. Based on the actions taken by the members of these groups, their motivations are much more straightforward: survival, evasion of arrest, and profit. The large numbers of jobless young men in the economically moribund country power the illicit groups, attracted by potential profits from the illegal exploitation the resources of the country, as well as the power to be had by joining such an organization.

The pro-development forces have their strengths and advantages as well as their weaknesses and disadvantages. Legitimate financing and the weight of the international support behind them gives them an advantage over the rebel militias. The UN’s implicit and explicit support of the government in Kinshasa weakens the rebels, casting them as as insurgent terrorists threatening the peace and security of the DRC, framing the conflict 69

as one of a legitimate institution working to bring peace and solvency to a region besieged by criminals and pirate miners. What this means is the access to the epic sums of credit offered by financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International

Monetary Fund. However, in a strange bit of irony, the laws of the market coupled with the resource rich nature of the Congolese soil enable anti-development forces to also secure solid funding, certainly on a smaller scale than their UN-aligned adversaries, but on a scale adequate to continue their struggle. The illicit charcoal economy charcoal consisting of smugglers belonging to both rebel militias, foreign military wings, and in the past members of the Congolese army itself, provides fluidity to the rebels untethered from the protocols that guide the actions of UN and international intervention forces. The illicit charcoal economy has carried on despite ongoing international condemnation of such damaging extractive measures.

In addition to the charcoal smuggling operations going on in and around Virunga

National Park there was an explosion in artisanal coltan mining in the Kivu region. In the year 2000, the price of coltan on international markets increased 1000 percent because of the booming demand for electronics (Burgis 2015). This increase in price and the violence of the 1990s, which prevented any large-scale mining infrastructure development, set the stage for rebels to be able to become the chief organizers of wide scale artisanal mining and smuggling operations that moved the coltan to Uganda or

Rwanda for sale on international markets. In the years following 2000, it was estimated that 30-80% of the coltan mined in the Eastern Congo was smuggled out of the country 70

(Burgis 2015). While the mining in the Eastern Congo is of less importance nationally than the large-scale, highly developed, mining industry in the Katanga province to the south, it has been highly impactful on the ongoing cycles of violence in the East. In this way, the illicit economy of the East did not cause any of the conflicts, but shaped the way the wars grew and continued to manifest until the present time of writing.

The rebel groups have the advantage of operating in one of the most difficult to patrol regions on the planet. The dense volcanic jungle peaks of the Virunga mountain range provide the ideal refuge. Not only can they hide in the bush, they can forage and hunt, disappearing without starving. Putting aside their ostensible goals of regime change in Uganda, Rwanda, or the DRC aside, the rebel militias are primarily engaged in v fostering continued instability.

These conditions have positioned the ICCN and the rebel forces in direct odds with each other. Specifically the ICCN and the more prominent rebel groups are competing for both the compliance but also the participation of the Congolese people living in the Great Lakes Region in their specific projects. The rebels are constantly recruiting more fighters, and the ICCN strategy relies on denying the rebels the hearts and minds of the local citizens. In the face of rebellions, the ICCN has been engaged in reshaping the social space so as to create conditions that encourage individuals to become rangers, tour guides, and members of ancillary industries to tourism, in turn creating law- abiding citizens opposed to the rebellion enabled, wild-west style, extractive industry. In order to compete with the rebels who offer fast cash, the masculinizing aspect of war, and 71

belongingness, the ICCN has begun a two-fold strategy coupling coercion with symbolic appeals to the nationalism of people who have watched kleptocracy, or rule by theft, reign supreme in their homeland for decades. Only because of its ability to rely on the non-profit organization Virunga Alliance, and others, for funding outside of what it can generate from eco-tourism profits, the ICCN has been able to begin actively pursue policies in line with its leader's vision of the development of the Eastern Congo. This is a clear example of hybrid governance: the joining forces of a private organization with a government agency to provide goods and services. By doing so, both groups aid each other in their respective missions and are able to a governing structure to a region in need, where such a goal would otherwise most likely be out of reach.

As this chapter further demonstrates below, in conjunction with the national politics of the DRC, conditions on the ground in the Eastern Congo have enabled the

ICCN to gain the tacit support of the central government regarding its mission to develop a eco-tourism industry and an economy that is geared towards sustainability in South and

North Kivu. This is despite conflict between such goals and the powerful Congolese mining industry. I argue that because mining in the East is of little national importance as compared to highly developed and profitable mining industry in the Katanga province, the government has made a calculated decision to pursue different industrial development in the eastern-most part of the country - thus pursuing a diversification of the Congolese economy. 72

Section 1: Migdal’s concept o f the Melange

Migdal’s observations regarding the dynamics of state development enable an incisive analysis of the political structures of the Eastern Congo. Migdal explicitly developed his theory of the melange as applied to societies with weak states, and as demonstrated elsewhere herein the DRC has consistently been among the weakest of the weak states on the planet. IN such a society with a weak state, as compared to societies with strong states at the center of society providing the acceptable boundaries of conduct, competing social groups are constantly engaged in ever evolving alliance making and conflict with one-another. Each group in any given melange is constantly vying to influence the behavior and decision making procedures of individuals. This parallels an observation of Foucault’s that in the early state-making period, states took up measures of discipline so as to structure possible social realities as would benefit the state (Foucault

2004, 17). To this, Migdal adds that while the state is attempting to shape social spaces, it is only one among many such groups. Something very important to both Foucault and

Migdal is that the state is yet another organization amongst others. However, Migdal notes, while the state is forced to compete with other social groups, it has the extreme privilege of being recognized by international organizations such as the UN, which boosts their legitimacy (Migdal 1988). Migdal notes that pre-existing social groups face relative deprivation vis-a-vis the state as it increases the depth and scope of its authority

(Migdal 1988; Migdal 2001). 73

According to Migdal, states only function if they penetrate society - breaking through traditional barriers and subsequently reordering social norms, procedures and practices (Migdal 1988). Following the ascendance of the international order and massive state penetration from the mid-20th century onward, states carried the moral authority of the UN system on their shoulders, to properly guide their countries into peaceful development and prosperity (Migdal 1988). The penetration of society necessarily entails three primary state practices; first, the regulation of social relationships; second, the extraction of resources (human, natural, and otherwise); and third, the guided appropriation of these resources towards state sanctioned projects (Migdal 1988, 4). It is through such procedures that states aim to shepherd their populations to prosperity.

Migdal defines the state as a “field of power marked by the use and threat of violence and shaped by (1) the image o f a coherent, controlling organizations in a territory, which is representative o f the people bounded by that territory, and (2) the actual practices o f its multiple parts” (Migdal 2002, 16). This definition separates the contrived image of the state from the material actions and practices of the agencies that constitute it. By distinguishing the image of a state from its practice and stressing the importance of focusing on the practice thereof; Migdal does away with the Weber’s nearly mystical conception of the state as the only “human community,” (Weber 1946,

78) that defines the rules of the game, as Migdal so often says, within a given territory.

Migdal still holds, however, that states are inherently attached to their discreet territory.

In this, he stresses the difference between de jure and de facto territorial control. One 74

thinks of The Zapatistas in Mexico, the FARC in Colombia, the MOP in Kurdistan,

Daesh in Iraq and Syria, or even perhaps the government of Taiwan vis-a-vis China, as examples of legal territorial control, images projected by governments, drastically differing with territorial control in practice. Migdal’s definition of the state allows for such a gap between image and practice.

A serious problem Migdal grapples with is the failure of many postcolonial states to live up to their image as highly energized and effectual organizations of social control

(Migdal 1988, 40). He accounts for the failure of many new states by recognizing the strength and vibrancy of the groups already established in these societies. These are groups such as influential families, church organizations, local clans or tribes, rebel militias, and so on (Migdal 1988). According to Migdal, prior to the state’s arrival, these groups structured social space, and not wanting to be displaced from such a privileged position, have thrown all efforts against the state’s effort to do so. That is, by claiming to represent a group of people within a given territory, offering incentives and sanctions, and structuring symbols in a way accepted by the relevant population these groups have demarcated for themselves a specific arena within which they hold power, however localized, that could rival, and in many cases forestall, the advances of newly arrived state (Migdal 1988, 26-28).

The political power of the groups is not always strictly defined by physical, or nakedly coercive, power. As understood here, power reveals itself in the capability of a group to influence the decisions of individuals in numerous areas of their lives, both the 75

somewhat benign; where they travel and where they live; how they make their livelihood; what they eat, and the more intimate and personal; who they spend their time with; how they raise their children; and their perceived relationship with God and the universe. By manipulating these decisions, Migdal argues that a specific group thus influences an individual’s conception of themself in relation to the social world, thus inserting itself into the life of that individual, further solidifying its base of power (Migdal 2001).

‘Control’ and ‘influence’ are words suited to describing the power wielded by these groups.

Migdal’s focus on social and political institutions in regards to their shaping of social space is what makes his theory so applicable for this study. By using a framework that lends itself to parsing out the competing interests and, in a systematic fashion, enables a review of how those interests function in terms of alliance building and decision making despite a lack of archival evidence. In this chapter, using Migdal’s framework, I piece together an idea of the structures of Eastern Congolese social groups in terms of their strategic goals, tactics, alliances, and benefactors. Doing so gives context to the actions taken by the ICCN, and develops a clear picture of the environment within which the agency has begun to offer governance and conservation policies despite being in the middle of an exceptionally violent and persistent war.

Migdal asserts that the state is not the sum of its parts, but the sum of the actions made by those parts (Migdal 1988, 10). Additionally illustrative is Migdal’s comparison of the state with other social groups. He goes to great lengths to make clear the state is 76

thrust into the same arenas as various other social groups that are all playing the same game. By this, Migdal asserts that the state competes with existing social forces; “clans, clubs, [and] communities” (Migdal 1988, 25), within various dimensions—geographical, policy, or temporal—in order to displace them as the actor that “subordinate^] people’s inclinations to its own.” (Migdal 1988, 22). Migdal observes that the ability of the state or other social groups to ultimately succeed in this endeavor is tied to that group’s ability to

“deliver key components for individuals’ strategies of survival” (Migdal 1988, 27). Thus, a society with non-state groups able to deliver the goods, services, and symbols necessary for individuals and their families to survive would stand as a difficult environ for a newly formed, newly decolonized, state. In addition to such an explanation regarding the prevalence of civil war in the 20th century, Migdal offers a way to understand the ongoing development of states in the both developing and developed world. Migdal’s theory of the state in society and the subsequent framework provides an alternative to the theories of state development that previously focused primarily on European and

American political development. This framework, instead of attempting to fit the cases to the theory, is by design modular and presses the scholar deploying it consider the historical contingencies of the country under study. 77

Section 2: Social Grouping in the Eastern Congo

The Eastern DRC has been host to a wide array of international governance institutions, conservation non-profits, and foreign armies. Since its inception in 2003, the

Congolese army, the Forces Armees de la Republique Democratique du Congo (hereafter referred to as the FARDC) simultaneously faced domestic challenges to state authority, and foreign incursions. The extreme levels of domestic unrest led the Congolese army to appear closer an occupying force rather than as gendarmes. Complicating the on-going

Clausewitzian-Machiavellian battle to secure sovereignty therein, the Eastern Congo possesses a melange of competing local social groups structured mainly along ethnic cleavages. Understanding the conflict in the Eastern Congo requires a working knowledge of the region's social geography and anthropological makeup.

Taken together the UN’s military and civilian missions in the DRC were both hugely influential in terms of the restructuring of power in the Congolese society around the turn of the 21st century. The UN conducted both its military and humanitarian operations so as to address the lack of security and health infrastructure experienced by the Congolese. Thus, the UN has provided the central government with a sovereignty bargain: the UN intrudes on the external sovereignty of the DRC, while at the same time securing the internal sovereignty of the Congolese government by targeting rebel groups that threaten the survival of Kabila and his regime. 78

It is impossible to know how the Eastern Congolese Melange would have developed in the decades following the Rwandan Genocide without the UN’s peacekeeping mission in the region. However, the conditions of the Eastern Congolese society in 1999, before the UN intervention began, did not appear to be changing in such a way so as to create conditions which would enable the ICCN to function as it began to in the first decade of the 21st century. The UN’s presence in the Eastern DRC was vast, and encompassed both multiple physical areas and policy areas. The UN began its mission in the DRC, its largest peacekeeping mission, on November 30, 1999 during the

Second Congo War. It was designed to assist in “the observation of the ceasefire and disengagement of forces” and was initially only planned to last until March 1, 2000 (UN resolution 1279 1999). In mid-2015 the UN Congo Mission’s personnel ceiling was reduced to “17,815 military personnel, 760 military observers and staff officers, 391 police personnel, and 1050 personnel of formed police units” (UN resolution 2211 2015), a reduction of 2,000 troops from its earlier ceiling established by UN resolution 2147

(2014).

The UN’s mission in the DRC moved huge sums of money and enlisted such large amounts of personnel in order to enable governance programs by bringing stability and de-escalation to the region, and without it, the ICCN would be completely subject to the violence and chaos characteristic there in the 1990s. With a 2015-2016 operating budget of $1.3 billion, compared to the $6.5 billion budget of the Congolese government, the UN’s peacekeeping mission in the Congo spends about 20 percent as much as the 79

entire Congolese government (UN 2016; U.S. Central Intelligence Agency 2016). This surge in spending by the UN on security propped up a sense of order in the region, turning the tide of rebel-led state dismantlement that had been ongoing since the

Rwandan Genocide.

The UN’s prime directive in the Congo, as put forth originally in UN resolution

1925 (2010), is the protection of civilians and humanitarian relief workers, though an ancillary mandate has been the support of the DRC's government in Kinshasa in its prolonged efforts to rid its eastern provinces, namely South and North Kivu, of rebel militias. As such, the government in Kinshasa has benefitted greatly from the UN Congo

Mission within its borders. Having the UN Blue Helmets shoulder a huge majority of

Kinshasa's ground campaign against rebel groups has enabled the government to stave off utter state failure regardless of its floundering army.

In addition to its armed mission, the UN also has an extensive humanitarian mission in the DRC led by UNHCR. Additionally, UNESCO has considerable personnel dedicated to its DRC mission, which is designed to assist with “capacity building for sustainable development” in the DRC (UNESCO 2016). In pursuing such a goal,

UNESCO primarily supports and protects existing conservation efforts in the DRC.

Through declaring five sites in the DRC, Virunga being one of them, to be Endangered

World Heritage Sites UNESCO has drawn international focus to the region’s tenuous environmental situation (UNESCO 2016). Regardless of such advocacy, UNESCO’s 80

presence in the country is largely limited to advocating existing projects, not directly engaging in the day-to-day business of the country.

The UN’s main civilian presence is through its UNHCR mission, which has provided material medical relief, in conjunction with Doctors Without Borders (MSF), to the refugees in the Eastern Congo—most recently, at the time of writing, fighting a measles epidemic as well as the ongoing problem of HIV/AIDS (UNHCR 2015; MSF

2014). The public health arm of the UN in the DRC was largely reactive, with no effective, large-scale, efforts at capacity building in the country in regards to public health. The capacity building efforts of the UN in the DRC primarily centered on environmental conservation, sustainable urban development, empowering women, and security (UN Habitat 2016; MONUSCO 2014). For the first decade and a half in the new century, the UN acted primarily as a crutch for the lack of health infrastructure in the country, not a builder of something new.

In addition to the UN, many non-governmental organizations were actively involved on the ground in the Eastern Congo region. The most prominent and largest conservation NGOs directly involved with conservation are Greenpeace and the World

Wildlife Fund. These organizations, along with numerous other conservation NGOs, either sponsor or have had researchers actively involved in zoological studies and surveys of Virunga for the past few decades (Virunga National Park 2016). The presence of such

NGOs serves to create a semi-protective aura as having Western zoologists in the area draws the scrutiny of Western media outlets. The local, PR-savvy, rebel militias wary of 81

drawing negative attention from the international community for harming a western

researcher tend to shift to less violent tactics in areas where such zoological studies are

being conducted (Human Rights Watch 2015).21

Conservation non-profits and charity organizations exerted strong influence on the development of the infrastructure of the Eastern Congo in the decade following the turn of the 21st century. With a direct link to governance, through their logistical support and financing of the ICCN and its various projects towards developing the fledgling ecotourism industry in the country, organizations such as WildLife Direct, The Virunga

Alliance, and Greenpeace, have become key players in the development of the Eastern

Congo (Milbum 2012).

Conservation charity organizations use their access to international media, as well as the charismatic nature of environmental issues, as their main lever by which to facilitate and encourage a specific type of development in the Eastern Congo. NGOs are able to channel conservation and humanitarian minded individuals to donate on a global scale to either support or end proposed policies or investments in the Eastern Congo

(McBride 2015). In this way, NGOs are not only able to generate international legitimacy for the ICCN, but also financially facilitate its operations (O’Brien 2015; Ross 2015).

The two primary supra-national governance institutions of Africa, the African

Union (AU) and the South African Development Community, have had zero concrete impact on conservation efforts in the region - pursuing diplomatic overtures rather than

21 However, this is not to say Western scientists and aid workers are completely safe, as there have been recent instances of kidnappings and extortion. 82

concrete involvement. While the AU maintains an African Standby Force (ASF) for times of crisis in Africa, no deployment has been made to the Eastern DRC. This may be attributed to the fact that the ASF was only recently conceived of and formed in the early years of the new century as well as the overall newness of the AU itself. However, AU diplomats have thrown their full weight behind UN intervention efforts in the Eastern

Congo, further legitimizing the Kinshasa government.

Joseph Kabila became president in 2001 following the assassination of the previous president, his father Laurent-Desire Kabila. In the years between 2001 and

2006, Kabila engaged in a struggle to establish his own base of power in Kinshasa

(Prunier 2009). Because of this, until 2003, he essentially left the Kivus, Virunga

National Park is located in North Kivu, to the various foreign and rebel elements engaged there, thus further solidifying the lack of state intervention in a region that was embroiled in local struggles for domination. When he did engage with the region by way of the integration of the army in 2003, Kabila did so as part of an effort to rebuild the Western portion of the country, rather than bring peace to the East (Prunier 2009). However, the consolidation of the army had the opposite effect, reactivating the violence that had roiled the region since 1994, as will be further elaborated on just below.

Reviewing the political challenges Kabila faced in 2001 and his observed actions taken to survive in such an environment reveals the general strategy of the Congolese central state apparatus regarding the Eastern Congo. Thus, it is possible to understand why the Congolese state remained essentially inactive in the Eastern Congolese Melange 83

for as long as it did, allowing the UN to operate as the primary provider of security well into the second decade of the 21st century. Kabila set out to stabilize the Congolese economy, which at the time of his ascension to the office of president was highly indebted and unproductive (Prunier 2009). In order to do this, Kabila focused on negotiating more favorable debt repayment schedules with Western financial institutions, reworking the Congolese economy - namely the mining industry in the Katanga province

- to demonstrate its viability in the modem global economy, and to consolidate his own power within his own government through a game of political chess within Kinshasa. All of these goals pursued relegated the conflict in the Kivus, almost a continent away, to be dealt with by other institutions than the Congolese central government.

Between the years of 2001 and 2003, Kabila received 20 million euros in emergency aid from Belgium, a $240 million loan from French donors, a $800 million credit from the IMF and World Bank to pay for government salary arrears - $522 million of which was immediately paid off by Belgium, South Africa, France and Sweden

(Prunier 2009, 280). Further the IMF granted the DRC another $750 million loan for towards its Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility Program, with another $450 million pumped into a Highly Indebted Poor Countries program with the DRC (Prunier 2009,

280). These were only the most visible in a flurry of restructuring of Congolese debt in the years following Kabila’s ascension to the presidency.

By 2005, Western financial institutions had rescheduled $8.98 billion of

Congolese debt, a relief for the Congolese government. Kabila received credit for this 84

good fortune, which he leveraged in Kinshasa to maintain support for his rule. However, as his position in the central government solidified, the stubborn intransigent conflict in the eastern region continued. While Kabila was charming international diplomats, bankers, and reporters, he was inactive regarding the slow burning rebellions in the

Kivus.

By overhauling the mining code, Kabila actively worked to encourage foreign investment while assuring the state’s ability to extract tariffs from the industry. To this end, the state maintained a mandatory minimum 5% stake in every new project.

Additionally, the granting of mining rights was standardized, with no custom tariffs for special companies with well placed political connections (Prunier 2009). This was the most important new policy: no exceptions. By fostering a technocratic atmosphere within the Congolese state apparatus, Kabila has distanced his government from the messy fray of Congolese patronage politics. Kabila tactfully pursued this in order to foster an image of the government as the arbiter of Congolese society, rather than yet another actor scrambling for control (Prunier 2009).

Third, Kabila completely reshuffled both his own cabinet and leaders of parastatal agencies and organizations, replacing 49 of 52 managers of state agencies within the first several years of his presidency (Prunier 2009). Kabila’s government thus became

“unencumbered by the weight of the past” (Prunier 2009, 263). Following his removal of these old leaders with pre-existing alliances, allegiances and so on, Kabila replaced them with new appointees he deemed suitable to his political goals. 85

I observe Kabila’s grand strategy as follows, (1) establish himself as an indispensible link from Congolese government to the Western financial institutions the country relies on and (2) attract foreign investment so as to elicit the formation of a strong, and readily taxable, mining sector in the Katanga province. As such, Kabila is primarily concerned with maintaining his own personal position and power within the government. Because of this, the central government can, in the agencies that are under his direct influence, be understood as acting in ways directed by Kabila so as to best benefit the sustaining of his power. Thus, considering the sovereignty bargain offered by the UN, Kabila has been able to retreat from the problematic eastern provinces of his country and focus on consolidating his own power in the western and southern regions.

All the while Kabila is able to defer handling the rebellions that threaten Congolese sovereignty in the East to the UN’s military presence there. This creates a degree of separation from the Congolese government and the ICCN, which becomes essentially an ally of the UN more so than an agency of the Congolese government.

The Congolese Army, The Forces Armees de la Republique Democratique du

Congo (FARDC or Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo) has, similarly to the government which it serves, remained relatively weak in the eastern region of the country. This weakness enabled rebel groups to survive and led to the continued struggle of the ICCN to maintain viable conservation efforts throughout the

2000s and 2010s. The FARDC is an amalgamation of the various belligerents in the

Second Congo Civil War of 1998 to 2003. The result of a troubled integration process 86

that began in 2002 following the Sun City peace agreement, the FARDC’s primary stated

objective is the establishment of a monopoly of violence in DRC (Inter-Congolese

Negotiations 2002; Stearns 2013).

However, it has been observed that the pursuit of the integration of the various

local rebel groups, many of which were enemies of the state prior to integration, was a

political gambit by Kabila at staving off confrontation with myriad armed enemies in his

eastern frontier (Prunier 2009; Steams 2011). This is yet another observable difference

between the image projected by an element of the Congolese state apparatus and the

practical impact of the policies related to that element. Gerard Prunier argues that Kabila

allowing rebel groups that were once adamant enemies of the state to become agents of that very same apparatus reinforced the notion that political violence could be used to

leverage one’s eventual absorption into the state (Prunier 2009).

Two systemic problems have come about due to the nature of the modem

Congolese army’s genesis. First, internal power struggles between rebel commanders fresh off of the front where many commanded men against one another have kept the force from coalescing into anything resembling a cohesive fighting force. Although there are two policies aimed at neutralizing the lingering loyalties of rebel soldiers to their commanders and their raison d'etre, namely those of mixage and that of brassage which respectively entail having hetero-ethnic units and individual soldiers stationed away from where their former rebel group fought or where they grew up, they have hardly been implemented (Prunier 2009). Thus, the incorporation of the medley of rebel groups that 87

now makes up the FARDC are in constant battle with one another. These internal power

struggles within the FARDC often spill into open warfare, as happened in the M23

rebellion in April 2012.

Second, officers systematically forged fake enlistment papers for “ghost soldiers”

in order to receive those fictitious soldiers’ income (Prunier 2009, 306). During the years

2004 and 2005 it was estimated that the FARDC consisted of between 120,000 and

150,000 able bodied, flesh and blood, soldiers, but payments were being made by the

central government for 240,000 enlisted soldiers (Prunier 2009). The budget allocated for the FARDC is meager, and has directly incentivized officers and enlisted alike towards

illicit ventures (the creation of ghost soldiers on the part of the officers, and looting on the part of those enlisted).

The combination of these two structural deficiencies in the FARDC has led it to be an ineffective fighting force. The FARDC was conceived of as a way to get passed a war that was tearing the country apart, neutralizing various factions that threatened to tear the country apart. As such, it proved partially successful, but moving forward huge reforms will be needed if the DRC is to have true security and not just relative stability.

While President Kabila holds the rank of Major General and is Commander-in-

Chief of the FARDC, he holds a distrust of the military (Prunier 2009; Steams 2013).

Considering that a large portion of his commanding officers were former enemies of the state, he is not without reason for concern. Because of his distrust of the majority of the officers serving in the military Kabila has created a informal parallel command structure 88

within the army, all members of whom have been thoroughly chosen because of their

loyalty to Kabila rather than their objective competence in military affairs. In doing so,

Kabila has taken a play directly out of the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko’s book.

Historically, such strategies have worked in the short term, and many limit the ability of

domestic forces to challenge Kabila’s control; however, in the long term elevating

military personnel based on loyalty will only cause such systematic problems as were

witnessed in the late 1980s and early 90s when the state crumbled under the weight of its

own incompetence.

The ICCN is central to the investigation of rehabilitative governance in the

Eastern Congo conducted by this paper. As such, it is of utmost importance to clarify precisely what the ICCN is, what it does, who it employs, and who and what organizations (both international and domestic) support it. The ICCN is a semi- autonomous agency of the Congolese government that is tasked with pursuing conservation goals in the country. To this end, the ICCN is the administrative body that coordinates the protection of the nine parks, mostly situated in the Northeast, of the DRC.

Most of its attention has been focused on Virunga National Park since the Rwandan genocide instigated the tensions that have affected the park since then. The ICCN is semi- autonomous because it is funded entirely by its own revenues from tourism in the park, donations from global conservation advocacy groups, and financial assistance from

UNESCO. The rangers of the ICCN are entirely Congolese, while the Chief Warden is a

White Belgian anthropologist. The rangers of the park have been targets of anti­ 89

government anger numerous times in the past two decades, and for stretches of time worked unpaid while ICCN struggled to raise funds (Rosen 2014). This commitment to the park has come at a cost, 140 rangers have died in altercations with rebels and

Congolese army personnel since 1996 (Rosen 2014). In recent years, the ICCN has reinvested 30% of all tourism revenues into community projects that have included two hydroelectric power plants, education initiatives and health clinics around the park and the surrounding villages. More on these initiatives and the role of the ICCN in the development of public services in the Rift Valley in the following chapter.

The ICCN is progenitor of both governance and conservation in the Eastern

Congo. The ICCN could be construed as just a rebellious agency struggling with their parent government for hegemony in their policy arena, if it were not embedded into a complex international web of conservation agencies that make it something more than a government agency. In addition to this grouping of international conservation non-profits, the ICCN is part of a web of organizations that are all working within discrete policy areas to provide the Congolese people with the something approaching basic governance.

By this I mean organizations such as MSF, UNHCR, and others that are each approaching separate policy areas, tackling problems such as health, locational displacement, education, as well as bigger infrastructural deficiencies, all of which are typically areas that a society in a developed country would look to the state to provide.

While I would not say the Congolese state is always, or even usually, in direct conflict with this array of secondary governance providers, it does not go out of its way to 90

facilitate such efforts. And, in the case of the ICCN, which even as an agency of the

government, there have been directly contending goals.

Throughout 2012, the ICCN was involved in a legal dispute with both the central

government and SOCO international, a British petroleum corporation that was in the

process of carrying out geographic surveys on the Lake Edward of Virunga in its search

for oil reserves there. The central government had sold a mining concession to SOCO

that included large parts of Virunga, despite its status as a World Heritage Site which

designated it as a definite no-drill zone (Rowley 2014). As this example demonstrates,

the ICCN has agency goals that often do not align with the goals of the central

government in Kinshasa.

The number of rebel groups that proliferated in and around the Great Lakes region

as a result of the political instability following the Rwandan genocide fluctuates year to year, but consistently places extremely high stress on the government. Complete coverage of these rebel groups with their long lists of grievances against each other, the

Congolese government, the Rwandan government, the Ugandan government, and so on,

is the subject of several well researched report by the Usalama Project, conducted by the

Rift Valley Institute.

Two rebel groups are of primary interest; the Mai-Mai Yakutumbua (MMY), which became the Mai-Mai Reforme or Reformed Mai-Mai (MMR), and the Congres national pour la defense du peuple or National Congress for the Defence of the People

(CNDP). The CNDP later collapsed, with officers either integrating into the national 91

Congolese army, or joining together forming the M23 militia. Analyzing the lifecycle of these two groups generates insights towards rebel movements writ large because they were all active in the Eastern Congo in the first two decades of the 21st century. Further, each provide a unique perspective into the motivating factors behind, necessary efforts required for, and the evolution of, such a movement.

For the MMY, the Sun City peace agreement and the process of national integration was a turning point. For other rebel groups, it meant shifting from being anti- state rebel insurgents to being integrated into a new state army consisting of many former enemies (Steams 2013). However, the MMY experienced continued political disenfranchisement because of an inability to properly gain parliamentary representation, and as a result, resisted integration (Steams, et al. 2013). The dynamics of integration were defined by careful calculation designed to out maneuver other groups also integrating into the army. As such, the MMY was wary of integrating before nearby enemy groups did so, with the fear that being the first to integrate would mean giving the other group the upper hand to seize control of important local lands and infrastructure

(Stearns 2013). This demonstrated that even after the peace agreement was reached, rebel groups still operated as discrete groups, and did not view themselves as members of a national army. Because of this, the MMY completely resisted integration for three full years after the peace agreement was reached (Steams 2013).

Finally, prompted by threats of a commander being prosecuted for war crimes, which possibly keys the reader into the nature of operations carried out by the MMY, key 92

members of the militia fled from their former headquarters in Baraka to the Ubwari

Peninsula. Here, Captain William Amuri Yakutumba, who lent the “Y” for “Yakutumba” to the Mai-Mai Yakutumba, and a few dozen of his closest allies formed the Mai-Mai

Reforme (Steams 2013). Soon, Raphael Looba Undji, one of a large group of politicians who had lost elections and were seeking new ways to power, joined the movement. Soon

Undji was president of the MMR, defining the agenda of the movement (Steams 2013).

With regards to their affiliation with the MMR, both Yakutumba and Undji are engaged in an ongoing effort to catapult themselves into national politics using their rebel movement as the arm of the catapult and the conflict in the Eastern Congo as the counter weight.

This is a definitional aspect of what Stearns refers to as the ongoing

“militarization of politics” in the DRC and the surrounding Great Lakes Region, including Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan and South Sudan (Steams 2013, 25). In fact, it is not only the rebel leaders who see violence as a means to their affecting national politics. This logic has taken root, according to Stearns, in the minds of most rebels. One of the largest motivating factors for a rebel to join a violent political movement is their repeatedly stated belief that by taking up arms and engaging in violent struggle they will thus be able to, “make their grievance heard at the national level” (Stearns 2013, 25).

The CNDP’s rise, fall and subsequent reincarnation as the M23 demonstrates numerous elements of the life of a rebel movement in the Eastern Congo. The move of some CNDP officers to resist integration through the formation of yet another movement, 93

the M23, demonstrates that despite the attempts of the central government to demobilize the Eastern Congo, the option of violent struggle remains viable and alluring for individuals left out of the integration process. Also, the CNDP’s ability to maintain diasporic offices in foreign countries such as South Africa and Belgium, even as far away as Canada, shows an ability to develop a relatively strong network of support in mirror image of the ICCN’s international non-profit support chain. Another highly important take away to get from the CNDP is the tendency of movement leaders to pursue goals typical of an emerging state such as taxation, policing and law enforcement, and humanitarian relief administration. All of this, indicates a sophisticated and engaged political body directly contesting the project of state penetration and legitimacy building currently being undertaken by the UN, Kinshasa, and the ICCN. There exists in the

Eastern Congo multiple parallel state projects, though they have hardly been recognized as such.

In considering the role of the CNDP in the struggle in the Eastern Congo, it is first important to recognize the overriding directive ostensibly guiding the decisions made by leaders. The main goal of the CNDP is the protection and support of the Tutsi ethnic community. In this, the “P” for “People” in its title refers not to the Congolese People, but to the Tutsi People. In this way, the CNDP can be understood as a nationalistic entity engaged in intrastate civil war between competing nations. As such, the CNDP’s main objective towards its directive is the elimination of the Forces democratiques pour la liberation de Rwanda Congolaise or the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda 94

(FDLR). This is because of the FDLR’s ties to the Hutu community. Additionally, the pro-Tutsi stance of the CNDP has given rise to a nominal alliance being formed between it and the government in Kigali.22 While Kigali has both protected and used to its benefit the CNDP and M23, it has only done so to benefit Rwandan interests, going no further

(Steams 2012). So while the CNDP claimed ethnic and ideological motivation, Rwanda, which gave up Laurent Nkunda, the CNDP’s leader, to FARDC forces in 2009, channeled this ideological fervor to its pragmatic power seeking needs until deciding allying with the CNDP was against its best interests. This completely falls in line with

Migdal’s framework advanced earlier in this chapter, which posits that discrete social groups align with one-another in mutually beneficial relationships until the time comes that such relationships no longer serve to benefit one or both groups.

Young men in the Eastern Congo have been described as, “socially desperate,” necessarily needing to constantly shift their affiliation “between [rebel] groups in order to eat” (Prunier 2009, 321). The leaders of the M23 have been able to exploit this aspect of the social structure of the Congo in the past few years and will continue to do so until actual social change takes place. To sum up, the disaffection that has sprung up from the destruction of infrastructure and opportunity in the DRC in the past few decades is directly fueling the biggest challenge to the forces of development there.23

22 The relationship between Rwanda, DRC, and the various rebel groups operating in the Eastern Congo has, since the Rwandan genocide, been a practice in musical chairs style alliance making. Thus, keeping track o f who is allied with whom in what year is difficult. 23 While it is outside the purview of this thesis to make policy proposals, it is obvious that if the youth of the Congo are not given a future they can believe in they will only continue to pick up the gun and try and shoot their way to one. 95

While the refugees’ presence in the Eastern DRC is important, regarding them as a uniform demographic would be a mistake. The United Nations High Commissioner for

Refugees, the UN Refugee Agency, characterizes refugees as “people fleeing persecution” (UNHCR 2016). I argue that in the context of the recent wars in the Congo as well as the latent militancy of the region, a second classifications of refugee must be considered. To the first, there is the archetype of the mother and her children, non- combatants fleeing a homeland at war, desperate for asylum to escape the chaos comes to mind for the first characterization. This is the classic refugee. However, I posit that the ongoing violence of the Eastern DRC has given way to the latently militarized refugee.

This refugee is Rwandan, Burundian, or Ugandan origin and was once a soldier, has since either been demobilized, mutinied, or simply shed his uniform and snuck away in the night, but is constantly reconsidering joining the struggle as there are always new militias popping up to which to lend one’s rifle. Unemployed young men largely made up the

Interhamwe and Impuzamugambi, ideologically radicalized groups that carried out the

Rwandan genocide (Steams 2011).24 The lack of legitimate options and absolute scarcity of economic opportunity available to young men drives them to pursue illicit opportunities.

Given their high volume in the Eastern Congo and their impact on the future of stability and conservation there, these two populations impact the political calculations of all surrounding social groups. To the first, the population of non-militarized refugees

24 The Interhamwe, upon the Hutu regimes ousting by Paul Kagame and the (Tutsi) Rwandan Patriotic Front, fled into the eastern border region of the DRC. 96

presents a clear danger to both conservation goals and stability in the region. Such refugees use up resources and cause extreme damage to the environment, both of which were discussed in the preceding chapter. Further, these masses of people without a future have availed rebels of a sure source of human capital. A refugee who has made the conscious decision to join an armed struggle so as to support himself and, if he has one, his family is important because of his role in perpetuating the atmosphere of violent conflict that then leads to both the generation of the first classification of refugee as well as their own continued hardship.

Section 3: Dividing Lines in the Eastern Congolese Melange

I identify two broad types of social actors in the ongoing political struggles of the

DRC. First, there were groups engaged primarily in diplomatic posturing, avoiding or unable to engage in direct boots-on-the-ground involvement, such as the AU and the

SADC. On the other hand, there were agencies and political groups with personnel stationed in the country actively engaged in campaigns to bring about their vision of development to the Eastern Congo. The former focused on cultivating their own image; while, the latter sunk funds and labor towards materially affecting the political practices of other groups and the lives of individuals in the region. These former groups are both militant rebel factions such as the CNDP, M23, the Mai-Mai or Mayi-Mayi, and so on, government agencies like the FARDC, the ICCN, and international entities such as the 97

UN. It is these latter groups with practical operations on the ground in the Eastern Congo

that are, in accordance with Migdal’s contention that practice differs from image, the

focus of the remainder of this chapter.

A broad coalition has formed comprised of the international community, the UN,

Kabila’s government in Kinshasa, and the ICCN, due to the mutual necessity of

overwhelming the rebel militias in order to pursue any further goals. On the other hand, the rebels have an interest in maintaining a disordered and fractured political environment as it provides the best possible scenario for groups such as theirs, weak and plural, to continue their ostensible political struggles. There are three main reasons for this: (1) doing so maintains an ideal staging ground in Virunga National Park for anti-government campaigns in Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC; (2) such an environment enables lucrative resource extraction to fund their respective political campaigns as well as (3) a continued supply of recruits due to lack of other viable options for young men. In order to pursue these three goals the rebels have a much lower bar than the govemment-UN- environmentalist coalition. The rebels need to disrupt government attempts at development or make future attempts too costly, and continue to extract resources.

Having done this, they would have carried the day. Therefore, I identify a dividing line in the politico-social grouping of Eastern DRC: development. Based on this, two broad groups come into view, pro-development and anti-development. These loose alliances will be continuously changing as groups switch sides as advantages them, but will continue to more or less represent the forces at work in the Eastern DRC. 98

Characterized as such, the government in Kinshasa’s relationship with the ICCN

is tenuous. This is due to the not necessarily compatible strategic goals of Kabila’s government in Kinshasa and the ICCN in Rutshuru. However, while the main immediate objective of each group was the stabilization of the Eastern Congo, the central government allowed its conservation agency to pursue its own tactics of governance building alongside international intervention. While complete autonomy from international oversight and intervention would benefit Kabila in the long run, the limited capacity of his government to maintain control over its provinces in the East has made a sovereignty bargain with the UN, strangely, the ICCN the more attractive option in the short term.

Thus, the central government allows the ICCN to carry on with its conservation efforts relatively unhindered, though also unfunded, so as to provide a screen for its ambitions of defeating rebels and securing its own dominance. In this way, the government in Kinshasa has calculated that allowing the ICCN to provide public services in the region will most likely contribute to its own goal of shoring up its legitimacy there.

This is also, as mentioned above, why the Congolese government has allowed UN troops, with troops hailing from 52 separate countries, to operate in its country.25 By having the

UN deliver security, the foundational public good typically provided by the government,

25 MONUSCO was comprised of military personnel from Bangladesh, Belgium, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, China, Cote d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Egypt, France, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Jordan, Kenya, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Mongolia, Morocco, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Senegal, Serbia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United Republic of Tanzania, United States, Uruguay, Yemen and Zambia (UN 2016. 99

the Congolese government survives despite its failure to perform the functions typically

expected as a state. Indeed, President Joseph Kabila has not attempted to alter the

kleptocratic nature of governance in the DRC. Kabila’s chief concern as president has

been maintaining, consolidating, and expanding his own power in the Congolese

government and subsequently solidifying his government’s control over the territory and population of the DRC.

I argue that anything Kabila authorizes in the Eastern Congo, such as when he allowed de Merode, Virunga’s Chief Warden, to negotiate with rebels for the return of the park, has been part of a calculated strategy towards reinserting the Congolese state into the goings-on of the Eastern Congo. In giving concessions to SOCO International to explore for oil in parts of Virunga, Kabila had no way of knowing there was a documentarian sniffing for a story in the park at the very time SOCO was strong-arming local conservationists into letting them conduct their surveys. However, as it turned out, a latent network of international conservationist activists were activated upon learning of the attempt by Kabila to effectively sell off portions of the park. This gave the ICCN leverage in their legal battle with the central government, which ended with SOCO halting their explorations in Lake Edward. However, while the government and Kabila neglected to actually repeal these concessions, international pressure and the conservationists of the ICCN have forced SOCO to put off any investment in exploiting possible oil reserves in the Eastern Congo. 100

These exigencies have forced Kabila to give the ICCN a long leash. While Kabila

has the legal authority to fire de Merode or any other official in the ICCN, any backlash

regarding the very popular park could cripple Kabila’s hopes for an constitutional

amendment granting him a third term. Kabila is engaged in a sort tactical deference

towards the ICCN. With regards to Congolese sovereignty, I argue two things. First, the

large donations the ICCN has generated has opened the door for it to provide

infrastructural development at zero cost to the Congolese government, further allowing

the government to disengage from the Kivu provinces. Second, and subsequent to my

first assertion, even if this development does no good and rebels destroy it, the

government will have gained goodwill by giving the conservationists a chance.

Considering the current complete lack of state penetration with the exception of the

ICCN, the Congolese government has nothing to lose and everything to gain by letting

the ICCN off its leash to develop the infrastructure in the provinces of the Eastern DRC.

Thus, the recent structural shifts of the Eastern Congolese Melange have reshaped

it such that the ICCN has been able to pursue short-term tactical goals of infrastructural

development, economic planning, and fundraising campaigns that. This, in essence, positioned the ICCN as a state-like entity. ICCN’s legal challenge of the Kinshasa governments decision to allow SOCO to explore for oil in Lake Edward of Virunga as well as the ICCN’s outsized role in the agenda-setting for the region in terms of economic and social development, positions the ICCN in a unique heuristic category.

While the ICCN was an agency of the Congolese state, it operates as something different 101

from a standard conservation agency. In this, the ICCN only exists de jure to provide protection for the flora and fauna of the land designated as Virunga National Park.

However, the agency has taken on the role of public service provider, economic coordinator and infrastructural developer. While the leadership in the ICCN has stated that the agency has deployed these tactics towards the end goal of stabilizing the social and political problems of the region to enable conservation there, this does not change the fact that the ICCN is operating as a state-like entity on a plane separate from the

Congolese state itself. As such, the ICCN offers yet another example of a non-state, or maybe rather parastatal entity, that is providing governance in the absence of a strong state. 102

Chapter 5: Virunga National Park’s State-Building Tactics and Conservation

Strategy

Virunga National Park, a highly sensitive and valuable area of relatively pristine wilderness replete with unique and endangered animals, is situated in the Eastern Congo, a region that has experienced the most violent wars since WWII and lacks stable government (International Rescue Committee 2007). Even as recently as the period between July 2012 and April 2013, mortality rates in the North Kivu province in the

Eastern DRC were at emergency levels (Martin, et al. 2014). Despite this, along with the consistent incursions by rebel militias and a lack of stable security, the Congolese

Institute for Nature Conservation (the ICCN), the administrative body that oversees operations in the park, maintained an ability to pursue its mission of conserving the animals and ecosystems of the park in the aftermath of the two Congo wars. Most notably, the agency has safeguarded the critically endangered silverback gorilla.

I argue such successes achieved by the ICCN in the second half of the 2010s were a result of three tactics deployed by the administrative agency designed to reshape the contours of the social space in which the agency operated into something more conducive to conservation. To do this, first, park officials leveraged the symbolic value of an important environmental park, as well as the charismatic nature of the critically endangered silverback gorillas, to give itself yet more support both internally and externally. Second, park leaders positioned the park administration as the primary social 103

actor with the influence and leverage to positively enable market development in the

region, thus generating further financial and logistical support, in addition to international

legitimacy. Lastly, during the first two decades of the 21st century, the ICCN worked to

establish itself as a reliable and durable organization for Congolese to turn to for jobs,

security, and some public services—thus constituting a governance. provisioning apparatus.

By pursuing these three tactics, the ICCN placed itself in a dominant position among other social actors in the Eastern Congolese Melange in terms of setting the rules of social engagement in the region, giving the agency’s staff room to maneuver advantageously toward its goal of conservation despite the instability endemic to the region. Alone, any of these three tactics would have been insufficient to enable the ICCN to pursue its established mission of conservation. However, taken together, these three tactics amounted to a strategy designed to simultaneously assuage the cycle of violence, as well as address the lack of economic development in the region with the aim of reshaping social space to enable the successful pursuit of conservation goals. The leveraging of the park as a symbol with both nationalistic appeal and global environmental importance enabled fundraising and the development of an ecotourism industry that in turn gave the park administration an ability to establish the public service provisioning it currently offers residents around the park. 104

Section 1: The Leveraging o f Virunga National Park’s Symbolic Importance

Virunga National Park stands out amongst the conservation parks around the globe in

being one of the oldest. Established in 1925, Virunga was the first national park

established in Africa. It has since come to stand as an international symbol of

environmentalism and as a vanguard park in the struggle waged against violence and the

following negative impact on the environment. Virunga was listed as a world heritage site

in 1979 because of its “outstanding diversity of habitats,” and was added to the world heritage site endangered list fifteen years later in 1994 due to the danger posed to the park from the violence that resulted from the Rwandan Genocide and subsequent wars (World

Heritage Convention 2016).

Virunga is important both in terms of its role as a host to biological diversity and volcanic activity unmatched anywhere in Africa. The park is home to the two most active volcanoes in Africa, Nyamuragira and nearby Nyiragongo, with Nyiragongo having a semi-permanent lava lake in its crater (World Heritage Convention 2016). While its volcanic activity is unique and awe inspiring, it is the biological diversity of the park that makes it such a valuable and important asset to conservationists the world over (World

Heritage Convention 2016). The mountains of Virunga are home to a majority of both the vertebrae and amphibian species that only live in the Albertine Rift Region, which lies along the eastern border of the DRC and the western borders of Uganda, Rwanda,

Burundi, and Tanzania (Owiunji, et al. 2005). Notably the park is home to the largest 105

single population of Hippopotamuses in Africa: nearly 20,000 (World Heritage

Convention 2016). Of large importance is the fact that the Virunga Massif, the mountain

range upon which Virunga National Park is partially located, was, as of the time of

writing, one of the last remaining habitats of Silverback Gorillas, of which less than 900

remain (Jenkins 2008). The gorillas have become a rallying symbol for conservationists

across the world, and the face of the ICCN’s efforts to protect the other animals and

plants within the park. Dian Fossey, who after living with and studying mountain gorillas

for 18 years, published Gorillas in the Mist in 1983, was among the first to introduce the

gorillas and their charismatic nature to the Western World. Fossey created a narrative of

gentle gorillas endangered by human activities, which catalyzed new conservation efforts

(Fossey 1983). More recently, Virunga a documentary released on the video streaming

service Netflix in 2014, generated significant international attention regarding the ICCN

staffs struggle to stop SOCO International, an oil company registered in the UK, from exploring for oil within the park’s territory.

The park administration, funded by an EU grant, began operating a website rife with projects that leveraged the symbolic value of the park and its wildlife (Virunga

2016). The fundraising campaigns listed on the park’s website at the time of writing, in the summer of 2016, were titled “Gorilla and Wildlife Protection,” “Elephant Crisis,”

“Congohounds,” “Fallen Rangers Fund,” “Gorilla Orphans at the Senkwekwe Orphan

Mountain Gorilla Center,” and “Adopt an Area.” Each of these campaigns had a homepage that connected the campaign to the park’s importance in terms of not only 106

protecting animals, but also the social benefits of staff of the park’s relevant efforts. For example, the “Fallen Rangers Fund” page explains to the visitor of the page that the park works to support the wives and families of rangers who died protecting the park. Further, the page links the park’s efforts to the political “turmoil” that surrounds the park

(Virunga 2016).

The park’s staff also regularly publishes updates on the news section of its website regarding the benchmarks and successes the park has made, with explicit references to the importance of the park in terms of regional stability (Virunga 2016).

These news updates typically cite the contributions of the park to the stabilization of the region, the protection of the environment, and argue that Virunga stands as an example for conservation parks internationally. The purpose of these news updates is primarily to demonstrate the viability and worthiness of the contributions of the park’s many generous small-scale benefactors, and often reminds visitors to continue donating.

All together, the biological and ecological value of Virunga served as strong symbol that the ICCN used to generate support both internally and externally. External support for the park comes from several sources. There was the security assistance from the UN’s MONUSCO mission in the Eastern DRC, centered in Goma, the major city nearest Virunga National Park. Additionally, logistical assistance and funding from numerous international conservation charity organizations enabled the ICCN in its mission. Among the biggest private financial supporters of Virunga are the Frankfurt

Zoological Society, The Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the International Gorilla 107

Conservation Program, the Thin Green Line Foundation, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife

Service, the Virunga Foundation (formerly the African Conservation Fund), the Wildlife

Conservation Society, among others (Virunga National Park 2016). Additionally, the

European Union and the United States’ Fish & Wildlife Service have both provided aid to the ICCN’s efforts in Virunga (Virunga National Park 2016).

With aid beginning to flow in the 1980s, the EU came to be one of the main financial benefactors of Virunga and the ICCN (Virunga National Park 2016). Recently, the EU has donated €11 million roughly US$12.2 million, towards developing infrastructure and personnel training in Virunga since 2002, additional funding from the

EU financed all web development for the park’s website as of 2016 (Virunga National

Park 2016). As of 2015, the park received roughly US$5 million, 5 percent of which coming from the Congolese state, the rest from international donations (Schlindwein

2015).

In addition, numerous charity organizations and foundations supported the infrastructural development programs of the ICCN. The Virunga Foundation, a conservation organization registered in the UK, with an operating budget of £3 million in the year of 2014, operated at the time of writing with the express purpose to “raise awareness of,” and “attract donors to support,” the park (Charity Commission 2016). The

Virunga Foundation is the fundraising conduit of Virunga Alliance—a public-private partnership between the ICCN, the Virunga Foundation, private tourism and agro­ industrial companies, and Congolese civil society groups (Virunga Alliance 2016). 108

Further, between 2004 and 2011, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation (HGBF) contributed US$100 million to various agencies operating in the Eastern Congo, among them the ICCN (Howard G. Buffett Foundation 2016). Then between 2012 and 2014 the

Buffet Foundation donated US$100 million to governance organizations in the region, with most of that money going to the ICCN specifically, to contribute to stabilization, peace building, and economic development (Howard G. Buffett Foundation 2016). I argue the ability of the ICCN to finance projects like the hydroelectric dams, ranger training programs, and education initiatives primarily through such donations is a result of the ICCN’s ability to leverage the park’s unique symbolic value to garner the support of foundations such as the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.

The use by Virunga to convince the people of the Congo that it stands as a symbol of their own nation enabled the ICCN to both recruit a solid cadre of rangers and win over the loyalty of large portions of the resident population (Hatcher 2015; Neme 2014).

Further, the strength of Virunga as a symbol with nationalistic appeal has given it the ability to push back against rebel recruiting efforts who rely on a vacuum of challengers in order to convince young men to join their ranks. One of the park rangers, a former enslaved child soldier, Andre Bauma, said in regards to his dedication to the park, “you must justify why you are on this earth. Gorillas justify why I am here. So if it is about dying, I will die for the gorillas” (Virunga 2014). 109

Section 2: Developing Sustainable Industries in Virunga National Park: Eco-

Tourism, Fishing, and Agro-Industry

Beginning in the late 2000s the park administration began channeling funding from the EU and organizations such as the Buffett Foundation towards infrastructural development, specifically the construction of hydroelectric power plants. By 2016, two such power plants were online, funded by the EU and the Buffett Foundation (O’Brien

2015; Virunga 2016). The electricity from these power plants both provided electricity to households that had previously purchased the coal extracted illegally from the park as well as enabling the expansion of palm-oil and soap enzyme manufacturing facilities.

The ICCN constructed these power plants in agreement with local civil society groups that the energy provided would only be used in industries that were sustainable and non-extractive, such as palm oil production, enzyme refining (for soap), and other agro-industries (Virunga Alliance 2016). In this, the ICCN encouraged the development of an ecotourism industry centered around visiting the gorillas residing in Virunga

National Park, as well as an agro-industrial industry that incorporates sustainable fishing industry on Lake Edward as well as palm-oil refining and enzyme processing for soap

(WWF 2013; Virunga Alliance 2016). These two industries subvert the extractive methods typical to developing economies under late-capitalism with the intention of both retaining environmental safety, and minimizing profit loss to foreign interests. Further, the development of industries that employ Congolese living around the park necessarily 110

impaired the recruitment capability of the rebel groups, thus weakening their influence in

the Eastern Congo.

The call for continued sustainable development of the Eastern Congo’s economy,

with an emphasis on the latent ecotourism industry in particular, came after an oil

company, SOCO International, bought exploratory rights to a block of land that largely

comprised Virunga National Park (WWF 2013; Natasegara 2014). A budding oil

extraction operation within Virunga would pose a danger to, in addition to the gorillas

and other wildlife of the park, the people of the region’s economic interests. Emmanuel

de Merode put the ICCN’s contestation of the oil company’s activities in context by

saying, “[SOCO is] undertaking activities in an area where there is serious armed conflict

that’s now recognised as having at its root the exploitation of natural resources” (Nicoll

2014). Examples of such neo-colonial development projects exist in Nigeria, Angola, and

Equatorial Guinea, where oil companies arrived promising a development that would lift the indigenous people from poverty, bequeathing them with a growing economy and well-paying jobs (Burgis 2015).

Instead, Dutch disease set in. Dutch disease, named after the effects on the Dutch economy when oil was discovered there in 1959, is characterized by large amounts of foreign currency rushing into a country’s markets because of highly profitable oil exports. The result of this is an appreciation of the country’s currency, which in turn forces export industries other than the oil industry to sell their products at a relatively higher price to foreign importers due to the aforementioned appreciation, which leads to Ill

decreased sales and returns for those industries. Dutch disease thus results in an economy that becomes dominated by, and thus dependent on and vulnerable to the risks of, the oil

industry while other domestic industries wither under the new strain of a quickly appreciating currency. This dependency exposes the country’s economy to risk involved with the rising and falling of the international price of oil, which is highly volatile.

Instead of such a path, the ICCN has taken steps towards developing an economy in the

Eastern Congo geared towards sustainability—in terms of both environmentalism and continued profit in the long term—and localizing profits.

The primary type of sustainable economic development pursued by park officials has been ecotourism, an industry that attracts visitors expressly “for the purpose of enjoying underdeveloped natural areas of wildlife” (Goodwin 1996). However, I argue ecotourism is not simply utilizing the resources and natural beauty of the location to profit, but the use of the profits from the tourism to finance conservation efforts (Milburn

2012). The Rwanda gorilla tourism industry demonstrated the viability and strength of ecotourism centered on gorilla visitations. The Rwandan ecotourism industry is centered around escorting tourists on visitations with gorillas in Volcanoes National Park, which is abuts Virunga National Park on the eastern border of the DRC. Behind coffee and tea, gorilla-based ecotourism in Rwanda’s largest “export.” Rates of ecotourism there have risen from 417 visitors in 2000 the year Volcanoes National Park was reopened, to just fewer than 20,000 in 2008 (WWF 2013). 112

The primary benefit of ecotourism for Rwanda, and the appeal in the DRC, is that

while it brings in foreign currency, it is not actually an export in the sense that it does not

require the extraction of capital or resources from the country. Thus, ecotourism valorizes

the environment on its own terms, enabling conservationists to compete in the global

market oriented economy. This sets it apart from mining and resource extractive ventures

writ large, industries that typically dominate developing industries and have historically

been at odds with conservation goals. In this way, so the argument goes, ecotourism gives a developing country, such as the DRC, a viable path to a sustainable and green prosperity (Milbum 2012).

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), in a 2013, reported that the “total economic value of the Virunga ecosystem is likely to be US$48.9 million annually. According to the same report, if current challenges are addressed, the park’s value has the potential to be as much as US$1.1 billion per year, in a country where the GDP is just above US$30 billion (WWF 2013; CIA 2016). However, such numbers are only representative of potentials, not numbers immediately achievable. The ICCN has struggled to maintain a viable tourism industry when for several years its staff was unable to maintain a presence in the park due to a rebel occupation of the park from 2007 until 2009. During these years, tourist visitations to the park were out of the question.

However, the World Wildlife Fund estimated that in the short term tourism could bring in US$235 million a year (WWF 2013). In the years 2010 and 2011, Virunga hosted 5,000 tourists generating US$1 million in revenue for the park, though this 113

number is the bottom end of an upward trending market (Natasegara 2014). The lodge that hosted these visitors only has 12 bungalows, and the park has just fewer than 50 beds for visitors altogether (Natasegara 2014; Virunga Alliance 2015). Previously, from 2009 to 2011, the number of visitors went from 400 to 4,000 (WWF 2013). The park currently has capacity to serve many thousands more a year, with additional facilities currently in the planning phase (WWF 2013). Not only would the visits bring money to the park, but also they would bring an estimated 100,000 jobs to a otherwise jobless region

(Natasegara 2014). This increase in domestic employment would generate further domestic spending on things distinct from the ecotourism industry on foodstuffs, energy and so on. Additionally, as estimated by the WWF report The Economic Value o f

Virunga, the conservationist mission of the ICCN, the fishing, hydroelectric production facilities, and agro-industries which actions taken by the park have supported would add together another US$100 million per year to the local economy of the Eastern Congo between the years 2015 and 2020 (WWF 2013).

A second economic project undertaken by park officials has been the development of the fishing industry and other agro-industrial invigoration. The park staff estimates that by the second half of the 2010s the fishing industry on Lake Edward would provide employment for 13,000 Congolese, both directly and indirectly (Virunga

Alliance 2016). The fishing on Lake Edward alone would add US$13M in profits to the local economy in that time (WWF 2013). The hydroelectric industry produced enough electricity for 190,000 Congolese in 2013 in both Lubero and Rutshuru, two towns less 114

than a day’s walk from the park, and was, in that same time frame, expected to produce

80MW, enough for 840,000 Congolese, by 2020 (WWF 2013). This increase in power production is geared towards enabling the planned expansion of agro-industrial output in the surrounding region. In 2016 it was estimated that by 2020 palm oil facilities, along with soap production and enzyme processing plants, all agro-industries, would employ a total of 67,500 people in Lubero, Rutshuru and other towns near the park (Virunga

Alliance 2016). Nick Hurk, the UK’s Minister for International Development stated at the opening of the Matebe power plant in March 2016, “Affordable, reliable, electricity means children can do their homework after dark, women and girls are safer at night... it will transform the prospects of hundreds of thousands of people as well as boost the growth of the DRC.” (Virunga 2016).

Additionally, there is demonstrated potential to develop other value-added industries, such as palm oil production, soap production and enzyme refining, which was hoped to buttress the economy of the Eastern Congo against Dutch disease. This, as opposed to other forms of infrastructural and economic development, centered around extractive industries that largely benefited the foreign companies that received the mining and lumber milling rights at the expense of local communities.

The redevelopment of an ecotourism industry in Virunga, during the decade and a half of the 21st century, enabled the ICCN to supplant the illicit extractive industry that had enabled rebel groups to continue operating in the region. In addition, the agency was able to demonstrate the viability of conservation as a modus operandi for sustainable 115

development of the Congolese economy in the Kivu provinces, over which, amongst all

Congolese provinces, the Congolese state had had the most difficulty maintaining control. Emmanuel de Merode, chief warden of the ICCN and Virunga National Park, in

2014 posited that the development of an ecotourism industry in Virunga would “offer a critical pathway to a post-war economy in Eastern Congo based on principles of poverty reductions, environmental protection, and peacebuilding” (Natasegara 2014).

Demonstrating the viability of the park as a profit-making machine further ensures economic support from donors and investors. The ability of the ICCN to generate investments, in addition to goodwill donations from the likes of the EU and the Howard

G. Buffett Foundation, is not only a result of the initial development of the ecotourism industry. I argue the ICCN’s ability to convince international investors of what it would be capable of in the future, that it was the actor best poised to find success in the Eastern

Congolese Melange, is what has given the international investors the confidence to get behind the ICCN.

Section 3: Providing Governance in Virunga National Park

The tactical shift by the ICCN in the first decades of the 21st century to a pursuit of necessary governance leveraged the fundraising potential and latent symbolic value of the park into effecting social gains for the people living near the park. In the second half of the 2000s, when the ICCN opened the Mutwanga hydroelectric power plant and began 116

a recruiting drive, the park initiated a program designed at providing governance to the region in order to create a social melange that enabled their primary mission of conservation (O’Brien 2015). Altogether, this program came to include the provisioning of security, health and education services, as well as the above-mentioned orchestration of economic infrastructure to support the fledgling ecotourism and agro-industrial industries.

The ICCN pursued such governance tactics as a means towards its grand strategic goal of realizing a stable region conducive to its main mission of conservation. This reality does not change the fact that in the first two decades of the 21st century, at the time of writing, the ICCN had become the most consistent source of governance in the small area surrounding Virunga National Park. De Merode, the warden of Virunga, saw the actions of the park’s administration to provide security and some basic public services as part of a region-wide effort to reestablish government efficacy, saying he was eager for

Virunga and its rangers to “really participate in rebuilding the DRC” (de Merode 2011).

As a ministry of the DRC, the ICCN was accountable for upholding the laws of the DRC. Throughout the two Congo wars, members of the Congolese army directly profited from extra-military practices referred to as either corruption or entrepreneurialism which, regardless of what they are to be called, were practices that existed because of a social space of violence and a lack of coherent law enforcement by the state or any strong social group. In the years following the height of violence, the

ICCN initiated a program of providing public services typically associated with an array 117

of government agencies rather than a government agency tasked with conservation. This followed the structuring of the social melange within which the ICCN operated. Because there was a vacuum of governance in the Eastern DRC, and the staff of the ICCN recognized conservation would be exceptionally difficult to manage in such a social environment, the agency set out to diminish such social barriers to wilderness preservation and wildlife protection. The years following the exit of one group of occupying rebel forces, the CNDP, from the park saw a huge shift in the parks activities and resultant outcomes—even despite an incursion into the park by yet another rebel group, the M23 militia, yet another group of mutineer Congolese soldiers. The greatest danger to the Virunga National Park in the past two and a half decades has been violence and instability.

In the ten-year period between 2004 and 2014, rebels killed nearly all of the 150 rangers who died in the park (Neme 2014). The five or so rangers not killed by rangers died in vehicle related accidents. In 2011 alone, 17 were killed, a majority of whom died protecting the public, not animals, on roads through the park (de Merode 2011). While many animal reserves in Africa, including Garamba National Park also in the DRC just north of Virunga, also had problems with poaching, especially those with elephants, which are killed for their tusks, Virunga was unique in becoming caught up in the aftermath of a decade long conflict. Due to the social instability and the lack of any legitimate state police services in the region, many people that lived around the park came to rely on the protection of the ICCN rangers. In 2012, there was a major battle 118

between the Congolese army and the M23 militia; local peoples flooded the park’s

headquarters in Rumangabo seeking assistance. A dramatic scene in von Eisiendel’s

documentary Virunga shows local people loading into ICCN trucks and being driven to

safety in Goma, a nearby city which at the time had been spared most of the violence

(Virunga 2015).

The ICCN’s provisioning of security services did not stop with reactive measures.

In 2009, six rangers from Virunga were sent to train with Belgian commandos, returning later that year having gained experience in ambush and anti-ambush tactics, patrol strategies, hand-to-hand combat, and camouflaging (Virunga 2009). These six individuals went on to train their fellow rangers, and in September 2009 150 rangers used their newly acquired operational knowledge to execute several raids in a series of a few days on illegal charcoal operations in the southeast sector of Virunga, near the city of Goma

(Virunga 2009). During the raids, the rangers engaged in several firefights with FDLR rebels, a suspected Rwandan proxy, and smaller militia groups unaffiliated with any government. These raids resulted in the destruction of several hundreds of charcoal kilns, used to bake wood illegally harvested from the park into charcoal, 177 on September 27 alone, and the arrest of six individuals involved in the illegal production of charcoal

(Virunga 2009).

The effectiveness of such law enforcement efforts by the rangers of the ICCN drew attention, and in 2014, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation disbursed US$5M to the

ICCN for 112 new rangers to be trained (Ross 2015). Further, the fact that, since the 2007 119

killing of a gorilla family, as of July 2016 no humans had killed any gorillas in the park demonstrates one major success of the rangers of the park. The 2007 attack was widely viewed as a rebel message to the ICCN that the park was no longer safe (Jenkins 2008).

Advancing from this success in bringing nominal security to the park, the rangers began to pursue actual conservation practices. In 2013, two rangers began to attend a comprehensive program in wildlife management and forestry conservation at the Ecole de Faune de Geroua (Wildlife College of Geroua) in Cameroon in 2013 and a group of rangers took part in software training for geological survey systems in Rwanda in the same year. Thus, the park rangers adopted a policy of law enforcement and alongside their role as stewards of the environment.

Alongside the ICCN’s security provision in and around Virunga, the agency has pursued the development of infrastructure towards enabling sustainable economic development for the people near the park. In addition to the two hydroelectric power plants opened in Mutwanga and Matebe, as of 2016 the ICCN coordinated the building of five primary schools near the park, and operated numerous health clinics throughout the park for the benefit of both visitors and local residents (Virunga 2016, Rosen 2014). In addition, the ICCN has repaved existing roads and paved new ones throughout the park, as well as increased access to clean drinking water for residents of the villages that surround the park (Rosen 2014). 120

Section 4: Tactical Governance Enables Conservation Goals in Virunga National Park

The ICCN’s strategy of enabling conservation by way of governance and the fostering of a fledgling economy addressed the challenges of rebel incursions, poverty, and environmental destruction that the agency was forced to deal with due to the lack of other coherent state agencies in the region. The tactical pursuit of stabilization and economic development has begun to raise the economic status of the region’s population by providing some job opportunities and a sense of increased opportunity. In this way, the park agency undercut the ability of rebel groups to recruit new fighters while simultaneously reinforcing the Congolese state’s authority and its own authority as a conservation agency. By shepherding the development of industries dependent on conservation for success, namely the ecotourism industry, the ICCN reshaped social space such that conservation was a realistic and attainable goal.

The fact that the park has not only been able to secure financial support from conservation non-profits but also from more profit driven investment groups is a reflection of the recent shift in the security situation of the region towards stability and de-escalation. The park’s appeal in this regard comes from its sitting at the epicenter of a global movement of conservationists and human rights advocates. The ICCN has situated itself as the cutting edge in the local struggle against governance breakdown, human rights abuses, and environmental degradation, thus enabling it to convince both 121

individual Congolese to support it, and the international community to continue funding its development of the region.

One could argue that the shift in security is because of Kabila’s efforts co-opt rebel militias hostile to the government in the region. However, without the efforts of the park management apparatus in directing its attention towards the development of a sustainable economy in the region, attempting to directly defuse the conflict by developing the infrastructure for an ecotourism economy, no infrastructure would have been built and international businesses would look elsewhere to invest. By aiding the development of the private economy, the park leadership seeks to entice potential combatants away from violence and put them into (taxable) jobs. By being the primary catalyst for the new industry, the ICCN leadership aims to ensure that the entire economy of the region develops in a sustainable manner. This demonstrates a momentous shift in the nature of social forces in the Eastern Great Lakes region, with the ongoing development of a sustainable economy that is not reliant on extraction, but directly dependent on the protection of the environment and sustainable development.

Despite the conflict between ICCN and the Congolese state, the tactics elaborated upon in this chapter demonstrate that in its mission of conservation the ICCN is underwriting the expansion of state authority and legitimacy. By allowing the ICCN to carry on as described above, the Congolese government was able to—without doing much of anything but not obstruct its own agency—bring a sort of vanguard stability to the region. With the ICCN acting as a dominant force in the region, the Congolese state 122

oversaw a build up, in one area of the region, of governance in the region. By reshaping the political space in such a way that expanded state hegemony, the tactics described in this chapter allowed the state (the ICCN) to push back against non-state social groups

(rebel militias). In terms of conservation, such tactics created a stable social situation that enabled the park to continue to pursue conservation efforts. The development of an ecotourism industry in the park situated the preservation of park’s natural resources as a profitable venture, turning the typical association of profit and environmental destruction on its head. 123

Chapter 6: Conclusion and Implications

In a majority of failed states, those countries with a government unable to or

unwilling to provide governance—public services and security typically associated with

states (Rotberg 2003; Nagan and Hammer 2004)—environmental degradation is the

norm. This is due to the state’s inability to protect the environment from the forces

compelling individual, so-called private, actors and businesses, to carry out profit seeking

activities as the expense of the environment and the wildlife living therein. Risse (2013),

Leise and Beisheim (2013) have demonstrated that, in such states, hybrid governance is a viable alternative to the dominant-state governance model. This model challenges the typical understanding of a discrete public sphere from the private one, and conceives of a model of private entities actively contributing to the stabilization of such governance failures to eventually benefit from such stabilization.

Ali (2007) demonstrated that conservation efforts in response to the dangers of environmental degradation diffuse conflicts, which in turn leads to the establishment of and collaboration on mutual conservation goals between previously warring state apparatuses. While Ali did not explicitly conceive of conservationists playing a part in a hybrid model of governance, based on his premise I argue environmental dangers and the prospects of the benefits of conservation in Virunga in the Eastern Congo have had the direct effect of de-escalation in the intra-state conflict there.

This argument may seem to fly in the face of the positive feedback loop between environmental destruction and political conflict observed by Dudley, et al. (2002). More 124

than 80 percent of violent human conflicts between the years 1950 and 2000 occurred in areas of significant biological and ecological value (Milbum 2012). The reality of this feedback loop allies conservationists with those interested in building peace by way of mutual interest. Further, this feedback loop adds to the importance of correctly addressing the possibility of such socially and environmentally destructive situations spinning out of control. Conservation in the twenty first century is a political concern, and politics are an environmental concern.

In Virunga National Park, the reality of the market based global economy has pressed conservation to make itself marketable (Moffett 2009). Given that the causality of the feedback loops identified by Dudley, et al. (2002) involves impoverished people and the seeking of profiting from the natural resources from the protected areas of natural park reserves, it goes to reason that creating an economically viable conservation plan is paramount (Moffett 2009). Put simply, because of the budgetary constraints they face, conservation in developing countries has to be profitable (Moffett 2009). One method of creating such a profitable form of conservation, while simultaneously valorizing environmental preservation, is ecotourism (Goodwin 1996; Duffy 2002). Ecotourism would bring individuals and social groups into an arrangement where they would benefit from a stable system.

I argue that the hybrid governance model constructed by the staff members of

Virunga National Park has reshaped the social space of the park and the surrounding region. The park staffs marshaling of public and private entities together to provide 125

security and other public goods was only one aspect of this social restructuring. In order to realize this reconfiguration, the park’s staff relied on the symbolic importance of the park, allowing the UN and conservation NGO’s to reinforce this notion internationally while the park’s staff works with the Congolese population near the park to raise awareness regarding conservation. Finally, making the survival of the park and the health of the region mutually dependent variables, the park’s staff has begun to develop the ecotourism industry in Virunga, which entrenches the park as a valuable resource which can only be exploited through its continued protection.

The realities of the Eastern Congolese Melange led the ICCN’s staff to carry out a strategy of governance in order to enable future conservation. The ICCN’s adoption of governance was not an end in of itself. Regardless, this situates the agency and its

Virunga Alliance partners (the UN, private Congolese businesses, and civil society groups in the North Kivu and South Kivu) as entities engaged in a novel example of what

Risse (2013) and others have characterized as hybrid governance.

I have provided an answer to the question of the violent and fractured state of

Congolese politics, specifically in the last two decades by investigating the competing social actors in the Congolese Melange. I primarily followed Migdal’s framework of the melange. However, Foucault’s conception that social arenas consist of “multiplicities in space” (Foucault 2004, 17) with constructed hierarchies and “precise communications of relations of power,” (Foucault 2004, 17) that reshape and redefine the limits of the space. 126

Foucault understands govemmentality to be the management and policing of populations, the construction of a legal system, and more generally the development of institutions that exert force onto the interests of the population to induce certain tendencies among the population (Foucault 2004, 352-353). Foucault does not argue that the government completely rewrites or reconfigures the natural desires and tendencies of the population on a society with a blank slate. While it is not the purpose herein to define human nature, there is such a thing, and Foucault’s recognizes this, asserting that govemmentality is the efforts of governing forces to impress upon populations certain affinities and barriers with human nature in mind. Govemmentality works to both limit and direct the decisions made by populations.

Following Foucault’s understanding of govemmentality, I argue the tactics of governance, initiation of economic development, and the leveraging of symbols by the staff of the ICCN amount to govemmentality. Closely examining the contextual realities that surround each of the agency’s governance initiatives the ways in which these tactical goals reveals an overarching strategy of govemmentality aimed at creating social realities conducive to conservation.

The tracts of untapped mineral resources and timber present in the Eastern Congo enabled rebel militias to become financially self-sustaining throughout the Congo wars and all the way on into the second decade of the 21st century. Some rebels groups, notably the Forces democratiques pour la liberation de Rwanda Congolaise or the

Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and the Congres national pour 127

la defense du peuple or National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), came to pursue such profitable ventures as charcoal smuggling, diamond mining and gun- running at the expense of their stated political purposes (Burgis 2015). The conflict-prone scenario of multiple rebel groups operating in close proximity of government troops, foreign advisors, international peacekeeping troops, civilians, conservation personnel and wild animals was one non-conducive to effective conservation efforts. The rationale for joining such a group, for the individual, was that such rebel militias provided an opportunity for both income and acclaim when such opportunities in other less violent occupations were absent.

In response to this, the stabilization of the region, with demilitarization and the disengagement of rebel groups from the fighting that has on numerous occasions forced the agencies staff to evacuate from the park, ceding it to anti-state forces, would most obviously benefit the park’s staff in conducting conservation activities. The leveraging of the symbolic value of the park both enabled the park’s staff to raise capital to both further carry out governance programs, but also for conservation activities. Further, the park’s symbolic status as a historic Congolese site gave the park’s staff a key weapon against rebel recruitment—enabling them to demonstrate to hundreds of young Congolese men and women, the rangers of the park, that the park was worth dying to protect. Finally, by coordinating the development of an ecotourism industry, as well as the establishment of agro-industrial processing, in the region the park staff further entrenches itself as a necessary element for the future stabilization and prosperity of the region’s population. 128

By pursuing an economic development plan centered on ecotourism within Virunga, the park staff valorizes its own conservation efforts, making ecological protection and a flourishing compatible rather than mutually exclusive goals.

It is the agenda setting of the ICCN in regards to the economic development of the region that is the most striking demonstration of its filling the role of a central state apparatus in the Eastern Congo. I argue this insofar as that by providing security, health services, education services, and infrastructural and economic development the ICCN is taking on the duties typically associated with central governments and practicing the art of govemmentality, reshaping the limits and contours of the Eastern Congolese Melange.

The case of Virunga National Park’s conservation in the province of North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo demonstrates the viability of hybrid governance as proposed by Risse (2013). The extent to which international actors like the EU, the

Belgian government, and various American and European charity organizations collaborated with and supported Congolese civil society groups as well as the ICCN demonstrates that in the event of governmental breakdown actors other than the territorially designated government can intercede and provide what amounts to a functioning level of governance. However, in the case of Virunga the area of effect of this governance is rather small—roughly constrained to the park itself and the towns within a day or two’s walk.

In closing, there are two implications regarding hybrid governance born out of this study. First, the state failure of the DRC catalyzed a reactivation of the relationship 129

between Belgium and the DRC, as evidenced by the logistical and financial support of the DRC by Belgium, as herein observed in the context of the hybrid governance situation in Virunga. The relationship between the former colonial power, Belgium, and former colony, the DRC, contributes to shaping of the hybrid governance programs implemented in the Eastern DRC. The continued influence the Belgian Government has on the development in the DRC has drawn sharp criticism, especially in the wake of its toxic domination of the African country. However, this demonstrates a likely path of hybrid governance: the failure of a formerly colonized state reactivates the relationship between the former colonizing power. Due to the lack of legitimacy of the now failed decolonized state apparatus, the formerly colonizing state has the leverage to press for its own governance goals in the new hybrid governance situation. I do not seek to pass a normative judgment on this dynamic, only observe it. Second, and lastly, the case of

Virunga demonstrates that conservation efforts can be a positive, contributive, factor in addressing the struggles of those living in failed states to pursue a path towards sustainable governance. As evidenced by the hybrid governance situation unfolding in the

Eastern Congo, conservation as a central element of a post-failed state society’s development path holds the potential to safeguard the society from the formation of extractive industries. This pushes back on the notion that conservation should only be a consideration after a society has stabilized and has so-called “real” productive industries operating as a level that sustain a healthy economy. I argue that conservation can serve as a bulwark against an economy that is defined by domination and exploitation; rather, 130

encouraging one that privileges the health of the local community rather than disturb it and valorizes the environment rather than exploit it.

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