Introduction

Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-11128-7 - The Great African War: Congo and Regional Geopolitics, 1996-2006 Filip Reyntjens Excerpt More information Introduction This book examines a decade-long period of instability, violence, war and extreme human suffering in Central Africa. Whilst a great deal has been written on specific aspects and episodes of the successive Congo wars, studies attempting a global overview are almost nonexistent.1 Interpretations have considerably diverged, with emphasis put on state failure, the resource base of the conflicts, their internal or external nature, ideological issues both regional and global, the macro or micro levels and the rationality or lack of it displayed by the actors. Three perspectives have dominated the question of why the recent wars in the region have occurred: the collapse of the Zairean/Congolese2 state, ‘warlordism’ coupled with plunder and local political dynamics, and external interven- tions, both by neighbouring countries and by more distant international players.3 A combination of these and other perspectives, rather than a sin- gle perspective, will emerge in this book. Indeed, in order to understand the multifaceted and complex nature of the conflicts, an eclectic approach to factors is required; some factors occurred simultaneously, whilst others were successive. Take Rwanda’s motives as an example. They were a combination, changing over time, of genuine security concerns, economic 1 An exception is T. Turner, The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality, London/ New York, Zed Books, 2007. However, there is little overlap between this book and that of Turner, which focuses on the cultural and ideological aspects of the wars. 2 The name of the country at the relevant time will be used, that is, Zaire until May 1997, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) or Congo after that date. 3 These perspectives are summarised in J. F. Clark, ‘Introduction. Causes and Consequences of the Congo War’, in: J.F. Clark (Ed.), The African Stakes of the Congo War, New York/ Houndmills, Palgrave MacMillan, 2002, pp. 2–4. 1 © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-11128-7 - The Great African War: Congo and Regional Geopolitics, 1996-2006 Filip Reyntjens Excerpt More information 2 Great African War interests, ethnic solidarity and even (selective) humanitarian concerns, the need to ‘buy’ internal elite solidarity, (military) institution building and a feeling of entitlement coupled with a sense of invincibility against the background of the comfort offered by the collapse of its rich neighbour. Considered in the past as peripheral, land-locked, and politically and economically uninteresting, in the 1990s, the African Great Lakes region found itself at the heart of a profound geopolitical recomposition with continental repercussions. Countries as varied as Namibia in the south, Libya in the north, Angola in the west and Uganda in the east became entangled in wars that ignored international borders. However, the seeds of instability were sown in the beginning of the 1960s: the massive exile of the Rwandan Tutsi, who fled to neighbouring countries during and after the revolution of 1959–1961, and the virtual exclusion of Tutsi from public life in Rwanda, the radicalisation of Burundian Tutsi who monopolised power and wealth and the insecure status of Kinyarwanda- speakers in the Kivu provinces – all these factors were to merge with others to create the conditions for war. The acute destabilisation of the region started on 1 October 1990 when the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF ) attacked Rwanda from Uganda with Ugandan support. After the collapse of the 1993 Arusha peace accord and following the genocide and massive war crimes and crimes against humanity, the RPF won a military victory and took power in July 1994. More than 1 million people died and more than 2 million fled abroad, mainly to Zaire and Tanzania. Eight months earlier, the democratic transition had ended in disaster in Burundi: tens of thousands of people were killed, and the country embarked on a decade- long civil war. At the end of 1993, some 200,000 Burundian refugees inundated the Zairean Kivu provinces, followed in mid-1994 by 1.5 million Rwandans. This was the beginning of the dramatic extension of the neighbouring conflicts, most prominently of the Rwandan civil war. The progressive implosion of the Zairean state, undermined by gen- eralised ‘predation’, was a major contributory factor to this extension. However, Zaire was also surrounded by nine neighbouring countries, seven of which were endemically or acutely unstable.4 In a perverse cycle, the instability of its neighbours threatened Zaire, just as Zaire’s instability was a menace to its neighbours. We shall see the determining impact of circumstantial alliances in a situation where borders are porous and where actors reason using the logic of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. State collapse opens space for very diverse local and regional, 4 I consider Tanzania and Zambia as stable. © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-11128-7 - The Great African War: Congo and Regional Geopolitics, 1996-2006 Filip Reyntjens Excerpt More information Introduction 3 public and private actors, each with contradictory interests. Such a context favours the privatisation of public violence and the challenging of states’ territorial spaces. I therefore agree with Nzongola , when he writes that “[t]he major determinant of the present conflict and instability in the Great Lakes Region is the decay of the state and its instruments of rule in the Congo. For it is this decay that made it possible for Lilliputian states the size of Congo’s smallest province, such as Uganda, or even that of a district, such as Rwanda, to take it upon themselves to impose rulers in Kinshasa and to invade, occupy and loot the territory of their giant neighbour.”5 Others are less pessimistic. Bayart argues that, as has been the case in Europe,6 wars in Africa might be the expression, albeit a pain- ful one, of a process of state formation. He sees conflicts as contributing to the emergence of ‘trickster states’, which skilfully exploit the interstices of the global economy and the interface between formal and informal, even illegal activities.7 Be that as it may, state collapse was not the only factor. Conversely, a unique combination of circumstances explains the unravelling of the successive wars. The main circumstance can be found in the recent history of Rwanda. Although it is the smallest country in the region, it is there that the epicentre of all the crises lay. Without it, the conflicts would not have developed to such an extent. On the one hand, the 1994 genocide is a fun- damental reference: as a consequence of both the old regime’s resistance to change and the deliberate strategy of tension conducted by the RPF , not only were hundreds of thousands of Tutsi killed, but the Rwandan civil war also resulted in the violent restructuring of the whole region. On the other hand, the RPF – incapable of managing its victory – chose exclusion, ethnic domination and the military management of a political space, a mode of management which it extended beyond Rwanda’s 5 G. Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila. A People’s History, London/ New York, Zed Books, 2002, p. 214. 6 He adds the important proviso that war has not been a sufficient cause of state formation in Europe. 7 J. F. Bayart, ‘La guerre en Afrique: dépérissement ou formation de l’Etat?’, Esprit, 1998, pp. 55–73. For a similar argument, based on local-level politics, see D.M. Tull, ‘A Recon- figuration of Political Order? The State of the State in North Kivu (DR Congo)’, African Affairs, 2003, pp. 429–446, who argues that, contrary to the discourse on collapsed states, the evidence suggests that there is a resilient (if ambivalent) attachment to the idea and prac- tice of the state in North Kivu. I disagree, because the practices Tull outlines (the mimicry of the Mobutist ‘state’) are precisely those that led to the demise of the Zairean state. While the continuity between Mobutu and the RCD-Goma suggested by Tull is undeniably present, it does not lead to state formation, but rather to its collapse. © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-11128-7 - The Great African War: Congo and Regional Geopolitics, 1996-2006 Filip Reyntjens Excerpt More information 4 Great African War borders. Encouraged by its moral high ground and by the ineptitude of the so-called international community,8 the new regime explored the limits of tolerance, crossing one Rubicon after another, and realised that there were none. (Military) success is intoxicating: the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA ) went from war to war, and from victory to victory (from 1981 to 1986 on the sides of Museveni in Uganda, from 1990 to 1994 in Rwanda, from 1996 to 1997 in Zaire, though not in the Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC] after 1998). The status of regional superpower acquired by this very small and very poor country is truly astonishing, and it was obtained through the force of arms, which was allowed to prevail because of the tolerance inspired by international feelings of guilt after the genocide. Paraphrasing what was said in the late 19th century about Prussia, Rwanda became an army with a state, rather than a state with an army, and it emerged as a major factor of regional instability. This book attempts to present a synthetic overview and analysis of the complex and violent evolution of Zaire/Congo in the regional set- ting, between the beginning of the first war in 1996 and the elections of 2006 that marked the formal end of the transition.

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