Chapter 2

Causes of Conflict and Key Protagonists

To a large degree, the key to the conflict in the DRC, as well as to that in the Great Lakes region, can be found in the eastern Kivu provinces. Since 1959, the various crises in Rwanda and Burundi have generated four major refugee flows that have affected the demographics, economics, politics and security in the Great Lakes region, and the Kivus in particular. The first was between 1959 and 1963, when an estimated 200 000 Tutsis fled from the Hutu revolution in Rwanda into Uganda, Burundi and eastern Congo. The second, in 1972, involved approximately 300 000 Hutus from Burundi, who fled into Tanzania and Rwanda to escape the genocidal massacres of Hutus by the Tutsi-dominated army. Following the massacre of Hutus and Tutsis triggered by the assassination of president-elect Melchior Ndadaye on 21 October 1993, a third wave of up to 400 000 Hutu refugees from Burundi crowded the existing refugee camps in Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, although more than half ended up in Rwanda. The fourth and largest flow of refugees followed the 1994 genocide, and involved approximately 2 million Hutus from Rwanda fleeing into eastern Congo and Tanzania.5 Most had fled Rwanda when the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and its military wing, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) took power in Kigali, advancing from Uganda under Paul Kagame with the support of the country. Up to 30 000 Hutus who fled into North and South Kivu were members of the former Rwandan army (ex-Forces armées rwandaises or ex-FAR) and the Interahamwe (Rwandan Hutu) militia, who had been responsible for the massacre of up to 800 000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the preceding months. The perpetrators of the genocide subsequently rearmed in the refugee camps of eastern Congo (ironically under the protection of the international community and with substantial financial and other support from the diaspora), and were able to resume the war in 1996 and again in 1998, bolstered by the recruitment of Congolese Hutus and supporters from Tanzania, Zambia, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon and the Central African Republic.6

Zaïrian President Mobutu Seso Seko subsequently employed these forces to destabilise Rwanda and Uganda using the conflict as an excuse to delay progress in the stalled constitutional transition process in his own country. His armed forces, the Forces armeés zaïroises (FAZ), had long engaged in the suppression and persecution of the Zaïrian Tutsi population of Kivu, the Banyarwanda (a grouping that includes the Banyamulenge), despite the fact that the majority had long since considered themselves Congolese rather than Rwandan.7 Starting in October 1996, the Banyamulenge began fighting back, having received training, supplies, encouragement and substantive military assistance from the Rwandan regime, including combat support from the RPA.8

Despite the initial RPA pursuit operations and subsequent ongoing military campaign into the then Zaïre (which would eventually see Laurent Kabila installed as President in Kinshasa through the support of Rwanda and Uganda), many Interahamwe and ex-FAR survived, reorganised and continued with their campaign to exterminate the inyenzi (cockroaches).

Crossing the border into Zaïre to seek out those responsible for the genocide, the RPA destroyed the refugee camps around Goma during October 1996. Rwanda soon found that it was pushing against an open door: Zaïre was ripe for the taking. With the tacit support of many who had grown tired of Mobutu’s excesses, and with the military backing of Rwanda and Uganda, a coalition of forces largely composed of Congolese Tutsis (Banyamulenge) from the east and Angolan Tigers (historical descendants of the Katangan Tigers of Shaba province in southern Zaïre), the Alliance des forces démocratiques pour la liberation du Congo-Zaïre (AFDL), under the leadership of the still obscure figure of Laurent Kabila, a baLuba from Katanga, led a successful armed revolt that swept across Zaïre from east to west. Kinshasa fell on 16 May 1997. Mobutu fled, and soon thereafter died of cancer.

Once in power, Kabila changed the name of the country to the DRC, but it was soon evident that he would not reverse the corruption, mismanagement and self-enrichment that had characterised governance in the Mobutu era. Mobutuism had wrecked the country, but Kabila did little to fill the vacuum, clinging to power through a combination of coercion, divide-and-rule tactics and foreign support. When he failed to address the security concerns of Uganda and Rwanda in the east, and expelled his advisors in Kinshasa, they backed a new rebellion against him in August 1998. The core of these forces comprised Tutsi soldiers in the Forces armées congolaises (FAC), and a new local rebel movement made up of Congolese Tutsis (Banyamulenge), the Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie (RCD).

The rebellion turned into a full-scale war when troops from Zimbabwe, Chad and Namibia joined those Angolan forces already in the DRC to shore up Kabila’s government and prevent the capture of Kinshasa. Rwanda and Uganda had long been sympathetic to the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA) cause and Angola, having supported a change in government in Kinshasa, was intent on ensuring an anti-UNITA government in Congo. This could not be guaranteed with Kabila in alliance with Rwanda and Uganda. Eventually, an RPA air assault on Kitona and Kinshasa was foiled by massive Angolan intervention. The Rwandan forces who fought their way into UNITA-controlled territory in north-eastern Angola were flown back to Rwanda. The war reached a stalemate.

The decision by Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia to support Laurent Kabila followed a summit attended by a number (but not all) of Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders hosted by President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe on 18 August 1998 at Victoria Falls. The following day, the defence ministers of Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe announced that their three countries would go to Kabila’s assistance. The first troops were dispatched shortly thereafter. The subsequent Defence Protocol between the Republic of Angola, the DR Congo, the Republic of Namibia and the Republic of Zimbabwe was signed in Luanda on 8 April 1999 by the ministers of defence of the four countries. Article 4 of the treaty states:

"That an armed attack against one of them shall be considered an attack against the other and that in the event of such an attack, each of them will assist the Party so attacked by taking forthwith individually or in collaboration with other parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to repel such attack and restore peace and security in the territory of the Party so attacked."

Article 11 establishes "a Joint Committee to be called the ‘Angola-DRC-Namibia-Zimbabwe Co-operation Committee’ whose function shall be to ensure the smooth implementation of this Protocol."

Less than a month after the Victoria Falls summit, on 4 September 1998, presidents Kabila and Mugabe signed a deal providing for a ‘self-financing’ intervention by the Zimbabwe National Defence Force (ZNDF). The International Crisis Group has explained the arrangement as follows:

"Under its terms, Zimbabwe Defence Industries (ZDI) was to provide arms and munitions to the DRC, in return for which the Zimbabwean mining company, Ridgepointe, would take over the management of Gecamines, and receive a 37,5 per cent share of the DRC state mining company. Moreover, between 20 and 30 per cent of the DRC government’s 62,5 per cent of the firm’s profits was to be used for financing the Zimbabwean war effort. Subsequent agreements have dealt with electric power, civil aviation and agriculture … Other Zimbabwean mining interests include a joint venture between its army firm Osleg (Operation Sovereign Legitimacy), and the DRC’s Comiex, to buy diamonds and gold for sale on the Kinshasa Precious Minerals Market."9

Recently, the UN Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)10 reported that Zimbabwe was also part of a complex logging contract to cut down 33 million hectares of Congolese trees in the first three years of operation with estimated profits worth US $300 million.11 The deal is being executed through a company called the Congolese Society for the Exploitation of Timber, known by its French acronym SOCEBO.

Zimbabwean deployment in the DRC has also been informed by other considerations, the most important of which is its regional power ambitions. These, in turn, are largely driven by President Robert Mugabe’s antipathy towards South Africa and the desire to find a counterweight to South African influence within SADC (including its dominant economic role). Zimbabwe has a long-standing partnership with Angola, and has at times portrayed its role in the DRC as part of a somewhat unlikely Bantu alliance against a ‘Nilotic plot’ to establish an ethnically based ‘Empire Hima-Tutsi’ in the heart of the DRC.12

At the height of the war, Zimbabwe had some 13 000 troops in the DRC, mostly deployed in and around Mbuji Mayi, where between 3 000 and 5 000 soldiers are engaged in active mining in the Shaba and Kasai Oriental provinces (Pweto, Kabinda, Ikela) and at Mbandaka in Equateur province. These troops constituted the bulk of the combat forces available to both Laurent and Joseph Kabila — Zimbabwe provided the second largest contingent in the country after Rwanda on the opposing side. Much has been made of the Zimbabwean mining interests in the DRC and the involvement of senior ZANU-PF politicians and ZNDF officers in various lucrative contracts. These benefits aside, it is well known that, overall, Zimbabwe has not profited from its engagement in the DRC, that its troops are not paid regularly and that the deployment there places a heavy burden on the fiscus.

Rwanda and Zimbabwe could be regarded as the key players in the DRC at present, on the grounds that they constitute the core forces on either side in the war. However, on the ‘SADC allies’ side, it is Angola, not Zimbabwe that has a national strategic interest, in pursuing an ongoing engagement and influencing developments in Kinshasa. It was, after all, the decisive intervention from the Forças Armadas Angolanas (FAA) that saved Laurent Kabila from defeat in August 1998, when Angolan artillery and air power played a key role in defending Mbuji Mayi and Mbandaka. A friendly or pliant government in Kinshasa that would help to oppose support to UNITA from the Bandudu, Kasai Occidental and Shaba provinces is a direct national security concern for Angola. UNITA logistics have run through Shaba (Katanga) for decades, and UNITA combatants have often retreated into the DRC to avoid Angolan armed forces.

Unlike Zimbabwe, Angola and the DRC are both Central African rather than Southern African powers, with President dos Santos having emerged as something of a regional power broker in recent years, riding on the back of the strength of the FAA and the regionalisation of the Angolan conflict into Congo-Brazzaville, the DRC, Zambia and Namibia. Angola has the ability and has repeatedly demonstrated the will to project power into this region from its bases in Cabinda, Brazzaville, Pointe-Noire and Dolisi at short notice. It does not require a large and ongoing presence in the DRC. With the war inside Angola again on the upsurge, there is also little justification for President dos Santos to retain a substantive military presence in the DRC when his troops are needed more urgently elsewhere.

Namibia, which laboriously transported its first two companies by road through Angola to the DRC, had about 2 000 troops there prior to withdrawal and owes Angola a substantial ‘liberation debt’ for the support provided during the liberation war.

Uganda entered the DRC to secure its borders and to counter the Allied Democratic Front (ADF) and the Lords Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA, led by self-proclaimed mystic Joseph Kony, has embarked upon a campaign of terror against the population of northern Uganda in 1998. Sudan had backed Kony in retaliation for Uganda’s support of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).13 The two countries signed a peace agreement in 1999, in which each pledged not to support the other government’s opponents. Uganda undertook to release prisoners of war, and Sudan promised to return thousands of children abducted by the LRA. As part of the efforts to restore diplomatic relations that had been broken off in 1995, Sudan’s President Bashir appointed an envoy to Kampala and invited Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni to visit Khartoum late in 2001.14

With the support of Uganda, the Mouvement pour la liberation congolais (MLC) grew from what the International Crisis Group called a "motley collection of 154 fighters in December 1998 to a force of over 6 000 that controlled most of Equateur province" barely twelve months later.15 Despite the trumpeting by Uganda that MLC leader Jean-Pierre Bemba was an ‘authentic Congolese leader’, Ugandan People’s Defence Force (UPDF) commander Brigadier Katumba Wamala commanded more than 10 000 Ugandan troops in Equateur province from his headquarters in Gbadolite by December 2000.16

According to a UN expert panel, commercial considerations have become important in the Ugandan engagement in the DRC. While the veracity of the panel’s findings have been widely disputed, it is evident that Uganda’s gold exports have increased dramatically since 1998. Coffee smuggling has also become an important source of revenue, and it is reported that President Museveni’s family owns shares in diamond mines in the DRC. Oxfam argues that the potential oil reserves in the Semliki Valley, bordering on the DRC, are another consideration.17 Evidence regarding the intense involvement of UPDF officers in Congolese resource extraction has been mounting for several years. During December 2000, for example, the International Crisis Group stated that:

"Official figures by the Bank of Uganda … show that Uganda’s gold exports shot up from $12,4 million in 1994-95 to $110 million in 1996 … Major General Salim Saleh, the President’s brother … was deeply involved in buying gold in UPDF controlled areas … Other senior UPDF officers have behaved in a similar fashion … Brigadier Kazini is accused of distributing diamond and cobalt concessions while he was the commander of UPDF operations in the DRC … Ties between front-line UPDF commanders and businessmen fuelled much of the Hema-Lendu violence, which may have claimed some ten thousand lives in the Ugandan controlled north-east since the war’s outbreak."18

It is evident from the above that the involvement of foreign forces in the DRC conflict, whether on the side of the government or of the opposing armed forces, has been motivated and sustained by a variety of powerful interests — ranging from legitimate security concerns, to regional ambitions, ethnic solidarity and financial gain. Under such circumstances, the engineering of a ceasefire was much easier to accomplish than actually dislodging the foreigners from their foothold in the DRC.