Arie Learns About the Congo Wars

I wanted to go see the mountain gorillas, but it looks like it won't be possible. There has been an upswing in insurgent activity in the eastern part of the Congo, where it borders Uganda. This has disrupted my vacation plans. It has also disrupted a lot of people's plans to continue living. Several thousand refugees from Congo, including a few dozen police officers, have fled to Uganda. In this post I'm going to try to give a brief historical framework of why I can't go see mountain gorillas -- if you don't care, you shouldn't read it. (Update: I did go gorilla trekking after all.)

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (“The Nation Formerly Known as Zaire”) is a gigantic nation in central sub-Saharan Africa. It's larger than western Europe. It should not be confused with the Republic of the Congo, which is an entirely different country with a totally separate national bird and everything.

In 1885 Congo was essentially purchased by King Leopold II of Belgium and was declared his private property (people included). He ran the country as a slave plantation, making a ton of money off of rubber plantations and treating the people brutally to keep down labor costs (the standard punishment for missing a rubber quota was Leopold's guys hacked one of your limbs off, though I would think that would make the workers less efficient, not more). Meanwhile, Leopold passed himself off as a philanthropist who was involved in Congo for humanitarian purposes. Gradually people caught on (it's hard to kill half the population of a country and keep it secret, right, Turkey?), and in response to international protests, in 1908 the Belgian government took over Congo.

Belgian Congo was run as a standard European colony, religious education, special privileges for white settlers, forced labor, etc. As with much of Africa, nationalist sentiment solidified in the 1950s and the colony became independent in 1960, with socialist Patrice Lumumba as the first Prime Minister. Congo's President promptly dismissed Lumumba, starting a political crisis. In the midst of the crisis, army officer Joseph Mobutu led a coup and assassinated Lumumba (aided by the United States and Belgium).

After a few years of disorder, Mobutu took over the country and renamed it Zaire. He had U.S. support because he was staunchly opposed to Communism, but he was also staunchly opposed to good government -- he stole several billion dollars from international aid accounts while engaging in brutal repression of his people. In the 1990s, when America stopped fearing Communism, it stopped propping up Mobutu and his regime began showing signs of instability.

OK, so put that aside and turn to Rwanda. Rwanda has two main ethnic groups, the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi. They lived together with minimal tension for a couple of centuries. The Tutsis were sort of a ruling class, with the military chiefs on up to the king all being Tutsis. The military was drawn from both tribes.

Rwanda became a German colony in the late nineteenth century, and with their sharp perception for these things, and with the aid of what passed for science in Germany, the Germans determined that the Tutsis were racially superior. They set up a bureaucracy that privileged Tutsis. Belgium took over Rwanda after World War I and maintained the system of Tutsi domination, but decided to make the colony profitable -- and so began a horrific system of forced labor. Belgium also issued racial identification cards to ensure that no inferior Hutus tried to pass as superior Tutsis (some have argued that there was little racial consciousness until Belgium and Germany came along). (NB: If you have to be colonized by someone, go for England or the Netherlands. Avoid Belgium at any cost.)

After World War II, Belgium began democratic reforms. These were resisted by the Tutsis, who could do math and understood what happens when you bring democracy to a country where 15% of the population that has been brutally repressing the other 85% for decades (South Africa apparently could not do math). Hutus rebelled in 1959 and expelled the Tutsi king. Tutsi extremists responded with violence, and the Hutus, with assistance from Belgium, massacred tens of thousands of Tutsis.

When the dust settled, Rwanda was a republic with a Hutu government. A quota system gave the Tutsis nine percent of the government and of seats in universities. Hundreds of thousands of Tutsis had fled the country and the government was not interested in protecting those who remained. Because they were anti-Communists, the United States and western Europe supported the Hutu government. In 1973, General Juvenal Habyarimana (a Hutu) took over the country. He instituted a “democratic” system with only one party and was elected President in 1978 and was reelected throughout the 1980s.

Through the 1980s, the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (“RPF”) had been unsuccessfully agitating for civil rights for Tutsis and a right of return for the Tutsis that had fled. In 1990, the RPF invaded from bases in Uganda. The invasion inflamed ethnic tensions and Hutu newspapers and radio began to advocate mass murder. France sent in troops to aid the government. In 1993, the rebels and Habyarimana's government negotiated a peace treaty that incorporated the RPF into the government.

In 1994, Tutsis or Hutu extremists (it's still unclear) shot down a plane carrying Habyarimana and the President of neighboring Burundi, also a Hutu. Hutus responded by organizing militias and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The genocide was supported by the Rwandan government, the Catholic church, and the media (members of the media have been indicted for war crimes).

What did the rest of the world do during the hundred days of the Rwandan Genocide? The United Nations was aware of what was happening, but it was concerned that taking any action would ruin its reputation for being totally ineffectual. Ten Belgian soldiers were killed, so Belgium withdrew its peacekeeping troops (in fairness, ten soldiers was like twenty percent of their army). The United States declined to get involved in a “local” conflict. Clinton later said that he regretted not sending troops. About a million Tutsis regret that too.

At least France didn't sit on the sidelines. Instead, apparently France directly aided the genocide. Rwanda recently concluded that various French politicians, including then-President Mitterrand, knowingly helped the Hutu militias and assisted the Rwandan government with developing a “kill list” database. There are also accusations that French soldiers were killing Tutsi civilians. France denies everything.

While the genocide was raging, the RPF was fighting the government. The genocide ended when the RPF won and took the capital. Anticipating retaliation, two million Hutus, many of them members of the militias, fled to Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, and... wait for it... Zaire.

Right, back to Zaire. So a few million Hutus fresh from massacring Tutsis move into an unstable country that has a lot of Tutsis. Clearly a recipe for stability. From their camps in Zaire, the Hutus began attacking Tutsis in Zaire and in Rwanda. Mobutu supported them to neutralize his political opponents.

The attacks against Tutsis in Zaire triggered the First Congo War. Rwanda, still a bit miffed about the whole genocide thing, began to arm the Tutsis. They became allied with the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Zaire (known as “AFDL” because the French word order incorrect use). The AFDL, led by Laurent Kabila, was supported by troops from Uganda and from Rwanda. Kabila, a Marxist who had contact with Che Guevara and some funding from China, was a long-time political opponent of Mobutu and follower of Patrice Lumumba.

Kabila moved slowly through Congo, allegedly torturing and killing civilians along the way. Finally he reached the capital, Kinshasa (née “Leopoldville”), proclaimed himself President, renamed the country “Democratic Republic of Congo”, and of course began a brutal crackdown to restore order. His ascendancy marked the end of the First Congo War.

Kabila's centralization efforts immediately brought him into conflict with ethnic minorities. Rwandan and Ugandan troops remained in the country. In 1998, feeling that he now had enough of a local power base to forgo Rwandan assistance, Kabila dismissed all Tutsis from the government, fired his Rwandan chief of staff, and demanded that all Rwandan and Ugandan military and officials leave the country.

Kabila's 1998 actions triggered the start of the Second Congo War. His expulsion of Rwanda concerned ethnic Tutsis, who thought that without Rwandan protection they would be massacred. They rebelled in the form of the Rally for Congolese Democracy (“RCD”), with support from Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi (and, it turns out, the United States) and conquered much of eastern Congo.

Kabila responded by aligning his government with Hutu militias and calling for violence against Tutsis. But the RCD made substantial gains both in the east and in the west, cutting power to the capital and seizing some of Congo's diamond mines (Uganda became a diamond-exporting nation during this period).

The RCD marched on the capital, but Kabila had been on a diplomatic push that paid off. In return for diamond-mining concessions, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe sent soldiers into the capital and they held off the RCD while an Angolan army marched into the region (Angola feared that rebel victory would lead to opportunities for Angolan rebels who were mining diamonds in Congo). Kabila also received support from Chad, Libya, Namibia, and Sudan (Namibia also received mining concessions). Uganda responded with a new rebel group, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (“MLC”), which began operations in northern Congo. The United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan also supported Kabila in return for mining concessions (but don't worry! Your engagement ring definitely didn't fund any of this! There is absolutely no connection between gemstones and gold jewelry in the west and the worst conflict since World War II! Continue consuming as normal! Five million people died! A diamond is forever!).

Meanwhile, there was substantial tension in the RCD between the factions supported by Rwanda and by Uganda. An RCD leader broke away, moving to a region controlled by Uganda and starting a new group. He was replaced by a pro-Rwanda figure, but inter-rebel violence erupted when Uganda announced the creation of a new province in Congo. Finally, Ugandan and Rwandan troops engaged each other directly. But within two months, the rebels had organized again and marched on the capital. The United Nations sent in a few thousand troops, but they were ineffective at stopping the violence.

In 2001, Kabila was assassinated. No one knows for sure who did it, but it's generally blamed on his allies. His son Joseph Kabila took his place. Kabila the Younger met with Rwanda and Rwanda and Uganda agreed to pull out their troops. Incidentally, ninety people were convicted of Kabila I's murder. I guess he was an unpopular guy.

The violence continued into 2002. RCD troops became frustrated with Rwanda and internal divisions became violent, while Kabila reasserted control over Congo, stabilized the economy, and welcomed international aid workers back to the country. In 2002, Rwanda and Congo signed a peace treaty that required Rwanda to withdraw its soldiers and Congo to dismantle the Interahamwe, which was still active inside Congo. Congo also signed a peace treaty with Uganda. The war allegedly ended in 2003 with the formation of a transitional government that incorporated the rebels.

So there's this guy, Laurent Nkunda. He was an officer in the RCD and became a general in the Congo army after the transitional government was formed. Then he rebelled, taking his troops (many former RCD) to eastern Congo at the border with Uganda and Rwanda. He says he's trying to protect ethnic Tutsis in eastern Congo, but the UN says he's lying. Congo and the UN have been fighting him for years. Last year, Nkunda ignored a disarmament deadline, and Congo responded with a military push that resulted in displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. There were peace talks in January of 2008 that appeared successful, but turns out no.

A few weeks ago, Nkunda launched a major offensive and seized the Virunga National Park. Then his forces advanced to the city of Goma while people in the region attacked UN troops for failing to protect them. The United Nations responded with a non-binding resolution (that'll show those rebels!).

The Virunga National Park is where the gorillas are. So no gorilla trekking for me. I blame Belgium.

(Incidentally, I simplified a lot of this. There were a lot of other armed groups involved, including the Impuzamugambi, the Interahamwe, DSP, FAR, The Erasers, MONUC, UNAMIR, CDR, NALU, ALIR, RDR, FDD, FLN, FNI, CNN, MRND, RGF, LRA, Forces for Renewal, ANC, APC, SPLA, UNITA, UPC, FAB, FEDEX, FARDC, NWA, FAZ, Mudundu 40, FRDKI, MLAZ, FURNAC, UPDF, ZNA, ZANLA, and ZIPRA. I thought it was better this way.)

(OK, so two of those aren't actual armed groups. And NWA was an armed group, but they were active mainly in California.)