Congolese Catholics demonstrate outside the St Francois de Sales Church
in Kinshasa to push for the ouster of President Joseph Kabila. PHOTO |
AFP
Border zones are by nature rather tense, unpleasant places, but
the actual significance of any particular border is simply a reflection
of the politics of the region.
An incursion by
soldiers into the Korean Demilitarised Zone or along the border of
Nagorno-Karabakh, for example, will have profound geopolitical
consequences, while we would probably not be too perturbed if we learned
tomorrow that some drunken members of the Guardia Civil had
accidentally stumbled into France.
The
Congolese-Rwandan border is one of those with tremendous geopolitical
significance, which makes last month’s reports that Rwandan troops
crossed over and killed five Congolese soldiers especially disconcerting
news, even from a region most Westerners already associate with
biblical scales of calamity.
In no other part of the
continent is the geopolitical situation so opaque, the nature of borders
so porous, and the flow of displaced people so weaponised as in the
eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The
past two decades of turbulent Congolese history have been propelled by
invasion, proxy warfare, interethnic strife spilling across arbitrary
borders, and African statesman who have seen little interest in anything
but a weak state in sub-Saharan Africa’s largest, most resource-rich
country.
The 1994 Rwandan genocide catalysed two
catastrophic wars in the DRC (then Zaire), the second of which was
dubbed “Africa’s World War” due to the involvement of nine African
nations and a death toll of between 2.7 and 5.4 million. And in many
ways, the Second Congo War never really ended — as evidenced by the
United Nations’ announcement this past October that the humanitarian
situation in the DRC constituted a Level 3 emergency, on par with Syria,
Iraq, and Yemen.
At present, roughly 120 armed groups operate in eastern DRC
alone, necessitating the presence of the largest UN peacekeeping force
in the world, Monusco. The Congolese security sector is in shambles,
with the fractious and corrupt Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC) acting as a
vehicle for political patronage for erstwhile warlords of questionable
loyalty.
The Congolese state is further weakened by a
dearth of infrastructure within the vast country and the combined
effects of neopatrimonialism, interethnic tension, and secessionism, all
working together to undermine the nation’s social cohesion.
Parochial politico-economic warlords
Meanwhile,
the political situation continues to deteriorate over President Joseph
Kabila’s desperate, illegal machinations to cling to power through the
delaying of elections, dubbed Glissement (“slippage”) by Congolese.
The
longer this process goes on, the greater the opportunity for warlords
with parochial politico-economic interests to rebrand themselves as
national political figures. This has already happened in the fascinating
case of the racketeer-turned-“liberator” William Yakutumba, and the
trend shows signs of spreading.
As the chief of
mission for the International Organisation for Migration in Congo
recently noted: “Whilst initially some of these armed groups were in it
for themselves — they would burn a village, and pillage, rape, burn and
scorch the earth — it seems now that they have more of a political
agenda.”
It may seem absurd to suggest that an obscure
militia operating in the jungle 500 miles (805km) from Kinshasa could
overthrow the president, but such rebellions have historically been
vehicles for the Congo’s neighbours to attempt regime change.
As
seemingly intractable and remote as the DRC’s problems are, the United
States has humanitarian, economic, and political interests in managing
the multifarious conflicts within Congolese borders. For example, any
conflict that spills over into Uganda or Burundi consequently affects
multinational efforts against Al Shabaab in Somalia.
More
importantly, a reversion to widespread interstate warfare in Central
Africa would undermine the fragile progress made in building up
collective security mechanisms and diplomatic forums in Africa.
If
the United States and its allies wish to ameliorate or at least contain
the current insecurity in the DRC, they must first understand how
deeply interconnected the country’s problems are with the wider
geopolitics of the region—and how limited Western influence over
relevant Congolese actors may be.
Because the DRC’s
crisis rebounds on its neighbours in such complex and often
contradictory ways, we should ask ourselves if and how other African
states may play a role in peacefully pushing the Congolese president
aside — which demands a fresh analysis of the region’s most
consequential stakeholders.
The Southern Powers: Zimbabwe, Angola, and South Africa
New
leadership to the DRC’s south will play a significant role in
determining if and how President Kabila exits the political stage.
The
Southern African Development Community (SADC) has thus far tolerated
Kabila’s election delays in large part because two of its most
influential members, Zimbabwe and Angola, are long-time backers of
Kabila.
Robert Mugabe was one of the closest allies of
Kabila’s father, the late Laurent Kabila. During the Second Congo War,
Mugabe and then-president of Angola Jose Eduardo dos Santos airlifted
hundreds of troops into Kinshasa to defend Laurent Kabila’s fledgling
regime from an onslaught of Congolese rebels and Rwandan and Ugandan
forces.
Throughout the
course of the war, Mugabe provided between $260 million and $1 billion
in military assistance to the fledgling regime in return for lucrative
mining and timber contracts for Mugabe’s clique.
One of
those cronies, Emmerson Mnangagwa, is Zimbabwe’s new president
following a November coup that finally sidelined Africa’s most notorious
nonagenarian dictator. Another is Maj Gen SB Moyo, reportedly one of
the key nodes in the coup plotters’ network, and Mnangagwa’s Minister of
Foreign Affairs.
We should be under no illusions
about the nature of the new Zimbabwean leadership. The country remains
an effective one-party state under ZANU-PF, and Mnangagwa needs to
ensure the loyalty of the party elites who helped him usurp the
presidency.
Due to its own economic collapse, Zimbabwe
significantly scaled back its role in the Congolese mining sector in the
early 2000s, although there are rumours that Zimbabweans continue to
serve as Joseph Kabila’s bodyguard. Mnangagwa is economically savvier
and less of an international pariah than his predecessor, and is thus
looking to jumpstart Zimbabwe’s economy with more foreign investment and
international debt relief.
Assuming Zimbabwe’s
fortunes rise as the DRC’s decrease, we can expect Mnangagwa to look for
ways to reinsert ZANU-PF into the most lucrative sectors of the
Congolese economy.
The question is whether he will see
Kabila’s Glissement as a means of ensuring a trusted friend remains in
power in Kinshasa, or as a foolish, unsustainable gambit which threatens
Zimbabwean investments. Needless to say, Kabila would be foolish to put
too much faith in a man Zimbabweans have dubbed “The Crocodile.”
Angola
Angola’s
long-serving dictator, dos Santos, also left office last year, although
in his case the decision was voluntary. Like Zimbabwe, Angola remains a
militarised one-party state, and the new president, João Lourenço, is a
General and former Minister of Defence.
Angola’s
interests in the DRC are largely economic as much of its oil, which
accounts for over 90 per cent of its exports, is located in Congolese
waters or in Cabinda, an enclave separated from the Angolan mainland by a
strip of Congolese territory.
Angolan foreign policy
is also heavily informed by historical considerations: For decades,
enemies of the ruling MPLA party operated with impunity from the Congo,
nearly overthrowing the regime on several occasions.
Angola
has been a key backer of Kabila since the day he took office in 2001,
even though Angola is also one of the prime suspects in the
assassination of Kabila’s father — a testament to the often unscrupulous
nature of regional politics.
In 2006, Angolan troops
flew to Kinshasa to defend the younger Kabila, this time as the
president’s bodyguards were fighting troops loyal to
warlord-turned-politician Jean Pierre Bemba following a contested
election.
Angola’s support has shown signs of waning
of late, however. A new and terrifying conflict in the DRC’s previously
calm southcentral province of Kasai — prompted by Kabila’s ham-handed
attempts to replace hereditary chieftains with political cronies — has
led to a massive influx of refugees into neighbouring Angola.
The
Angolan government has been understandably concerned by these
developments, to say nothing of a number of massive prison breaks near
the Angolan border, and reportedly played a role in pushing Kabila to
accept the December 2016 San Sylvestre agreement with the opposition.
Kabila
has since reneged his end of the deal. Perhaps more than any of the
Congo’s other neighbours, Angola needs a modicum of stability in the
DRC.
Unpredictable as Angolan foreign policy can be,
we can safely assume that Lourenço will not back a losing horse in
Kinshasa, and that is exactly what Kabila looks like these days.
South Africa
Finally,
South Africa has a new president who appreciates the importance of his
country’s international standing better than the recently resigned Jacob
Zuma.
While South Africa has not traditionally played
as significant a role in the DRC’s internal affairs as Zimbabwe or
Angola, the country is a pivotal diplomatic force on the continent and
has been a key broker in previous negotiations within the Great Lakes
region. (Thabo Mbeki oversaw the 2002 Pretoria Accord between Rwanda and
the DRC).
South Africa is also the biggest player in
the SADC. Where Zuma had tolerated Kabila’s Glissement for reasons both
ideological (who are former colonial powers to lecture Africans on
democracy?) and practical (Zuma’s nephew was named in the Panama Papers
as a major investor in Congolese oil fields), Cyril Ramaphosa enters
office looking to reclaim the nation’s role as a pragmatic arbiter of
regional disputes.
He will need to tread carefully:
The issue of term limits is a very sensitive one in African politics
these days, and he needs good relations with his neighbours as much as
he does with the West. Still, subtle diplomatic efforts to push Kabila
out the door could earn South Africa some much needed international
goodwill.
The Eastern Front: Burundi, Uganda, and Rwanda
To
the DRC’s east, Burundi remains in the midst of a protracted crisis
that at points has appeared dangerously close to civil war. For the past
three years, President Pierre Nkurunziza, a former Hutu rebel leader,
has stoked ethnic resentment in attempts to dismantle a broad-based,
multi-ethnic coalition that challenged his decision to run for a
controversial third term.
Roughly 2,000 people have
been killed (overwhelmingly by state security forces), another 10,000
arrested, and nearly 400,000 have fled the country, including to the
DRC. UN and African Union efforts to resolve the crisis have stalled and
Burundi has rejected African Union peacekeepers and observers.
In
September, at least 36 Burundian refugees were killed in clashes with
Congolese security forces in South Kivu, sparking a diplomatic row
between the two neighbours.
Given the role Burundi’s
internal conflicts have played in Congolese history (anti-Hutu pogroms
in 1972 and civil war from 1993-2006 saw hundreds of thousands of
refugees crossing into the Kivus, radically altering local
ethno-political dynamics), any further fallout from Burundi’s upcoming
elections and proposed constitutional amendment on presidential term
limits is liable to spill into the DRC.
After Kabila,
no men will probably be more influential in determining the future of
the DRC than Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Ugandan President Yoweri
Museveni.
Both presidents have their separate
interests, but their personal histories are intertwined and their
worldviews reflect a similar hard-earned cynicism from years fighting in
the bush.
Kagame was Museveni’s chief of intelligence
when the latter was a rebel commander in the 1980s. Several years after
Museveni usurped the Ugandan presidency, Kagame invaded Rwanda with his
Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels, sparking a civil war with the
Hutu extremist government in Kigali.
In 1994, it was
the RPF who ended the 100-day genocide by pushing the Hutu genocidaires
into the Congo as the world stood watching. The repressive state model
and militaristic foreign policy of post-genocide Rwanda is Kagame’s
response to what he sees as the utter failure of democracy and
international law to save his people.
Trilateral relations
Together,
Kagame and Museveni have twice invaded the Congo, once gone to war with
each other (over the conduct of the second invasion and control of the
Congo’s natural resources), and to this day are both heavily invested in
ensuring that perceived threats to their regimes are held at bay within
the DRC’s borders, rather than their own.
Trilateral
relations between the DRC and its two powerful neighbours to the east
remain frosty, although they began to improve slightly in 2013.
Kagame
and Museveni have heretofore tolerated Kabila’s Glissement for their
own practical purposes. Kagame won re-election for a third term last
August after his party pushed for a constitutional amendment (ratified
by popular vote) that eliminated term limits.
Museveni
has been in power since 1986, and his party recently voted to scrap
presidential age limits to allow the 73-year old to run again in 2021, a
move that sparked an angry brawl in the Ugandan parliament.
Understandably,
both leaders are reluctant to see either the African Union or Western
powers take a hard line on electoral malfeasance in the DRC, lest it set
a precedent for the rest of the continent.
Kabila’s
relatively cordial relations with Rwanda and Uganda these past few years
have been a historic aberration, and they look set to deteriorate as
the situation in the DRC unravels.
Uganda’s
decision to moderate its meddling in eastern DRC was in response to
supposedly significant progress against the Allied Democratic Forces
(ADF) — a vaguely Islamist Ugandan rebel group — on the part of the
FARDC and Monusco’s new Force Intervention Brigade (FIB), a muscular
peacekeeping unit with a more aggressive mandate. This progress was
illusory. Monusco hastily cut its budget in 2017, leading to the
premature closure of peacekeeping bases in ADF areas of operation.
Even
prior to the budget cuts, Tanzanian soldiers in the FIB who I spoke
with last year were pessimistic about the UN force’s ability to root out
the ADF and had little praise for the FARDC’s efforts.
This
is the backdrop to the startling series of Ugandan People’s Defence
Force (UPDF) airstrikes within the DRC last December that killed 100 ADF
militants, as well as Museveni’s subsequent chastising of the United
Nations. While these strikes were reportedly co-ordinated with the
FARDC, the UPDF is unlikely to always be so courteous with their
Congolese counterparts.
With plans to increase oil
production in western Uganda under way, Museveni will look to establish a
buffer against the ADF in eastern DRC which could take the form of UPDF
presence or Congolese proxies.
Another oft-overlooked
dimension of Uganda’s strategic landscape is the resurgent conflict in
the DRC’s northeastern Ituri region, along the Ugandan border. Tension
between pastoralist Hema and agriculturalist Lendu bubbled over into
open warfare during the Second Congo War, during which time the Ugandans
alternately supported militias from both ethnic groups to counter
Rwandan (and later Congolese) influence.
Major
operations by Lendu rebels resisting integration into the FARDC
continued well into 2015, and FARDC soldiers I spoke with last summer
confirmed that the area was one of primary concern for their commanders
even though it had not been getting any international attention.
Then Xinhua
reported this month that 26 people had been killed in fighting between
unidentified Hema and Lendu groups, and that some 34,000 people had fled
into Uganda this year as a result of the violence. Given the high level
of ADF activity in Ituri, the onset of a broader Hema-Lendu conflict
will complicate Ugandan efforts in the region.
Malleable leadership
Rwanda’s strategic interests in the DRC are not so fundamentally different from what they were 20 years ago.
Rwanda
seeks to neutralise the FDLR rebels, whose ranks include many former
genocidaires; prevent the emergence of new rebel movements that are
strong enough to challenge the Rwandan state; and ensure Rwandan access
to Congolese natural resources.
Malleable leadership in Kinshasa allows Kagame to secure these interests, just as it allows Museveni to secure Uganda’s.
If Kagame finds Kabila recalcitrant, he can weaken his hand through proxies. This is precisely what Kagame did in 2012, when Rwanda helped catalyse a mutiny-turned-rebellion, the M23 movement (which also received modest Ugandan backing).
In
a matter of weeks, M23 routed the FARDC and temporarily occupied the
major eastern city of Goma, humiliating the Congolese leader.
The subsequent diplomatic scramble to prevent a Third Congo War
succeeded in pushing Kagame to drop his support of M23. While some
hopeful Western commentators heralded this as the beginning of a new
chapter in Congolese-Rwandan relations, the reality of the situation was
never so encouraging.
Kagame had never intended for
the rebels to overthrow Kabila. As former Tutsi rebels of the CNDP group
who had recently been integrated into the FARDC, the M23 rebels were
solely interested in maintaining their privileged positions in the
politico-economic sphere of eastern Congo; they never numbered more than
2,500 and their social base was much narrower than previous
Rwanda-backed insurgencies, meaning that they would have never managed
to overcome the popular anti-Rwandan sentiment that dominates the Kivus.
Furthermore, Kagame had no compelling interest in
seeing Kabila overthrown in 2012 so long as Kabila continued to tolerate
Rwandan smuggling in eastern Congo.
It is much more
likely that Kagame was simply trying to maintain his influence in
eastern DRC by weakening Kabila’s position, which had been growing
slowly stronger since 2009.
In Kagame’s eyes, M23
would not only serve as a bulwark against the FDLR, but a defection of
Tutsi soldiers from the FARDC would erase any legitimacy the Congolese
state once enjoyed among the Rwandophone population of the Kivus.
Kagame’s
eventual decision to sever ties with M23 was the result of intense
international pressure, namely the Obama Administration’s withholding of
US military assistance to Rwanda, as well as the fact that the
rebellion inevitably fell apart shortly after its inception due to
conflict between its two leading commanders, Bosco Ntaganda and Sultani
Makenga.
None
of this suggests that Kagame has any desire to become what we might
consider a responsible stakeholder in a regional order. On the contrary,
the militaristic and interventionist mindset of the RPF vanguard still
dominates Rwanda’s foreign policy.
Kagame’s Minister of
Defence since 2010, Gen James Kaberebe, is known in the Congo for his
widespread use of child soldiers during the Congo Wars as well as his
propensity for daring commando operations — including the 1998 Kitona
Airlift that nearly toppled Laurent Kabila.
Just
months after the M23 rebellion ended, Kagame’s former chief of external
intelligence, Patrick Karegeya, was found murdered in a posh
Johannesburg hotel. In exile, Karegeya had secretly been advising South
African and Tanzanian intelligence in their efforts to target M23 for
the FIB.
Kagame officially denied involvement in the
assassination, but speaking on the matter to a domestic audience shortly
thereafter, said: “You can’t betray Rwanda and not get punished for
it.”
Burundi
With
the advent of Burundi’s crisis in the spring of 2015, Nkurunziza, an
erstwhile friend of Kagame’s until 2013 (when relations soured over the
M23 rebellion), quickly began casting the blame for his country’s
instability on Rwanda.
It would have been easy to
brush off such claims as little more than Nkurunziza’s efforts to split
the Burundian opposition by stoking Hutu fears of a nefarious Tutsi
dictator orchestrating the current unrest.
Unfortunately,
a report by a UN panel of experts in February 2016 found that the
charges had some merit: Rwandan intelligence officers had indeed
conscripted Burundian refugees, including children, and provided them
with military training in the hopes of toppling Nkurunziza. As of yet
there has been no RPF-style invasion and Nkurunziza remains in office,
but the crisis in Burundi continues among high tensions with Rwanda.
None
of this recent history can tell us precisely how Kagame will react to
an increasingly unstable DRC. In some ways, the case for Rwandan
intervention is weaker than ever, as the FDLR, traditionally the
justification for Rwanda’s aggressive foreign policy, is a shadow of its
former self. But insecurity allows insurgencies to rebuild.
Nkurunziza’s
government was also probably not an existential threat to Rwanda, yet
this did not stop Kagame from assembling a nascent Burundian rebel
force. Furthermore, after two decades of Rwandan interventions in
eastern DRC, the various communities there have no shortage of
grievances against Kigali.
It seems the only way
Rwanda has managed to stay on decent terms with any eastern Congolese
community is through illicit trade. Even most Rwandophone Tutsi in the
Kivus long for integration into Congolese society and see Rwandan
backing as a scarlet letter.
In short, Kagame knows
that most of the armed groups operating in eastern DRC are at best
highly sceptical of Rwanda and at worst openly hostile.
And,
of course, last month’s deadly clash with FARDC troops 100 metres
inside Congolese territory is further testament to how precarious the
situation between the two neighbours is, as communication between the
two armies is lacking while mutual distrust is in high supply. Finally,
as a rule of thumb, one should never underestimate Paul Kagame.
A Way Forward?
Unfortunately,
there is no silver bullet to the crises in the DRC so long as its
neighbours continue to see little downside to a weak Congolese state.
For
one thing, the European Union and United States, despite their
tremendous financial power and international standing, do not possess
the same sort of leverage over the relevant Congolese actors, most
notably Kabila, that other African states do.
Nevertheless,
some common ground for preventing a further deterioration of the
situation exists, as a complete collapse of the DRC would constitute far
too great a risk for neighbouring states which are generally rather
fragile in their own right.
Our best chance of
ameliorating the situation, however slightly, rests on the various
African stakeholders acknowledging that Kabila’s presidency is
unsustainable, which seems to be clearer every week with new reports of
growing chaos.
The question then becomes what form any
regional pressure on Kabila would take: Diplomatic efforts in forums
such as the African Union (of which Kagame is now chairperson) and SADC,
or the blunter tools of statecraft all too common throughout the
region’s history: Proxy warfare and invasion.
We should
not fool ourselves into thinking that the fundamental failure of the
Congolese state would be remedied overnight with new leadership.
(This analysis was first published by The American Interest.)
James H. Barnett is a Public Interest Fellow in Washington, DC.
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