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THE BELGIAN CONGO HAD ONE OF the shortest independence struggles in African colonial history. It started late in 1958 and achieved its goal in June 1960. It was a colony in which traditional leadership had been systematically weakened and in which no university-trained modern elites had replaced it — because no university training was made available. Advanced education was only available to would-be priests. By the end of colonial rule there were about 3,000 theologically trained Congolese of whom about 500 had actually become priests, but there were only about 20 secular university graduates.

Typically for the time, the colony was to be handed over to an elected government, and thus one month before independence the first national election was held. This forced the young leaders of young political parties to go to the urban and rural masses and mobilize them. Surprisingly, they very often found an angry, radically inclined population which anticipated that independence would dismantle the whole colonial system. Because of this mood, the more radical political parties won, and the most prominent leader of this tendency, Patrice Lumumba, became the first Prime Minister. Unlike most of the independence movements, there was no time for the parties to coalesce into one or two massive movements. At the national level, sixteen political parties were represented in the first parliament with none having a majority.

The first cabinet was made up of leaders from many different parties and it had little cohesion or loyalty to its leader. A few days after independence the army mutinied and a massive exodus of Belgians began. A few days later, Katanga, the mineral rich province declared itself to be independent. Katangan secession was given protection by the Belgian army and support by a variety of European, South African, and American right wing forces. Lumumba first sought U.S. help but was told to request it from the UN. Within weeks, a massive UN operation — ONUC — began with at its peak about 30,000 foreign troops. Stopping Katangan secession became Lumumba’s highest priority, and he felt that the Security Council resolutions supporting ONUC promised use of its forces to accomplish this goal. But the then Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjöld, regarded military action against Katanga as undesirable. He thought that the Security Council resolutions calling for the maintenance of the Congo’s sovereignty could be accomplished diplomatically. This difference of view created a deep rift between the Lumumba government and the UN and was partly responsible for Lumumba’s appeal for help to the Soviet Union. That only confirmed, for the U.S., that Lumumba was leaning toward the communist world and resulted in an attempt by the CIA to assassinate him in September 1960 (this particular incident came to nothing).

Another plot against Lumumba was organized by getting the President, Joseph Kasavubu, to dismiss him. In the political struggle which ensued, ONUC intervened in a manner which helped Kasavubu and resulted in Lumumba’s isolation in the Prime Minister’s residence. The head of ONUC at the time was Special Representative Andrew Cordier, an American citizen. When a few months later Lumumba attempted to escape from his Kinshasa residence and make a run for it to his Kisangani home base, he was caught by Mobutu’s men, shipped to Katanga and there murdered. This brutally summarized story is all but forgotten at the UN, but it is remembered as if it were yesterday by the Lumumbists who are among the most important government leaders in Kinshasa today.

There is a tragic irony in this story; Hammarskjöld also lost his life as a result of the first Congo crisis. His plane crashed on the way to yet another attempt to bring about the end of Katanga secession. But in the end, Lumumba was right and Hammarskjöld wrong — it was impossible to end Katanga secession diplomatically and it took a military campaign by ONUC with strong backing from the Kennedy administration to end this chapter in the Congo’s history. But by that time (1962) Lumumba was gone, his closest allies were in exile, and Kinshasa was controlled by Mobutu who became for decades the West’s favorite dictator in Africa.

The Katangans

Apart from Lumumbists, Kabila’s closest allies are people from his home province, Katanga. It was the Katangans in Angola who became the most important Congolese military force which helped Kabila reach Kinshasa in 1997. The Katangans gave him the protection with which he was able to divorce himself from the Rwandans in the summer of 1998. When the Congolese see ethnic favoritism in Kabila’s entourage, it is the Katangans they point to. Today, the Katangan identity is essentially regional, but in the 1960s it was divided, more or less, on the basis of ethnicity. The north Katangan Luba were allied to Lumumba while the south Katangan Lunda supported the provincial President, Moise Tshombe, who organized, with much help from Western right wing circles, the Katangan secession. In fact in 1960–62 there was a war between the Lunda-dominated Katanga Gendarmerie and the Luba in the north. As indicated earlier, when ONUC put an end to the secession many of the Gendarmerie fled to Angola. They were the ones who attempted to overthrow Mobutu in 1977 and 1978 by invading Katanga from their Angolan bases only to find that Mobutu was rescued by the military intervention of some of his African and European and American supporters. These forces finally returned to the Congo during the campaign to oust Mobutu and have since become a vital part of the FAC. But despite the fact that they were Lumumba’s worst enemies at the time, their memory of the UN is quite as negative as that of the Lumumbists. After all, it was ONUC which ended their attempted independence movement and drove them into exile.

The Congo Rebellions-Revolution

Between 1960 and 1963 the Congo was essentially under a UN protectorate which in turn was under strong U.S. influence. As noted earlier, this allowed the elimination of Lumumba and resulted in the exclusion of many of his collaborators from the political arena. Some compromised and joined one of the several pro-Western governments which were established in Kinshasa, some attempted to create a competing central government in Kisangani (but that soon failed), and others went into exile in Third World or communist countries. By 1963, ONUC had almost bankrupted the UN and it took the opportunity of a parliamentary compromise which gave the semblance of restored legitimacy in order to withdraw. In the meantime, living conditions for ordinary Congolese had plummeted. In many rural areas, the purchasing power of workers dropped to 25 percent of what it had been three years earlier. Many politicians, having been elected, failed to return to their home bases since power and money now flowed from embassies rather than from their constituents. A population which had been mobilized in 1960 and which often displayed quite radical predilections was abandoned by its leaders and its living standard was sharply reduced.

It was at this moment that some of the exiled Lumumbist leaders returned and began to organize a revolutionary movement with vaguely Marxist ideology and some support from sympathetic states. These elites found very fertile ground and in a matter of weeks “liberated” large areas of the country. The Congolese army was clearly destined to be defeated by this upheaval, but it and the Kinshasa regime of the day were saved by massive Western aid. White mercenaries were hired, a small airforce was organized piloted by Miami-recruited anti-Castro exiles, and much military hardware was sent to the forces fighting this revolutionary movement. In the end, the movement was defeated and shortly thereafter, Mobutu officially took over the presidency. The cost of this episode in lives and destruction was enormous. Many villagers escaped into the forests where then — as now — they often starved and died of diseases. Some observers have estimated that over one million Congolese died.

This terrible legacy has left two results: First, the impact of the Rebellions-Revolution is the return of some of its leaders. Kabila himself is the best example of this group, some of whom have been in exile since the mid 1960’s. They are not many, but they are very important in Kinshasa today. If it is considered diplomatically maladroit for Kabila to visit Cuba, Sudan, Libya, and Iraq (the last only rumored), the reason can at least in part be linked to the deep distrust he appears to have inherited from the 1960s for everything which is Western and that includes the UN, since in those days it was Western-dominated.

The second impact of the Rebellions-Revolution of the mid 1960s was that the Congolese people thereafter adopted a passive political culture. Someone has called this the Spanish syndrome, drawing a parallel with post-Civil War Spain when, despite a tradition of political engagement and activism, people accepted Franco’s rule with little active protest. If one asks why the Congolese people tolerated Mobutu’s rule for so long, the answer can be found in this post-revolutionary reaction. If today one can say that most of the fighting in the First and Second Congo Wars was done by foreign troops on both sides of the struggle, this can also be linked to this pacifist culture. Perhaps the best illustration of this phenomenon occurred in Katanga in 1993 when an anti Kasai pogrom encouraged by the Mobutu regime resulted in the brutal expulsion of close to a million Kasaians. This ethnic cleansing exercise forced these destitute people to “return” to a province in which most of them had never lived. But East Kasai was not without means. It possesses the greatest source of diamonds in the DRC, and at the time it had direct commercial relations with Angola and South Africa. These people could have bought arms and sought to avenge themselves against the Katangans. No such action was organized. The expelled people were, with great difficulty, integrated into a small province.

However, today this culture of rejecting violence, born out of an excess of violence, may be evaporating. Certainly, in the Kivus the mobilization of the Mai Mai and the support which they are receiving from the general population is indicative of a change. Is this because the memory of the bloodletting which took place in 1963–65 is no longer alive? Is this because the violence in the neighboring states — Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi — has “infected” the Congolese? Is this because of the heightened hatred between Rwandaphone peoples and the Kivu populations? Is this because of an age-old struggle between pasturalists and sedentary farmers? Is it because this is one of the most densely populated areas of Africa? Or, finally, is it because the wars have destroyed the opportunities for education and work for a whole generation of young men who are therefore easily mobilized by militias and armies?

Whatever the reason, it is possible that a sea change has occurred and that henceforth the DRC will behave more like so many of its neighbors — Congo/Brazzaville, Uganda, Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, and Angola — where political conflict has repeatedly been transformed into armed, violent struggle.

Conclusions

Central Africa, and particularly the DRC, stands at a crossroads facing three alternative paths: peace, status quo, or renewed conflict and expanded war.

Peace

A complex road map for peace has been charted by the Lusaka Agreement. It will be very difficult to fulfill for the following principal reasons:

1. It calls for an Article 7 UN Peacekeeping Mission, but there is a big question whether a force large enough to accomplish the assigned tasks can be mustered especially if casualties are to be expected. And it is difficult to see how such a Mission can be expected to reach the Agreement’s goals without at least some violent encounters.
   
   
2. It calls on all parties to disarm and dismantle militias who may very well resist such a prospect. Some of these militias are well armed and powerful. It is, for instance, difficult to imagine the DRC Government disarming and dismantling the ex-FAR/Interahamwe fighters it has only recently armed and reorganized. Will the Peacekeeping Mission undertake this task? And at what cost?
   
   
3. It calls for an inter-Congolese national dialogue which is to include the Government of the DRC, the RCD, the MLC, the non-violent opposition, and Civil Society. They are to negotiate while enjoying “equal status.” It is hard to imagine Kabila negotiating on that basis. Would that mean that he would (temporarily at least) abandon the prerogatives of Head of State?
   
   
4. It calls on all foreign armies to withdraw from the DRC. That will mean that the substantial benefits which states, officers, and political leaders from the countries with armies in the DRC have been able to obtain will have to be abandoned. Will the achievement of peace be a sufficient incentive to accept such losses?

Status Quo

The Lusaka Agreement established a cease-fire which has, more or less, held. Putting it that way may be placing the cart before the horse. A stalemate had developed and all the major players in this war appear to have realized that victory was not — at least in the near future — likely. Therefore, the great amount of international pressure for an agreement to stop the war finally reached receptive ears and as a result the Lusaka Agreement came about. As has been indicated earlier in this article, for some parties the current status quo is not necessarily a bad condition. The Congolese leaders in question control territory and wealth and all have foreign supporters. An end to the status quo may well end the political careers of some of them.

Much the same can be said about the foreign powers with armies in the DRC. At present, they are able to benefit from the DRC’s riches even as the occupation — because of the cease-fire — costs less than before. For them, too, there are dangers in a real settlement. For instance, can Rwanda and Uganda be certain that respect for their borders and sovereignty — which is called for in the Lusaka Agreement for all states — would last if a reunited DRC is, in the future, led by leaders who remember the Congolese humiliation at being occupied by their “small” neighbors?

Thus, if the difficulties and dangers of the Lusaka Agreement should result in its abandonment or fulfillment but at a snail’s pace, the status quo may well continue for some time. This would prevent almost all rebuilding and development. It would profoundly offend the ordinary Congolese who desperately seek the reunification of their country and the departure of foreign troops. Yet, it is not an entirely unlikely scenario in the coming months or even years.

War

A renewal of war on a serious scale is dependent on one or the other party deciding that it has a reasonable chance to win. The military conditions which produced the stalemate which in turn produced Lusaka may either objectively, or subjectively as viewed by some of the leaders, change. The conditions which could produce such a change are, unfortunately, broadly present. First, there is the question of military hardware. Numerous news items and rumors indicate that substantial arms deliveries have been negotiated on all sides. Second, there is the question of military training. In this respect, the Kinshasa authorities were at a real disadvantage. The FAC was a new army which had barely started to function when the Second Congo War began. Moreover, its best units had been sent to the east to fight the Mai Mai and the Interahamwe, and it was those units which sided with Rwanda and Uganda in the attempt to unseat Kabila. However, since then, Kabila has apparently put a great deal of effort into recruiting and training his army. The result may have an impact on the balance of power. Or, he and his officers may think it will have an impact and on the basis of that view attempt to reconquer lost territory. Furthermore, there is always the possibility that the rebel side, seeing the development of the FAC, decide that their best defense would be a renewed attack.

In short, renewed fighting on an expanded basis is not to be excluded.

The Regional Elements

Yet another obstacle to peace in the DRC must be raised. The question is whether it is possible to achieve the goals set by the Lusaka Agreement without, at the same time or even preliminarily, solving the conflicts in some of the neighboring states. How, for instance, is real peace to be achieved in the Kivus if Rwandan, Ugandan, and Burundian insurgency movements continue to use Congolese territory as rear bases? How can the Lusaka process go forward if UNITA and the Angolan Army fight each other on Congo soil? Of course, if all these movements are designated as “militias” to be disarmed, then this particular problem would be solved, but what military force is going to disarm them all?

The suggestion has been made, by France among others, that a regional conference presumably going beyond the regional implications of the Lusaka Agreement could come to a global resolution. Unless the international community is willing to invest the type of force, money, and interest in Central Africa that it has been able to commit to Timor, Bosnia, and Kosovo, it is doubtful that such a conference would succeed. One need only look at the time and effort which has been invested in the Arusha process to deal with Burundi in order to conclude that joining all the problems of all the states in the region is unlikely to magically produce peace.

The Future

This analysis does not conclude on a very optimistic note. The current problems should not distort one’s view of what is ultimately likely to develop. The Congolese people have gained a real sense of their national identity from the trials and tribulations through which they have been forced to live. No significant body of opinion wants anything else than a single Congolese state. Despite the virtual collapse of education and employment opportunities in many if not most parts of the country, public opinion has again and again been seen to support a compromise and inclusion — in short, a democratic solution. The disaffection of the public from most of the visible political leaders is due to the fact that in one way or another they have closed the door to open participation. This picture of a politically aware people seeking basic freedoms and an opportunity to rebuild — modest goals which have been denied for decades — has its blemishes. The expulsion of the Luba from Katanga, though manipulated by a Mobutist governor, found a receptive audience among the Lubumbashi population. The hatred expressed against Congolese Tutsi and their very unresolved future fate in the DRC is another example of intolerance. But given half a chance the Congolese public would respond positively to a pluralistic social agenda.

Postscript (January 2000)

Recent events have been marked by more intense attention given to the war in the DRC and the connected Central African conflicts. This is partly the result of the commitment which Ambassador Holbrooke, the U.S. delegate to the United Nations, has made to place Africa at the head of the priorities to be handled by the Security Council in January when he presided over the Council. This increased U.S. interest in the war, which has been relatively limited up to the present, has resulted in pressure to move the Lusaka process forward — since it had almost stalled. The first concrete result has been agreement by all parties to naming former President of Botswana, Quett Masire, as the “neutral facilitator” who will organize the internal dialogue called for in the Lusaka Agreement. Ambassador Holbrooke has also invited the presidents of the conflicting states to come to the UN for a full debate on how peace can be achieved.

Other developments which may lower the level of conflict can be pointed to:

     1. Negotiations between Sudan and Uganda aimed at re-establishing diplomatic relations and seeking peace in the region. If this leads to concrete results, one may expect Sudanese support for Ugandan insurgency movements — some with bases in the DRC — to decline.

     2. Some negotiations between Rwanda and Zimbabwe have been reported. They may only concern some Zimbabwean soldiers who are surrounded by Congolese rebels at Ikela, but they could possibly signify bilateral talks aimed at reducing confrontations.

     3. The three rebel movements — RCD/Goma, RCD-ML, and MLC — have met twice in order to coordinate their political and military positions and to define common policies in anticipation of the internal dialogue. This move will in all probability strengthen their position vis-à-vis the international community and Kabila. Only time will tell whether this furthers the prospects for a peaceful resolution of the Second Congo War. But given the fact that these movements had in the past months confronted each other — along with their external supporters, Rwanda and Uganda — not only with words but also with arms, their cooperating now, with the blessing of both Rwanda and Uganda, can be seen as a positive development.

     4. Finally, while the time schedule foreseen in the Lusaka Agreement has not been even remotely respected, none of the signatories has formally rejected it. The Agreement has become the road map toward peace.

The other side of this balance sheet must, however, also be looked at, and there are several developments in recent weeks which have extended the principle “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and have reduced the prospects for peace.

1. The UN peacekeeping force which is called for in the Lusaka Agreement is far from being deployed. In this respect, the war in the DRC is being treated very differently than those in former Yugoslavia or Timor.

2. In the Kivus, conditions continue to deteriorate badly. The Mai Mai, who were not invited to Lusaka and have rejected the Agreement, appear to grow in strength. There are credible reports that they are being supported by the Kinshasa authorities. Further, they appear to be cooperating with the ex-FAR and Interahamwe as well as the Burundian Conseil National pour la Defense de la Democratie (CNDD) the Hutu militia who have rejected the Arusha negotiations and have continued to fight.

3. Zimbabwe,is reported to have undertaken talks with CNDD representatives and to have promised support. Since the CNDD is cooperating with anti-RCD movements, and the RCD is the enemy of the Kabila regime which is supported by Zimbabwe, there is a logic to this new extension of the principle “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”; but the impact of this development certainly undermines the prospects of both Lusaka for the DRC and Arusha for Burundi. Moreover, strengthening the CNDD will make President Mandela’s role as mediator in Burundi more difficult.

4. The balance of power in Angola appears to have swung in the Government’s favor, with the result that its forces have pursued UNITA inside both the DRC and Namibia. These border crossings were accomplished with the agreement of the respective governments but at considerable cost to the local populations. However, Angolan forces also appear to be massed on the Zambian border with the possible prospect of clashes with Zambian forces.

5. There continues to be little indication that the Kabila regime is willing to participate in the internal dialogue on the basis of equality with other elements of Congolese society or to accept political pluralism. Both the armed and non-violent oppositions are placing a great deal of hope in the Lusaka process, but it is still unclear to what degree Kinshasa is willing to play by those rules.

6. Kinshasa’s concern and emphasis have been on the departure of “aggressor” forces, i.e. Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. Rwandan withdrawal is probably dependent on its being satisfied that the Interahamwe have been disarmed and disbanded, and for the moment it is difficult to envision how, when, and by whom this will be accomplished.

In a word, war is still very much present, and peace is still only a hope. In the meantime hundreds of thousands of internally displaced civilian Congolese suffer endless afflictions, from hunger to rape to massacres.

Published by permission of the author and the Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Uppsala, Sweden.

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American Diplomacy                Vol. V, No. 3                Summer 2000
Copyright © 2000 American Diplomacy Publishers, Durham NC
http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/amdipl_16