External Causes of the Conflict: Foreign Interventions

The external factors that contributed to the Congolese conflict can be viewed in two main aspects.

As already emphasised, the conflict in the Congo was externally driven and involved troops from several other African countries, siding with either the rebels or the DRC government, all providing official justifications for their interventions, but acting on different hidden agenda. Besides African States whose interventions was visible, the invisible and real force behind the Congo war came from Western States, led by America, France and their multinational corporations with the main aim to preserving both economic and political interests, at the expense of losses of million lives in the DRC.

2.3.4.1 Justification for Interventions of African Foreign Troops

In September 1996, the Banyamulenge, many of whom had served with their kinsmen in the Rwanda army, were prompted by Zairean persecution and the (Tutsi-led) Rwandan government’s anticipation of an increase in attacks by Hutu militias from their bases in the refugee camps of Eastern DRC, to launch counter-strike, partly retaliatory but in the main pre-emptive, against the Mobutu and thereafter the Kabila regime that reportedly backed them.²²² It is the repeated failure of the international community to take action against the genocidaires of 1994 that provided the major justification for the Rwandan unilateral interventions in the DRC.²²³ Uganda also made it clear that its army was in the Congo to fight against Uganda rebels allegedly based in Eastern DRC. Rwanda

218 F. Reyntjens, ‘Situation geostrategique en Afrique centrale’, in grip. Kabila prend le pouvoir, Brussels: Editions Complexe, 1998, 150; See also Willame, supra ,note 217, pp. 32-35, 38-40.

219 P. Laurent, & T. Mafikiri, Mouvements des populations, cohabitions ethniques, transformations agrairres et fanciers dans le Kivu montagneux. Repers historiques et perspective theonique, (Rapport intermediaire de recherché pour le CIUF et l’AGCD, Universite de Louvain Institut d’etudes du developpement, June 1996), 101, quoted in Willame, supra note 217, 40.

220 See Rapport de la Mission TEUWEN au Kivu, 6 November 1966.

221 F. Reyntejens, & S Marysse, (Eds.) Les conflicts au Kivu: antecedents et enjeux, Antwerp, (1996), 33-34.

222 Cornwell, R. and Potgieter, J. (1998) ‘African Watch: A Large Peace of Africa’ in African Security Review, vol. 7, No. 6, pp. 74-86.

223 Wolpe, supra note 142, p. 31.

and Uganda referred to international law and justified their cross-border raids and interventions in the DRC as ‘hot pursuit.’ This was however an unfortunate misuse of the term, as the right to hot pursuit can only be exercised in relation to the law of the sea.²²⁴ According to Dugard, if a state wishes to justify cross-border raids, it must do so in terms of the right of self-defence or, possibly reasonable reprisal action.²²⁵

Dugard noted that, unlike self-defence, which is authorized in modern international law,²²⁶ reprisals remain illegal de jure in view of Article 2 (4) of the United Nations (UN) Charter.²²⁷ Even if the argument of hot pursuit and self-defence or anticipatory self-defence could stand by default, it would not hold. Hot pursuit or self-defence cannot be invoked to acquire title to the territory of a foreign state. Nor can it be used to justify the occupation of the Congolese territory, the exploitation of the Congolese natural resources, the commission of gross human rights violations and the establishment of puppet government in Kinshasa under the false pretence of helping Congolese people establish democracy.

Uganda and Rwanda leaders also justified their campaign in the DRC on the basis that they wanted to help the Congolese people to get rid of Kabila and establish an all-inclusive democratic regime in the DRC. Such a justification was really surprising and made a mockery of democracy. At no time did the people of DRC call upon Rwanda and Uganda for assistance in ousting their “dictator” and establish the genuine democratic regime. Rwanda and Uganda, who pretended to help ‘free’ or

‘liberate’ the Congolese people from dictatorship and establish a more human-rights friendly regime in the Congo, are not known as fully-fledge democratic countries respectful of these rights.

Such arguments, recently advanced by the Bush and Blair administrations to wage war on Iraq, are unjustifiable in modern international law. It is inconsistent with the principles of non-aggression, non-interference in the internal affairs of another state, development of friendly relations among nations, equality of states, self-determination of peoples and respect for the political independence of foreign states that should govern the civilized world.²²⁸

224 See Article 111 and 112 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 (UNCLOS), 1982, 1833 UNTS 3; 21 ILM 1261 (1982).

225 Dugard J, (2000) International Law: A South African Perspective, Lansdowne: Juta Law, p. 421.

226 See art 51 of the UN Charter; See also Nicaragua v USA (1986) ICJ Reports 14, pp. 99-100 (the court held that self-defense was the rule of customary international law). See Dugard, Ibid, p. 418.

227 Dugard, supra note 225, p. 420.

228 See art 1(7) UN Charter; Declaration on principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-Operation among states in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations 1970 (xxv) 1970); Resolution on the Definition of aggression, preamble and Art 7.

Just weeks after the outbreak of the rebellion initiated by Banyamulenge dominated regiment in Kivu on August 2 1998, the rebel troops had already advanced across the country from the east to the western seaboard. They had captured the Kitona and Mbanza Ngungu military bases in the Bas-Congo, where they recruited a number of solders of Mobutu’s past army and were heading for Kinshasa. Faced with this rapidly deteriorating military situation, Kabila denounced the rebellion as an invasion by Uganda and Rwanda in an effort-in which he ultimately succeeded-to mobilize the Congolese people around an anti-Tutsi banner and to secure his own political survival.

Kabila also appealed to other SADC members for assistance to a fellow SADC member state under external aggression.²²⁹ Following a meeting of their defence ministers in Harare on 17 to 18 August 1998, Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe agreed that the government of Laurent-Desire Kabila required the full support of the SADC to guarantee its survival. Speaking in his capacity as head of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and security, President Mugabe announced that the meeting had agreed that military aid should be sent to secure Kabila’s position.

Although former South African President Mandela, who was the chairperson of SADC disagreed that it was a proper SADC decision, since he was not consulted and all SADC members did not attend the meeting, Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe later sent troops to the DRC. Chad also joined them.

In line with the principle of political independence or sovereignty, people are free to choose their own political system or government.²³⁰ This is an internal affair, an exercise of self-determination, which allows no interference by any foreign state. However, there are circumstances where interventions by foreign governments to support a friendly incumbent government are permissible under international law. This is the case, for instance, when the rebels are supported by another or other states and such support is sufficiently substantial to amount to an armed attack or an aggression²³¹

229 The DRC become SADC member state at its Blantyre summit in 1997.

230 Nicaragua v USA, supra note 226, p. 108

231 Dugard, supra note 225, pp. 426-428.

2.3.4.2 Hidden Agenda for Foreign Interventions

With the end of the Cold war, President Mobutu who had served the American and Western interests in Africa, was no longer of use and was regarded a man of the past.²³² America had now to bank on new generation of leaders represented by President Museveni and Kagame in the Great Lakes region, and these new allies were asked or just too willing to assume leadership in the region.

To better serve their interests, the Rwanda and Uganda leaders realized that they had to maintain control over the exercise of power in the DRC. By dismissing the Rwanda and Uganda officers who commanded the Congolese army and who were accredited with him to look after the interests of their governments, Kabila’s days were numbered, and according to the logic of his former patrons he no longer qualified to remain in power in the DRC. Rwanda and Uganda sought to replace him with a more pliant client. Angola, Chad, Libya, Namibia and Zimbabwe reacted by sending troops or providing some kind of assistance to President Kabila in an attempt to restore the regional balance of power and help maintain their own influence in the region.

As Howard Wolpe stressed, the interests at stake in the Congolese crisis were enormous.²³³ They were political, military but also, and even mostly, economic ones. The UN report on the plundering of the resources of the DRC in which the Congolese warring parties and their respective allies were involved, bears testimony to this.²³⁴ Foreign countries involved in the Congolese conflict became exporters of diamonds, gold, copper, timber and other natural resources from DRC. The fighting between Rwanda and Uganda armies on the Congolese territory at Kisangani, for instance, may only be understood as a fight for leadership and control over diamonds, the gold mining industries and other natural resources.²³⁵ On the other hand, the Zimbabwean battle for Mbuji-Mayi was mostly a war over the control of diamonds. Economic interests were important for the rebels’ allies and Kabila’s supporters as well.²³⁶

232 See this argument well articulated in Clark, J ‘Causes and Consequences of the Congo War’ in Clark supra note 157, pp. 1-10.

233 Wolpe , supra note 142, p. 27.

234 See United Nation Security Council, Final Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and other Forms of Wealth in the DRC in 2002 (S/2001/357), 12 April 2001.

235 Dugard , supra note 225, p. 126.

236 The management of Gecamines, the leading Congolese mining company, was given to Billy Rautenbach, a Zimbabwean businessman very close to president Mugabe, in compensation for the rule played by the latter in Kabila’s political survival. Zimbabwe entered into a joint venture with the DRC in the diamond industry through Zimcom operating in Mbuji-Mayi.senior officer within the Zimbabwe Defence Force, through the Harare registered company, Osleg, also embarked on a partnership with a Congolese company, Comiex. This company had links with sengamines, an alluvial diamond-mining project in the DRC. Zimbabwe was even poised to take over MIB, the miniere des Bakwanga, in Kasai. Meanwhile Zimbabwe, through the Zimbabwe defence industries, entered into a partnership with the DRC through Congolese strategic Reserves to form Congo Duka (Pty)Ltd. The Zimbabwean parliament ratified this agreement in 1999. To name but a few theatres of conflict, internal wars in Angola, Sierra Leone and DRC were also

Similarly, the real reason of the war in the DRC has much to do with foreign interventions directly involving Western superpowers led by America. This source of intervention and counter intervention in African international relations, and for that matter the DRC, has been salient in both the Cold War and the post-Cold War periods.²³⁷ Classical realists had no difficulty understanding the hostility of the rulers of fragile states toward their neighbours who have wished them ill for any number of reasons. Rene Lemarchand has unconsciously deployed precisely this variety of old-fashioned power political analysis to the foreign policies of the states of the Great Lakes region recently with great success.²³⁸ That the goals and ambitions of Yoweri Museveni and Paul Kagame were not generally shared by their countrymen was of no particular relevance to Lemarchand. All he suggests in his analysis was that the security of regimes remains of paramount concern, and a motive force behind foreign policy when regimes are really threatened. Although this language is not explicitly used, the analysis broadly supports this view.

The increasing US role and influence in the Great Lakes region has generated tensions with France.

France has not concealed its distaste for what it considers a growing Anglo-Saxon sphere of influence (Britain has also mediated between Uganda and Rwanda and is a major donor to both countries) in a region that was traditionally part of France’s chasse gardée (private hunting grounds). The fall of the Hutu government in Rwanda in 1994, and the subsequent demise of Mobutu in the Congo in 1997 significantly reduced French influence in Central Africa. The US is a close ally of Rwanda and Uganda, the two countries with significant influence in this region, whose leaders greatly mistrust France’s role. The current Rwandan government has never forgiven France for its assistance to the genocidal Hutu regime in 1994. The rivalry between Paris and Washington has implications for a durable peace in the Great Lakes region.

The EU as well has recently taken a more active role in the peacemaking efforts in the region. In 2003, France deployed the first soldiers of a 1,400-strong largely European force mandated to protect civilians in Bunia until the expected arrival of 3,000 Bangladeshi peacekeepers by

September 2003. Belgium, with its long and complicated relation to the region, as well plays an active role.

diamond –fueled. Ironically, the precious stone and oil have turned out to be a curse of many Africa peoples. The real motivation of the recent British and US war on Iraq also demonstrates how oil may be a misfortune for Iraq and other Arab countries around Israel.

237 See generally Clark, J. ‘Realism, Neo-Realism and Africa’s International Relations in the Post-Cold War era’ in Dunn, K. and Shaw, T (Eds.) (2001) Africa’s Challenge to International Relations Theory’, New York: Palgrave.

238 Lemarchand, R. ‘Foreign Policy Making in the Great Lakes Region’ in Khadiagala, G and Lyons, T. (Eds.) (2001) African Foreign Policy, Power and Process, Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, p. 33.

In terms of resolving the DRC conflict, various diplomatic efforts within the SADC, AU/OAU and the UN culminated in the signing of the Lusaka Agreement of 1999, and the holding of the Inter-Congolese political negotiations that ended with the adoption of the Global Inclusive Agreement, Signed in Pretoria on December 16, 2002.

On the UN side the MONUC, which together with other forms of conflict resolution approaches to the DRC conflict, forms part of subsequent discussion, was created. Suffice it to point out here that the Congolese conflict was both an internal rebellion against an authoritarian regime that did not care for the rights of the people and also a foreign aggression of the DRC by some African states, with complicity of or direct support from the most powerful actors on the international scene, the Western powers.