In what has been called Africa’s World War violence rippled out across Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Zaire then Democratic Republic (DR) of Congo, Sudan, Chad, Libya, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Angola, Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, impacted other African and European nation-states, and drew in various international organizations and corporations. An unusually large number of rebel groups emerged in the constantly shifting chaos, many of them warring against each other as well as different nation-state governments. The scale of the war is equivalent in size to Europe. The casualties are staggering. Almost a million dead in Rwanda, over five and a half million in Congo, and more deaths in other neighboring countries. Millions of people maimed and mutilated. Untold numbers raped and sexually traumatized. Hundreds of thousands of children kidnapped and forced into slavery, combat, or sexual slavery. Thousands of Pygmies killed and even eaten. Whole economies and governments destroyed. It is the largest hot conflict since the Second World War.
In spite of long-ago efforts by Joseph Conrad and Mark Twain in their writings Heart of Darkness and King Leopold’s Soliloquy as well as outraged reformers, Central Africa including the immense Congo basin remains an enigma to the outside world. The true horror of Conrad’s masterpiece, perhaps, is that “The horror! The horror!” never really ended. The horror continues to this day.
The Congo Free State which preceded the Belgian Congo was the scene of a long and horrific occupation and series of overlapping wars and rebellions that merged into one long war seemingly without end, just as today’s “African World War” does. In this most savage conflict, from about 1877 with the first European military invasions to the establishment of the Congo Free State in 1885 to its being taken over by the Kingdom of Belgium in 1908, up to an estimated ten million human beings died. This does not even include a much smaller number of non-Africans who died trying to kill and exploit Africans. In addition, the destruction of Congo's environment led to widespread death by disease on both sides.
The Belgians, among Europe’s most gentle people, and their European and North American allies behaved with the most barbaric and grotesque savagery. The irony is that the native Africans of Congo were considered by the European invaders to be the true savages. The Belgian conquest and occupation was of a scale of cruelty that rivals the Nazis and Communists of later ages. The violence didn’t necessarily end with the official Belgian government takeover in 1908, and was soon eclipsed by the outbreak across Europe of the First World War and its spread into the European colonial empires in Africa and the Middle East.
The Congo Free State was also an early example of the early Corporatocracy at work. The Congo along with all its natural resources and even its people were the private property of one man and his company, King Leopold II of Belgium and the deceptively titled Association Internationale Africaine. Professing humanitarian concerns, drawing in European support while playing their governments one against the other, King Leopold was the early epitome of proto-fascism, merging private corporations and industry with the machinery of the Congo and Belgian governments to create an absolute tyranny where the collection of basketfuls of severed human hands was regarded as a form of currency and symbol of tyranny.
Now Congo is once again in chaos. The United Nations stands by helpless once again as it’s largest military “peacekeeping” force on the planet is unable to stop the violence, protect refugees, confront armed combatants from any faction, or help maintain infrastructure. Yes, aid is arriving, thanks to shaky ceasefires and ceasefires called by Laurent Nkunda, the primary warlord of the Kivu region.
General Laurent Nkunda, the Banyamulengen or Congolese Tutsi leader of the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) who revolted against the DRC government and conquered much of eastern Congo is driving hard to capture the regional capital of Goma. From North Kivu, he left Congo in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide to fight for Tutsis there. He is a veteran of earlier campaigns in Uganda and Rwanda before returning to Congo to help overthrow the dictator Mobutu. Nkunda rose through the ranks in the so-called First Congo War. He then fell out with President Kabila’s chaotic regime and was a major player on the Tutsi side in the so-called Second Congo War. Both Congo wars along with a number of other interrelated conflicts are part of the so-called Great African War or Africa’s World War. Earlier world wars were fought in Africa but spread there from elsewhere. This one, however, originated in Africa and so far seems confined to that continent. Nkunda and his CNDP have been in continual warfare since 2004 against Hutu militias that moved into Congo from Rwanda and Burundi as well as against the DR Congo government. This phase of the Great African War is called the Kivu War, although the term "Third Congo War" is gaining traction.
Nkunda is a charismatic intellectual trained in psychology prior to his emersion in the ways of soldiers. His agenda seems to be a mix of anti-Hutu Tutsi nationalism, Evangelical Pentecostal Christianity (he sometimes identifies as a Rebel for Christ), a desire to protect Tutsi people from recurring Hutu massacres, and political ambition. The wars in Central Africa are compounded by the ugly fact all sides commit atrocities. The Tutsis once had world-wide sympathy for their cause, but now those under Nkunda are accused of war crimes and human rights abuses.
Laurent Nkunda himself was accused of leading the massacre of 160 people in Kisangani, the capital city of Tshopo Province in northeastern Congo, in May 2002 and beating UN investigators sent to confirm those charges. This prompted Mary Robinson, the UN Human Rights Commissioner, to demand that Laurent Nkunda be arrested for war crimes. Of course, in this lawless realm he was not. General Laurent Nkunda was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court back in 2005. He remains under investigation even though Refugees International and Amnesty International have accused him and his army of murder, rape, looting, and kidnapping children to serve as child soldiers. Nkunda, however, either denies these charges or implies mistakes were made in the past and the future should be the focus. He not only claims to be a conservationist but helps protect the rare mountain gorillas. Even so, in a case that outraged the world and struck the locals with grief, seven gorillas were killed in Virunga National Park from a family of twelve great apes in 2007. Their human killers remain unknown, but Nkunda used it an excuse to expand his protectorate there. Perhaps more importantly from a political standpoint, Nkunda claims to be the grand protector of Congolese Tutsis. The DR Congo government which broke with its former pro-Tutsi allies Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda continues to target Congolese Tutsis, known as the Banyamulenge, or ignore their plight as Hutu militias kill and maim them.
The latest upheaval is spreading quickly out of control. Nkunda’s forces drove the remaining DRC government rangers out of Virunga National Park on the Congo-Rwanda border and stormed toward Goma. DR Congo troops scattered, pillaging and raping in their retreat, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of panicked and exhausted refugees. Nkunda’s troops, despite their Draconian and criminal approach, appear well-disciplined and orderly by comparison. His Protestant strictness seems almost welcomed by the war-weary populace.
General Nkunda’s ambitions are far-reaching, however. Unlike the Afghan Taliban, this austere soldier has no desire to return to some Medieval past. His sights are on Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He insists on serious negotiations to bring about meaningful change not just in Kivu but in all of Congo, maybe in all of Central Africa. If not, he may well consolidate his conquest of Eastern Congo and drive on Kinshasa to overthrow the weak and ineffective regime of President Joseph Kabila. Meanwhile, he ignores calls for his arrest, denies Rwandan military assistance, and acts with a calm, self-assured confidence. After all, he is a student of human behavior and has been engaged in almost constant practice of the arts of war and leadership since the Rwandan Genocide compelled him to action 14 years ago. Will the UN have the courage to arrest Laurent Nkunda and try him for war crimes?
Proposed Solutions:
The immediate solution is for the United States and the European Union to work in concert and send air, land, and riverine combat forces into Congo to secure territory, secure air and river ports, protect refugees, allow the unimpeded flow of food and medical supplies and other much needed aid, and establish secure communications. These forces can be independent of the NATO command and can work in coordination with MONUC (United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo). What this region needs, however, are not more peacekeepers but an international intervention from beyond the region to defeat rebel armies, tribal militias, ethnic gangs, regional warlords, national militaries, and cross international boundaries to pursue the constantly crisscrossing armies and arrest suspected war criminals.
If humanity truly wants to resolve these seemingly intractable conflicts, more has to be done than pious speeches over the media and a parade of lightly armed blue helmets. This war roots are in ethnic and tribal conflicts exacerbated to an extreme degree by thoughtless European colonial empires that drew arbitrary lines helter skelter across maps of “the Dark Continent” without any respect to geography and ethnicity. Current Neo-Liberal globalization practices with a focus on Free Trade and economic exploitation by the Western Corporatocracy of its resources have to be reversed. Such catastrophic approaches need to be replaced by economic policies that are sustainable and encourage local entrepreneurship. These must be based upon fair trade and be environmentally friendly and socially responsible.
Get off the high horse of national sovereignty, realize that nation-states are co-dependent and not independent, that we strive toward interdependence and integration, that the concept of national sovereignty is as obsolete as the Divine Right of Kings. A series of UN-AU brokered conferences can redraw the boundaries of this area. Each major ethnic group or coalition can have their own homeland as a nation-state within the United Nations and the African Union. There can be one Tutsi state and one Hutu state that encompass parts of today’s Rwanda, Burundi, and Congo. Perhaps the people of North and South Kivu provinces can have their own states while the Lenda and Hema in the Ituri region have their own states. This approach can be applied to most if not all of the nation-states of post-colonial Africa. Action, too, must be taken to protect the Pygmy tribes as well.
At the same time it has to be clear that anyone has the right to live where they want within reason, that one’s ethnicity, tribe, religion, or nationality are not grounds for exclusion from a new ethnic homeland as micro-state. The media focus is on Hutu killers of Tutsis, especially as the Hutus seemed to have slaughtered the most people including large numbers of Tutsis. It must be remembered, however, Tutsis also killed Hutus in vicious massacres. Nevertheless, Hutu and other militias have to be disarmed and disbanded, by violent force if necessary. The world has an interest in socio-political and economic stability in this region, the heart of Africa. Powerful and heavily armed combat forces must be introduced to squash all combatants while economic rebuilding begins.
Troops will have to come from somewhere and have the clear authority to go into battle against any resistance. If not UN & AU, then the superpowers from North America and Europe, perhaps even Russian and China, will have to step up and work together. Much has to be done in the way of building infrastructure, not just physical ones such as roads, bridges, water and sewage systems, hospitals, communication systems, and electrical power plants but the infrastructure of a progressive, responsible civil society including courts, health clinics, police, fire departments, and worker protection. Medical personnel including therapists and counselors are needed to address not just epidemics but the deep traumas of mutilation, rape, child combat, and torture.
At the same time, professional Congolese police and military forces need to be trained and held accountable. It may take years to build up these forces. These Congolese forces have to protect all the people of Congo, including the Banyamulenge Tutsis and the Pygmies, not just those living in the capital of Kinshasa. Poorly trained troops who pillage, rape, and slaughter their own citizens as well as refugees from other nations while running away from real combat merely drive their own people into rebellion and destroy their own country. And the rest of the world cleans up their mess because the rest of the world didn’t want to do the work required in the first place.
The demand for justice, especially to address war crimes such as massacres and mass rapes, has to be addressed as well as balanced with truth, reconciliation and forgiveness. It will take time, it will take attention, and it will take troops, lawyers, engineers, doctors, nurses, and construction workers. It will take money. And if not addressed the bloodshed and chaos of this area will pull in yet more countries as a black hole in space consumes stars and planets. The war may well spread across the whole of Africa, merging with other conflicts and jumping to Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. Or some warlord will emerge from the fury like some African Tamerlane and bent on conquest sweep half-way across the planet before he is stopped.
William Dudley Bass
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
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© by William Dudley Bass
