divided heart of Africa
Several dubious assumptions underlay the Congo peace talks, which are unlikely to deliver more than a de facto partition of the country, write Ivor Powell and Howard Barrell
A failed ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo will open the way for the break-up of the country that straddles the heart of Africa and could usher in a prolonged period of instability, directly affecting nine other states bordering on it.
As the harsh realities and costs of implementing last week’s ceasefire agreement in Lusaka are assessed, it is becoming clear that the negotiations that preceded the drawing-up of the peace plan were dominated by wishful thinking.
Negotiators made several dubious assumptions, including:
l that the belligerents are serious about the search for peace;
l that foreign states will be prepared to commit military forces to peace enforcement and the arrest of those responsible for atrocities in one of the world’s most remote, inaccessible and inhospitable environments; and
l that the United Nations will be able to persuade the major powers to provide the financial and logistical backing for an operation which will have to involve between 15 000 and 50 000 troops to have any hope of being effective.
The head of early warning at the Pretoria- based Institute of Security Studies, Richard Cornwell, remarked that the agreement was “so remote from the realities on the ground in the Congo as to defy belief”.
The ceasefire agreement – which has yet to be ratified by rebel groupings opposed to the regime of Congo President Laurent Kabila – achieves little more than the de facto partition of the unruly territory into a rebel-controlled east, and a western part still under the control of Kabila.
Just how those zones would break up, however, remains uncertain, with numerous reports this week of continuing engagements. Especially at stake is the diamond capital of Mbuji Mayi at the centre of one of Congo’s two richest mining areas.
Zimbabwean troops at Mbuji Mayi and nearby Kabinda, bolstered and supplied by Angolans and fed via Angolan supply routes, continue to hold out against rebel attacks despite a three-week offensive. According to unconfirmed reports, part of the difficulty for the rebels lies in the fact that the area around Mbuji Mayi has been heavily mined – a difficulty the rebels have met by driving cattle over the minefields.
Securing Mbuji Mayi would give rebel forces control over the two richest mining areas in Congo, while cutting off Kabila’s regime from much-needed funding for his war effort. It is not expected that Rwandan- sponsored Congo rebels will commit themselves to any ceasefire until the front has finally been won or lost.
In terms of the proposed ceasefire, it is only after the various rebel groupings and the government army have been integrated into a national defence force and “inter- Congolese political negotiations” have led to the creation of a new political dispensation that the two Congos might be brought together again.
Meanwhile, international diplomats, backed up by yet-to-be-mustered peacekeeping forces under the auspices of the United Nations and the Organisation for African Unity, will still be scrambling to find ways of bringing order to not only Congo itself but nearly half of the African continent as well.
Congo is bordered by Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Congo- Brazzaville, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda – all of which are experiencing their own domestic turmoil – as well as Tanzania and Zambia.
As it stands, the ceasefire agreement is essentially a compendium of preconditions for restoring order in the central African region – the original site of the scramble for Africa in the late 1800s. It was, in fact, Congo that prompted the Berlin conference of 1885 at which the European powers drafted the rules for the carving up of Africa between them.
In the early 1960s, a few weeks after Congo had achieved independence, rebellion and an attempt at secession by the mineral-rich province of Katanga produced the first major challenge to the organising principle of the map of post-colonial Africa: the retention of colonially established borders. Now, 40-odd years later, the country again threatens to blow apart the post-colonial map.
A key consideration in the stitching together of a ceasefire in Lusaka last week was an attempt to satisfy the requirements of the various belligerents. For there is little to suggest any agreement will hold unless the individual bottom lines of the major players are met.
But, even if these requirements are met, the “war economy” that has developed inside the Congo will provide additional complications. This economy has developed a strong set of dynamics that serve a number of groups and powerful individuals extremely well. There is no guarantee that mere agreement among the major belligerents to seek a peace will lead to the unravelling of the interests that may need the war to continue.
Equally problematic are the logistics of peacekeeping. With its resources depleted by peacekeeping efforts in Kosovo, the UN appears to be reluctant to commit itself to sending in more than a contingent of 400 or 500 peace monitors and leaving the actual business of keeping the peace to belligerents mustered under the auspices of a joint military commission. And there are few indications that the United States, the only global power in a position to support a major peacekeeping operation, has sufficient interest to involve itself in a possibly irresolvable Third World conflict.
Even South Africa, whose President Thabo Mbeki earlier indicated a willingness to send in troops to secure the peace, appears to be backing down. Now, in the words of a security source quoted by monitoring agency Central Africa Watch: “South Africa still wants to play a role but a low-profile one.”
Independent analysts have estimated that securing the peace would, conservatively estimated, demand between 15 000 and 50 000 troops. Analysts point out that disarming militias like the Rwandan Hutu interahamwe cannot be left to the good offices of their allies and comrades in arms – and that peace deals will almost certainly run aground if these provisions in the ceasefire agreement are not fulfilled.
In the case of Rwanda, the major backer for the rebel forces, the bottom line for disengagement is the disarming and repatriation of an estimated 40 000 Hutu interahamwe militias, many of them perpetrators of the 1994 genocide on Rwandan Tutsis. The interahamwe continues to be sheltered by the Kabila regime and to fight alongside Congo government troops.
Indeed, it was after Kabila called for a genocide on Tutsis in Congo that the Rwandan-sponsored rebellion was launched nearly a year ago. More recent reports have linked the Hutu interahamwe militias to the Zimbabwean war effort, with intelligence filtering through of ongoing military training of Rwandan Hutus inside Zimbabwe as well as Congo.
Whether Kabila and his allies are able to and are willing to deliver the interahamwe could prove the decisive factor in the conflict. Unless they do, there is little doubt that Rwanda – whose strongman Paul Kagame hinted earlier this week, despite Rwanda’s having signed the ceasefire agreement, that the war might yet be far from over – is unlikely to pull out of the territory.
Uganda, the other major backer of the Congo rebels, is also concerned primarily with its own security, and specifically with the expulsion of anti-Ugandan rebels, notably the Sudanese-backed Lord’s Resistance Army from bases inside Congo.
However, Ugandan enthusiasm for the war has diminished after the fragmentation of the rebel movement into the Rwandan-backed Goma faction and a Ugandan-backed Kisangani faction. Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni is also believed to have been under mounting diplomatic pressure from the US, his major international ally.
Like the Rwandans, Kabila’s Angolan allies have reasons associated with their own security for their involvement in the conflict – and are equally unlikely to withdraw from the region until their particular concerns are convincingly addressed. Angolan involvement has from the start been motivated less by any real support of the Kabila regime than by its own civil war with Jonas Savimbi’s Unita.
Angola first entered the war in response to a marriage of military convenience between Unita and the Congo rebels, which had Unita launching attacks into Angola from bases inside the south-east of Congo. More recently, however, Unita diamond advisers have reportedly been brought in by Congo rebels to assist in diamond-mining operations in the central diamond fields.
By linking up with this source of supply, Angola fears, Unita could further supplement the diamond income that has funded its war effort for the past three decades. But, with Unita making advances inside Angola, the country’s MPLA government will be satisfied with an arrangement that will secure its own borders – and a non-Unita-friendly government in Congo. In the short term, the presence of UN peacekeepers could guarantee such a situation.
Zimbabwe’s case is markedly different. With opposition to the war reaching fever pitch at home and industrial unrest rising to levels that could well spill over into a real threat to President Robert Mugabe’s hold on power, the Zimbabweans have for some months been looking for ways to pull out of a distant and increasingly unprofitable war.
All that has been missing has been the opportunity to save face and to secure financial compensation against an investment in the war which on occasion ran to an estimated $1-million a day.
Both of these bottom lines appear to have been secured. Mineral concessions currently held by Zimbabwe have been guaranteed in terms of the ceasefire deal, and provision made for a relatively small contingent of Zimbabwean troops to remain behind as part of a transitional arrangement.
Zimbabwe has indicated that it will pull out its approximately 10 000 combatant troops within three months. Following on the heels of troop pullouts by Kabila allies Namibia and Chad, the Zimbabwean pullout will almost certainly alter the balance of power in the region – and could prove the turning point in the conflict.
Indeed the envisaged ceasefire would leave Kabila’s hold on power much diminished. With rebels currently in control of nearly all the eastern mineral fields, and the diamond centre of Mbuji Mayi hotly contested, Kabila lacks the resources to wage war without external allies. In the first six months of this year, only 10% of budgeted government revenues in Congo were actually realised.
But though the writing is on the wall, it is unlikely that Kabila will voluntarily hand over power by subscribing in good faith to ceasefire agreements. It was after the former Rwandan-backed rebel leader faced massive internal protest on sweeping to power in 1996 that he reneged on undertakings to convene a national conference leading to democratic elections in Congo, instead proclaiming himself president.
He is even less likely to win through by democratic process today, and, like the Rwandese, has darkly hinted that it will be business as usual for the warmongers of the Great Lakes.
Sad thing is, he is probably right.