Posts

The Changing Face of Power in Africa

/in /by

With Laurent Kabila’s successful overthrow of Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko, American policy makers need to conduct a long-overdue reappraisal of the contours of African politics. Rather than unfolding as an isolated insurgency, Kabila’s rise to power signals the latest in a series of victories for a new breed of African leaders. While their political futures remain uncertain, they still constitute a distinctive, and important, political bloc.

Most of the continent’s old, post-colonial leaders were despots. Typically they, like Mobutu, had served as national army officers, went on to lead post-independence coups and consolidated their power with military force and internal political repression. The new ones like Kabila led insurgencies that defeated these despots and their armies in battle. Other guerrilla commanders include Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame in Central Africa, as well as Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi and Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki on the African Horn. Uganda’s Museveni came to power in 1986. The rest did so only after the Cold War.

This recent vintage of these leaders means, among other things, that they are relatively free of the Cold War’s obsolete ideological baggage. While Kabila and company were all once influenced by Marxism, none espouses the Marxist faith anymore. Instead they have shed their ideology for pragmatism, with Eritrea’s Afwerki, for example, stating that corruption — rather than capitalism or colonialism — is the greatest threat to development. The new generation of African leaders has been looking for new development strategies that combine state-led economic growth with free-market reforms.

At the same time, none of these new soldier-statesmen could be easily called democratic: Each runs a de facto one-party state.

The Clinton administration, which has so far leaned little on these soldier-statesmen, now says that it will encourage the Congo’s Kabila to share power and ultimately hold elections. But all these other new leaders have yet to open their societies fully, making it unlikely that Kabila, whose own forces have already committed horrendous crimes, will be the first to open his.

This confusion is symptomatic of a wider policy drift in the Clinton administration. Clinton and his advisers have yet to develop an effective policy for Africa. As a point of departure, they should recognize that these new soldier-statesmen have begun to form a new, independent bloc.

It is a bloc, first of all, midwifed by a vigorous nationalism. Both Eritrea’s and Ethiopia’s guerrillas fought first against Haile Selassie, backed by the United States, and later against Mengistu Haile-Mariam, backed by the Soviet Union. Similarly, Rwanda’s long-time dictator, Juvenel Habyarimana, was backed by France until the end, just as Zaire’s Mobutu had been.

During the Cold War, Mobutu was backed by both France and the United States, in particular the CIA. Now the political landscape is different. Russia abandoned Africa after the Cold War, while Kabila and others have been pushing France out. At the same time, the U.S. presence on the continent has grown.

Most of Africa now seeks closer ties with the United States. But these new soldier-statesmen are not the type to come forward with their palms extended. This year Eritrea suspended the operations of all non-governmental organizations, fearing both that foreign funding to human rights groups, for example, might spur too much independence within civil society, and that it would lead to a welfare-like dependency among its people.

Rwanda has even more cause to distrust the international community. The reasons, not surprisingly, lurk in the country’s recent history, which is intimately linked with the fall of Mobutu’s Zaire. In fact, Kabila was just an old guerrilla-leader-turned-mineral-thug until Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. In addition to flagging the decline of France, it continues to help change the region. It is against this background that Rwanda lent the most important foreign troops, foreign advisers and other resources to Kabila’s campaign.

Rwanda is a central player in the new politics of nationalist independence. And to address Rwanda’s stature effectively, policy makers must squarely acknowledge that all their previous responses to Rwanda’s bloody internal strife have not only failed, but worsened it. Before the genocide against Rwanda’s Tutsis (and moderate Hutus) began in 1994, France armed and trained the Hutu government led by President Juvenel Habyarimana, despite its then-escalating massacres against Tutsis. The United States and other outside powers merely watched. The French, meanwhile, created a safe haven not for Tutsi survivors but for Hutu refugees, including the Hutu militias — known as Interahamwe — which led the attacks.

After the attacks ended, the United Nations stepped in, providing aid to these Hutu refugees now in camps across Rwanda’s border in eastern Zaire. It continued to do so over the next two years, even though UN officials were well aware that many of these camps were controlled by the Interahamwe. The Hutu militias used the camps as sanctuaries from which to launch new raids back into Rwanda. Both sides were guilty of abuses, and hundreds more people were killed.

By late 1996 it became clear to many observers that the Interahamwe’s ongoing presence in the refugee camps had to be stopped. But while the United Nations agreed to send a peacekeeping force to eastern Zaire, it did not have the mandate to pursue and arrest the Interahamwe.

Enter Laurent Kabila. Last November as this UN force was preparing to deploy, Rwanda and Kabila decided to deal with them on their own. Kabila’s guerrillas defeated both Zairean army troops in eastern Zaire and put the Interahamwe on the run in just a few weeks. Then Kabila’s forces, feeding off of 32 years of popular discontent with Mobutu’s despotic rule, spread into Zaire, finally taking the country last week after a surprisingly short, seven-month campaign.

Kabila’s success in Zaire reminds us of another important trait that Africa’s new soldier-statesmen share in common: They all lead military forces that are, by any standard, highly competent and well trained. Nonetheless, after winning battles, Kabila’s troops systematically hunted down and killed unarmed Rwandan Hutus suspected of association with the Interahamwe, as well as Zaireans suspected of being ex-government soldiers.

This doesn’t bode well for the Congo’s future, and whether Kabila will become just another despot remains to be seen. He is the least impressive of all these new soldier-statesmen. Though he fought Mobutu on and off for more than 30 years, Kabila is better known for being a strongman among his country’s lucrative diamond and gold trades in Eastern Zaire. Kabila has limited experience and education; Africa’s other new soldier-statesmen are better prepared to lead their nations.

Politically, however, all these countries face an uphill task, and the always troubled question of ethnic conflict looms as one of the greatest potential sources of instability. Take the Congo, Kabila himself is a member of the Luba ethnic group, while most of his troops are Tutsi. Both are a minority, among the country’s more than 200 ethnic groups. Much the same pattern holds for the minority leaders of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Tigrean-led regime of Ethiopia. (Eritrea, whose Tigrean leader, Afwerki, governs a Tigrean majority, is the only exception.) Though other individuals from other ethnic groups hold even top formal posts in all their governments, these new soldier-statesmen have yet to develop any real plans to provide for the peaceful transfer of power — a key feature of any fledgling democracy. Nevertheless they all represent regimes that are far more responsive, accountable and egalitarian than any of the respective despots they’ve overthrown.

If American policy makers want to see democracy take root in Africa, they will take advantage of the new opportunities that statesmen like Kabila offer them. Freed of the worst ideological and human-rights excesses of their predecessors, the new breed of African soldier-statesmen could harbinge a new continental order that is more open to the benefits of market economies and civil society. Yet to nudge this new bloc of African regimes toward egalitarian rule, the United States needs to understand that they are a bloc in the first place.

Rwanda’s Butchers: the Interahamwe and Former Rwandan Army

/in /by

Special Report No 13

Military history will record the Interahamwe and allied Rwandan soldiers uniquely. Back in April 1994, they achieved a dramatic tactical success, while failing entirely in their strategic vision. When faced with having to share power both with a Tutsi guerrilla movement (RPF) and with moderate Hutu politicians, their leaders decided that if they could just eliminate both elements they could stay in power. Over the ensuing weeks, they and their followers successfully managed to kill about 800,000 people, including nearly all of Rwanda’s moderate Hutu political activists and at least half of the country’s then-resident Tutsi population. Yet, they still lost the war.

Today, the propensity of the surviving Interahamwe and former Rwandan Army elements to carry out seemingly irrational acts of terrorism should not be underestimated. Even before they embarked on genocide, these same forces were responsible for a wave of bombings of civilian markets as well as landmines left on rural roads. These killed mostly their own fellow Hutus in the cynical hope that Hutu survivors would blame these attacks on Tutsis.

Isolated now in the jungles of central Zaire, the Interahamwe and former Rwandan forces have nowhere to go. Collective starvation, like death from disease, is a palpable scenario. These forces are unlikely to allow any of the civilians still travelling with them to leave. And they still may have access to funds from radical supporters in the diaspora, and could use them to buy arms either through or from the Zairian Army. And unlike the latter, the Interahamwe and former Rwandan combatants now have nothing to lose by fighting.

The Interahamwe and their allies are well-supplied with small arms, including Kalashnikov, R-4 and Belgian FN assault rifles, FN MAG Belgian machine guns, RPG-7 grenade launchers, hand grenades, and mortars. These forces have also used landmines and South African No 2 mines modeled upon the US Claymore.

Rwanda’s Intervention in Zaire?

/in /by

Special Report No 13

The ADFL and the RPA share a community of interest as well as experience. Both represent Tutsi minorities who have suffered under majority rule in their respective countries. Each of their leaders has also long been involved in a guerrilla struggle.

Laurent Kabila, the self-declared ADFL leader, is a former Marxist who briefly joined forces with Che Guevara in the 1960s during his short-lived stint in Zaire. Although Kabila has fought the government of Mobutu for over 30 years, he has also long been a strongman in Zaire’s lucrative ivory, diamond, and gold trades. In the late 1980s, he frequently visited Uganda after Yoweri Musoveni and his guerrillas took power. One of Musoveni’s officers was Paul Kagame; he was later Musoveni’s intelligence chief and helped to secretly organize a Tutsi guerrilla force, the RPF, which invaded Rwanda in 1990. Today, Kagame is Rwanda’s defense minister and head of the RPA.

The ADFL’s recent surprise offensive in eastern Zaire bears an uncanny resemblance to the RPF invasion of Rwanda in 1990. Rebel forces in both cases managed to train, arm and infiltrate fighters almost without detection. Each demonstrated impressive tactical prowess, with operations executed by well-disciplined and highly motivated combatants. Although each force is responsible for specific cases of abuse against unarmed civilians, each made a significant effort to minimize civilian casualties. The question now is: “What are their respective objectives?” They share the goal of destroying the former Rwandan Army and Interahamwe. However, Kabila claims that his primary goal is to overthrow Mobutu and seize power in Zaire.

The ADFL was established on 18 October 1996 as a coalition of four opposition political parties: the Popular Revolutionary Party, led by Kabila; the National Council of Resistance for Democracy, led by Andre Kissasse-Ngandu; the Revolutionary Movement for the Liberation of Zaire, led by Mosasa Minitaga; and the People’s Democratic Alliance, led by Robert Bugera. None is well known. The ADFL also purports to include various Zairian ethnic groups besides the Banyamulenge, including the Kasai and Babembe ethnic groups, and to represent a number of geographic regions besides North and South Kivu, including Kasai Province. Still, the ADFL is far from marching on Kinshasa.

The most important elements of the ADFL remain the Banyamulenge, its crucial base of support remains the RPA. The RPA has little to gain by promoting a rebel takeover of all of Zaire, but it remains unclear to what extent Rwanda will support the ADFL as it tries to consolidate its hold on eastern Zaire. As long as the Interahamwe and the former Rwandan troops remain active, the ADFL affords Rwanda a useful buffer against Hutu rebel incursions. Such incursions, leaving behind murdered witnesses of the genocide, have escalated dramatically over the past year. Rwanda has responded by killing Hutu civilians whom they suspect of supporting them, as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has documented.

The ADFL’s arsenal is limited, so far, to small arms, including Kalashnikov and South African G-4 assault rifles, Uzi sub-machine guns, RPG-7 rocket launchers and 60 mm mortars. The RPA has much of the same as well as heavier weapons, including artillery and anti-aircraft guns, which it has used against ground positions.

Tutsis, Hutus Oppose Increased International Presence

/in /by

Nyamiagbe, Rwanda — How to curb the violence in Rwanda and Burundi is the question facing the United Nations Security Council and others. No one has offered a viable plan. The two countries have been fighting civil wars since the early 1990s but have been involved in internecine warfare for centuries. For Burundi, the Security Council has proposed deploying a U.N. peacekeeping force to be paid by permanent member states and composed of soldiers from African nations.

But its Hutu rebels and Tutsi-led army are hostile to the idea, with Tutsi students even taking to the streets to protest in the capital, Bujumbura. In Rwanda, Tutsi leaders are no more eager to see an expanded international presence. They are already leery of U.N. and other human-rights observers who, in addition to monitoring rebel abuses, have recently begun denouncing government abuses.

The rising tide of instability has alarmed both countries’ neighbors, with Tanzania leading an African economic embargo against Burundi over its coup last month. Demonstrating that there are limits to even ethnic alliances, Rwanda unexpectedly signed on, although Defense Minister Paul Kagame initially waffled. Joining the embargo makes him look like a Democrat, thereby lessening the chance that Rwanda, too, might some day become the target of sanctions.

But although the embargo may help persuade Burundi’s leaders to accept some form of accommodation with Hutu politicians, free elections in both countries are still ruled out. Tutsi army leaders talk about interethnic reconciliation, even emphasizing that most Hutus in each country are innocent of participation in past abuses. Yet they remain unwilling to relinquish control of their armies, or to allow a process that is certain to elect Hutu candidates.

Neither are the leaders in either country willing to negotiate with Hutu rebels. Shortly after Burundi’s newly installed leader, Pierre Buyoya, said that he wanted a “frank and honest national debate” with opposition groups including rebel leaders, he announced that his military government plans to stay in power for at least three years.Rwanda’s military leaders are not even willing to talk with the rebels. “What would be the terms of negotiations? ” Lt. Col. Kayizali Caesar asked. “Now the rebels are killing survivors of the genocide. So where is the basis for compromise?”

Instead, both countries’ leaders want the Hutu rebels shut down. Indeed, international observers agree that the military organization the rebels have built in and around refugee camps in eastern Zaire should be dismantled.
The camps from which they operate are well known, and include the ones near Goma at Mugunga and Lac Vert, with about 200,000 people combined. The rebel leadership has even established a headquarters just west of Lac Vert blatantly known as the Etat Major, or High Command.

Farther south near Bukavu, the rebels dominate 100,000 refugees in the camps at Kashusha and Inera. Even farther south near Uvira, Burundian rebels operate among 21,000 refugees in Kanganiro camp.But no one is sure who should break up those armed rebel organizations. The United Nations and its member states have yet to volunteer for the job. Some international observers think Zaire should do it, even though its corrupt and ill-disciplined forces hardly seem up to the task.

Nor has the government led by President Mobutu Sese Seko demonstrated much will to act. Mobutu has threatened since last year to close the camps and expel the refugees, but their presence has made him a key player in the region, and he is using them to obtain favors including foreign aid.

Another problem would be how to separate the perpetrators of Rwanda’s past genocide and other abuses from the other refugees. Even among those who did not participate in the slaughter of Tutsis in 1994, many nonetheless stood by and watched. “On some level everybody” is guilty, one international official said. “But on another, so many of these people are brainwashed about what Tutsi forces would do to them if they were to go home. ”

Grim Testimony from the Dead of Two Years Ago

/in /by

Nyamiagabe, Rwanda — Sights, sounds and even the smell of violence frequently remain etched in memory long after they have occurred. The stench of rotting cadavers will stay with you a good while after you’ve turned away. The surroundings had given no hint of the remains laid out inside the cinder-block classrooms: a hilltop breeze passing through eucalyptus trees, and fields of black earth planted with sorghum, sweet potatoes, and corn.

Two years after the government says they were slain, the victims’ fragile-looking skeletons and skulls have withered to a dusty gray in what was once a village school, permanent testimony to their brutal killing. Bits of flesh, tufts of thick black hair and strips of clothing cling to some. They lie frozen in final gestures: Some are curled up in a fetal ball as if cowering or nursing wounds; others have both arms around their heads, finger bones clenched in defiance; here a child clings to its mother.

Some skeletons are well over 6 feet long, fitting the image of East Central Africa’s tallest people, the Tutsis. In Rwanda’s genocide, more than 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus perished. Roughly half the Tutsi population was killed. Thousands of others fled to neighboring countries.

Now they are returning.

Many Tutsis Are Strangers in Their Own Homeland

/in /by

Most of Rwanda’s new Tutsis hardly know the country they call their homeland.

After Hutus first seized power in Rwanda during the early 1960s amid the region’s transition to independence (in Burundi, the Tutsis never lost power), more than 150,000 Tutsis fled to Uganda and other countries. There they eventually grew to more than 1 million.

Minorities in foreign lands, they were made scapegoats by dictators including Uganda’s Milton Obote and Idi Amin. That led many Tutsis to join forces with Ugandan guerrillas led by Yoweri Museveni, who seized power there in 1986.

Some Tutsis, including Paul Kagame, the leader of Rwanda’s new army, and Kayizali Caesar, one of his most respected field commanders, served as senior officers in Museveni’s army.

In October 1990, after almost 30 years in exile, both men returned to Rwanda, leading an invasion force of Tutsi guerrillas armed with Ugandan weapons. They won their battle in July 1994.

Caesar is now the field commander for southern Rwanda, bordering volatile Burundi and anarchical Zaire. His enemies are the Rwandan Hutu rebels who operate among 1.7 million Hutu refugees throughout the region, about one-fourth of Rwanda’s pre-genocide Hutu population, who two years ago fled the country in the face of advancing Tutsi fighters.

The rebel leaders are the same men who during the genocide encouraged Hutus to put aside their differences and exterminate the “cockroaches” (Tutsis).

Central African Conflict: Rwanda and Burundi Sink into Abyss of a Long War

/in /by

Nyamiagabe, Rwanda — Recent killings by Hutu rebels in Rwanda and Burundi, and retaliatory attacks by the Tutsi-dominated army in each country indicate that the combatants are digging in for protracted war.

Such a development would scuttle efforts by African leaders and international mediators to bring stability to the East Central African region and prevent widespread bloodletting.

In recent months, Hutu rebels in Burundi and Rwanda have begun making the successful transition from a conventional to an insurgent force, increasingly hiding among the local populations rather than returning to camps in Zaire after attacks, observers say.

They are battling Tutsis who control the government and military in both countries, yet make up only 15 percent of each country’s population. The rebels sometimes coordinate efforts from their respective bases across both countries’ borders in eastern Zaire.

Last month, Hutu rebels massacred more than 300 Tutsi civilians in Gitega province in the heart of Burundi, leading to a coup.

Amnesty International accused the Tutsi-led army of retaliating by killing more than 200 Hutu civilians in the same region during a military operation lasting several days.

Similarly in Rwanda, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports that Hutu rebels have killed more than 100 witnesses and other survivors of Hutu-led genocide in Cyangugu, Gisenyi and Ruhengeri provinces near the border with Zaire. In Gisenyi and Ruhengeri, the Tutsi-controlled army has killed at least 132 people suspected of supporting the rebels, the U.N. says.

“Civilians are completely caught in the middle,” said one international observer in Gisenyi. “If they report rebel activity, the rebels will kill them. And if they don’t, the government may kill them. ”

Most of the victims in Rwanda since 1990 have been Tutsis, although its president is a Hutu. More than 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutus there in genocide that began in April 1994.

In Burundi, more than 150,000 Tutsis and Hutus have been killed since 1993, after Tutsi army officers assassinated the country’s first elected Hutu president.

The slaughter shows no sign of a letup as the rebel forces move from camps in Zaire to the provinces and assume the role of an insurgency. In recent months, Hutu rebels have infiltrated farther into each country, stoking Tutsi fears and cries for vengeance for the recent genocide, U.N. officials say.

More than 500,000 Tutsis who fled the Hutu regime in Rwanda have also returned, protected by an army of Tutsis that was unable to prevent the genocide against their brethren who never left Rwanda, but who, three frenzied months after it started, overthrew the Hutu government that was responsible for their deaths.

Changing their name from the Rwandan Patriotic Front guerrillas to the Rwandan Patriotic Army, these Tutsi fighters and their military commanders rule Rwanda today.

But deep distrust remains between the government and the governed.

A Tutsi going by the name “Francois” said he never left Rwanda and claimed to get along now with his Hutu and Tutsi neighbors.

As a truckload of soldiers drove by, toward Zaire and the site of recent fighting, Francois was asked what he thought of Rwanda’s new army.

“Bad,” he said in French, immediately raising his hands and extending his fingers as if he were holding a rifle: “They shoot too much. ”

And what about the Hutu rebels?

“No, I’m not with them,” he responded quietly without animation.

Hutus and Tutsis have a long history of enmity.

From the 16th century until independence, Tutsi kings and lords dominated the East Central African region, owning most of the land and cattle and treating the Hutu masses not unlike serfs in medieval Europe.

Tutsi kings had their own ways of dealing with resisters. One was to hang the genitals of their vanquished enemies on a symbol of divine power known as the Kalinga, or sacred drum.

Now the coals of hate are hot again.