The Weekly N&C for October 6th, 2008

It didn’t end in 1994, and it is not over yet.

If one were to start a discussion with the topics of “Hutu’s” and “Tutsi’s”, one might have a decent chance of having the movie “Hotel Rwanda” come up. That movie details one experience within the multitude that was the Rwandan Genocide, the ~100 days of slaughter by government-organized elements of the Hutu majority tribals against the Tutsi minority tribals in Rwanda that killed somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsi and only ended with the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front rebellion (a movement underway prior to the Genocide) fighting its way into control of the country. As many as 2,000,000 Hutu then fled Rwanda to adjacent lands to avoid arrest or reprisals, most going to then-called-Zaire (Democratic Republic of Congo). The Hutu militias that were the prime perpetrators of the Genocide fled with and amongst them, in the main organizationally intact. In fact, they were likely allowed to go by a combination of U.S. and U.K. willful inaction and an act of overt French intervention.

But the Rwandan Genocide is also famously “resolved” by the establishment of and successful ongoing prosecutions by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

The aftershocks of the Genocide destabilized the entire region, leading to a host of conflicts most famously including the First and Second Congo Wars. Now Congo is vastly larger, and more tribally complex than the simple Tutsi vs. Hutu conflict, but it is a measure of the intensity of that battle that it could sweep aside all else to become the driving force of two more major wars. The First (1996~1997) brought down Mobutu’s Zaire and was immediately followed in 1998 by the Second… which is perhaps better known as “Africa’s World War”. Eight countries battled for 4 years and left in excess of 3,500,000 dead (some citations reach over 5,000,000). In the course of the war, it often seemed that looting and controlling resource areas were more important than any larger goal. Think of it as Kleptocracy applied to war, and keep that in mind for later, here. Officially this war ended in December, 2002, with the Transitional Government being established in July of 2003. That is what the treaties say, at least. Hutu-aligned and Tutsi-aligned forces and a host of other locals and troublemakers still are at it, and are showing no sign of letting up.

Oh, there is one more relic of the Second Congo War still around besides those aligned forces: MONUC (site in English). This Peacekeeping Authority was authorized in February, 2000, by UNSC Resolution 1291, and has grown in scope, priorities, and expense ever since. As of now, MONUC is the largest and most expensive U.N. Peacekeeping authorization *in the world*. If you would prefer an overview of the history of MONUC, it can be found *here*. MONUC has recently been heavily involved in matters in Ituri province, and has a host of other responsibilities, but from here let us focus on their role in the Kivu Provinces, because that is where matters of Tutsi vs. Hutu are at their worst.

The two provinces of D.R. Congo facing Lake Kivu are Nord-Kivu and Sud-Kivu and unless one is particularly interested in the Rift Valley Great Lakes region of Africa, the only association that might come to mind is that there is a famous World Heritage site of Virunga National Park (the Colonial-times Albert National Park, est. 1925) that is the home of the Mountain Gorillas. Sadly, our focus here is on a different homonym: guerillas.

The not-formally-recognized-as-a-real-war Kivu Conflict is in full swing again, with an array of combatants and causes but once again an alignment of forces backing Tutsi or Hutu elements. The Tutsi are native to the area, and the bulk of the Hutu are… yes, escapees from Rwandan justice (or some say, revenge).

The array of factions through the region is astoundingly broad, as even a brief look at this resource from Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre offers (note the extended list includes forces in adjacent conflicts to Kivu). Three major forces in play are: the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC) which is the national army of record in the D.R. Congo; what was known (see below) as the Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP), the primarily-Tutsi rebellion led by Laurent Nkunda; and MONUC. As the detailed list shows, there are handfuls of factional players and tribal forces aligned with both the FARDC and the former-CNDP, including the FARDC-allied Forces Démocratiques de la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), the army of the Hutu militias of the Rwandan Genocide. Force sizes by these two groups are in the thousands, and both possess arms and troop formations from the previous incarnation of the national army.

Laurent Nkunda, the founder of the former-CNDP in 2006, is a war-hardened veteran of the Congo Wars (both) as a part of the Rally for Congolese Democracy-Goma (1998~2006) and before that, as a member of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (1992~1998), the Rwandan rebel movement that rescued the nation from the Genocide… which ties us all the way back to our beginning here. Regrettably, it seems that ‘General Nkunda’ is also not what anyone would call a good guy, and he has ended up listed on the UNSC wanted/banned list under Resolution 1596. In the interest comparison, however, *here* is a link to the former-CNDP organization web site. As of this week, the former-CNDP has been renamed (in English) as the Movement for the Total Liberation of Congo, although there is some debate as to what this could mean about a wider war to come, because…

The former-CNDP is saying that they are about to be attacked broadly by the FARDC, and there is active intervention by MONUC *on the side of the FARDC*. The FARDC is calling in re-enforcements and given their competence on the battlefield and the loyalty of their leaders, they need all the troops and arms they can get.

MONUC is calling for more “peacekeepers” including co-opting the language of “a surge” which is all rather beyond any mandate they may have, but may in fact be the correct thing to do considering the spreading humanitarian costs of the conflict. Things are getting so bad that Medicins Sans Frontieres is saying they are “losing” North Kivu.

It is all coming to a head, and it will be in the news again the next time MONUC attack helicopters fire on rebel formations…

But one might have missed *this* in all the posturing and maneuvering. Read it carefully, and notice that it is not only Tin Ore exports being banned. There on the list is Columbite-Tantalite as well.

Then remember the assertion made above about “…as Kleptocracy applied to war…”, and watch who is backing which faction to win and look at who will be controlling the resources.

Then pray for the people of the Kivu’s, for they are once again being trampled underfoot.

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End Notes:

Most notes are embedded as links in the text.

Here is the U.N. Peacekeeping (worldwide) home page:

Here is an analysis by South Scan Ltd. on the quality of the FARDC.