However, Kinshasa is all the way on the western side of the country and in the eastern area, especially the North Kivu province, Rwandan and Ugandan troops ruthlessly hunted down Hutu forces and killed any village or people that got in their way. They also tried desperately to strip this rich area of all its valuable resources and sent them back to their respective countries. There no doubt that genocide, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing occurred during this time and the world again shut its eyes to these atrocities.
At this time, Congolese Tutsi’s and the governments of the Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi relied upon the presence of the Rwandan army to continue with their exploitation of the resources of the area and to protect them from the hostile peoples of the area who rejected this sudden influx of uncontrolled refugees.
In this area of eastern DRC after the overthrowing of the Mobutu regime, five different armed forces were present. Firstly, there was the Interahamwe, made up of ethnic Hutu’s who were fighting against the mostly Tutsi controlled government. Secondly, there were Hutu soldiers formerly apart of the Rwandan Armed Forces in the area. Thirdly, the Alliance of Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan rebel group supported by the Sudanese against the Ugandan government was present contributing to the chaos. Fourthly, you had a few Hutus who were from Burundi fighting the Tutsi controlled government of Burundi. And lastly, the Mai Mai, a group of loosely united local militia men who fought against the entry of Rwandan immigrants regardless of tribe. They did this because the government had limited capability to control these people and there was much looting, rape, and destruction that occurred following their incursion. They had also supported Kabila from the 60’s up to his re-entry into the Zaire with the foreign troops. Some saw that move as a betrayal and it fuelled their revenge and resentment of the foreign people they saw as invading their country. In other words, complete pandemonium bordering on anarchy.
The west turned a blind eye away from the practices of the Tutsi controlled forces because of the guilt of them not acting in the Rwandan genocide. Just as they allowed the Jews who survived the Holocaust to oppress and repress the people of Palestine, the west allowed wrong to be committed against others because those doing the wrong had wrong committed against them.
However, while the west was content to allow this exploitation of the DRC, Kabila was not. In July 1998, he demanded that his backers leave the country and cease with their exploitation of his country’s resources and the murdering of his people. Enraged that the man who they thought was their puppet turned on them, Rwandan, Ugandan, and Burundian forces plotted to now overthrow him. They sent fresh troops into the country and came very close to replacing Kabila in a coup. However, Kabila had appealed to SADC for help to fight his former allies and although SADC as a body could not intervene, individual members did. Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Angola immediately sent troops to help Kabila and they pushed back the invading army.
During the ensuing conflict, the DRC unofficially split into three large spheres of influence. Each area was controlled by a group of forces and the DRC truly did become a failed state. Although the allied forces of the DRC were very successful in winning battles against the invading forces, there were not enough troops to completely dislodge them from the DRC. So, although they were victorious, there was still a standstill as the majority of the military operations had to be carried out as quick strike missions instead of conquering territory piece by piece. A cease-fire was signed in July 1999 by the DRC, Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia, Uganda, and Rwanda but seemed to only exist on paper and not materialize in reality. The terms of the treaty that was planned on being signed was that all foreign troops would leave the country, a UN peacekeeping force called Monuc would be deployed to the region, and an Inter-Congolese dialogue would be launched to help form a transitional government to build up to the eventuality of free and fair elections in the DRC. However this wasn’t realized immediately and each side blamed the other for violating the terms of the treaty and fighting continued albeit on small frenetic scales.
Then on January 16, 2001, Laurent Kabila was assassinated and his son, Joseph, succeeded him. Dialogue continued despite Lauren Kabila’s death and finally in Pretoria, in October 2002, an agreement was reached to implement the previously failed Lusaka accord. The terms of the new Pretoria Accord, signed in 2003 by all parties, were the same as those stated by the Lusaka Accord with the slight adjustment that Ugandan forces could leave a few months later.
A few years of relative peace and restructuring occurred from this point until late last year of 2007. During this time, although the allies of the DRC were honoring the agreements made in the Pretoria accord, the non-state actors, whom were supported by the Rwandan allies, were not. On a small scale, they were continuing their actions and still causing chaos and destruction to the areas they controlled. Local people suffered and to many of them, things did not change with the signing of the Pretoria Accord.
Furthermore, these non state actors were still being supplied by their Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundian allies although they fiercely denied these claims. The government of the DRC’s army had been largely neglected since Mobutu regime but even more so after the peace treaty was signed. Their soldiers were being paid slave wages, were poorly equipped, had poor untrained leadership and thus were completely undisciplined. In addition to this, many local armed forces owe their allegiance to local warlords who aren’t necessarily loyal to Kabila. This meant that the government was largely unable to control the entire DRC territory which meant that small scale violence was allowed to grow into something bigger and more deadly.
So this was the situation southern Africa found itself in prior to recent hostilities. Facts have been given so in Part III, I will turn to my theories and arguments in support of a prolonged military presence in the DRC and highlight arguments that disagree.
When the DRC was invaded by forces from Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi in 1998 a terrible war was fought. Laurent Kabila, President of the DRC at the time, appealed to SADC (Southern African Development Community) for military assistance. Although SADC as a body could not intervene, some of its member states did, these were Namibia, Zimbabwe and Angola. Their job was to help DRC forces push back the aggressors, protect the local population from revenge driven troops, and provide any assistance that the DRC government needed. After the military intervention, all allies of the DRC, in accordance with the Pretoria Accord, promptly pulled out. After a year or two of relative calm, any disturbances were easily handled by the DRC’s armed forces; violence sparked up again after the 2006 elections and has continued since.
Although Responsibility to Protect was not the called upon as a legitimating factor for this situation, in my opinion mainly because of the need to intervene in a timely manner, it was indeed influenced by its doctrine. In addition to protecting the sovereignty of the DRC, intervention was justified as the invading forces were responsible for mass atrocities including genocide, mass murder, and ethnic cleansing. The Responsibility to Protect doctrine highlights three responsibilities of intervention that must be carried out and these are: the Responsibility to prevent, React, and Rebuild. But the question that this paper asks is, does the long-term legitimacy of an intervention require the early withdrawal of forces to demonstrate a lack of ulterior motives, or does legitimacy in some cases require the establishment of protectorates even where these may facilitate protectionism?
In the case of the DRC, although the original objective of preventing the Rwandan, Ugandan, and Burundian forces from replacing Laurent Kabila and continuing their killing of innocents was achieved, more people have died since the withdrawal of the allied forces because of the inability of the DRC government to provide protection for its people. Because of this, perhaps it would have been better to keep a larger force in the country in addition to the UN peacekeeping force Monuc, on a permanent basis in order to assist the government in consolidating its territory and ensuring that any local violence against the people of the DRC was stopped. Granted, this force should have followed the criteria laid out in the R2P doctrine especially that of the R2B but if this had been done, it is very likely that the situation in the DRC would not be as dire as it is today.
There were and are many arguments against a prolonged military intervention in the DRC but this can be touched on after laying out the situation that lead up to the current crisis in this country ravaged by war.
To better understand why things in eastern DRC would be much better if Angolan, Zimbabwean, and Namibian troops had been allowed to stay for a longer period of time, let us illustrate the current crisis and the causes for it.
From the end of the Cold War to the mid-1990s, it had become clear that Mobutu Sese Seko, the dictator of Zaire, needed to go. Even the American, French and Belgian governments, who helped him rise to and keep power, had grown weary of his endless corruption and oppression of his people. During the Rwandan genocide in 1994, Mobutu did nothing to intervene and it is even rumored that he had a hand in helping the Hutu’s commit the genocide. As the conflict escalated, Tutsi troops in northern Rwanda, near the border of Uganda, resumed their war against the majority Hutu government in response to the genocide being committed. Over 800,000 people were killed in roughly a year’s time, this included Tutsi’s but also moderate Hutu’s and Hutu’s protecting Tutsi’s. The Tutsi army defeated, with help from the west and Uganda, the majority Hutu government and those Hutu’s who could, fled to the eastern DRC. According to some estimates, around a million and a half Hutu’s fled Rwanda into neighboring Zaire.
In eastern DRC, in the North Kivu area, there are Hutu’s and Tutsi’s who live in the DRC. There are more Hutu’s than Tutsi’s and so they on the whole rejected most of the Tutsi refuges that came. However, most Tutsi refugees did not go the DRC for this reason and instead fled to Uganda and Burundi. This greatly angered the now Tutsi controlled government and would set the stage for future conflict. Furthermore, because Mobutu had created a government so inept and ineffective in administering and protecting the borders of the Zaire, there was unchecked movement in and out of the country unable to be monitored or controlled by government.
These Hutu refugees, many of whom were Rwandan Hutu militia (called Interahamwe) responsible for perpetrating the genocide, were allowed safe haven in eastern Zaire and used some of the Hutu refugee camps as bases for attacks into Rwanda. Due to a willingness to see Mobutu replaced, and guilt at not doing anything to stop the Rwandan genocide, the US backed the RPA (the Rwandan forces, majority Tutsi) in their plan to invade the Zaire and remove Mobutu from power. The Rwandans chose one of Patrice Lumumba’s old commanders from the 1960s and rallied his small forces into a join military mission to overthrow Mobutu. This commander’s name was Laurent Kabila and he had been in hiding in eastern Zaire and various other places during Mobutu’s rule. Now he was the figure head of a Rwandan backed, and US sanctioned, coup. His forces were known as the AFDL and with the support of Rwandan and Ugandan troops (who are also ethnically Tutsi), forced Mobutu to flee from power as they marched towards Kinshasa. Mobutu left the country in May 1997 and on the 17th of that month, Kabila marched into the capital and declared himself President of the country. He renamed Zaire the Democratic Republic of the Congo and moved quickly to consolidate his power.
