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Rumours of Peace, Whispers of War - Assessment o the Reintegration o Ex-Combatantsinto Civilian Li e in North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri Democratic Republic o Congo 3

1.1 Te Congo warsTe DRC has a prolonged history o repression andarmed conict dating back to the era o Europeanoccupation. Te Belgian monarchy and colonial elite

used violence against the population o the DRCto maximise the extraction o natural resources inrom the late 1800s. Te DRC gained independence

in 1960, and ve years later General Joseph-DésiréMobutu (later re erred to as Mobutu Sese Seko) seizedpower through a military coup d’état with oreignbacking (particularly the United States). Te countrywas subsequently renamed Zaire in 1971. Mobutoruled the Zairian state with an iron st or more thanthree decades. Despite the ‘strongman’ approach togovernance there was a severe lack o state investmentin improving in rastructure and human development,exacerbated by endemic corruption. Governmentauthority was not exercised over vast tracts o territory,particularly in the eastern Zaire. Tese dynamicscontributed to the emergence o various oppositionmovements and armed groups.

Government armed orces, the Forces Armées Zaï-roises (FAZ) were routinely unpaid, and there oresoldiers ofen resorted to raiding and looting ruralcommunities to sustain themselves, which was ofencondoned by the Mobutu regime. 1 Affected commu-nities responded to the FAZ predatory behaviour andthe other insecurities brought about by what TomasHobbes termed ‘a state o nature’2 by creating theirown militarised structures and processes, typically inthe orm o militias. Tese armed groups, which werediverse in structure and membership, proli erated inthe mid-1990s in response to heightened insecurity(mentioned below), and became commonly re erredto as Mai Mai .

In 1994, in excess o one million re ugees rom Rwan-da ed into eastern Zaire. Some (ethnic utsis) hadcrossed the border to escape the genocide in Rwan-da that was being pursued against ethnic utsi andmoderate Hutus. Later that year, with the imminent victory o the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) reb-els (ethnic utsi) over the Hutu-dominated govern-ment in Kigali, more Rwandese (mainly ethnic Hutu)also crossed the border earing reprisals rom theRPF. Re ugee camps were subsequently establishedin Eastern Zaire. Amongst the re ugee populationwere ormer soldiers rom the Rwandan military, aswell as the Interahamwe , which were those individu-als that had directly perpetrated the mass violence inRwanda. Tese individuals would later orm the basiso the rebel group,Forces Démocratiques de Libérationdu Rwanda (FDLR). Te Interahamwe , allegedly withmaterial support rom Mobutu, launched military as-saults into Rwanda, as well as against Banyarwandaand Banyamulenge (ethnic utsi) communities resi-dent in eastern Zaire. 3

Tis series o events, combined with decades o sim-mering tensions between the Banyarwanda/Banyamu-lenge and other communities, and the disen ranchise-ment o the Banyarwanda/Banyamulenge, ignited arebellion in 1996. Te RPF provided strategic, mili-

1. Post-independence conict andpeace-building in the DRC

1 Michela Wrong, In the ootsteps o Mr. Kurtz: living on the brinko disaster in Mobutu’s Congo, New York, HarperCollins, 2001.

2 Tis was a phrase used by Hobbes in his philosophical masterpiece,‘Leviathan’, rst published in 1651. Hobbes, building on the theology oTomas Aquinas, described a state nature as being characterized by theabsence o the state or government, where every person seeks to preservetheir li e through whatever means is at their disposal. According to Hob-bes, human li e would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.

3 Filip Reyntjens, Te Great A rican War: Congo and Regional Geo-politics, 1996-2006, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

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tary and material backing to the rebellion, with addedsupport rom Uganda and Angola. Te uprising har-nessed the widespread discontent with the Mobuturegime, drawing in various militia and armed groups.As a result, within a matter o months, the rebelsseized control o Kinshasa and orced Mobutu intoexile. Te country’s name was changed to the DRC,

and Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who had led the rebellion,became the head o state.4

Due to domestic pressures, Kabila sought to dilutethe inuence o the Rwandan and Ugandan militarywithin the DRC government, and eventually expelledthem. Tis development, in conjunction with contin-ued attacks by the Interahamwe, motivated Rwandaand Uganda to instigate a second rebellion in the east-ern DRC in 1998 through a military rebellion withinthe ranks o newly established DRC armed orces. Aedgling rebel movement, the Rassemblement Congo-

lais pour la Démocratie (RCD) was then used as the vehicle (along with Rwandan soldiers) in an attemptto depose Kabila. Te RCD marched on Kinshasa, butwere prevented rom overthrowing the Kabila govern-ment by rapid military support provided by Angola,Namibia, Zimbabwe and a hand ul o other govern-ments. Te Kabila regime also enlisted some Hutumilitia groups in the east to this war effort. Ugandasupported the anti-Kabila alliance through anotherrebel group, the Mouvement de Libération du Congo(MLC).5

Leadership tensions and strategic disagreementswithin the RCD led to the rebel movement racturinginto three groups: the RCD- Kisangani-Mouvement deLibération (RCD-K-ML); RCD-National (RCD-N)and RCD-Goma. In June 1999 the Ugandan armed

orces carved out a new mineral-rich “province” rompart o the area it was controlling in eastern DRC,and re erred to it as Ituri. Te effective annexation othis region by the Ugandan military escalated ethnictensions in the area that had been estering or decadesinto violent conict, which was then perpetuated by various armed groups. Te most prominent o suchgroups were the Nationalist and Integrationist Front(FNI) and the Union o Congolese Patriots (UPC).Te complexity o the military campaign combinedwith conict over access to mineral wealth took itstoll on the collaborative relationship between Rwandaand Uganda, with a number o armed con rontationsand battles taking place between both militaries. In

addition, an array o other armed groups continued tocontribute to the destabilisation o the region. 6

1.2 Peace accords

A ceasere was secured through the Lusaka Accords(1999) and a UN peacekeeping mission was deployed

(MONUC) the ollowing year, but despite these de- velopments, the violence continued. In 2001, Laurent-Désiré Kabila was assassinated. Shortly thereafer hisson Joseph was appointed head o state. In 2002 theInter-Congolese Dialogue and a series o peace agree-ments between the principal warring parties resultedin an uneasy cessation o hostilities, and paved theway or the incorporation o many o the larger armedgroups and militia into the Forces Armées de la Ré- publique Démocratique du Congo (FARDC). However,the FDLR and an unknown number o armed groupscontinued to operate in the eastern DRC. Democraticelections were held in 2006, with Joseph Kabila beingelected president.

In late-2006 and early 2007, the Congrès national pourla défense du peuple(CNDP), led by Laurent Nkundaescalated tensions in the Kivu provinces by launch-ing a military campaign against the FDLR. Te CNDPwas comprised o elements rom one o the RCDsplinter groups, as well as combatants ormerly asso-ciated with militia and other armed groups, and hadbeen operating as brigades within the DRC govern-ment armed orces, the FARDC. Te CNDP withdrew

rom the FARDC and initiated a military campaignagainst the government orces. Te violence was even-tually restrained through a peace accord in 2009, withagreement that the bulk o the CNDP orces, as wellas some militia groups, would be incorporated intothe FARDC. However, sizeable areas o the easternDRC continued to be unstable, with an assortment oarmed/militia groups remaining active, particularlyin mining areas.

4 Gérard Prunier, A rica’s world war: Congo, the Rwandangenocide, and the making o a continental catastrophe, Ox ord, Ox ordUniversity Press, 2009.

5 Jason Stearns, Dancing in the glory o monsters: the collapse o theCongo and the great war o A rica, New York, PublicAffairs, 2011.

6 Gérard Prunier, A rica’s world war: Congo, the Rwandan genocide,and the making o a continental catastrophe, Ox ord, Ox ord UniversityPress, 2009; Filip Reyntjens, Te Great A rican War: Congo and RegionalGeopolitics, 1996-2006, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009.