Reconstructing the Congo.

• Author: Weiss, Herbert F.

Since 1996, the Congo has been the battleground for wars and wars within wars, involving, at various times, at least nine African countries as direct combatants and many more as military, financial and political supporters of one or the other fighting force. To this one must add a number of internal conflicts. All together, these forces are often involved in complex and shifting military and diplomatic networks. These wars have, in a de facto manner, partitioned the country into several broad spheres of influence which are controlled, to varying degrees, by these networks. (1) And they have also created one of the most devastating humanitarian disasters of our day, resulting in what some have estimated as 3.5 million deaths from war, famine and disease, and an internal displacement rate of nearly 10 percent of the population. (2)

After many failed negotiation attempts, the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement was concluded in July 1999, but did not end the conflicts. It was followed three years later by a series of bilateral agreements between Kinshasa, Uganda and Rwanda that resulted in the withdrawal of nearly all foreign troops. The peace process in the Congo culminated in a power-sharing agreement, reached in Pretoria on December 16, 2002 and brokered by South Africa; this, in turn, led to the establishment of a transitional government in June 2003. The new transitional government is comprised of leaders representing almost every Congolese actor in the wars, many of whom have been each other's enemies for the last seven years. It is based on political accommodation rather than on effective governance. Despite this, the government is mandated with the difficult task of beginning the reconstruction process by temporarily governing the country, drafting a new constitution, preparing for democratic elections and establishing a new, integrated, national army--all within a period of two years.

The future reconstruction needs of a country that has undergone 32 years of President Mobutu's predatory rule in addition to seven years of devastating war are massive. Moreover, violent conflict continues in eastern Congo. But there is a strong commitment on the part of the Congolese to the state and to maintaining its territorial integrity.

This paper examines state-building efforts and the refraining of Congolese nationalism from independence through the three subsequent decades of dictatorship under President Mobutu. This is followed by an analysis of the three Congo wars, which started in 1996 and are, to a certain degree, still going on today. It also looks at more recent evidence of nationhood from public opinion surveys with respect to three variables: commitment to national unity, satisfaction with government or rebel authority services and attitudes towards minority groups. A final section draws some conclusions about the Congolese nation and state and the implications for future post-war reconstruction.

The data show, first, that the identification of the Congolese with the Congo nation and state over the last 40 years has become stronger, despite predatory leaders, years of war and political fragmentation, devastating poverty, ethnic and linguistic diversity and the virtual collapse of state services. It also suggests that while Congolese identity has become stronger, it has also become exclusionary with regard to one particular ethnic group, the Rwandaphone peoples. Although these groups constitute a small minority in the Congo, their exclusion from the Congolese nation is significant for any future state-building efforts--not only because they have been an important group historically and politically, but also because that exclusion is tied to two external actors, Rwanda and Burundi, and their actions in the region.

CONSTRUCTING AN INDEPENDENT CONGO

The geographic frontiers of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have largely remained unchanged since the Association Internationale du Congo, a private company under the leadership and ownership of King Leopold II of the Belgians, established a private colonial, commercial empire in Central Africa in 1875. The boundaries of this empire were largely arbitrary and separated many pre-colonial African nations and ethnic groups into different European controlled colonies and territories. (3)

Desperate to receive international recognition for "his" colony, Leopold became one of the founders of the 1884 Berlin Conference, which carved up the African continent among the European colonial powers and resulted in the international recognition of the boundaries of the Congo. The territory was then renamed the Congo Free State.

The Congo Free State lacked the capital and military resources of a state-sponsored colonial takeover and soon faced severe financial constraints. This resulted in a period of particularly harsh rule and economic exploitation in territories focused primarily on the forced collection of rubber and ivory, which then led to "atrocities on a large scale." (4) The growing international scandal surrounding the treatment of the Congolese under Leopold's brutal rule pressured a reluctant Belgian parliament into accepting responsibility for the territory. In 1908, the Congo Free State became a colony of the Belgian state and was renamed the Belgian Congo.

The beginning of Congo's independence was particularly difficult. The anti-colonial nationalist movement had not achieved anything resembling unity; the colonial army mutinied a few days after independence was declared; not all Congolese people embraced the notion of a united Congo; the richest provinces attempted to secede; and almost as soon as independence was won, it was, to a considerable extent, lost.

From Lumumba to Mobutu

Shortly after independence and the Katanga secession, a split in leadership occurred along ideological lines, which mirrored the Cold War conflict. The Kinshasa government, led by President Kasavubu, became "pro-Western," while a second "national" government formed by supporters of Prime Minister Lumumba in Kisangani became "anti-Western." Unlike the secessionist leaders in Katanga and South Kasai, however, neither of these "governments" supported any form of separation nor opposed the unity of the state.

In the hectic months following the mutiny of the Force Publique and the deployment of UN forces to the Congo, Lumumba appointed Joseph Mobutu to be the Chief of Staff of the new Congo army, the Armee Nationale Congolaise (ANC). (5) In September 1960, a little more than two months after independence, differences between President Kasavubu and Prime Minister Lumumba reached the point where Kasavubu dismissed Lumumba--an act that Lumumba declared unconstitutional. This gave Mobutu the opportunity to engage in a Western-supported military coup, arguing that he had neutralized both Kasavubu and Lumumba in the interest of order. Mobutu did not, however, take over the reins of government at this point. Rather, he handed them over to a "College of Commissioners," a group of young Congolese university graduates who were to act as technical caretakers of government services. But the Congo was, in effect, under a UN protectorate that limited the amount of power that the College possessed.

Mobutu, fearing Lumumba's capacity to mobilize the Congolese masses, attempted to arrest him, but the UN prevented this by surrounding his residence with UN troops. Lumumba escaped from Kinshasa in order to rejoin supporters in his home base of Kisangani. He was captured by forces loyal to Mobutu who shipped him off to the Katangan secessionist leader, Moise Tshombe, who immediately had Lumumba assassinated. The months that followed were the low point of Congolese unity, with the secessionist leadership in Katanga supporting a confederal state structure with virtual independence for the different provinces. This did not hold and, within two years, military action by the UN resulted in the defeat of the Katangan forces and the reunification of the Congo under a quasi-federal structure in which the six provinces were divided into 23.

The next important development along the trajectory of state formation occurred when the so-called Congo rebellions began. Here again, the issue was ideological, with strong Cold War influences and interferences. Mobutu's government was supported by the West, especially the US, and the revolutionary forces were supported by the communist world and radical Third World states. As in the previous conflict between President Kasavubu and Prime Minister Lumumba, neither side contemplated dividing the country or challenging the notion of a single nationality for all Congolese. With some exceptions, mobilization tended to occur along ethnic lines, with ethnic groups either supporting the revolutionary movement or opposing it.

During these early years, the standard of living of the Congolese people dropped precipitously, as did the high hopes that they had held for the results of independence. This provided even more fertile ground for revolutionary mobilization. In the summer of 1963, one of Lumumba's closest associates, Pierre Mulele, returned from exile and began to organize a revolutionary movement--one with a vaguely Marxist ideology--in the Kwilu District, his home region, east of Kinshasa. Within a matter of weeks, a full-scale rebellion was underway against the Western-supported government in Kinshasa. A few months later, a second arena of revolt started in the northeast of the Congo. Most of the areas that rose up had voted in the May 1960 elections for the more radical parties and had supported the pro-Lumumba alliance.

When this revolutionary movement began, UN forces had virtually withdrawn from the Congo and the Kinshasa authorities were saved by considerable Western-supplied military assistance and aid. (6)

The revolutionary movement was defeated and there was an attempt to return to party politics in the Congo, but the governments that ensued were weak and divided...