In this post, I will analyze the conflict in the DRC on the local
level.
Background - This
background is somewhat of a summary of an excellent book called
The
Trouble with the Congo by Séverine Autesserre. The main message of the book
is to point out the failures of UN in the DRC, which I will not get into. However,
I did think her well-rounded description of the historical issues in the DRC is a good start for my conflict analysis. But, you can skip down to more present-day
analysis.
J So
here we go!
The DRC is one of those ill-fated countries that has not known
peace for many decades. Indeed, in the
90’s, the DRC has been through two wars. However, the DRC's issues have started at least
in 1930’s when the Belgians sent tens of thousands of Rwandans to work for the
plantations in the Kivus provinces. Since the Congolese chiefs allowed Belgians
to bring the Rwandans only on the condition that they would not have any
political rights, the Rwandans were left with a very ambiguous political status.
In particular, they were denied indigenous status, which would allow them to
own land. However, the Belgians did put a disproportionate amount of Rwandans
into local administration, to the dismay of the Congolese. This added fuel to fire as there were already
issues with land availability.
Land was awarded by the local chiefs to those who had an indigenous
status, which again Rwandans did not.
Land issue became more prominent in 60s-70s when thousands of Rwandan
Tutsis fled to the Kivus in order to escape the prosecution in Rwanda. The
tensions increased further when Rwandan Hutus fled to the Kivus because of 1994
Rwandan genocide. Soon after, in 1996,
the 1
st Congo War began, which was closely followed by the 2
nd
Congo War in 1998. The close proximity
of the wars is not surprising, considering that the 2nd Congo War started in large
part because of President’s Kabila alienation of his Rwandan and Ugandan war
allies and the expulsion of their force from the DRC after the 1st war.
Although the wars have technically ended, the DRC has not enjoyed a period of
peace since then.
On the local level, one of the prominent issues is the lack
of land. Consequently, land disputes happen often and usually turn violent and
deadly. In 1973, Mobutu passed a General
Property Law that nationalized all land thus taking power away from the chiefs,
who usually handed it out. Furthermore, a lot of young peasants were deprived
of the access to land due to this law. As a result, their survival opportunities
decreased and tensions increased at the local level, which lead to small scale
violence.
In the late 80’s, tensions began brewing between the Congolese Hutus
and the Congolese Tutsis of Rwandan descent because the Hutus who came to the Kivus
tried to affirm their power and diminish the Tutsi influence. As the Rwandan Hutu
refugees arrived in 1994, the Rwandan Tutsis in the DRC feared that they would be
attacked as their ethnic kin were in Rwanda.
At the same time, the Congolese radicalized against all Rwandans. They
blamed Rwandan ethnic tensions for increasing violence in the DRC in general,
in addition to already existing land and political disagreements they had with
Congolese of Rwandan descent. All of
these tensions over time blew up into a 1996 war.
During the war, the militias switched alliances as it served
their needs. Some militia groups fragmented and began fighting each other. All of the fighting reinforced local tensions,
led to militarization of some and decentralised others as militias followed their
own local agendas, most notably in South Kivu, North Katanga, and Ituri.
However, in general, militias rarely fought with each other and instead
targeted unarmed civilians to gain power by either preventing them from
collaborating with other groups or punishing those who have done so.
The violence in the South and North Kivu has existed for
decades. A lot of it is driven by the competition over land. Since local
administration and central governance is weak at best, the local chiefs fill
the power vacuum. Even today, they play a prominent role when it comes to the distribution
of land. However, they have been losing the support of local populations due to
their involvement in patronage and sales of communal land without informing
the communities.
Although their authority is now often questioned, there is little help for the
locals from elsewhere. Indeed, even though the tribunals for land disputes are
accessible, the hierarchy between them is not clearly defined, which results in
of the tribunals’ overruling of each other’s decisions.
Naturally, this uncertainty in the rulings creates tension, which again tends
to turn into violence over time.
Perhaps more importantly, there are different laws that
apply to resolving land disputes and they often contradict each other. For
instance, the Constitution gives investment rights to Congolese and
foreigners, while the Agriculture Law states that only the ethnically Congolese people may own
land.
Furthermore, land governance framework is in disarray. There is a multitude of
systems, such as “a statutory land system, customary systems and informal
governance practices” that oversee the access and the use of land.
There is not much harmonization among the systems, which tends to lead to
conflicts when one system is pitted against another in a land dispute.
All of these issues are further complicated by the inter-ethnic
competition. Since there is limited arable land, land conflicts are prominent
in heavily populated areas. They often turn violent. This problem is
intensified by massive displacement caused by armed groups activities or
clashes with the army. In South Kivu, a lot of pastoralists are Tutsi
Banyamulenge (Congolese of Rwandan descent) who often dispute with customary
chiefs and farmers over land use. Pastoralists need the land for their cattle
to graze on, which at least partially destroys farmers (usually ethnic
Congolese) crops. Unfortunately, due to ethnic competition the land disputes
often involve armed groups, and consequently, violence and death.
An example of a land dispute can be found in the Ruzizi plain, which is
located between at the border of South Kivu and Burundi. There, the disputes between
the Barundi (20% of population) and the Bafuliro (80% of population)
communities about land and traditional leadership have long ended up in
violence.
In 2010, the chefferie (mainly made of those from the
Bafuliro community) has created its own security force, the FALL armed group,
to protect the Bafuliro from the Forces democratiques pour la liberation du
Rwanda (FDLR) when the DRC Armed Forces (FARDC) were unable to do so.
Unfortunately, the FALL quickly became predatory and began imposing “taxes” and
demanding payoffs at checkpoints from the population.
This brings us to the next prominent local issue, the armed groups.
Although not all of the
armed groups are local, all of them do have local implications: massive
displacement and insecurity. Before entering the analysis of the armed groups
in the DRC, one should place oneself in the shoes of the local population. Massive
insecurity that stems from inter-ethnic conflict, predatory armed forces,
vicious armed groups, and incompetent government creates an environment of
desperate people in desperate situations. This is important to keep at the back
of one’s mind especially when analyzing armed groups. In particular, it is
important to consider when thinking about disarmament, demobilization,
repatriation, resettlement and reintegration in the DRC, or elsewhere really.
For the past two years, the FARDC
was actively engaged in fighting with the armed group called the Mouvement du
23 mars (M23). The group officially surrendered and signed an agreement with the
government in mid-December 2013, after robust operations against it by the FARDC and
MONUSCO in October 2013.
M23 are former members of the National Congress for the Defence of the
People (CNDP), who turned against the government due to the poor conditions in the
army and the government's unwillingness to implement the 23 March 2009 peace
deal. M23 was supported by Rwanda and Uganda in 2012, especially in the
offensives that led to capture of a very commercially active city, Goma.
However, in 2013 support from Uganda weaned, mostly likely due to international
pressure and the lack of a strong incentive that Rwanda continued to have .
Indeed, the support from the Government of Rwanda continued mostly likely
because M23 aimed to overthrow the government, and extremely resource poor
country such as Rwanda could have substantially benefited from having a
friendly indebted-to-it DRC government that would oversee an immensely resource rich
territory. Indeed, M23 recruited a lot of
demobilized Rwandan soldiers and received support from Rwandan officers, who
helped to prevent those soldiers from returning home.
However, when internal division within M23 began, Rwandan officials decided to
support the new leader because they began to feel that they could not control
the original leader Ntaganda and his network. This development is
understandable since there isn't much use for Rwanda to help install a new
government in the DRC that it would not be able to control. The internal division within M23, however, weakened it,
which eventually lead to its defeat.
As for financing, M23 taxed
commercial trucks, from $200 to $1000 per truck that crossed its checkpoints at
Kibumba and Kiwanja in North Kivu. In Goma, they looted more than $3million.
Other armed groups, such as the FDLR, are involved in gold mining to finance their
activities. The FDLR operates in Lubero Territory in North Kivu. While in Walikale,
gold mines are controlled by Ria Mutomboki and Mai Mai Simba armed groups.
In Orientale Province, Mai Mai Morgan group robbed miners of their cold.
All of these “financing” activities have
naturally contributed to the insecurity in the region, human rights violations, and displacement. Indeed, the armed groups often engage in forced recruitment,
child recruitment, killings, lootings, abductions, sexual violence, and other
human rights violations.
The armed forces were responsible
for at least 135 cases of rapes from 20 to 30 November 2012 in the South Kivu.
The displacement of people has reached astonishing heights: in December 2013,
Secretary General stated that 2.7 million people have been internally displaced
within the DRC.
Thus for the locals, the picture is quite bleak all around. Inter-ethnic
tensions, violence perpetrated by the armed groups and the armed forces, and a distrust
in the protection provided by the law are daily realities of those living in the DRC.
In order to
move towards peace in the DRC, land issues need to be solved. The starting point
for this should be the harmonization of the laws that deal with land disputes,
usage or ownership. Indeed, a new Agricultural Law should be passed that
will be the ultimate authority on land issues and that will override parts of
any other legal statues that deal with issues relating to land. The law
should state all of the relevant information about owning land, using it or
resolving conflicts in regards to it. It should clearly define and limit
the powers of local chiefs. It should also describe the process one should
go through in order to get a hearing at a tribunal and identify a higher
authority which to address when looking to for an appeal.
That being said, one tribunal should not have the legal authority to
overrule the decision of another tribunal. If one of the parties goes to
another tribunal to get a more favourable ruling than the other party could
present documents that the case has already been tried previously and the party
that tried to launch a new case should have to pay a fee for trying to abuse
the justice system. However, an entity should exist that would hear the appeals
that originate from the tribunals’ rulings. It is essential that the
legal framework is not only organized, but that there is a clear hierarchy
within the system, where only one entity exists per each level. Furthermore,
the land governance framework also needs to be streamlined as the current multitude of systems, practices and
institutional frameworks (such a statutory land system, customary systems and a
variety of informal land governance practices) creates conflicts since two people can
claim rights for the same land under two different systems. The legal and land governance system should be
publicized heavily by every institution (UN, NGOs, all of the government
institutions) in the local languages thus spreading the knowledge as widely as
possible. If knowledge is power, the DRC needs to limit the concentration of power
at the hands of the few (i.e. chiefs).
A harder
issue to address is the issue of armed groups. It is important to remember
that often the “recruited” people have been either forced or dubbed into
joining the group with a promise of pay or better life. People in the DRC are
desperate people in desperate circumstances. Always fearing for your life,
never having enough to eat, being constantly immersed in violence and seeing
all of the problems being solved with guns will make anyone want to pick up a
gun in order to give oneself and/or his family a fighting chance. No one
likes feeling powerless.
Thus
the the DRC government and UN need to focus on changing the structures that form
the desperate circumstances rather than focusing on chasing down the armed
groups. As long as the desperate circumstances exist, desperate people
will exist as well… and so will the armed groups. In order to change the
structures which create the desperate circumstances, the government needs to
begin by fixing their legal system, starting with the harmonization of the land
laws and land governance systems in particular, and the legal system in
general. With a clearly defined laws and legal system, a just application of
the law will be easier – although granted, it will probably take decades for the
application to get in the proximity of just (due to the level of
corruption), but you have to start somewhere.
Secretary General Report on the DRC- S/2013/757- http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2013/757
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