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Central Africa's Laboratory Burns Again

The East African Standard (Nairobi)
ANALYSIS
September 12, 2004
Posted to the web September 13, 2004

By Wallace Kantai
Nairobi
One of the most dangerous places in the world to be right now is Central
Africa. Since the 1994 genocide, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of
Congo and western Uganda have been the theatre of a cruel, intractable and
incredibly bloody series of wars, in which more than three million people have
died and DRC almost ceased to function as a state.
At the centre of this conflict have been several intertwined issues. The first
one is the question of ethnicity. Ethnic tension in Central Africa is viewed as
the reason for the conflagration in an area larger than western Europe. Add to
this is the fabulous mineral wealth of the Congo, and it becomes clear why war,
a state in which it is easy to use chaos as a cover for making money, has been
allowed to continue.
Africa's World War I
Some have called it Africa's First World War, in reference to the manner in
which, a few years ago, countries as disparate as Angola, Zimbabwe, Uganda and
Rwanda eagerly sent troops into the former Zaire.
This war, which for whatever reason escaped much of the world's attention,
served as the laboratory in which notions of African national identities were
tested. Would nations be defined on the basis of ethnic identity? Did the
Rwandese have a historical obligation to protect and defend the Banyamulenge,
who were ethnically related to the beleaguered Tutsi?
It also tested whether African countries could be counted on, and could be
trusted, to intervene in wars in which the world decidedly did not take an
interest. All the armies that rushed into DRC did so under a humanitarian
banner, claiming their concern for the victims of the war that overthrew
dictator Mobutu sese Seko.
Between 1996 and 1999, the experiment was a complete failure. The state of
Zaire was barely dead, before the foreign soldiers began to compete for the
rights to hack off the fat of the land. As millions died around them, Uganda
and Rwanda almost went to war over the spoils of the conflict. The spoils were
significant, with timber, diamonds, gold and increasingly important minerals
such as coltan being available for the exploitation of those whose armies were
in control.
A cessation in conflict - one cannot truly call it peace - had prevailed in the
area for the last three years, time enough for DRC to cease being a viable
state. In the last few weeks, death and war have returned to the Great Lakes.
The intermission between the two episodes of conflict in the area seems not to
have changed the thinking that informed the leadership the first time round.
While everyone's attention was focused on the unfolding tragedy in the Darfur
region of Sudan, some were plotting to re-ignite the still warm embers of the
Congolese war, and they chose the most incendiary way of doing it. They
massacred hundreds of Tutsis in the Congo in the middle of August, guaranteeing
that Paul Kagame, the protector of Tutsis all over Central Africa, would rise
and threaten war.
The laboratory has been re-opened for business. The questions are still the
same, but additional ones have emerged. As in 1998, the new war in Central
Africa will test the ability of African countries to selflessly intervene in
conflict, to avoid the dependence on an "international community" that needs
worse carnage before being convinced to step into an African conflict.
Ironically, Rwanda has sent peacekeepers to Darfur, though the Sudanese
government's rejection of African peacekeepers leaves that particular
intervention up in the air.
The second question is that of how much ethnic affiliation matters in
artificial states such as those in Africa. Depending on whom you ask, Paul
Kagame is either David Ben Gurion or the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. His
admirers readily compare him to the founder of modern Israel, who vowed that
the Jews of the world would fight any other attempt at genocide from a position
of strength. They would not meekly accept to be decimated. Kagame has declared
a similar position for the Tutsi, and his deployment of troops outside his
borders has been geared to backing up his words with action.
Invasion
Yet, his detractors see in Kagame motives and tactics similar to the leader of
Nazi Germany. In the lead-up to the Second World War, in the 1930s, Hitler used
the alleged mistreatment of ethnic Germans in countries such as Czechoslovakia
and Austria as an excuse to invade those countries.
And those who championed him pointed to the fact that Germany could not stand
by as "her people" suffered in foreign lands. Kagame, this line of thinking
states, is using the persecution of the Tutsi to establish his hegemony over
the Great Lakes region.
We have no idea how the present act of the conflict will end. We hope - and by
past evidence, all we do is hope - that another three million will not die as
arguments are settled.

   

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