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DPMF Publications: |
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Conflicts in the Great Lakes Lakes or Reality of the War in
DRC: Moving
out of a Routinized Approach
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The
end of the cold war and globalization are the two phenomena that gave an
electroshock to the future of Africa in the last days of the 20th
century. Their combined effects transformed the nature of conflicts and provided
them with a new dimension. The new geo-strategy that has liberated Africa from
its linkage with other security zones in the world also changed the perception
and the meaning of alliances between the great powers and African countries and
leaders. National struggles for democracy that were overshadowed by the cold war
and generated authoritarian rule, became more awful than ever with atrocities
for example the genocide in Rwanda, fratricidal wars in Angola, Somalia,
Liberia, Congo - Brazzaville, etc. In these intractable wars, international
officials and Mafia networks are involved in trade with warlords, who provide
them with raw products at low cost, and in return, international merchants
deliver lethal weapons. Consequently, a new logic of war appears to be evolving
in Africa. It appears to originate from the transformation of refugees’
sanctuaries in the receiving or host countries into political cradles for the
birth of popular struggles against corrupt and irresponsible regimes. This strategy, described as the ‘Museveni syndrome’,
resulting from his war against Idi Amin Dada and all the ‘post-Idi Amin era’
authoritarian regimes in Uganda in the early '80s, took root all over the
continent (Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Congo DRC, etc.). Presently, this new
strategy has incorporated a pan-African ideological orientation by espousing
regional economic integration as a permanent remedy for Africa’s chronic
developmental malaise.
This
new context helps to strengthen subregional organizations on the basis of a
deepened understanding of African studies, which redefines the boundaries of
conflict areas and provides them with a new meaning and representation.
Therefore, the Great Lakes Region as a construct and representation takes place
and becomes a dominant one thanks to the Rwanda genocide and the international
community's guilty conscience, following its failure to prevent the genocide in
spite of an abundance of early warnings. Hence, through a cunning manipulation
of the Rwandan Government and the academia, people have overlooked two historic
factors, which have distorted the concept of Central Africa to the advantage of
the Great Lakes. The subregion has been in a permanent state of war since
decolonization, starting with the Hutu and Luluwa revolution of 1959; secondly,
the recent war involves seven countries, six of which belong to the Central
Africa region. A bigger distortion relates to the inclusion of DRC in the Great
Lakes region: in fact, the part of the DRC belonging to that subregion accounts
for less than 1/8 part of the country’s physical territory. To the contrary,
the logic behind invading and pillaging, while linked to a combination of
economic and administrative structures newly put in place, has given rise to a
scenario wherein economic rather than political dictates are the main driving
forces behind the civil war. The
process and its dynamics have given rise to a parallel structure of economic
predation and criminalization which has permitted the invading countries to
expand their commercial markets to encompass the territory of the DRC i.e.
Uganda, Rwanda and Zimbabwe. They plunder Congo's natural resources to
compensate their national deficits and pursue the ongoing war in order to
advance their own egoistic economic interests. Paradoxically, they are
encouraging the growth of a ‘parallel society’ in the Congo and hence by the
same token undermining the capacity for rebuilding a viable and cohesive state
in the DRC. This state of affairs has also created an opportunity for the flow
of weapons and the unrestrained use of young people in the ongoing
militarization process. Hence, this analysis exposes and discredits the bogus
and often repeated arguments employed by the invading countries to justify their
flagrant interference in the DRC’s internal affairs as well as plundering the
country’s enormous natural resources (the right to pursue the rebels operating
from Congolese bases or sanctuaries). The hidden face of this war reveals itself
in the way the leaders of the subregion are incapable of conceiving a new and
innovative agenda and program of action/development for the same youth they had
used in their ascendance to power. On the contrary, they are sending scores of
young people to their deaths by cynically using them to engage in wanton
violence, human rights abuses and the destructive pillage of their countries.