Africa martyred again

The west has blood on its hands. Time to act.

Mark Johnson tries to unravel the crises in Burundi, Rwanda and Zaire.

The current situation was not just "foreseeable." We could hardly
pretend to have expected anything else. What was the reality of the
refugee camps? They throw together several hundred thousand people,
for the most part totally disarmed. Immediately, the different cliques
present try to pull strings. The Zairian army, unpaid and without
officers, use the camps for their own ends: promoting the black
market, trading on connections. The leading figures in the ex-Rwandan
regime, the militia and various others, come to do business and mount
their own politico-military operations.

The fish rots from the head down, as they say. According to Colette
Braeckman, Africa specialist at the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, "for
President Mobutu, the refugees are a political and diplomatic card.
The president's brother in law, and Zaire's generals, all take a cut
of the humanitarian aid that comes through Kinshasa, and they have
grown rich in the arms trade that feeds the conflict."

There was a combination of massive and incomparable poverty and
enormous despair in the camps. And they became the arena of important
power struggles. The stakes were not only military but economic, which
is all-important in a situation of such poverty. People in the region
are effectively fighting over the morsels of poverty.

Virtual control

The second element that made this situation predictable is the fact
that Zaire is a state in name only. The regime of President Mobuto
Sese Seko is totalitarian. Even The Economist magazine calls his
regime "kleptocratic." This is a country the resources of which have
been pillaged for nearly 30 years by one family, one clan, one man. As
a result, apart from the presidential guard, the Zairian army is
non-existent in operational terms. It seems to act more as a gang,
dedicated to using its force against the people, to augment its meagre
salaries.

Mobutu has been in power now for 31 years. This is an unspeakable
regime - totalitarian would be a euphemism. Mobutu is responsible for
the assassination of thousands of people. He has not allowed the
slightest opposition, and has plundered the basic resources of the
country to accumulate wealth for himself.

It could hardly have been otherwise. If there had been the slightest
attempt to construct a real Zairian state in the 1960s (when most
African countries gained political independence), the imperialist
powers would have de-stabilised the regime. Instead, Mobutu has been a
devoted servant of the western anti-communist crusade in Africa. Among
other 'great' causes, he supported the Angola Popular Liberation
Movement (MPLA) and opposed the African National Congress (ANC)
struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Mobutu, lord of chaos

After the implosion of the 'Soviet bloc,' Mobutu became less useful to
his masters. His half-measures in the development of a parliamentary
democracy made it more and more difficult for the United States to
continue their unconditional support, and they began to look for a
reliable alternative. But Mobutu chose not to go quietly. To remind
his estranged western backers that he alone can prevent chaos in
central Africa, he created chaos.

France, the main imperialist interest in the region, has always
supported Mobutu. In recent weeks France has sent troops to
Brazzaville, the Congo capital city, just across the river from
Kinshasa, Zaire's capital. The only explanation for this intervention
is to be ready to support Mobutu if the situation in Kinshasa gets out
of hand. The dictator himself seems to have recovered from his
prostate operation in Europe, and will presumably try to return to
Kinshasa.

Opposition

The oppositions which appeared, particularly in Zaire, during the wave
of democratic pressure in 1990-1991 are more or less totally absent or
have become accomplices of the regimes. They play absolutely no role
as a counter-force. The situation in Kinshasa, Zaire, where part of
the opposition participates in demonstrations against "Rwandan
aggression", demonstrates the role and nature of the majority of the
opposition forces.

Having said this, Doctor Kenji of Zaire's Patriotic Front recently
said that the rebellion in the east of Zaire is "a senseless
adventure, which plays into Mobutu's hands. We should remain on guard,
and not forget who the main enemy is." It illustrates to what extent
the political and social situation has deteriorated in these
countries. There regimes are extremely unstable, even imploding, yet
at the same time the oppositions do not represent a credible
alternative.

It is clear that the absence of state and economic factors weighs
heavily on the current situation in the east of Zaire, bordering on
Rwanda and Burundi. It is one thing to have camps containing hundreds
of thousands of people in a real country; it is a completely different
matter to have them in a country that is an abstraction, a virtual
country, where no legitimate power exercises control over daily
existence.

Genocide

The second element of the crisis is the aggravation of this situation
by the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. In about four months, almost one
million people were slaughtered. Half of the Tutsi population had to
die, because the clique around the dictator, President Habyarimana
refused to share power with the opposition, and the rebels of the FRP.
Habyarimana himself perished in the conflagration he planned in such
great detail. Beyond this macabre justice, the genocide has gone
totally unpunished.  All the potential warlords of the region must be
feeling more confident as a result.

The carnage only stopped when the FPR conquered the country and took
power. The 2,700 UN "peace-keepers" didn't even try to stop the
slaughter. But France was quick to send 5,000 troops to create a
buffer zone the real purpose of which was to enable the genocide
perpetrators to escape chastisement and regroup, shielded not only by
French and Senegalese "peace-keepers" but by the mass of Rwandan Hutus
who had been hounded into exile by the retreating Hutu militia and the
fragments of the Rwandan army.

In the camps around Kivu, in eastern Zaire, the Hutu militia could
reorganise itself in peace. And, of course, prevent its "human shield"
from returning to Rwanda. They bought all the arms they needed from
the Zaire military. And, it seems, from French, British and Italian
arms dealers.

>From their bases in the Zaire refugee camps, the Hutu militia began to
organise regular incursions into Rwanda, eliminating remaining
witnesses to the genocide, and de-stabilising the new FRP regime,
which had stopped the massacre when it came to power. When the
situation became intolerable, the Rwandan army counter-attacked.
According to Le Soir journalist Colette Braeckman, "only the Rwandan
army can put an end to this situation. This is probably the unspoken
conclusion of the 'international community.' Rwanda has the will to
put an end to this situation. No other country is willing to send
troops to clear up this infection."

The border camps are now empty. Those Hutu civilians who have escaped
from the Hutu militia have returned to Rwanda, where reception camps
have been opened to receive them. The less fortunate have been driven
deeper into Zaire as the Hutu militia retreat before the Rwandan army.
The impunity of those responsible for the 1994 genocide has had an
impact at several levels. Those who have already committed crimes and
are ready to commit new ones are forming new alliances. Today they are
candidates for receiving arms or for again becoming linked to this or
that state, this or that diplomatic interest. Their impunity also
works in favour of the new rulers of Rwanda, who reason that since
atrocities in the past went unpunished, they too can indulge in
extortion or opt for military responses rather than working towards
the necessary political and social solutions. Obviously all this is
not only the responsibility of the local regimes or of African
political movements. The outrage we are witnessing also flows from the
responsibility of the great powers, who have played an essential role
in supporting these regimes for decades now.

What else?

Any real solution will have to include measures for agrarian reform.
Farmland is becoming more and more rare, because of population growth.
Meanwhile, the financial returns from farming are falling, and the
social surplus product is consequently stunted. This level of poverty,
combined with the crisis and the dismemberment of these economies and
states, ensures that conflicts inevitably break out over the division
of what remains.

Social criteria no longer have any reality so people attach themselves
to the nearest, most immediate entity - village, clan, different
ethnic group. These are the sole references points that retain a sense
for people. The reaction today is one of panic and withdrawal into
this identification with "otherness". There is above all a desire to
take from or keep from the "other" - who equally wants to take from or
keep from you.

Within this framework fragmentation is inevitable. We are not heading
for a war between Tutsis and Hutus. The future looks much worse than
that. If things continue to deteriorate there will be, here as
elsewhere in Africa, fifteen or twenty small groups who will fight
among themselves. An array of temporary alliances will be formed,
based primarily on material interests which appear to us utterly
derisory, but, for local people, will be quite literally matters of
life and death.

What needs to be recognised, by the Rwandan regime and the
"international community" is the need for a regional solution. There
can be no Rwandan solutions to the problems of Rwanda, and no
Burundian solutions to the problems of Burundi. There can only be
regional solutions: not for reasons of immediate ethnic identity but
simply because the problem results from poverty. One can develop
neither Rwanda not Burundi with just the resources of these two
states.

The same is true for the eastern part of Zaire, which is not even
connected by paved road to the capital, Kinshasa. For natural
geographical reasons, this region needs to have an intense economic
and social relationship with the other countries of the Great Lakes.
This is not about proposing a conference of these states and their
existing regimes, as the French government is doing. Because the
nature of the regimes in place is also, obviously, part of the
problem. Take Burundi. The French government supported a boycott of
the Burundi regime after the last coup d'itat. Today France claims
that a political solution for the region requires the participation of
this same regime in an international conference. None of this makes
any sense.

Resolving the problems of Africa in the medium term requires a halting
of any sort of "Western support" for regimes such as that in Zaire, as
well as all the existing cliques who will inevitably engage in similar
policies if they manage to come to power. The only way is to put an
end to these manoeuvres which, in the name of strategies and
alliances, support profiteering and money-grubbing. Thirty years oft
these policies have created a humanitarian disaster. The scale of the
disaster in the Great Lakes region is without precedent. But it is the
third or fourth time the same pattern of crisis has developed in this
region.

The 1996 European Union aid programme for the Great Lakes area of
Africa is 284 million ecus (#230 million). European NGOs take 25% to
finance their operations. Of the money distributed 65%has gone to the
2 m. refugees living in camps, surrounded by Hutu militias. Seven
million Rwandans have received the other 35%. This leaves nothing for
the Rwandan government to facilitate the return to Rwanda of Hutu
refugees not involved in genocide. Without massive aid any
re-integration of Rwandan refugees will be impossible.