Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR), which would become the most entrenched of all rebel groups operating in eastern DRC.22
The resource-rich provinces of North and South Kivu consequently became the launching grounds in 1996 for “Africa’s World War,” which was effectively two consecutive wars that drew in nine countries and lasted for seven years.23 At the culmination of the first war (1996–97), the Forces Armées Zairoises (FAZ) of Mobutu Sese Seko fell to the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo (AFDL), which was led by Laurent Desirée Kabila. Kabila, a long-term revolutionary known to have met with Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Tanzania in 1965, would take over the Congolese presidency. In 2001, Laurent Kabila was assassinated, then succeeded by his son Joseph Kabila, who remained in control throughout the period covered in this book.
The Second Congo War (1998–2003) resulted in an effective split of the country, with the eastern provinces, including the Kivus, coming under the control of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD), essentially a proxy government for Rwanda. At the local level, Congolese Mayi-Mayi forces mobilized to protect local interests and to gain control of land and resources. Initially a product of the 1960s autonomy movements, Mayi-Mayi groups resurged during the 1996–2003 wars. Usually monoethnic, their political claims formed along identity-based lines, and their discourse generally decried the presence of foreigners, in particular Tutsi Rwandaphones.
International UN peacekeepers arrived in 1999, establishing the Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies en République démocratique du Congo (MONUC), which would become the largest UN peace operation at the time and would eventually transform into the Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en République démocratique du Congo (MONUSCO). By 2003, the national armed forces had been reconfigured into the FARDC through a continuing process of brassage, or integration, of the former rebel groups into one national army.
Although formal peace was finally negotiated at a national level in 2003, conflict continued in eastern DRC. The 2006 presidential elections—the first in the DRC since 1960—officially ended the “postconflict transition” period and legitimized Joseph Kabila’s leadership, but they resulted in renewed political violence in the Kivus. Military offensives continued in the following years, despite various iterations of Kinshasa-led, UN-supported, and Kigali-influenced negotiations. The Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP), a reconfiguration of the former RCD armed wing, eventually won its military offensive against the DRC government.24
The Goma Peace Accords were signed in early 2008, and although the CNDP had been integrated into the national army, fighting continued. A deal brokered between Kigali and Kinshasa at the end of 2008 resulted in joint Rwanda-DRC military operations (called Umoja Wetu, or “our unity” in Kiswahili) aimed at eradicating the FDLR presence in the Kivus. This was soon followed by the FARDC-led, MONUC-supported Kimia (“quiet”) II operations, marking a fundamental shift in the politico-military balance that had held since the end of the Second Congo War. Until that time, the FDLR had largely coexisted with the DRC government and the local population. The FDLR’s presence had often been instrumentalized to the advantage of national and regional political entrepreneurs.25
In direct response to the 2009 offensive, the FDLR conducted ravaging reprisals on the civilian population. The humanitarian consequences of these attacks were devastating, and the investigation of grave human rights abuses constituted much of my work in the DRC during that year.26 From the beginning of the operations in January until September 2009, Human Rights Watch documented the killing of more than fourteen hundred civilians, more than seventy-five hundred cases of sexual violence against women and girls, and the forced displacement of more than nine hundred thousand people.27 The FARDC also conducted attacks on the civilian population, including Hutu refugees who lived in proximity to the FDLR.
While international and regional attention remained focused on routing the FDLR in the following years, by 2012 conflict resurged, as several key CNDP leaders created the new Mouvement du 23 mars (M23) group, justifying their rebellion with the same discourses as in the past.28 Following sustained fighting with the FARDC, the M23 occupied Goma in November 2012. International outcry, including about the lack of defense by the UN peacekeeping mission, led to a strong and eventually effective military response to push back the M23. A cease-fire and a new series of peace talks led to the disbanding of the M23 in November 2013. Attention could again turn back on the FDLR, and in 2014 a voluntary FDLR disarmament process was organized. It ultimately failed, and renewed military offensives began in January 2015. Called “Sukola II” (“clean up” in Lingala), this operation was unilaterally conducted by the FARDC as the UN had blacklisted several of the FARDC commanders for allegations of previous human rights abuses and thus could not offer its support to the government forces.
Since my last visit to the DRC in 2016, the various iterations of militarized violence in eastern DRC have continued.29 As this book went to press, tensions in the DRC were high because of the repeated delays in presidential elections that should have been held in 2016 but still had not occurred; popular protests had been violently repressed, and renewed fighting threatened ahead of the promised elections in December 2018. The “common sense” of militarized violence that has guided Congolese politics throughout the DRC’s history continues to prevail.30
CONSERVING VIOLENCE
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