Zachary Ochieng
6 November 2007
Nairobi — Congo renegade general Laurent Nkunda's announcement that he will disarm some of his men and send them to camps run by the army somewhat eased tensions in the east of Democratic Republic of congo. But the role of Congolese who speak Kinyarwanda in the chaos that engulfed the country after the exit of Mobutu Sese Seko is largely glossed over.
They represent less than five per cent of the population of Congo and live largely in the two eastern provinces of North and South Kivu.
Congolese Tutsi are a small part of the larger group of Rwandophones that constitute between one and two per cent of the total Congolese population of some 60 million.
In South Kivu, the Tutsi are known locally as Banyamulenge, but this term does not apply to the Tutsi living in North Kivu. The rapid rise of the Tutsi to national political prominence in the 1990s followed by a sharp decline in their power, as well as the anti-Tutsi hostility accompanying it form the essential context of the current political and military crisis in eastern Congo.
Despite their small numbers and limited geographical base, Congolese Tutsi have played an extraordinarily significant role in Congolese political life in the past 15 years, in part because of their co-operation with the neighbouring state of Rwanda.
Backed by Rwanda, and for some time also by Uganda, Congolese Tutsi provided significant support for the rebellion that ousted the late Mobutu in 1997.
Following a second war from 1998-2003, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD, superseded by a splinter group later known as RCD-Goma) - a party identified with Congolese Tutsi - secured one of four vice-presidencies in a government headed by President Joseph Kabila.
Joseph Kabila himself was once part of the Rwandan-supported forces that overthrew Mobutu, as was his father Laurent Kabila, who preceded him as president. Laurent Kabila was assassinated in 2001.
The Global and All Inclusive Accords of 2002 established the objective of an integrated national army, meant to include all the previously hostile forces that had been loyal to the different Congolese political contenders.
The transitional government was to accomplish this task before holding national elections, but it was far from having finished the process when the 2006 elections took place.
The integration process (called brassage) required soldiers to be trained for 45 days and then be deployed in a region other than that in which they had previously fought. At the time of processing, soldiers could also choose to be demobilised and return to civilian life.
In 2004, Laurent Nkunda, a Rwandan-trained Congolese Tutsi, who commanded RCD's 81st and 83rd brigades - based in Maisis, north of Goma - was named a general in the new national army, with orders to report to Kinshasa for brassage. He refused, as did many of the men under his command.
"We have no confidence in the army," Nkunda told Human Rights Watch in August 2006.
Most Rwandaphone soldiers feared the integration process, he said. Rwandans who go to brassage choose demobilisation rather than face death in the army.
Tutsi are well represented in command positions in the national army. Ordinary Tutsi soldiers have, nonetheless, been attacked on occasion by soldiers of other ethnic groups.
In an incident in Kindu in 2004, the 51st Battalion (8th brigade) was disbanded after its officers - who were Tutsi - were told by their superiors that they were not Congolese.
According to the former commander, soldiers who joined other units were beaten, imprisoned and tortured, and four were killed. In a more recent incident at a training camp in Bas-Congo province in February 2006, a soldier of Banyamulenge origin was blamed for the death of a fellow combatant of another ethnic group, and he and other Banyamulenge soldiers were attacked and several injured.
By 2004, RCD-Goma was losing strength, even in its original stronghold of the Kivus. Dissatisfied with the erosion of their party's strength and reluctant to join the integrated national army where, they said, their security was not be assured, troops loyal to RCD-Goma mutinied in Bukavu, South Kivu.
In ensuing military operations, national army troops killed more than a dozen Banyamulenge civilians.
Gen Nkunda, a renegade since his refusal to join brassage, led the troops he commanded in North Kivu south and took and briefly held Bukavu. Nkunda claimed that the operation was "to protect his people," but his troops and those of his collaborator, Jules Mutebutsi, also killed civilians and committed widespread sexual violence.
After the mutiny was put down, the Congolese government issued, but did not execute, a warrant for Nkunda's arrest on charges of war crimes, and he retreated to Masisi in North Kivu, where the RCD-Goma still had some popularity.
The increase in the political prominence of Congolese Tutsi sparked negative reactions from other Congolese, particularly those who suffered from abuses and exploitation by Rwandan troops during the wars of 1996-97 and 1998-2003.
Political leaders of other ethnic groups, eager to profit from anger against and fear of Tutsi, stepped up anti-Tutsi rhetoric during the 2006 election campaign.
In May 2006, for example, Abdoulaye Yerodia, one of Congo's four vice-presidents and a supporter of presidential candidate Joseph Kabila, verbally attacked Congolese Tutsi at a rally in Goma: "These people, we will tell them to leave our territory. You who stay here, you must go back to where you came from. If you don't want to go back from where you came from, we will put sticks into your backsides to make sure you go back," he said.
As arrangements were being made for the elections, many Tutsi in North and South Kivu expected the national government to recognise the territorial status of Minembwe, an administrative division established in South Kivu by RCD authorities when they controlled the region.
Banyamulenge represented the majority population of Minembwe and recognition of the division as a territory would have virtually guaranteed them local administrative control and representation in the provincial and national assemblies.
But the national government refused to recognise Minembwe as a territory. Some Banyamulenge and other Congolese Tutsi saw the decision as an effort to limit their participation in national political life.
The 2006 election confirmed the political eclipse of RCD-Goma. From having been one of the four political forces governing the country during the transition period, it fell to virtually having no political significance at the national level.
Alarmed by the precipitate decline in political strength of RCD-Goma and the anti-Tutsi rhetoric of the electoral period, and well aware of previous violence against them in Congo, Burundi, and, of course, in Rwanda, many Congolese Tutsi expressed fears of possible future abuse by other Congolese groups.
In August, a riot in Moba, a large town in Katanga province, seemed to confirm such fears.
Hundreds of Moba residents rioted and attacked UN staff following the dissemination of rumours about a UN-assisted return of Tutsi refugees to the area.
The suddenness and violence of the demonstration suggested a conscious effort to whip up anti-Tutsi feeling, and the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo (Monuc) denounced the deliberate incitement to ethnic hatred in public meetings and in the media.Nkunda, who kept a low profile during the elections, played an increasingly public role in the months after, presenting himself as spokesman for and protector of Congolese Tutsi.
With some Tutsi leaders - particularly those resident in North Kivu - aware that their political clout had shrunk following the 2006 elections, insisted that Nkunda's troops constituted their last bulwark of protection and must not leave the Kivus.
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