The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa. Rene Lemarchand

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      Quite aside from its efficiency in collecting funds from exile Tutsi communities and gaining a privileged access to NRA equipment, compared to Hutu refugee movements, the Uganda exiles have been remarkably adept at mobilizing support through their skillful manipulation of information. This fact goes far in explaining its capacity to sway international public opinion long after the diaspora had become a nation.

      Another Look at Theory

      What new light do the theories mentioned earlier shed on the dynamics of ethnoregional conflict in the Great Lakes? The answer, in part, depends on how they “fit” into any particular aspect of the crisis.

      Let us begin with Huntington. The whole drift of our argument, centered on the concept of exclusion, can be read as a refutation of the “clash of civilization” thesis; by the same token, his discussion of the “kin country syndrome” is of direct relevance to an understanding of the patterns of ethnic mobilization unleashed by refugee diasporas. As our previous discussion makes clear, where ethnic fault lines cut across national boundaries, conflict tends to spill over from one national arena to the next, transforming kin solidarities into a powerful vector of transnational violence. An action-reaction pattern sets in, whereby victims in one setting become instigators of violence in the other. Largely missing from Huntington's discussion, however, is a sustained attention to mobilization strategies, including the kinds of resources employed to mobilize support.

      This is where Collier's paper offers some challenging insights. I refer specifically to his analysis of the role of diasporas and access to financial resources as crucial factors in explaining the risk of civil war. On the other hand, serious questions arise as to whether the financial viability of rebel factions, including refugee diasporas, is entirely reducible to the opportunities offered by commodity export economies. If this were the case, the whole of the continent would be tottering on the brink of insurrection. Not just any export commodity but gold and diamonds are the rebels' best friends.

      Whether through gem trading or any other source of profits, financial viability matters. There is no denying the cardinal importance of the looting of gold and diamond resources in eastern Congo in the funding of the war effort by Kigali and Kampala and of the deadly rivalries over the loot in pitting Rwanda against Uganda in Kisangani. Nonetheless, “financial viability” only tells part of the story. Crucial as they are in explaining the failure or success of mobilized diasporas, contextual opportunities are not limited to financial viability; equally important is the political viability of rebel and refugee movements, most notably their ability to negotiate political and military support. This is true not only of the RCD factions today, but was certainly the case for the second generation Tutsi refugees in Uganda in the 1980s.

      Where the Collier thesis seems most vulnerable is in the rejection of objective socioeconomic indicators as a source of civil violence: “Objective measures of social grievance, such as inequality, a lack of democracy, and ethnic and religious divisions, have no systematic effect on risk…because civil wars occur when rebel organizations are financially viable.” ¹⁸ Quite aside from the fact that the argument simply doesn' t hold up in the face of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary—a fact that Collier might conceivably explain away by relegating Rwanda, Burundi, and eastern Congo to deviant cases—one wonders why one set of independent variables (objective measures of social grievance) should exclude the other (financial viability).

      Categorically dismissing rebellion as “protest motivated by genuine and extreme grievance,” Collier offers a striking analogy: “For a few moments suspend disbelief,” he writes, “and suppose that most rebel movements are pretty close to being large-scale variants of organized crime. The discourse would be exactly the same as if they were protest movements.” ¹⁹ Nowhere, however, does he consider the alternative proposition that the state might qualify as the criminal and the rebels as victims of state crimes. This is, of course, the central argument set forth by Bayart, Ellis, and Hibou in their recent work on the criminalization of the state.²⁰ This is not meant to deny the propensity of rebel and refugees, and refugees turned rebels, to engage in criminal activities, yet it is important to note that the phrase covers a wide spectrum of illegal activities and that such criminal activities often pale in comparison with those carried out by the state. Rwanda under Habyalimana, Zaire under Mobutu, and the Burundi armed forces under Buyoya all exhibit, to some degree or another, at one point or another, what can only be described as a criminal behavior of the worst kind, including political assassination, theft, and corruption on a grand scale. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the result has been to promote huge social and economic inequalities, along with corresponding “genuine and extreme grievances,” and thus pave the way for the exclusionary policies that lie at the heart of ethnic violence in the Great Lakes.

      The Herbst thesis has the merit of looking at a range of variables seldom taken into account by political scientists: the combined effect on state failure of low population densities, weak and artificial boundaries, and the resultant inability of the state to control its hinterland; this, he adds, is in striking contrast with the historical record of European states, all of which have experienced “the brutality of interstate war” as a major ingredient of state consolidation.²¹ On each of these counts, however, the recent history of the Great Lakes offers massive counter-factual evidence. The region claims the highest population density in the continent; the precolonial boundaries of the interlacustrine kingdoms of Rwanda and Burundi were fairly well delineated, at least by comparison with the rest of Africa; control of these states over the hinterland was relatively well established; and the “brutality of interstate war” was a major feature of their precolonial histories, though by no means comparable to the devastation caused by the internal and interstate wars currently ravaging the region. What Herbst leaves out of the picture is the impact of colonial and postcolonial history. He leaves out what Crawford Young has so ably brought into view—the enduring disabilities arising from the impact of the colonial state on African societies.²² Predictably, Herbst makes no reference to the multifaceted crises of exclusion and social marginalization around which much of this discussion revolves and for which there are many parallels in the continent. Only by confusing optimism with fantasy and reality with illusion, can one take comfort in the view, implicit in the Herbst thesis, that the violent confrontations in former Belgian Africa will ultimately bring to the region the benefits of state consolidation along a bloodstained path similar to the one historically taken by European states.

      Policy Implications

      By postulating exclusion as a crucial dimension of the Great Lakes crisis, we do not mean to suggest that its conceptual opposite is the only solution to the region's woes. Inclusion is a theme that admits many variations. It can easily mask a policy of cooptation and serve as a substitute for a genuine sharing of power; carried to an extreme, with little or no attention paid to contextual realities, the result may be chronic instability, as happened in Burundi in 1995, following the so-called Convention of Government of 1994. The diffusion of ethnic violence across national boundaries, sustained by external forces, imposes severe limitations on the benefits of power sharing.

      The case of Burundi is instructive in this respect. A key provision of the precarious peace deal worked out in Arusha (Tanzania) in July 2000, through Nelson Mandela's painstaking facilitating efforts, involves a broadly based three-year transitional government incorporating the representatives of fifteen parties, almost evenly distributed between predominantly Tutsi and Hutu parties. For the next eighteen months a Tutsi (Pierre Buyoya) will serve as president and a Hutu (Domitien Ndayizeye) as vice president; during the following eighteen-month period, the roles will be reversed. This power-sharing arrangement is bolstered by more fundamental concessions to the Hutu majority, such as a commitment to restructuring the all-Tutsi army on the basis of ethnic parity. Demands which until recently were non-negotiable have now been met, such as the presence of a 1,400-strong South African peace keeping force; others will be negotiated in months ahead, such as the restructuring of the army, the dismantling of regroupment camps, and the appointment of an international judicial commission СКАЧАТЬ