Reconstructing the Congo.

Weiss, Herbert F. ; Carayannis, Tatiana

Since 1996, the Congo has been the battleground for wars and wars within wars, involving, at various times, at least nine African countries as direct combatants and many more as military, financial and political supporters of one or the other fighting force. To this one must add a number of internal conflicts. All together, these forces are often involved in complex and shifting military and diplomatic networks. These wars have, in a de facto manner, partitioned the country into several broad spheres of influence which are controlled, to varying degrees, by these networks. (1) And they have also created one of the most devastating humanitarian disasters of our day, resulting in what some have estimated as 3.5 million deaths from war, famine and disease, and an internal displacement rate of nearly 10 percent of the population. (2)

After many failed negotiation attempts, the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement was concluded in July 1999, but did not end the conflicts. It was followed three years later by a series of bilateral agreements between Kinshasa, Uganda and Rwanda that resulted in the withdrawal of nearly all foreign troops. The peace process in the Congo culminated in a power-sharing agreement, reached in Pretoria on December 16, 2002 and brokered by South Africa; this, in turn, led to the establishment of a transitional government in June 2003. The new transitional government is comprised of leaders representing almost every Congolese actor in the wars, many of whom have been each other's enemies for the last seven years. It is based on political accommodation rather than on effective governance. Despite this, the government is mandated with the difficult task of beginning the reconstruction process by temporarily governing the country, drafting a new constitution, preparing for democratic elections and establishing a new, integrated, national army--all within a period of two years.

The future reconstruction needs of a country that has undergone 32 years of President Mobutu's predatory rule in addition to seven years of devastating war are massive. Moreover, violent conflict continues in eastern Congo. But there is a strong commitment on the part of the Congolese to the state and to maintaining its territorial integrity.

This paper examines state-building efforts and the refraining of Congolese nationalism from independence through the three subsequent decades of dictatorship under President Mobutu. This is followed by an analysis of the three Congo wars, which started in 1996 and are, to a certain degree, still going on today. It also looks at more recent evidence of nationhood from public opinion surveys with respect to three variables: commitment to national unity, satisfaction with government or rebel authority services and attitudes towards minority groups. A final section draws some conclusions about the Congolese nation and state and the implications for future post-war reconstruction.

The data show, first, that the identification of the Congolese with the Congo nation and state over the last 40 years has become stronger, despite predatory leaders, years of war and political fragmentation, devastating poverty, ethnic and linguistic diversity and the virtual collapse of state services. It also suggests that while Congolese identity has become stronger, it has also become exclusionary with regard to one particular ethnic group, the Rwandaphone peoples. Although these groups constitute a small minority in the Congo, their exclusion from the Congolese nation is significant for any future state-building efforts--not only because they have been an important group historically and politically, but also because that exclusion is tied to two external actors, Rwanda and Burundi, and their actions in the region.

CONSTRUCTING AN INDEPENDENT CONGO

The geographic frontiers of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have largely remained unchanged since the Association Internationale du Congo, a private company under the leadership and ownership of King Leopold II of the Belgians, established a private colonial, commercial empire in Central Africa in 1875. The boundaries of this empire were largely arbitrary and separated many pre-colonial African nations and ethnic groups into different European controlled colonies and territories. (3)

Desperate to receive international recognition for "his" colony, Leopold became one of the founders of the 1884 Berlin Conference, which carved up the African continent among the European colonial powers and resulted in the international recognition of the boundaries of the Congo. The territory was then renamed the Congo Free State.

The Congo Free State lacked the capital and military resources of a state-sponsored colonial takeover and soon faced severe financial constraints. This resulted in a period of particularly harsh rule and economic exploitation in territories focused primarily on the forced collection of rubber and ivory, which then led to "atrocities on a large scale." (4) The growing international scandal surrounding the treatment of the Congolese under Leopold's brutal rule pressured a reluctant Belgian parliament into accepting responsibility for the territory. In 1908, the Congo Free State became a colony of the Belgian state and was renamed the Belgian Congo.

The beginning of Congo's independence was particularly difficult. The anti-colonial nationalist movement had not achieved anything resembling unity; the colonial army mutinied a few days after independence was declared; not all Congolese people embraced the notion of a united Congo; the richest provinces attempted to secede; and almost as soon as independence was won, it was, to a considerable extent, lost.

From Lumumba to Mobutu

Shortly after independence and the Katanga secession, a split in leadership occurred along ideological lines, which mirrored the Cold War conflict. The Kinshasa government, led by President Kasavubu, became "pro-Western," while a second "national" government formed by supporters of Prime Minister Lumumba in Kisangani became "anti-Western." Unlike the secessionist leaders in Katanga and South Kasai, however, neither of these "governments" supported any form of separation nor opposed the unity of the state.

In the hectic months following the mutiny of the Force Publique and the deployment of UN forces to the Congo, Lumumba appointed Joseph Mobutu to be the Chief of Staff of the new Congo army, the Armee Nationale Congolaise (ANC). (5) In September 1960, a little more than two months after independence, differences between President Kasavubu and Prime Minister Lumumba reached the point where Kasavubu dismissed Lumumba--an act that Lumumba declared unconstitutional. This gave Mobutu the opportunity to engage in a Western-supported military coup, arguing that he had neutralized both Kasavubu and Lumumba in the interest of order. Mobutu did not, however, take over the reins of government at this point. Rather, he handed them over to a "College of Commissioners," a group of young Congolese university graduates who were to act as technical caretakers of government services. But the Congo was, in effect, under a UN protectorate that limited the amount of power that the College possessed.

Mobutu, fearing Lumumba's capacity to mobilize the Congolese masses, attempted to arrest him, but the UN prevented this by surrounding his residence with UN troops. Lumumba escaped from Kinshasa in order to rejoin supporters in his home base of Kisangani. He was captured by forces loyal to Mobutu who shipped him off to the Katangan secessionist leader, Moise Tshombe, who immediately had Lumumba assassinated. The months that followed were the low point of Congolese unity, with the secessionist leadership in Katanga supporting a confederal state structure with virtual independence for the different provinces. This did not hold and, within two years, military action by the UN resulted in the defeat of the Katangan forces and the reunification of the Congo under a quasi-federal structure in which the six provinces were divided into 23.

The next important development along the trajectory of state formation occurred when the so-called Congo rebellions began. Here again, the issue was ideological, with strong Cold War influences and interferences. Mobutu's government was supported by the West, especially the US, and the revolutionary forces were supported by the communist world and radical Third World states. As in the previous conflict between President Kasavubu and Prime Minister Lumumba, neither side contemplated dividing the country or challenging the notion of a single nationality for all Congolese. With some exceptions, mobilization tended to occur along ethnic lines, with ethnic groups either supporting the revolutionary movement or opposing it.

During these early years, the standard of living of the Congolese people dropped precipitously, as did the high hopes that they had held for the results of independence. This provided even more fertile ground for revolutionary mobilization. In the summer of 1963, one of Lumumba's closest associates, Pierre Mulele, returned from exile and began to organize a revolutionary movement--one with a vaguely Marxist ideology--in the Kwilu District, his home region, east of Kinshasa. Within a matter of weeks, a full-scale rebellion was underway against the Western-supported government in Kinshasa. A few months later, a second arena of revolt started in the northeast of the Congo. Most of the areas that rose up had voted in the May 1960 elections for the more radical parties and had supported the pro-Lumumba alliance.

When this revolutionary movement began, UN forces had virtually withdrawn from the Congo and the Kinshasa authorities were saved by considerable Western-supplied military assistance and aid. (6)

The revolutionary movement was defeated and there was an attempt to return to party politics in the Congo, but the governments that ensued were weak and divided. In 1965, Mobutu asserted the power that he had held since 1960 but never formalized. He expelled political leaders, closed down Parliament and appointed himself state president. Initially this move was quite popular, since there was general disillusionment with political leaders and a sense that the great pain and loss of life the country had experienced during the period of revolutionary uprising and its suppression should not be repeated. (7)

Mobutu's Thirty-Year Rule and the Decline of the State

In the core period of the independence struggle, Congolese nationalism was framed in terms of ending Belgian colonial rule. With the defeat of the revolutionary forces and the beginnings of the formal Mobutu dictatorship, a concerted effort was made by the national government to strengthen the national identity and instill values and pride in a common nationality. (8) Mobutu did this by going to great lengths to mobilize the public in support of a personality cult. Mobutu would be the embodiment of the nation.

In the years that followed, Mobutu transformed a military coup into a single-party system of government and an authoritarian state. (9) He created what he claimed was a "movement" rather than a political party, the Mouvement Populaire de la Revolution (MPR), and he financed a mass mobilization effort that made every Congolese, from childhood to death, a member of the MPR. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the MPR rivaled the power of the state and a competitive balance developed between the state structure and the party structure. Both government administrators and the party presidents had the power to report to their highest authorities where the two structures intersected. This system produced an extraordinary degree of grievance articulation, which could have been developed into an instrument of governance responsive to the interests of common people. The eternal quarrels that it also produced, however, were anathema to Mobutu's vision of authoritarian governance. Institutional changes were made, which then resulted in the combination of the two structures at all levels of the party and the government. Administrators became ex-officio party presidents, pay scales were synchronized and formalized grievance articulation, by and large, died.

Under the Mobutu system, higher levels of government systematically followed an endless process of group favoritism, division, payoff and neutralization. Due to revenue from the export of resources and massive loans from international financial institutions and private banks, the state's wealth and relative stability during this period resulted in one of the most corrupt systems of governance in the world. The state became completely nonresponsive to the interests of common citizens whose standard of living continued to decline while the regime's elite went from one ostentatious excess to another.

During Mobutu's thirty-year rule, the state abandoned virtually all social service delivery functions and the country's socio-economic infrastructure crumbled while the informal economy thrived. Inflation was so high that the national currency was employed only for the lowest levels of economic activity; any substantial transaction was conducted with US dollars. In 1973, the Mobutu regime announced a policy of "Zairianization." This was a process of nationalizing all foreign-owned businesses, which were appropriated by the state and handed over to friends and family of Mobutu--who, in turn, used the money to buy new cars, houses and clothes. Inventories were liquidated and not replenished and, by mid-1974, shortages and long lines for foodstuffs and other consumer goods were commonplace in all cities, including Kinshasa. The transfer of wealth to new elites solidified political support for Mobutu. By 1980, in a country with a total population of over 24 million, many of those of working age were unemployed. In Kinshasa, which housed half of the country's wage earners, the unemployment rate was over 40 percent for males over 18 years of age. Kananga and Mbuji-Mayi had an unemployment rate of 80 percent. (10) In the face of these dismal socio-economic indicators, Mobutu issued ala edict that he called "le retour a l'authenticite" (the return to authenticity), a measure meant to instill pride in being Congolese and African. This entailed rejecting some superficial aspects of Westernization. Orders were issued to Africanize personal names and dress and to create new national symbols, with Mobutu as the father of the nation.

These conditions did not result in internal upheaval. Some would argue that this was the result of the coercive power of the system in place. Although that was one factor, stiff coercion was in fact rarely used. The reason for this absence of violent protest has to be seen in the history of the Congo after 1960. The price paid bv the Congolese during the 1963 to 1968 revolutionary period was so heavy and the number of deaths were so great that, subsequently, up to the 1990s, there was no organized mobilization of a movement willing to employ political violence against Mobutu's rule. Some protests did occur, such as periodic nonviolent student demonstrations. Another example is the 1977 to 1978 invasion bv the Katanga Tigers (former members of Katanga's secessionist military) from kalgola. In the face of this violent, foreign-based challenge, the Mobutu regime proved to be very weak, but no internal uprising aimed at joining the insurgency developed and, with the military help of his Western allies, the insurgency was soon defeated.

While Mobutu aimed to strengthen the powers of the presidency by personalizing the nation, Congolese nationalism did not end ethnic and regional identities and antagonisms. Mobutu was, however, a master in balancing these tensions against each other, and, in the end, he was credited bv many observers with having contributed significantly to the acceptance of a single, national identity by most Congolese people. This achievement was marred bv some of his policies toward the end of his tenure of power when, at the close of the Cold War, he could no longer count on the unqualified support of his foreign allies. That was when Mobutu sought to retain power bv encouraging ethnic tensions and conflicts to the point of violence and ethnic cleansing. Ala example of this is the massive ethnic cleansing of Kasai Luba in Katanga in 1993. This radicalization of the policy of balancing ethnic tensions also heightened the antagonism towards Congolese Tutsi. While Mobutu cannot be held responsible for all antiTutsi sentiment, he did permit anti-Tutsi politicians in Kinshasa and in the Kivus to generate a campaign that resulted in the expulsion of the Tutsi from North Kivu and in threats for the mass expulsion of the Banyamulenge Tutsi from South Kivu.

Liberalization, Political Opposition and the Sovereign National Conference

The process of democratization under Mobutu began as early as January 1990, when President Mobutu--facing growing internal pressures for reform and democratization during a sustained economic crisis and during a significant drop in international support--took steps toward reform.

Under pressure from the so-called nonviolent opposition, Mobutu invited individuals to submit written lists of grievances, and, in April 1990, he announced the end of single-party rule. This led to the convening, on August 7, 1991, of the Sovereign National Conference (CNS, or Conference Nationale Souveraine)--a body of 2,842 delegates from political parties and civic and religious organizations across the country who produced a widely accepted plan for both a peaceful transition to democracy and a new institutional framework. It was a major state-building exercise. The CNS terminated its work on December 6, 1992. This national constitutional conference opted for a power-sharing plan (with Mobutu), and it elected Etienne Tshisekedi, the leader of the political opposition and head of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) party, as interim Prime Minister. (11) In full public view with live television coverage, it reviewed the performance of the Mobutu regime and the country's history of corruption, political assassinations and theft from public coffers. Although constantly undermined and manipulated by the Mobutu regime, the conference had a lasting legacy and legitimac, because it provided a framework within which the nonviolent opposition to the Mobutu regime could formulate its demands for change. Later, the Kabila regime was challenged to uphold the decisions of the CNS, which it refused to do.

All of this, however, failed to dislodge Mobutu. Tshisekedi lasted no more than three months as prime minister, and Mobutu forcibly evicted all newly appointed ministers from their offices and brazenly reasserted his dominance. While the CNS was ultimately unsuccessful in establishing a new order, it laid the foundation for a democratic Congo, a transition from dictatorship toward elections and a federalist constitutional order.

THE THREE CONGO WARS AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE WAR-TORN STATE

A series of events transformed an impoverished, yet relatively nonviolent, Congolese societv into an arena of conflict and war. The first was the genocide of the Rwandan Tutsi in 1994. The failure of international interventions in Rwanda had a profound impact on the Congo.12 When, two weeks into the genocide, the deteriorating security situation on the ground led the UN to withdraw most of its UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR I) forces, France offered to lead a humanitarian mission to the region until the United Nations could mobilize support for a new operation. On June 22, 1994, the UN Security Council, with the support of the Organization of African Unitv (OAU), authorized a temporary French mission, known as Operation Turquoise. The authorizing resolution (929) of the French intervention stressed "the strictly humanitarian character of this operation which shall be conducted in an impartial and neutral fashion." (13)

Operation Turquoise, however, did something quite contrary to its mandate of neutrality. It allowed the Hutu militias, known as the Interahamwe, the defeated Forces Armies Rwand,aises (FAR) units and their political leaders, along with masses of Rwandan Hutu civilians, to escape across the border into the Congo under French protection while the Rwandan Tutsi population received little protection from the ongoing killings. (14) This influx of about 1 million Rwandan Hutu resulted in the profound de-stabilization of eastern Congo.

By August 1994, after the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) had defeated the Hutu government in Rwanda, several UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) camps were established in eastern Congo near the Rwandan border to shelter the Rwandan Hutu refugees, gdnocidnires, armv units and leaders. For the next two years, while the international community fed the inmates of the camps, the camps were used as staging grounds from which the lnterahamwe/ex-FAR regrouped and launched offensives against the new Tutsi-dominated government in Rwanda. The presence of this large, new, armed population of Hutu changed the ethnic balance in the Kivus, especially in the southern portion of North Kivu where indigenous Hutu joined forces with the Rwandan Hutu.

Despite the local conditions caused bv the influx of Hutu from Rwanda, the Mobutu government, some Kivu politicians and administrators and some Congolese military officers, in particular, made common cause with the Hutu. A campaign was launched against the Banyamulenge (a Congolese Tutsi) community, and, bv the summer of 1996, this campaign reached crisis proportions with some Kivu politicians and administrators threatening to expel all Banvamulenge from the country. This threat against the Congolese Tutsi population was deftly used bv the Rwandans to legitimate their uhimate invasion of the Congo and to gain Banyamulenge support for attacks against the UNHCR camps. The Rwandan government had repeatedly asked the international community to disarm the Hutu in the UNftCR camps, but nothing concrete was done, in spite of warnings that if the international community did not act, Rwanda would take the matter into its own hands.

In October 1996, Rwanda attacked the camps, with the goal of eliminating the Interahamwe/ex-FAR threat and also to strike a blow against the Hutu-sympathizing Mobutu regime. This joint assault on the camps resulted in the dismantling of the Interahamwe/ex-FAR's base of operations, and the vast majority of Hutu refugees in the camps returned to Rwanda. Other Rwandan Hutu, especially the military and militia, fled westwards and were pursued bv the invading Rwandan army. This marked the beginning of the First Congo War.

The First Congo War

The Rwandans were soon joined bv Uganda for similar, although less pressing, security reasons. Anti-Museveni insurrection movements, some of which were supported by the Sudanese government, operated for years out of bases in the Congo with support from the Mobutu government, or at least some of Mobutu's generals. (15) Several months later, Angola joined the alliance against the Mobutu government, also for similar reasons. Its principal adversary, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), continued to have bases in the Congo and had received substantial support from the US via Mobutu during the Cold War. Therefore, Angola, Uganda and Rwanda coalesced around a common goal--to cripple the insurgency movements challenging their governments from bases in the Congo.

To avoid being seen as aggressors and invaders, the Rwandan and Ugandan governments immediately sponsored the creation of an alliance of small and obscure exiled anti-Mobutu Congolese revolutionary groups. Laurent Kabila emerged as the principal spokesperson of the Alliance des forces Democratiques pour la Liberation du Congo-Zaire (AFDL) and became the protdgd of the coalition's foreign sponsors. Kabila was the only one of the Congolese recruited into this alliance who was even remotely known outside the Congo. He had been a zone commander in the Congo rebellions of the mid-1960s, a Lumumbist and, for over 20 years, the leader of a small revolutionary redoubt in south Kivu where Che Guevara and a few hundred Cubans joined the Congo rebellion in 1964. The attempt to give a Congolese revolutionary character to this conflict was largely successful because of the world wide rejection of Mobutu, but there is little doubt that the vast majority of the military force employed in this war against Mobutu was foreign.

By the end of 1996, Mobutu's army was in full retreat, looting, raping and killing Congolese civilians along the way. Mobutu desperately sought help from his friends and allies abroad, but his corrupt rule had become an embarrassment to most Western governments, and his appeals fell on deaf ears. Dying from prostrate cancer, Mobutu ultimately went into exile, where he died shortly thereafter. The anti-Mobutu alliance marched across the Congo and into Kinshasa in a matter of eight months.

It is important to note that at no time since the early 1960s was the Congolese state structure weaker than at this juncture. The Congolese army was so weakened that foreign armies were able to march across the country and change the regime with little resistance. Local Congolese opposition leaders enjoyed great popular support and were under no control or restraint from the capital. Secession would have been possible, had anyone chosen to lead it. Indeed, the governments of the invading armies might well have welcomed the partition of the Congo. Rwanda did have ambitions to annex a part of the Kivus in eastern Congo. Yet, not a single significant Congolese leader or group mobilized in favor of splitting up the countrv. All aimed, instead, to capture the whole prize. Moreover, they knew that there would be no public support for partition.

National identity was refrained again in the context of the First Congo War. The AFDL adopted a left-leaning, radical ideology with prejudices against the West harkening back to the 1960s and made a series of symbolic gestures aimed at eliminating all traces of the Mobutu regime, returning to national swnbols from the independence period.

Opinions regarding the government changed profoundly: It was generally hoped that Kabila would share power with the nonviolent anti-Mobutu opposition, but he completely reiected this path. Kabila not only refused to give recognition to the long struggle which such groups as the UDPS had conducted against Mobutu, but he also imposed a new dictatorship inspired bv his long association with Marxist revolutionaries. He attempted to initiate a "cultural revolution" in which ordinary citizens were to be watched bv street committees and only the AFDL was allowed to function; civil society was to synchronize its activities with the AFDL and most trials were to be held before military courts. The behavior of Rwandan soldiers in Kinshasa further alienated the population froln the AFDL. Many began to see the Rwandan troops in the capital as an armv of occupation rather than an army of liberation. None of this corresponded to the desires of the Congolese public, and Kabila's popularity dropped rapidly.

In the short 15 months between the end of the First Congo War and the start of the Second, Kabila managed to antagonize the UN, Western donors, his domestic opposition and his foreign sponsors. By early 1998, it became increasingly clear that the leaders who had been most responsible for putting Kabila into power were dissatisfied with his performance. The split between Kabila and his foreign sponsors may have been inevitable. Anv Congolese leader would have tried to seek popular legitimacy, which would have required distancing oneself from foreign, militarily present sponsors. Indeed, public opinion survevs conducted in Kinshasa during 1997 and 1998 clearly show that the Rwandan presence was profoundly tmpopular, and that when Kabila ousted the Rwandans, his popularity skyrocketed. (16)

The Second Congo War

There were numerous indications in June and July 1998 that relations between Kabila and the Rwandans had deteriorated to a point of mutual distrust. Increasingly, Kabila fell back on his supporters from his home province of Katanga. On July 27, 1998, the Rwandan military was asked to leave the Congo immediately, and they did so in an atmosphere of biting antagonism and nmtual suspicion.

On August 2, 1998, the Second Congo War broke out when two of the best and largest units in the new Congolese army mutinied. They were stationed in the east in close contact with the Rwandan military and Rwandan army troops crossed the border to support them. In Kinshasa, Congolese Tutsi soldiers in the Forces Armees Congolaises (FAC) refused orders to disarm and were attacked by FAC soldiers of other ethnic backgrounds. Most of them were killed, and a pogrom against all Tutsi, civilian or military, men, women and children included, took hold. In subsequent weeks, the pogrom was extended to all the areas of the country under Kabila's control. On August 4, in a spectacular cross-continental airlift, a hijacked plane full of Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers landed at Kitona army base in Western Congo, where some 10,000 to 15,000 former Mobutu soldiers were being "re-educated." These soldiers joined the Rwandan and Ugandan forces and began a march on Kinshasa. Within two weeks, and with the Kabila regime facing almost certain military defeat, a group of Congolese politicians, ranging from former anti-Mobutu alliance leaders to former Mobutists, united in Goma to form the political wing of the anti-Kabila movement, known as the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratic (RCD).

On August 23, 1998, and in striking contrast to its actions in the First Congo War, Angola intervened militarily on behalf of Kabila. From its bases in Cabinda, Angola attacked and defeated the Rwanda-Uganda forces in the Western Congo. (17) Although this cross-continental maneuver aimed at overthrowing Kabila failed as a result of Angola's intervention, the "rebellion" was able to achieve military control over eastern Congo. This second war would no doubt have ended very quickly if it had not been for the Angolan intervention. Angola's decision to switch sides had a profound impact on the war and on politics in the region. The Angolan intervention was probably due to its suspicion that the anti-Kabila alliance had struck a deal with the Angolan government's greatest enemy, UNITA, who fought a civil war against the government since independence.

For the next year, the Congo became the arena of a regional war. Kinshasa received direct military support from Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Chad, while the "rebels" were supported by Uganda, Rwanda and, later and to a lesser extent, Burundi. Significantly, Kabila mobilized the Interahamwe/ex-FAR and other Rwandan Hutu from the Congo and the region and incorporated them in ethnically homogeneous battalions within his army. Seeking support wherever he could find it, Kabila also made an alliance with many Mai Mai guerrillas in eastern Congo, particularly in the RCD-controlled area. The Mai Mai are Congolese guerrilla fighters, often in ethnically homogeneous groups, who had, up to this point, had a very checkered past in their relations with Kabila. (18) In the east, an alliance developed between the Mai Mai and the Rwandan and Burundian Hutu insurgency militia that maintained large bases in the Congo. Kabila helped this alliance with weapons shipments and political support.

The guerrilla war against the RCD/Rwandan authorities in the east became Kinshasa's strongest card in a war in which the FAC and its allies were never able to gain important military victories. But the RCD was also weakened by internal division. The relationship between Rwanda and Uganda deteriorated, and each laid claim to its own sphere of influence. The RCD split into two factions with separate military establishments, one supported by Rwanda and the other by Uganda. Uganda also helped to create a completely new anti-Kinshasa movement, the Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC), which soon became dominant in Northern Congo.

As in 1996 to 1997, this moment in the Congo's history could have given rise to a leader or movement seeking the division of the Congo into separate states. A de facto division had taken place with political and military establishments having created what became recognized borders between the Kinshasa and the rebel-controlled zones. At a later stage, these borders were even monitored by MONUC, the UN observer mission in the Congo. Yet, despite the deep antagonisms that existed between the leaders of the different movements, not a single one postulated a breakup of the Congo.

There were at least 20 failed efforts by the UN, OAU, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and individual mediators to stop the war; but most active military engagements during the Second Congo War only ended when a stalemate emerged and each side realized that military victory was not possible. Considerable Western pressure was also exerted, especially on the rebel forces and their foreign patrons, to stop advancing. The result of the stalemate was the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement, ultimately signed by all parties in July 1999. (19) The genius of the Lusaka Agreement is that it recognized the overlapping layers of interstate and intrastate actors involved in the war, and it legitimated the serious concerns of Rwanda, Uganda and Angola regarding insurgency movements aiming to overthrow their governments based in the Congo. The agreement specifically called for disarming foreign militia groups in the Congo--the so-called "negative forces"--and for the withdrawal of all foreign state armies from the country. The agreement also provided for an all-inclusive Congolese process, the "Inter-Congolese Dialogue," whose charge was to produce a new transitional political order for the Congo. To achieve this, the Lusaka Agreement mandated a "neutral facilitator" to organize this process. An important provision was that all parties to the internal dispute, whether armed or not, whether governmental or rebel, would participate in this dialogue as equals.

The agreement also called for a UN Chapter VII force to enforce the cease-fire and disarm the foreign militias. After first deploying a small technical assessment team, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1279 on November 30, 1999, authorizing the United Nations Observer Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC or Mission He l'Organisation des Nations Unies en Republique Demoratique du Congo). This was expanded to a force of 5,537 military personnel in 2003 and to 10,800 in 2004, but critics have argued that this team is far too small to fulfill its given mandates. MONUC's failure to intervene to stop the May 14, 2002 massacres in Kisangani, as well as the May 2004 clashes in Bukavu, indicate that even this limited mandate has not been followed--a failure due as much to earlier internal management problems within MONUC, to the ultra-prudent interpretation its leaders have given to the terms of reference under which it operates and to limited resources. Moreover, while MONUC is mandated with coordinating the disarmament, demobilization, reintegration, repatriation and resettlement (DDRRR) of foreign militia, it is not authorized to disarm them by force. The problem with voluntary compliance, of course, is that many of these armed groups do not wish to be disarmed.

After Laurent Kabila's assassination on January 16th, 2001, his son Joseph Kabila became president and, reversing a policy pursued by his father, took steps to actively participate in the national dialogue for a new institutional framework. Despite numerous efforts by South Africa, the dialogue, which took place in Sun City, South Africa, in February 2001, failed to achieve even a general agreement between the key actors: the Kinshasa authorities, RDC-Goma and the MLC. This impasse resulted in a separate agreement between the Kinshasa authorities and the MLC, which involved Joseph Kabila remaining president and MLC leader Jean-Pierre Bemba becoming the prime minister. Needless to say, this was rejected by the Rwanda-backed RCD-Goma, but also by the non-militarized political opposition. This was, indeed, a dangerous moment for the Congo's unity, since the attempted marginalization of the RCD-Goma and the de facto exclusion of Rwandan influence could have resulted in a militarily backed separation of the region they controlled from the process of reunification. Further negotiations, however, prevented this outcome.

The Sun City dialogue failed because the balance achieved by the Lusaka Agreement (i.e., the departure of foreign armies, especially Rwanda, and the disarming of foreign militia, especially the Rwandan ex-FAR/Interahamwe) was ignored, as was the emerging Third Congo War in the east and its devastating consequences. The Kinshasa-MLC agreement also collapsed once it became clear that national unification under Kinshasa's domination was not forthcoming. The government walked away from this deal and chose instead to enter into bilateral agreements with Rwanda and Uganda in an effort to marginalize the rebel movements opposing it. A bilateral agreement signed between Kinshasa and Kigali in Pretoria on July 30, 2002 resulted in the withdrawal of most, although probably not all, Rwandan forces, in exchange for Kinshasa's promise to dismantle the Rwandan Hutu militias, purge Hutu leaders who had been given positions in the FAC and hand over g6nocidaire leaders either to the International Court or to Rwandan judicial authorities. This was, in fact, a return to the Lusaka Agreement--in which this "quid pro quo" is implicit. A similar cease-fire agreement with Kampala in Luanda on September 6, 2002 resulted in the withdrawal of most Ugandan troops. The withdrawal of foreign troops created a power vacuum in the east, and a significant increase in violence, partly because the departing occupation forces left behind proxy movements. But it also paved the wav to a continuation of the dialogue under South African auspices, and the eventual establishment, in July 2003, of a transitional government composed of representatives from all armed and unarmed parties. Modeled loosely after South Africa's transitional government, the new Congolese government is a power-sharing arrangement between President Kabila and four vice presidents drawn from the two major rebel movements, the Kinshasa authorities and civil society.

The Third Congo War

Since the signing of the Lusaka Agreement, violence and the accompanying humanitarian disaster has been largely limited to two eastern provinces, South and North Kivu, and to the district of Ituri further north. In South Kivu, the violent struggles have been between two alliances: an alliance of opportunity was forged between Congolese Mai Mai groups and Rwandan and Burundian Hum groups (the Rwandan Interahamwe/ex-FAR, and the Burundian Forces pour la defense de la democratic, or FDD). This alliance was strongly supported by the Kinshasa authorities. The other alliance has been between the Tutsi-dominated RCD-Goma and Rwanda, which supported and controlled the RCD-Goma army and maintained a quasi governmental administration in the region. None of the Mai Mai groups had been invited to participate in the Lusaka negotiations and they never accepted the Ceasefire Agreement. Mai Mai leaders frequently stated that they would continue to fight Rwandan troops so long as the latter or their proxies operated in the Congo. In all of these alliances of opportunity and conflict, the operative principle seems to have been "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." This explains why the Mai Mai allied themselves, for a time, with Rwandan Hutu groups despite the fact that these were also foreigners whom they would want out of their region.

The Third Congo War is fundamentally different from the First and Second. It is far less structured and involves many more, though smaller, military actors. In the First and Second Congo Wars, the international community involved itself in seeking to contain the conflict and achieve, at the minimum, cease-fire agreements. This pressure contributed to the Lusaka Agreement. The Third Congo War has not benefited substantially from such initiatives and the result has been endless violence while the rest of the country, though divided, survives without daily, bloody confrontations.

Even though the Mai Mai and other Congolese armed groups in these conflict arenas are smaller and weaker than the three principal "partners" who have dominated the negotiations on the national scene (the Kinshasa or Kabila authorities, the MLC and the RCD-Goma), they all are focused on participating in the central government in Kinshasa. None have articulated programs aiming at secession, integration with surrounding states or independence.

With the development of the Second Congo War, the country was divided into several politico-military zones controlled by elites who were supported in each case by foreign allies. Once again, if there were any inclination to break up the Congo, these divisions easily could have served the purpose of a claim for an independent state. In fact, none of the leaders sought any solution other than joining and participating in a national government in Kinshasa. The aversion to any form of breakup or separatism is so great that in the Kivus the notion of federalism--surely a possible and reasonable institutional structure for a country as vast as the Congo--has become anathema as people fear that support for a federal solution implies separation from the whole.

As shown by the public opinion evidence that follows, there is pervasive acceptance among all Congolese of their common Congolese nationality. There is one glaring exception to those accepted as Congolese by the rest of the population, and that is the Rwandaphone populations, i.e., the Congolese Tutsi, Hutu and the separately identified Banyamulenge Tutsi. One can postulate the hypothesis that the three wars that the Congolese have endured and the humiliation that they have experienced at the hands of foreign armies has had a powerful strengthening effect on their sense of national identity. It may also explain the rejection of the Tutsi, all of whom have been linked with the Rwandan invaders. However, this does not explain why the Hutu are also rejected. This is particularly interesting in view of the campaign initiated among Congolese and African elites claiming that a profound division and antagonism exists among Africans of Bantu as against Hamitic or Nilotic backgrounds. This ideological claim, which has dubious scientific basis, places the Hutu among the Bantu and the Tutsi among the Hamitic/Nilotic peoples. Its political purpose has been to mobilize antagonism against the Tutsi and the Tutsi-led Rwandan government, and to legitimate the Kinshasa authorities' alliance with the Rwandan Hutu insurgents in the Congo. This ideological formulation can be observed not only all over the Congo but also as far away as Zimbabwe and Gabon. The survey data give almost no support to this ideology. This data suggest that the Hutu are rejected almost as much as the Tutsi and are part of the only group which is excluded from the national community. In sum, at the same time that the identification of the Congolese with the nation over the last 40 years has become stronger, it has also become more exclusionary with respect to one particular ethnic group--the Rwandaphone peoples.

National Identity and the War-Torn State: Public Opinion Surveys (20)

The following surveys commissioned by the authors were conducted in January and June 2002 in the following five cities of the Congo: Kinshasa, Kikwit, Lumumbashi, Mbuji-Mayi and Gemena. The first four of these cities were in the region controlled, at that time, by the Kinshasa authorities. The surveys in these cities were conducted by the Bureau d'etudes, de Red, etches et de Consulting International (BERCI), an independent Congolese research organization. The Gemena survey was undertaken in the region controlled by the MLC rebel authorities and conducted by lecturers at a university extension program in Gemena. More importantly, all of these cities were, at the time, in non-violent regions of the country. It would, of course, have been highly desirable to conduct the survey in the eastern part of the Congo both because it would have given us responses from the RCD-Goma controlled region as well as from a region of intense, ongoing violence and conflict. Unfortunately, despite our several attempts to gain access, the RCD-Goma authorities did not permit such an undertaking.

It is commonly thought that the Congo, given its size, heterogeneity and history, as well as its current state of conflict, is a country divided. However, in one of the most important questions put before the respondents, the vast majority identified themselves as Congolese, suggesting that there may in fact be a strong national identity among the Congolese people. (21)

In order to better understand whether there is a common perception of "national Unity," respondents in the BERCI polls were asked what they thought when one spoke of unity of the Congo. Gemena was not polled on this question because the question was added later. Respondents in Kinshasa and Kikwit shared similar responses: nearly one-third in each city thought of national unity as the Christian value of brotherly love (29 percent and 33 percent respectively), and nearly half of the respondents showed some nostalgia for the days of Mobutu and colonialism by thinking of it as Mobutu's Zaire (23 percent and 21 percent respectively) or the Belgian Congo (23 percent and 20 percent respectively). In contrast, only 11 percent of respondents in Lumumbashi thought to equate unity with Mobutu's Zaire and only 14 percent with the Belgian Congo. Reflecting the secessionist past of Katanga province, 35 percent of its residents in Lumumbashi equated unity with the territorial integrity of the state, the highest such response rate.

Only 4 percent of respondents in Kinshasa, 7 percent in Mbuji-Mayi, 15 percent in Lumumbashi and 16 percent in Kikwit equated unity with peace and democracy, which suggests that they do not consider peace as a determinant of unity--a logical conclusion given that they were at war under a non-democratic government, yet felt united under a common national identity.

When asked whether the Congo must remain unified, the vast majority of respondents in all five cities said yes, and even advocated the use of force, if necessary, to do so. (22) Earlier BERCI polls conducted in Kinshasa show respondents from all regions (residing in Kinshasa) categorically rejecting the idea of partitioning the country. (23) In an October 1996 survey in Kinshasa, less than one month into the first war, respondents overwhelmingly rejected carving up the country into independent states, with less than 5 percent in favor. In a November 1998 poll in Kinshasa, an overwhelming 89 percent were against partitioning the country. The response rates against any threat to the unity of the state have been consistently high every time this type of question has been asked.

In some cases, responses indicate that the disintegration of the country was not even seen as a possibility: In surveys conducted prior to Mobutu's ouster, respondents did not fear that his death would result in the division of the country. (24) This seriously qualifies the once Western-accepted "Mobutu or chaos" theory, and seems to indicate that for the Congolese people, national unity is not tied to one leader or one regime.

When asked if the unity of the Congo was more important than the interests of any particular group or ethnicity, respondents in all five cities answered overwhelmingly that unity superseded any one group's interests. (25) Although this has potentially grim consequences for minority rights in the country, it appears to suggest that ethnic identity is not the primary identification of the Congolese people, whereas a unitary Congolese nation is.

The responses about the importance of ethnic ties in earlier BERCI surveys is consistent with this observation. The majority of respondents surveyed in a September through October 2000 BERCI poll in Kinshasa, Matadi, Lumumbashi and Mbuji-Mayi indicated that ethnicity was not an important factor in their lives, and that it should not be a factor in political leadership. (26) Most respondents in each city indicated that they did not consider ethnicity an important factor in either their public or private lives. The one exception is Matadi, where respondents made the distinction between the importance of ethnicity in their public versus their private lives. Nearly half of those respondents thought that ethnicity was an important factor in one's public life.

There has been a gradual shift in Congolese preferences regarding systems of government since the start of the war. In BERCI surveys through 1998, among the three choices given--federal state (authority decentralized and constitutionally given), unitary state (authority highly centralized) and decentralized unitary state (authority decentralized and conferred by the state)--a federal system of government was preferred by most respondents. (27) However, there was a marked difference in opinion between the capital and cities in the interior. Interior cities indicated a strong preference for federalism, while respondents in Kinshasa indicated a slight preference for a unitary, yet decentralized, system. Although this showed a national preference for some kind of decentralized system, it also showed a concern in the capital of devolving too much power to provincial authorities. Since then, support for federalism has dropped drastically, with only 29 percent of all respondents in this survey favoring that system of government. In a country divided into four politico-military zones by six years of war, federalism has come to be seen as code word for partition. The tendency in recent years, therefore, has been to move away from a preference for a decentralized government structure because of fears that that decision would possibly lead to the permanent partition of the state. Thus, in our survey, 70 percent of respondents in Kinshasa favored some form of unitary state system. Only 23 percent of Kinshasa respondents favored federalism, compared to 41 percent in 1998. Sixty-four percent of respondents in Kikwit and 82 percent in Gemena favored some form of unitary state system. In Mbuji-Mayi, 46 percent of respondents favored some form of unitary state system and 39 percent favored federalism. Although this is the highest response rate in favor of federalism of the five cities, when compared to earlier polls, it is a dramatic drop; in a 1998 poll, for example, 73 percent of respondents in Mbuji-Mayi, the stronghold of Etienne Tshisekedi, the national leader of the nonviolent opposition, favored federalism. In Lumumbashi, 39 percent favored some form of unitary state and only 23 percent favored federalism--a change from four years ago when 53 percent favored federalism. The two cities with secessionist pasts had the highest rate of non-responses: Lumumbashi (39 percent) and Mbuji-Mayi (16 percent), due perhaps to a fear of being perceived as secessionist.

In June 2002, we asked respondents in Kinshasa, Kikwit, Lumumbashi and Mbuji-Mayi whether they thought the war was over. (28) The great majority in all four cities (76 percent total) said that they thought the war was ongoing. In Kinshasa, a greater percentage of respondents (18 percent) thought the war was over, compared to 11 percent of respondents in Mbuji-Mayi, 7 percent in Kikwit and 4 percent in Lumumbashi. Of the total, 76 percent in all four cities who responded said that the war was not over. When asked what solution they would support to end it, 44 percent favored the resumption of a national dialogue and reconciliation, which, at the time the survey was administered, had been interrupted; 7 percent favored reorganizing the national army to launch an offensive against enemy forces with or without foreign allies; 2 percent saw God and 2 percent saw elections as the solution; and only I percent considered the implementation of UN decisions as the best solution for ending the war. Although the use of force was strongly rejected, one-quarter of all respondents registered that they did not know what would end the war. (29)

The surveys sought to capture the degree of satisfaction with the public services provided by the state or, in rebel-held territories, by the rebel administration. They polled respondents' attitudes toward the following four public services: road maintenance, the provision of personal security and that of property; access and quality of education and primary health care.

An overwhelming 80 percent of respondents in the BERCI polls and 72 percent in the Gemena poll indicated that they were dissatisfied with the roads in their city. There was a similarly high rate of dissatisfaction in all five cities with the way roads are maintained, except in Gemena. There, 69 percent of respondents indicated that the roads were being maintained and 42 percent gave credit to the rebel authorities for that maintenance. Of those who thought the roads were being maintained in the other cities, over half in Kinshasa credited NGOs, missions and private companies; half of those in Kikwit, 86 percent of those in Lumumbashi and 73 percent of those in Mbuji-Mayi credited the state.

In earlier BERCI surveys, respondents consistently pointed to the improved security which was provided to persons and property as Laurent Kabila's greatest success. A survey conducted in Kisangani, Mbuji-Mayi and Lumumbashi three months before the outbreak of the second war had 62 percent of respondents approving of Kabila's policies to ensure the security of people and property. (30) However, our surveys indicate that the security situation seems to have improved only in Kinshasa, where 58 percent of respondents feel secure. Overall, only 38 percent of respondents in the BERCI polls and 45 percent in the Gemena poll were satisfied with their security. When asked if they felt adequately protected against crime, 67 percent of respondents in Gemena indicated that they were, compared to 53 percent in Kinshasa and Kikwit, 41 percent in Lumumbashi and only 33 percent in Mbuji-Mayi (the least satisfied). This question, of course, relates to who is in control of the local police.

Most respondents, with the exception of Kinshasa, are dissatisfied with their access to and the quality of primary health care. Gemena had the highest rate of dissatisfaction, with 60 percent of respondents claiming to be dissatisfied. Respondents in all five cities indicated an even higher level of dissatisfaction with the educational system than with the health care system. Only one-quarter of respondents in the BERCI polls and one-third of those in Gemena said they were satisfied.

When asked about the absolute right of different groups to determine their future, half of the BERCI poll respondents and 79 percent of those in Gemena said that minority groups should not have the right to determine their own future. The question itself, however, was fairly ambiguous, and could have included options from the right to self-determination and secession to the right to pursue group self-interest in a centralized political system.

If one focuses specifically on ethnic groups, the survey results strongly suggest a great amount of mutual acceptance, at least as regards the recognition that members of "other" ethnic groups are bona fide Congolese. The Rwandaphone populations are a significant exception. Their citizenship rights have been challenged on several occasions in the past. While there is no available polling data that indicates what the popular attitude toward Rwandaphone populations was prior to the outbreak of the war in 1996, the Congo wars have no doubt had a dramatic impact on the degree of acceptance the public is willing to accord them. (31) We would assume that the impact has been to reduce their acceptance sharply.

In order to determine attitudes towards these groups, a series of questions in the questionnaire were tailored for each city. Respondents were given a list of ethnic groups and asked which of the ethnic groups on the list living in the Congo were Congolese. The list included prevalent ethnic groups living in their particular city, as well as Hutu, Tutsi and Banyamulenge, who, unlike other Tutsis, live in a homogeneous community of cattle herders on the upper reaches of a mountain range in South Kivu. All the ethnic groups other than Rwandaphone groups were overwhelmingly considered Congolese, except in instances when the respondent was unfamiliar with a particular ethnic group. In those cases, the unfamiliarity was demonstrated by a high rate of non-response for that ethnic group rather than a high rate of objection to that group's nationality status. Of the respondents in the BERCI polls, 54 percent considered the Banyamulenge not to be Congolese and another 20 percent were unsure. In other words, only 26 percent accepted the Banyamulenge as Congolese. This indicates a much greater willingness to consider the Banyamulenge to be Congolese than the Hutu or Tutsi. The two latter groups were categorically rejected as Congolese: 83 percent said the Tutsi were not Congolese and 82 percent said that the Hutu were not. This is consistent with earlier BERCI polls. For example, in a poll taken in Kinshasa four months into the second war, when respondents were asked about the nationality question of the Tutsi all overwhelming majority said that they were not Congolese--only 4 percent said they should be granted citizenship, even as a solution to the war. (32) The exception to this trend is Gemena, where the Tutsi and especially the Hutu fared slightly better than the Banyamulenge. Eighty, per cent of respondents in Gemena said that the Banyamulenge are not Congolese, 74 percent said that of the Tutsi and 66 percent said that of the Hutu.

From an internal Congolese point of view, one of the more interesting results of these polls is the sharp difference in the acceptance of Tutsi as a general category in contrast to the Banyamulenge. Although there is no consensus on exact dates, the Banyamulenge probably emigrated from Rwanda and Burundi about 200 years ago, and thus probably constitute the longest residing Rwandaphone community in the Congo. It is possible that their greater acceptance as Congolese by the Congolese people is due to their longevity in the country. However, it is more likely that recent events explain the difference in attitudes between the Banyamulenge and the Tutsi and Hutu. In January 2002, Rwanda and the RCD-Goma undertook a military campaign against the Banyamulenge community in the High Plateau because a mutinous Banyamulenge officer had organized a rebellion against their authority.

This inter-Tutsi war resulted in some modification in the attitudes of some members of the Congolese political class vis-a-vis the Tutsi. These leaders had tended to view all Tutsi as one united bloc and some advocated their expulsion from the Congo. Since the struggle has been quite violent, it may be that the Banyamulenge are beginning to gain some modest acceptance as genuine Congolese who have paid with blood for their divorce from their fellow Rwandan Tutsi. However, the more recent escalation of tensions between Congo's transitional government and Rwanda, and in particular the killings of over 100 Congolese Tutsi refugees in Burundi camps, may alter the situation.

The Congolese believe that certain minority groups deserve and require special protection. In this regard, the survey focused not only on ethnic minorities but also on such groups as "internally displaced persons," "child soldiers," "invalids," etc. Nonethnic minority groups are seen as deserving special protection by a larger number of respondents than ethnic groups. It is noteworthy that a substantially larger number of respondents favored giving Rwandaphone minorities special protection than respondents who considered them to be Congolese.

Specifically, the BERCI poll produced the following positive responses for special protection:

Refugees 89%
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) 77%
Child Soldiers 70%
The Infirm 70%
Invalids 64%
Pygmies 52%
Hema (Ethnic Group in Ituri) 36%
Lendu (Ethnic Group in Ituri) 36%
Banyamulenge 33%
Hutu 28%
Tutsi 26%

Ethnic minorities not only received a lower percentage of approval for special protection than the other minority categories but also a higher nonresponse rate. In the Gemena survey, pygmies received a much lower degree of support for special protection. This can, of course, be linked to the fact that a relatively large number of pygmies live in Equateur province. The results in the Gemena poll were largely consistent with the BERCI ones except that the level of support for special protection was, across the board, lower for all groups.

Respondents were also asked what type of special protection they supported. Both in the BERCI and in the Gemena polls the protection favored was legal rather than through the use of force or such methods as civic education.

The majority of respondents everywhere thought the government had been ineffective in resolving intergroup, interethnic, and interregional conflicts. Respondents in Mbuji-Mayi, the home of political opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, and Gemena, a rebel stronghold, were the most critical of the government's effectiveness. Lumumbashi, located in Kabila's home province, had the highest rate of non-responses. Gemena respondents were also given the opportunity to Judge the effectiveness of the MLC rebel administration in their area. Respondents were split down the middle: 47 percent found the MLC effective, while 48 percent found it ineffective--higher marks, however, than Gemena respondents gave the Kinshasa government.

When asked whether the Kinshasa government represented the interests of all the Congolese, the majority of those polled said it did not. Of the five cities polled, Kinshasa respondents indicated the most favorable assessment of the government's role in this regard. Respondents in the Gemena survey were also asked to assess the rebel authority's performance in this area. They indicated that the MLC defended the interests of all Congolese more effectively than the Kinshasa government.

CONCLUSION

Simply put, the survey data presented here clearly shows that a national consciousness and identity has been emerging in the Congo. This comes as no surprise to social scientists and other observers of Congolese society who have had direct contact with the people of this country during recent years.

A second conclusion is also no surprise to "Congo watchers"--that all administrations during the three wars, i.e., Kinshasa and the rebel authorities, have failed to perform most services which are usually considered to be normal, or even minimal, responsibilities of governments vis-a-vis their citizenry. Given the economic decline of the country over the last 40 years, it is surprising how much "satisfaction" with these services is reported by the data. What this may mean is that years of hardship and declining state support have so reduced expectations that some respondents consider what they are receiving as adequate or the norm. In this regard, it may be possible to employ the data along with additional research to qualify differences, and their causes, between the different regions and urban centers surveyed. But the essential, abstract lesson to be drawn from a coupling of the national identity variable and the services rendered variable is that a national consciousness can develop, even to a strong degree, without any obvious material benefit to the citizenry emanating from the state structures in question.

In this sense, the data must be viewed as challenging an entire school of political science, notably led by Karl Deutsch. One thing is clear: social communication among all Congolese cannot, under present circumstances, be said to be intense, nor are the levels of transactions among them high. (33) And although we would agree with Benedict Anderson (34) that the Congolese nation is "imagined" and not a primordial given, the social construction of nationhood in the Congo suggests that national identity formation is a continual process and not a one-time event. (35) Congolese identity is a moving force that has been, and continues to be, refrained by the nationalization of political space.

The one dramatic exception to the general acceptance of all inhabitants as Congolese is the Rwandaphone population, whose claim to Congolese nationality is widely rejected. But even here a nuance has to be emphasized. Some, perhaps most, of the current rejection of the Rwandaphone population is linked to the effects of the Rwandan genocide on the Congolese people--the sudden immigration of about 1 million Rwandan Hutu in 1994, and the subsequent invasions of the First and Second Congo Wars by Tutsi-dominated Rwanda, bringing war and disaster to the Congo.

These surveys measure the positive elements of unification and identification with the state and nation, and thus may be more optimistic about the Congo's reconstruction prospects than realities on the ground warrant. While it is evident that the Congolese people will resist any effort, external or internal, to undermine the national unity and territorial integrity of the state, they will fight equally hard for the spoils contained within it. A strong national consciousness does not, therefore, preclude crippling internal divisions over power and resources.

In the Congo, after nearly a decade of war and four years after the signing of the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement, the promised transitional government was finally established in June 2003. In its first year of operation, this transitional government has had some positive impact, especially on the interior of the country, despite the continued violence in eastern Congo. People and goods now freely circulate across the different military-political zones, at least when the roads are passable. Cellular communications companies have set up operations throughout rebel-held territory, linking by satellite previously cut-off communities. And a common currency is now in use throughout the country, albeit alongside the trusted US dollar. Yet internal divisions continue to stymie efforts to rebuild state institutions.

The transitional government adopted a "1+4 formula," modeled loosely after the South African "1+2" model, which is not surprising, given the key role that South Africa played in mediating the settlement. President Joseph Kabila retained his position and four new vice presidents were appointed, drawn from the two principal rebel groups (the MLC and the RCD-Goma) and one each from the former Kinshasa authorities and the political opposition to it. In addition, over 50 ministers and deputy ministers were appointed and a parliament was selected from representatives of the Kinshasa authorities, the rebel groups, the unarmed political opposition, civil society and Congolese militia groups such as the Mai Mai. This interim government thus forces former enemies and in many cases, current enemies, to occupy the same political space and work toward developing new and durable institutions. It makes Vice President Ruberwa, for instance, a Banyamulenge Tutsi and leader of the Rwandan-backed RCD-Goma, a "partner" of Vice President Yerodia, who as Kabila's foreign minister in 1998 was one of the main leaders of the widespread anti-Tutsi pogrom which spread to all Kinshasa-controlled regions.

In the Congo, as elsewhere, the period immediately following the signing of a peace agreement after prolonged intrastate conflict and state predation--the implementation of the agreement--is not only the first phase, but arguably the most critical phase in any postwar reconstruction effort. As John Stedman has noted, two of the most violent outbreaks of conflict in Africa--Angola and Rwanda--followed the collapse of peace agreements. (36) Other studies have found that half of conflicts that end through negotiated settlement rather than outright victory result in renewed fighting within five years. (37) The strategies in this phase, therefore, must lay the foundations for peace. Only in that way can long-term reconstruction be undertaken.

In the DRC, the new transitional government has been mandated with three principal reconstruction, or more accurately, "nation-building" tasks for the 24 months it is scheduled to be in business. (38) First, it must draw up a new constitution; second, it must prepare and hold national and provincial elections; and third, it must establish a new, integrated national army. The first hurdle--that of drafting a new constitution--was partly crossed in April 2003, when a UN-assembled team of Swiss jurists helped to draft an interim constitution. It reflects the provisions in the Pretoria Agreement as well as elements of all previous Congolese constitutions and gives all important role to the legislature, which is to pass a series of laws that will lead to a new constitution. One key issue that the new constitution must address is the degree of political decentralization. While some form of territorial decentralization would make sense to reassure political and ethnic minority groups and thus help overcome group insecurity in a country as large and diverse as the DRC, there is, as the polls above have shown, very little support for federalism. A new constitution will have to be ratified, and this will raise the issue of voter rights and citizenship. These have been very divisive issues in Congo's history, especially regarding the Rwandaphone populations.

The transitional government's second hurdle is that of selecting an electoral system and preparing for elections. The only relatively free national election ever held in the Congo was in May 1960, immediately prior to independence--not a great track record. Identity cards and birth records are nonexistent, and the last census was conducted in 1984. Thus, some may want to hold off elections until a new national census and voter registry have been completed, a time consuming and contentious process. The option to hold the referendum without a voter registry, as was done in the 1994 South African elections, has been rejected by the principals involved.

One of the most difficult tasks facing the transitional government and the international donor community assisting in the implementation of the agreement is the integration of the armed forces and the composition of a new national army. This, more than any other, is the factor on which the transition hinges, as there is enormous mistrust among the formerly warring parties. "Patterns of cooperative behavior cannot be fully accomplished until military security-building ... has been largely achieved, and leaders and the public concentrate on coping with the arduous challenges of institution-building and economic development." (39) Indeed, in eastern Congo some of the belligerent parties continue to fight. The process of military integration and demobilization of armed groups has hardly begun. Soldiers and militia are, of course, particularly dangerous because they have guns. The divisions among them are numerous and daunting. In addition, the Rwandan Hutu militia, the Interahamwe/ex-FAR, are far from having been disarmed and repatriated and this remains a dangerous bone of contention between the DRC and Rwanda, and results in ongoing violence in eastern Congo.

Finally, the efforts to exclude the Rwandaphone population from political participation poses a greater problem than may at first seem likely. As the past has shown, the specific exclusion of the Rwandaphone population can lead to the gravest interstate conflicts in the Great Lakes region. Thus, despite the fact that this population is numerically relatively small, the issues surrounding their citizenship rights, popular antagonism towards them, and relations between the DRC and Rwanda and Burundi have in the past, and will in the future, be inter-related. This poses a great danger for future peace in the Congo, and without that peace, real reconstruction is unlikely to succeed.

* This article is a shortened version of Weiss and Carayannis, "The Enduring Idea of the Congo," in Ricardo Rene Laremont, ed., Borders, Nationalism, and the African State (Boulder, Co: Lynne Rienner Publishers, forthcoming 2005).

NOTES

(1) Tatiana Carayannis and Herbert F. Weiss, "The Democratic Republic of Congo: 1996-2002," lane Boulden, ed., Dealing with Conflict in Africa: The Role of the United Nations and Regional Organizations (London: Palgrave, 2003), 271-72. See also Tatiana Carayannis, "The Network Wars of the Congo: Towards a New Analytic Approach," Journal of Asian and African Studies 38, no. 2-3, (2003), 232-255.

(2) See mortality study on the DRC released by the International Rescue Committee on May 8, 2001. Recent UNHCR estimates suggest that there are currently nearly 3 million internally displaced persons in the country one of the highest rates of displacement in Africa.

(3) For example, the Bakongo who resided in northern Angola, Congo, French Congo and Cabinda; the Lunda, who lived in Angola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and the Belgian Congo; the Zande, who are found both in southern Sudan and northern Belgian Congo; and the Tutsi and Hutu, who resided mainly in Rwanda and Burundi but also across the frontier in Congo.

(4) Roger Anstey, King Leopold's Possessive Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 2. See also Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Creed, Terror, and Heroism in Central Africa (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998).

(5) Mobutu was initially a close ally of Lumumba's. He had been a member of the Force Publique, and later was a journalist.

(6) Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Alain Forest, and Herbert Weiss. Rebellions-Revolution au Zaire: 1963-1965. (Paris: Editions L'Harmattan, 1987), and Benoit Verhaegen, Rebellions au Congo. (Brussels, Les Edudes du CRISP, 1969)

(7) Some estimates put the death rate of these clashes at 1 million lives.

(8) Kevin C. Dunn, Imagining the Congo: The International Relations of Identity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

(9) For an analysis of Zairian state formation under the Mobutu regime see Thomas M. Callaghy, The State-Society Society Struggle: Zaire in Comparative Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984) and Crawford Young and Thomas Turner, The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State (Madison, Wisconsin. The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985)

(10) Janet MacGaffey, "Fending for Yourself: The Organization of the Second Economy in Zaire," in Nzongola-Ntalaja (Ed.), The Crisis in Zaire: Myths and Realities. (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1986). 144.

(11) Union pour la democratie et le progres social.

(12) Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Linda Melvern, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide (New York: Zed Books, 2000); J. Matthew Vaccaro, "The Politics of Genocide: Peacekeeping and Disaster Relief in Rwanda," William J. Durch, ed., UN Peacekeeping, American Policy, and the Uncivil Wars of the 1990s (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996), pp. 367-407; Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform you that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With our Families: Stories from Rwanda (New York: Farar, Straus, and Giroux, 1998); Scott Peterson, Me Against my Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda (New York: Routledge, 2000); Bruce D. Jones, Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failure (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001); United Nations, "UN Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations During the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda," December 15, 1999.

(13) UN Security Council resolution 929 was adopted on June 22, 1994. [Italics added.]

(14) Once out of power, known as "the ex-FAR"; later, ALiR (Armee Pour la Liberation du Rwanda) when they recruited others, not connected to the 1994 genocide, into their ranks; and more recently, FDLR (Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda).

(15) Some of these insurrection movements included the Lord's Resistance Army, the West Nile Bank Front and the Allied Democratic Forces.

(16) Surveys conducted by the Bureau d'Etudes, de Recherches et de Consulting International (BERCI), a Congolese research firm, between 1997-98 show a gradual decline in Kabila's popularity in his first year in power, and then a sharp increase when he broke with his Rwandan and Ugandan allies. He was most popular in the weeks following the outbreak of the second war in August 1998. However, his popularity gradually declined after that, as the toll of war began to register. It is worth noting that at the height of Kabila's popularity, respondents overwhelmingly characterized his government as a dictatorship, while at the same time advocating for a transition to democratic elections. This may indicate that the population initially made a distinction between Kabila the person and leader, and government policy

(17) Henceforth referred to as the anti-Kabila alliance or the "rebellion."

(18) When Kabila was in alliance with the Rwandans the Mai Mai fought against the alliance.

(19) The text of the agreement is available from http://www.monuc.org/english/geninfo/documents/documents.asp (May 24, 2002) or http://www.usip.org/library/pa/index/pa_drc.html (February 1, 2003).

(20) These public opinion surveys were first administered in Gemena, in the Congo's northern Equateur province, in January 2002, while under rebel (MLC) control: and then in June 2002 in the cities of Kinshasa, Mbuji-Mayi, Lumumbashi, and Kikwit with BERCI.

(21) The following percent of respondents in each city identified themselves as Congolese: Kinshasa, 96 percent: Kikwit, 99 percent: Lumumbashi, 98 percent; Mbuji-Mayi, 99 percent: Gemena, 100 percent. The vast majority of respondents in all five cities also felt that other ethnic groups identified them as Congolese: Kinshasa, 88 percent: Kikwit, 64 percent: Lumumbashi, 85 percent; Mbuji-Mayi, 93 percent; Gemena, 95 percent.

(22) Kinshasa, 90 percent; Kikwit, 85 percent: Lumumbashi, 69 percent: Mbuji-Mayi, 84 percent; Gemena, 62 percent.

(23) See, for example, Oct 1996, Nov 1998.

(24) In an October i996 survey conducted in Kinshasa by BERCI, respondents were more concerned about a military coup (40 percent) than of the country being carved up (31 percent) in the event of Mobutu's death. In fact, more respondents indicated that death of Mobutu would not likely result in the division of the country (43 percnet) than those who thought it likely to divide the country (31 percent). 25 Kinshasa, 96 percent; Kikwit, 76 percent: Lumumbashi, 83 percent: Mbuji-Mayi, 88 percent; Gemena, 99 percent.

(26) Moreover, in this survey, fewer than 13 percent of respondents in all four cities (3% percent in Lumumbashi only) said that they were best represented by ethnic associations.

(27) In the April 1998 BERCI survey conducted in Kinshasa and the May 1998 survey conducted in Kinsangani, Lumumbashi, and Mbuji-Mayi, most respondents noted a preference for federalism (60 percent nationally), although that sentiment was much stronger outside of the capital. In Kinshasa, there was an even split between federalism and some form of unitary state (centralized or decentralized). Support for federalism dropped in Kinshasa in the first year of the Kabila regime; however, it was still the most popular system of government throughout the country then.

(28) Gemena was not polled on this as the question was added later.

(29) Although less so by respondents from Lumumbashi, 14 percent of whom suggested that alternative, compared to 4 percent or less in other cities.

(30) BERCI, May 1998.

(31) BERCI surveys did not distinguish between Tutsi and Banyamulenge until very recently. Survey questions asked about the Tutsi only.

(32) BERCI survey, November 199bi.

(33) Karl Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1953).

(34) Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: New Left Books, 1991).

(35) Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996).

(36) Stephen John Stedman, "Introduction," Stephen John Stedman, Donald Rothchild, and Elizabeth M. Cousens, eds., Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2002), 1.

(37) Roy Licklider, "The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars, 1945-1993," American Political Science Review 89, no. 3 (1995): 681-690.

(38) The negotiated settlement does grant the transitional government a six month extension if necessary.

(39) Donald Rothchild, "Settlement Terms and Postagreement Stability," Stedman et al., 117-118.