The US Supreme Court and the Congo

The US Supreme Court will soon rule on a case of great importance to the Congo. Well, not really, but it does reveal an interesting loop hole in international diplomacy and law.

In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the court is currently hearing a case about a retired United States administrative law judge who wanted to provide training in peaceful dispute resolution to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has waged a separatist guerrilla campaign against the Turkish government, and to advise the group on how to petition the United Nations and other international organizations for relief. (See the New York Times Op-Ed here.)

It is illegal for people in the US to provide "material support" to groups listed as terrorist organizations by the US government. Support can be financial, but also advice and "service." The issue at stake in the Supreme Court case is what exactly this vague definition of material support means.

The reason that I raise this issue is because the US, as well as governments in Europe, has consistently had a hard time prosecuting leaders and supporters of rebel groups abroad, no matter how violent and abusive those groups are. In Germany, for example, the prosecutors flailed around for a long time before finally prosecuting the FDLR leaders living there based on the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute definition of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The US, of course, has not signed onto the Rome Statute. It can, however, prosecute people who provide material support to terrorist groups, which are defined as organizations that threaten the security of US nationals or US national interests. Most of the organizations on the current list are linked to extremist Islamist networks. But there are some notable exceptions of groups that do not target US interests per se, but who may target governments allied to the US: the PKK in Turkey, LTTE in Sri Lanka, ETA in Spain. Just to prove that it is more about political will than abiding by legal definitions. (In fact, many have criticized the naming of these groups as cynical realpolitik).

All of this is just to say that the FDLR, CNDP and LRA can be as massively abusive as they want to be and still travel to the United States. In fact, the two leaders of an FDLR splinter faction, RUD-URUNANA, live in New Jersey and Massachusetts. When the CNDP was still officially a rebel group, its leaders regularly traveled throughout Africa and Europe.

We may need to think about some more creative legislating - in the US, you can get people under

• the Torture Victim Protection Act, which allows for the filing of civil suits in the United States against individuals who, acting in an official capacity for any foreign nation, committed torture and/or extrajudicial killing.
  
• the Alien Tort Claims Act, which allows United States courts to hear human rights cases brought by foreign citizens for conduct committed outside the United States, including by corporations.

Unfortunately, you have to prove the "purposeful complicity in human rights violations," which is often difficult. (See here for more detail.)

Vulture funds, censorship and debt relief

A few miscellaneous tidbits:

• The Paris Club of Creditors agreed Thursday to cancel $1.3 billion of the Democratic Republic of Congo's external public debt and to reschedule around $1.6 billion of the debt it owes. This is eliminate around 97% of debt services the Congo has to do, a substantial subsidy to its budget.
• The Congolese government has upheld the suspension of Radio France International throughout the country. It initially cut RFI, which broadcast on FM in various Congolese cities, in July 2009, claiming that its broadcasts "undermined army morale." It also maintains the persona non grata status of RFI's main correspondent to the Congo, Ghislaine du Pont.
• The Comite national de suivi (CNS), the peace process committee, is meeting in Goma with the various signatory armed groups. The CNDP refused to meet with them because they didn't get positions in the new cabinet. The government is now saying that this was because "they didn't agree on CNDP candidates and send us their CVs on time." Sure.
• The Financial Times reported that the Congolese government is now being sued in a Hing Kong court by a "vulture fund" that bought part of Congolese public debt and is now trying to get the Chinese government to pay them what the Congolese owe from the $350 million signing bonus. The total they want: $100 million. (Article here, might need to subscribe).
  

Chinque Chantiers: Hiccups in the China-Congo deal

There was a good article in the Africa-Asia Confidential newsletter last week on the Congo-China deal. (You can read it for free here). According to a parliamentary commission, some $23 million of the $350 million in signing bonuses have gone missing.

"Commission President and ruling party member Modeste Bahati Lukwebo criticised the collusion of some senior officials in Gécamines with 'local justice officials in Lubumbashi '. This complicity 'facilitated the loss of $23,722,036 of the $50 mn. intended for Gécamines,' claimed the report, signed by five deputies of the Assembly.

The $50 mn. is just a part of the $350 mn. entry fee that the Chinese consortium agreed to pay for signing the $6 bn. ore-for-infrastructure joint venture deal which was concluded on 22 April 2008 by Minister of State for Infrastructure Pierre Lumbi Okongo, China Railway's Li Changjin and Sinohydro's Fan Jixiang.

The deal gave the Chinese companies access to mining concessions which hold 10.6 mn. tonnes of copper and 626,000 tonnes of cobalt, which are currently estimated to be worth $100 billion, in exchange for the construction of railways, roads, schools and hospitals. The Chinese consortium added a new partner in July 2008, giving China Metallurgical Group a 20% stake."

The report also talks about other hiccups in the deal:

• "The biofuels project involving the Chinese telecommunications company ZTE has stalled. In 2007, when the Memorandum of Understanding between ZTE and Congo 's Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Livestock farming was signed, it was estimated that the biofuels project, worth $1 bn., would require 3 mn. hectares of oil palm plantations in Equateur, Bandundu, Orientale and Kasai-Occidental provinces. In 2008, 250 hectares of fertile land were offered to ZTE. The Agriculture Minister has twice received delegations from ZTE to discuss this. The last time was in March 2009, but three years after the MOU nothing has been done and according to the Ministry of Agriculture 'nobody talks about it anymore'."
• "...talks were underway in 2009 with the China Development Bank and Sinosure to finance four universities and the renovation of N'Djili airport, as well as the road leading there, in Kinshasa . The contractor was supposed to be Changda Highway Engineering Corporation. None of these projects had materialised because the CDB did not accept the concessions offered to them in Potopoto in Katanga and had pulled out of talks in late 2009. The CDB was the financier behind Sinosure, so the deal involving the latter also fell through.

The price of peace

As expected, the CNDP is not happy about not getting any cabinet positions in PM Muzito's new government line-up. " A violation of the peace deal," they called it in their press statement. Kabila's coalition reacted, saying they had to respect the constitution, implying that they couldn't name anyone to the cabinet from a party which hadn't been elected to parliament.

So will this deeply damage the peace process in the Kivus?

According to a source close to both parties, probably not. Apparently, a fund that officials close to President Kabila set might be used to keep CNDP officers flush with cash, perhaps to compensate for the lack of ministerial finery. PAREC, a registered NGO run by Pasteur Mulunda Ngoy, is currently handing out $50 per weapon collected in their campaign to disarm the civilian population in Masisi and Rutshuru. Mulunda Ngoy is very close to the president (he was a key go between with the FDLR at the beginning of the 1998 war) and has already carried out a controversial disarmament campaign in Katanga province, giving people bicycles for cash. (It caused some militia to fight each other for the bicycles, and one civilian was blown up by a landmine he was bringing in for collection.)

Anyway, apparently there was a meeting in a private house in Goma yesterday, where CNDP officials met with Mulunda and he promised money for General Bosco Taganda and several of his officers. It looks like the CNDP won't go back to war any time soon: they are doing too well with their parallel administration in Masisi and these kinds of deals.


Plus, the tin prices have gone back up again since the commodity crash in 2009. As you can see here, they bubbled towards the end of 2008, only to crawl back slowly. They are now around the level they were in early 2008.

CNDP tighten control over Masisi

As mentioned in the last post, the CNDP will probably not be very happy that they didn't get a ministerial position during the cabinet re-shuffle on Saturday. Up until the last minute, they had been hoping to get one of their men into the government. What will the consequences be?

Well, just last week the CNDP leadership told MONUC that they would not dismantle their parallel taxation system in Masisi unless they "obtained administrative positions for their cadres." I guess that was what they were talking about, not just the 6 territorial administrators they have been promised. They are thus going back on their promise to dismantle the roadblocks and taxes in Masisi once the government pays for health care for their war wounded. (I think the government has disbursed some/much of the money for their health care).

Then, later in the week, we found out that the CNDP had tightened its control over a large part of highland Masisi. The CNDP administrator, Jerome Mashagiro, who is based in Mushaki, has demanded that all house owners in Kitchanga pay $25 within a week, warning that if they didn't they would be evicted from their houses. Then, the ex-CNDP and ex-PARECO police forces in Mushaki, Matanda and Kadirisha stopped taking orders from the Goma police command and have rallied behind the CNDP administration. The former PARECO commander Colonel Zabuloni (a Hutu from Masisi) is apparently their leader, an interesting development given the former enmity between PARECO and the CNDP, but such is the see-saw dynamics between Hutu and Tutsi in Masisi.

Lastly, a CNDP Hutu stalwart called Erasto (he claims to be a traditional chief) has told the population in Masisi not to heed calls for civilians disarmament. A group called PAREC has offered cash in return for weapons in the area. Erasto allegedly told people not to hand over weapons, "You will still need them."

According to MONUC, during the past few weeks, a wave of killings of civilians has hit the CNDP-controlled area; these killings were reportedly all committed by non-integrated CNDP soldiers or deserters.

Kabila shuffles his cabinet: analysis

After months of waiting and rumor-mongering, President finally shuffled his cabinet today. (A full list of the new cabinet can be found here.) He trimmed it down from 54 to 43 members, mostly by cutting down on vice-ministers (many weren't sure what they did anyway), but otherwise the most important aspect of this shuffle is what did not happen.

The embattled Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito was not fired, as many had suspected, for charges of corruption and ineffectiveness. The important ministries of defense, mining, foreign affairs, information and planning were not changed. And, above all, the Kabila alliance between his AMP coalition, Antoine Gizenga's PALU and Nzanga Mobutu's UDEMO has not been affected. I can understand keeping Muzito around and maintaining the alliance with PALU, as they do have a decent electoral machine in Kinshasa and Bandundu, but UDEMO? Nzanga Mobutu was barely able to bring any MPs with him into alliance, and only a few per cent of Equateur voted for him.

The other thing that did not happen was that the CNDP did not get any ministerial positions. Not even a vice-minister, apparently. The one Tutsi minister who had been in the cabinet, the former CNDP sympathizer Safi Adili, was fired after only 14 months from the Ministry of Rural Development and replaced by a Katangan who as recently as 2003 was an mid-level assistant in the ministry. The CNDP has been banking on getting at least one ministry as part of their deal with Kabila to dismantle the parallel administration - this may affect the peace process in the East.

The new nominations are a bit lackluster, I must say. The government used to have three vice prime ministers, one for security, another for reconstruction and the last for social needs. They got rid of the reconstruction one and replaced him with one for post and telecommunications. That's right - the Congo now has a vice PM for the post office. Has anyone ever been to a post office in the Congo recently? Not exactly functional. But mobile phones are one of the biggest industries, so maybe that's why. The guy that Kabila nominated, Simon BULUPIY GALATI, is a relative unknown former MP from Haut Uele.

The other big changes are: MATATA PONYO MAPON replaces Athanasa Matenda at the ministry of finance - not a huge change there, as he used to be the head of BCECO, the procurement office that attributes most contracts for foreign assistance managed by the Congolese. He has the trust of the World Bank and IMF.

Kabila took advantage of the shuffle to reconfigure his own personal cabinet. Perhaps the most interesting thing is the new-found importance of oil. Since his chief of staff Adolphe Lumanu is now the powerful vice PM for security, he named a new one, another Kasaian: Gustave Beya, who had been at the oil ministry before. Just goes to show how important oil is becoming in the Congo's future (see other blog postings about oil here - and that's just offshore oil, not to mention the reserves in Lake Albert). Along the same lines, the former Minister of Interior, Celestin Mbuyu, a close Kabila ally, has been named as the new minister of oil.

Also newly named was Kabila's national security adviser, a position that has in the past wielded huge control over the intelligence services in the country. That position has now been filled by a Kivutian, Pierre Lumbi, (it used to be headed by a Katangan) who used to be the minister of reconstruction and is credited for having negotiated the $9 billion Chinese reconstruction deal. Lumbi, now 60 years old, is the godfather of the civil society movement in South Kivu; let's see if he remembers his roots.

The killings and kidnappings continue: South Kivu

Here's an example of what kinds of killings are going on in South Kivu at the moment. From an internal UN report of a few days ago:

"Military observers reported the killing of 7 women by FDLR at Kisembe village in the Mulombozi groupment of Mwenga territory. According to the report, 15 women were initially seized and taken to the forest after the assailants stormed and cordoned a market area on 12 February. Eight of the fifteen later managed to either escape or get released while the remaining seven were cold bloodedly killed by the criminals. The names of the victims have been given as Nyabulambo, Nyamunyatwa, Esperance, Mrs Muganza, Mere ‘Sadam’, Mrs Mbulu and Wabiwa. The Chef de Poste in Kamituga has revealed that the FDLR atrocity was apparently in reprisal against a recent Amani Leo Operations during which FDLR dependents were captured and handed to UNHCR for repatriation.

"On 12 February, UNMOs interacted with the Bunyakiri Intelligence Officer who informed that 2 weeks ago, FDLR also kidnapped 13 women from Mashere (27 NW of Bunyakiri) and took them into the forests. On 6 February, the miscreants kidnapped 4 more people at Kaumi (4 KM SE of Bunyakiri) but soon after released them with a message that FDLR should be given access to market produce in the area failing which the villages of Bulambika and Kambali nearby will be attacked.

"In another incident, armed men in Kamanyola village killed a Palm Oil dealer who was shot at close range in her house on the night of 13 and 14 February. According to Lt Col Salumu, 411 Bde Cdr, the victim, a 56 year old mother of 6 children named Monique Fatima, was killed a kilometer and a half away from the Team Site. Lt. Col Salumu narrating the incident said three men, one of whom was armed got Monique to open her door through a neighbour forced at gun point to knock on the victim’s door that night. The assailants demanded money from Mrs Fatima insisting they knew she had money as she was a cross border Palm Oil trader. She admitted that she had only 3000FC and asked to be allowed to contact her son for more money. Once inside her house, she began screaming for help and this angered the bandits one of whom shot her dead. The bandits fled the scene."