Erratum

Correction: The proposed budget for the organization of local and national elections is apparently $700 million, not $70 as I had initially written (which might have been enough to buy Malu Malu a pizza and a beer at the Grand Hotel).

Elections in the DRC: Just a year away

You may have missed it (I did), but in late July President Kabila finally signed into a law legislation creating a new electoral commission. It will be led by an office of 7 people, four of whom are designated by the majority coalition in the national assembly (Kabila's AMP) and three by the opposition .

Elections in 2011 may be very contentious, especially if a strong opponent to Kabila emerges, such as Vital Kamerhe. There are a few controversies making the rounds at the moment. First, the existing electoral commission has asked for all Congolese voters to re-register; they say that there have been a lot of fraudulent registration cards distributed. This could be contentious, especially in the East, where many rwandophones breathed a sigh of relief when they effectively obtained proof of citizenship through their last voter registration card in 2005. What will happen in areas such as Masisi, where we know have over 10,000 refugees who have returned from Rwanda?

Secondly, the issue of foreign supervision/interference. Much was made about MONUC being sent packing before elections, so they wouldn't be able to observe any funny business, but apparently the electoral commission has now asked MONUC to help with logistics - in 2006, it was largely the peacekeeping mission that helped transport ballot boxes and personnel.

The elections in 2006 were more or less free and fair (with some notable exceptions). But the government has repeatedly said they want to organize these elections themselves. I hear a provisional budget would be around $70 million for two separate rounds of elections (first national, then local), with the Congolese government funding over half. That is a far cry from the over $400 million needed for the 2006 elections - how will they organize it? Will they allow the same degree of civil society and foreign observation?

Finally, the electoral calendar - it's already getting pretty tight. According to the constitution, the presidential elections have to be held by the latest in September 2011, just a year from now. Apparently the electoral commission will propose the timetable once the national assembly comes back into session in September, but that could take a while, especially if we are delayed by a new registration process.

Kigali-Kampala beef?

The following is from a story in the Ugandan online newspaper Uganda Record:

Rwandan intelligence officers that Uganda Record sources have spoken to seem to believe that the bombings were by Ugandan intelligence. They say so matter-of-factly.

I have heard from Rwandan security officers that President Museveni suspects Rwandan involvement in the bombings, or at least that Rwanda is exacerbating the situation somehow.

The Ugandan journalist who published the above story, Tim Kalyegira, was briefly arrested by the police on charges of sedition. According to Kalyegira's lawyer, the police went through his phone and papers, apparently interested in seeing if he had contacts with Rwandan security services.

Kalyegira is not known for being a partisan of the RPF. A few weeks ago, he published this article critical of Rwanda.

The real challenge for Kagame

Most of the focus in the run-up to the elections in Rwanda has been on the crack-down on opposition and the media. People are right to focus on this out of principle, but this is not where the real political struggle is taking place. The opposition is weak and divided and does not pose much threat to the RPF.

There is a much more acrimonious battle taking place outside of the media limelight, within the ruling RPF party. Since the RPF came to power in 1994, there have been defections. Initially, the RPF tried to include other political constituencies in government, led by Hutu politicians like Faustin Twagiraumungu, Pierre-Celestin Rwigema, Pasteur Bizimungu and Seth Sendashonga. They fell out with these leaders, and many of them fled into exile, leading Paul Kagame to take the reins as president in 2000. These initial defections, however, did not affect that core RPF leadership.

A bit later, some of the military top brass of the RPF were also sidelined from government, albeit in a much less public fashion. These included the commanders of the RPF who were Kagame's peers or older: General Sam Kaka (the first army chief of staff), General Frank Rusagara (former commander of military academy) and others. In 2001, General Kayumba Nyamwasa, who had taken over command of the RPA from General Kaka in 1998, fell out with Kagame, as well, and in 2005 the head of external intelligence Colonel Patrick Karegeya was arrested on allegations of insubordination.

This crisis within the RPF elite festered until breaking out into the open this year, when Kayumba fled into exile in South Africa, and two other top generals were arrested in Kigali (Gen Karenzi Karake and Gen Charles Muhire). Of the most senior RPF commanders from 1994, many have gone into exile, are retired or have bene arrested.

Two explanations have been offered for this. In private, Rwandan government officials say that these officers have been marginalized because they did not share the same ideological vision as Kagame. They were more interested in personal power and wealth than in seeing the country advance. Indeed, all of the arrests have been made based on accusations of corruption, embezzlement or insubordination.

The other explanation comes from the dissidents - Nyamwasa and Karegeya say that they grievances are political: Kagame has horded power and is incapable of allowing for other opinions. He goes so far as to assassinate his rivals. The most important military and security positions have been given to officers who were relatively junior in 1994, but who are fiercely loyal to Kagame. Emmanuel Ndahiro (head of security) was Kagame's personal doctor; General Kabarebe (Minister of Defense) was commander of his bodyguard and General Kayonga (Army Chief of Staff) was his military advisor.

Whatever you believe, it boils down to a struggle for power among the party's inner cabal that could end up becoming very nasty. In private, RPF officials have told me: " This is probably the biggest challenge we have faced as a party in many years."

Many donors have heralded Kagame's vision for the country and have looked the other way when the RPF have curtailed civil liberties. In fact, many in private seem to think that the authoritarian touch is a boon for a country coming out of such mass violence. Also, it isolates the government from the democratic pressures that have driven patronage politics in Kenya and Nigeria, for example. Because Kagame has such control over government, he doesn't have to pay any constituencies off, he can push through tough economic reforms and clamp down on corruption.

That assumes that the black box of the RPF is actually a solid, unbreakable thing, that Kagame really does command absolute respect within the RPF.

It is notoriously difficult to maintain stability in an authoritarian government. You need to have a way of satisfying your leaders' ambitions, of empowering them and making them feel part of a process. In Rwanda, many of the erstwhile military and political leaders have been marginalized and left without many prospects in a country where the economy and power is largely in the hands of the RPF.

Kagame's real challenge over the next few years will be to manage these tensions within his own house and make sure that irredentist former RPF members don't link up with the other people who have a bone to pick with Kagame: Nkunda's men, Uganda, the radical Hutu opposition, FDLR, etc. Will he meet this challenge by decentralizing and democratizing power over his next 7 year mandate, or will he continue to dominate the political scene? And if he doesn't manage to deal with this tensions, what could the outcome be?

Interviews on Rwanda

Rwanda will be heading to the polls on August 9th, and while there may not be much suspense about the outcome of the elections, there have been several interesting interviews in the press recently.

The Ugandan Observer ran an interview with former Rwandan intelligence chief Patrick Karegeya - the headline was "Exiled Rwandan Colonel Calls for War on Kagame," and here is the important quote:

A dictator can never step down, they are brought down. It’s only Rwandans who can stand up now and fight for their freedom. Kagame will have his breaking point and I think it will be very soon. There is no one who will come to save Rwandans from the dictatorship of Kagame and there is no time to fold hands. They should stand up to him and say look; we are tired, you have to go. Obviously some will lose their lives in the process but those who will die will have lost life for a worthy cause, and I am prepared to support Rwandans who want to fight the dictatorship of Paul Kagame.

But there are other interesting points in the interview, for example where Karegeya more or less confirms that assassinations of political opponents were carried out under his leadership of external intelligence between 1994-2004. The interviewer asked about the killings of Colonel Lizinde and Seth Sendashonga in Nairobi, to which he answers:

Many people, especially politicians, died under mysterious circumstances. I can’t say I don’t have information regarding those cases, but Kagame was the boss so he is in a better position to explain those assassinations and mysterious disappearances of people.

Kagame's response to the interview: 'Those who want war, we'll give them war and they will regret it."

Then there was the interview in The Independent with the former head of Laurent Kabila's presidential guard, Francis Gakwerere. He was arrested after the assassination attempt against Kayumba Nyamwasa in South Africa - he has an interesting version of the story. According to him, Kayumba's driver was in prison with him, and he alleged that a Rwandan official called Dr. Ndahiro had promised him $2,000 to kill Kayumba.

Gakwerere responds:

The story sounded suspicious to me. First, I understood him to be referring to Dr. Emmanuel Ndahiro, the head of the National Security Services. So I asked him if he knew this Ndahiro and he said no. I asked if he had ever met him. He said no. I asked if he knows his voice, he said he has never seen him or heard him speak. So I asked him why he believed that it was Dr. Ndahiro. He said he simply trusted.

Second, this story of killers coming into the house at night all sounded phony. You cannot want to kill someone, have him in the best place (his home) best location (his bedroom), best time (at night) and in the best situation (when he is asleep) and just walk away and wait to do it at a shopping mall, in broad daylight and in front of many people. What type of killers are these? They must be amateurs!

Interesting time. In other related news, it seems that the South African High Commissioner to Rwanda has left Kigali in the ongoing diplomatic row over the Kayumba hit.

What you didn't know about Congolese history: The Killing of LDK

#1 - Laurent Kabila's assassination

Ah, this is mired in a web of rumors and conspiracies. All I can say is: buy my book, out next spring, on the Congo war.

But as an appetizer: Basically, there are two schools of thought.

The first one, supported by the Congolese government, lays the blame squarely at Rwanda’s doorstep, which it said had acted through a gang of discontent former child soldiers close to Anselme Masasu.

Masasu had grown up along the border between Rwanda and the Congo, the son of a Shi father and a Tutsi mother. He had many friends in the Tutsi community, and when they left school to join the RPF rebellion in the early 1990s, Masasu, eager for adventure, joined up as well. He was twenty and rose to the rank of sergeant in the Rwandan army. His charisma and keen wit brought him to the attention of his superiors and he was chosen as the fourth member of the AFDL leadership in 1996.

As one of the original founders of the AFDL, Masasu often exaggerated his position, calling himself Commander-in-Chief of the army and granting himself the rank of general. In the ethnically-fuelled politics of Kinshasa, Masasu represented the Kivutian wing within the army, and was seen as a threat by Katangans close to Kabila.

In November 1997, President Kabila had Masasu arrested and put out a press statement, accusing him of “fraternizing with enemies of the state” and clarifying that he was not a general. When many kadogo protested and signs of a possible mutiny appeared, Kabila allowed him to go free.

However, as soon as Masasu was set free, he began criticizing Kabila again in the foreign press. In Kinshasa, the security services became convinced that he was recruiting former kadogo to attempt to overthrow the president. Masasu was arrested along with over fifty other soldiers; several weeks later, on November 27, 2000, he was executed on the frontline at Pweto.

Young recruits from the Kivus constituted up to a third of Kabila’s army of 50,000. Masasu’s execution prompted riots in military camps in Kinshasa, and hundreds of kadogo were arrested or fled across the river to Brazzaville. Although details are murky, at least several dozen were executed by firing squad in the capital. It was then, according to interviews of kadogo carried out by a French journalist, that a fateful meeting was held among the young Kivutians who had remained in the president’s bodyguard. “I will kill him,” Rashidi Kasereka is reported to have said, furious over the killing of his friends, to a group of twenty other presidential guards, who cheered their approval.

After the assassination, a group of kadogo were eventually arrested. According to Kabila’s security services, when they interrogated these prisoners, they admitted to being part of a plan to kill Kabila.

There are several other indications that Rwanda was directly involved. According to the Congolese security services, before fleeing, the Masasu crew admitted to being in cahoots with Kigali. Secondly, when they did flee, along with several affluent Lebanese businessmen, they made their way directly to Rwanda, where they were eventually given influential political and business positions by the government. Former Rwandan government officials have also supported this version of events.

Second possibility: The Angolan connection

Others, however, dismiss the Rwandan conspiracy theory. They argue that if the Rwandans had wanted to get rid of Kabila, they would have launched an offensive, either in Kinshasa or along the front line, to accompany their coup. There was nothing. These skeptics, including the French political scientist Gerard Prunier, usually point their finger at Angola, President Kabila’s erstwhile ally. According to UN investigators, Angolan UNITA rebels continued to rake in revenues of $200 million a year through diamond deals and it appeared that Kabila, in a desperate bid for cash, had begun to allow UNITA to deal through Lebanese gem traders in Kinshasa. The Angolan rebels would mask the true origin of the diamonds and Kabila would get heftly kickbacks in return.

This hypothesis is supported by the curious behavior of General Yav Nawej, the commander of Kinshasa who had close ties to Angola, along with Edy Kapend, the president’s military advisor. The day before the assassination, General Yav ordered the disarmament of select northern Katangan units in Kinshasa’s garrison, who were the most loyal to Kabila. Then, within hours of the assassination, General Yav ordered the execution of eleven Lebanese belonging to a diamond trading family. In the meantime, Kapend had gone on the radio and ordered the commanders of the army, navy and air force to maintain discipline and calm, rankling these officers, who thought such commands to be far above his pay grade.

According to this scenario, the Angolans did not instigate the assassination, but found out about it ahead of time and then told their men in Kinshasa – Yav and Kapend – not to intervene. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the kadogo acting on behest of Angola, as they had few links to Luanda and were much closer to Rwanda. It is, however, equally difficult to believe that only the pro-Angolan officers within the presidency would have discovered the coup plot, given the porous information networks in Kinshasa. This theory is also challenged by the subsequent arrest of both Kapend and Yav, the former for having allegedly orchestrated the assassination, the latter for his extrajudicial execution of the Lebanese citizens. One would imagine that if Angola had wanted to get rid of any leaks of information they would have eliminated both altogether – prisons in the Congo are notoriously porous themselves.

Third possibility: The Kadogos

This version of events does not feed into anyone's conspiracy theories. Here, the kadogo killed LDK because he mistreated them, not in the pay of Rwanda. Since the early days of his rebellion, Kabila had surrounded himself with child soldiers, much to the chagrin of visiting diplomats and dignitaries, who were often accosted by the youths asking for a couple of dollars or some cigarettes. When one visiting foreign businessman, a friend of the president, warned him against using these kadogo, Kabila replied: “Oh no, they could never hurt me. They’ve been with me since the beginning. They are my children.” In another frequently described incident, the kadogo prevented Kabila’s wife from leaving the residence, protesting that they hadn’t been paid and were hungry. In order to shut them up, she opened up the chicken coop behind the residence and allowed them to help themselves to the hens and eggs.

Other possibilities: No time to explore them here, but American involvement has been mentioned (a business card of a defense attaché in the killer's pocket), as has that of Joseph Kabila himself....

So what does the conflict minerals bill actually say?

It seems to be that there has been an awful lot of debate of late about the "conflict minerals bill" - known on the streets as "Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act: Conflict Minerals" - without much mention of what it will actually do. Allow Congo Siasa to edify.

This is what it calls for:

1. Reporting

• Within 270 days (i.e. by April 2011), the Securities and Exchange Commission has to publish regulations requiring companies to report annually whether they are using minerals from the Congo and what they have done to conduct due diligence on the source of minerals and the chain of custody;
• They then have to commission a private audit of this report that lives up the standards of the US Comptroller General;
• The purpose of the report is to ascertain whether they are trading in minerals that have benefited armed groups, either because the groups controls the mines, taxes the minerals along the transport routes, controls the trading houses or benefits in any other way from the trade;
• Armed groups are not just rebel groups and militias, but also any units that are guilty of widespread human rights abuses;
• These reports then become available on the Internet to the public;

2. Strategy

• Within 180 days, the Secretary of State, in consultation with USAID, must submit a strategy to Congress on how to deal with the linkages between armed groups, human rights abuses, conflict minerals and the minerals trade;
• This strategy must support efforts by the Congolese government and UN Group of Experts to monitor and prevent the financing of armed groups through the minerals trade;
• It must also help strengthen institutions involved in the management of this trade so as to make cross-border trade more transparent and legitimate;
• It should provide guidance to private companies on how to conduct due diligence;
• And propose punitive measures for those entities found to be trading in conflict minerals;

3. Map

• Within 180 days, the Secretary of State shall (in according with the UN GoE report) produce a map of mineral rich zones and areas under the control of armed groups and make it available to the public;
• The map must be updated every 6 months;

4. Sexual Violence

• The Comptroller General of the US must submit a report within one year on the rate of sexual violence in the eastern Congo and adjoining countries;

5. Reports

• After two years, the Comptroller General must report back to Congress on how effective these measures were and what challenges they posed.

Some comments:

• It responds to the need express by both Laura Seay and Harrison Mitchell have argued on the comments section here that we need better governance and stronger institutions - in a best case scenario, the Act will result in investment in the Congolese regulatory institutions in the Kivus;
• As Friends of the Congo have argued here, these are just Congress' demands. How the SEC, State Department and the Comptroller General execute these requirements is a different matter altogether;
• Most importantly: They only ask for companies to say what they have been doing to conduct due diligence - they don't say at what point a company would be sanctioned (I guess the State Dept strategy should outline that) and what the consequences of trading in "conflict minerals" would be. In other words, we are likely to get an awful lot of information about what the supply chains look like, but there is no legal consequence to trading in conflict minerals;
• A map that is updated once every 6 months will not be that useful - these arrangements need to be more flexible, as the situation on the ground can change very rapidly.

That is what my novice eye can make of the bill. If you want to have a look yourself, here it is (scroll all the way to the end).