Background on North Kivu

The Kivu region is located in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo, bordering Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania. Throughout its history an influx of migrants from these regions has fueled competition over land rights and access to politico-economic power. As migrants have largely originated in Rwanda and Burundi (Banyarwanda) this has caused tensions to split along linguistic lines, separating Rwandaphones, speakers of Kinyarwanda from non-speakers. In some regions, the Rwandaphones, largely Hutu and Tutsi came to outnumber native Nande groups.

As land became scarcer, competition for remaining territory was exacerbated by periodic famines. As the Nanda considered themselves the historic political and territorial overlords of the region, this set the stage for future inter-ethnic conflict between Rwandaphones and non-Rwandaphones.

Development of Ethnic Conflict

After the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) achieved independence in June of 1960, the coalition of different ethnic groups battled for land rights during the Kanyarwanda War (1963-1965). This was complicated by a conflict over representation in local administrative and access to natural resources. This was complicated by the legal status of recent Banyarwanda residents, as post-1908 arrivals were denied citizenship by the Congolese constitution. Due the government power struggle in newly-independent Congo, many Congolese Tutsis were labeled as rebels against the government. As a result of the attempt to quash this rebellion, many Tutsis were interred in concentration camps. Concurrent with this internment campaign, Tutsi had their land and livestock confiscated, were expelled from the country, or were simply murdered.

After Mobutu Sese Seko consolidated his hold on the government of Congo in 1965, he formed an alliance between the government and the Rwandaphones in the Kivu region. In 1972, a humanitarian crisis began due to a massive inflow of Burundian refugees into the Kivus in the aftermath of a failed Hutu rebellion against the Burundian government. This crisis compelled Mobutu to issue blanket citizenship to all Banyarwanda who arrived in the Congo between 1959 and 1963. This was seen by many as an alarming increase in Banyarwanda power at the federal level. Combined with the rising economic power of the Banyarwanda Tutsis, there was increasing resentment on behalf of local Hutu and Congolese. In an attempt to check growing Tutsi power, these groups increased their political mobilization, gaining additional influence in the national assembly in the late 1970’s.

This increased political power led to a reversal of Mobutu’s citizenship laws, instead requiring Congolese citizens to prove ancestral residence since 1885. This move marginalized the Rwandaphone immigrant community who had arrived since then. Tension mounted on both sides as suspicion and resentment of the other increased.

As the Cold War ended, Mobutu increasingly yielded to pressures for reform and democratization. In the Kivus political parties were constructed along ethnic lines, with each party possessing local allied militias. The reform movement resulted in an increasing distinction being made between residents, particularly between Tutsi and non-Tutsi inhabitants.

Government Crisis of 1993 and the Rwandan Genocide

In March 1993, tensions peaked, when Governor Jean Pierre Kalumbo Mbogho, an ethnic Nande, ordered state security to drive Tutsis out of the Kivus, allegedly calling the ethnicity of the Banyarwanda into question and promising their extermination. After 14,000 are killed in two months of violence, Mobutu dismissed Governor Kalumbo Mbogho and increased Tutsi representation in the provincial government.

Despite Mobutu’s efforts to placate the situation in the Kivus, tensions remained high throughout 1994 due to a regional catastrophe. Between April and July 1994, the Rwandan Genocide caused more than a million Hutu refugees, interspersed with members of the Interahamwe militias, to flood into the eastern Congo. The instability that this influx caused intensified tensions between ethnic groups in eastern Congo. As instability grew, locals began to militarize along ethnic lines as competition for resources increased. As Hutu militias began espousing the genocidal ideology of the Interahamwe, the local Tutsi population fled to avoid a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Politically, the central government supported the Hutu militias as a justification for an increase in centralized federal power.

The First and Second Congo War

Continuing unrest lasting into 1996 led to a Rwandan incursion into the Congo with the goals of protecting the Tutsis of Kivu as well as destroying the Hutu camps sheltering an anti-Rwandan insurrection. The Congolese central government opposed this incursion, prompting reform elements to join forces with the Rwandan invaders. Eventually anti-government forces, supported by Rwanda, Uganda and Angola would coalesce around the leadership of General Laurent Kabila. Kabila’s forces waged a war of national liberation, eventually overthrowing the government of Mobutu Sese Seko and forcing him into exile. With the end of Mobutu’s regime, it appeared that the situation in the Congo had finally stabilized.

However, less than two years later, this shifting combination of alliances contributed to the beginning of the Second Congo War, the largest armed conflict in African history. Kabila faced many of the same problems as Mobutu, a fragmented nation, subsistence economy with the added challenge of a large Rwandan armed force in eastern Congo. In an attempt to dismiss charges of Rwandan control of the government and reinforce Congolese command over the rich natural resources of the east, Kabila called for the withdrawal of Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers from the Congo. Removing the protectors of the Banyarwanda caused them to militarize and seek armed protection from Rwanda.

Tutsi from Kivu provinces, with support from the Rwandan government, took control of the eastern city of Goma under the banner of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD). The RCD, also containing large numbers of Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers, possessed the backing of those two governments as well. As the RCD went on the offensive, it began to wrest control of eastern Congo from the government. This fighting for control of the mineral resources of the Congo was accompanied by the massacre of thousands of innocent civilians. After victories by the RCD, international supporters of the Kabila government, namely Zimbabwe and Angola stepped in with assistance as the conflict turned into a war for control of the Congo’s vast mineral resources, notably coltan, cobalt and diamonds.

Each of these actors supported different militia groups, causing interethnic tensions to soar and destabilize the Kivu region. Increasingly cruel violence became the hallmark of the conference, including rape as a weapon of war, the commonplace murder of non-combatants, leading to the death of around 3.6 million people by the middle of 2002. In the middle of that year, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Angola withdrew troops from the DRC, followed by the ratification of the Pretoria agreement. This pact arranged for the withdrawal of 23,000 Rwandan troops from the Congo in exchange for the disarmament of all expatriate Rwandan militias operating in eastern Congo. Coinciding with the arrest of three wanted Rwandan génocidaires, this removed one of the pretexts for the Rwandan invasion in 1998. The removal of troops and disarmament of ethnic militias created a power vacuum altering the operational dynamics for groups in North and South Kivu.

Resurgence of the Conflict

At the end of 2002, the Kabila government, now headed by Laurent Kabila’s son, Joseph, signed a power-sharing deal with rebel factions in the Congo. These agreements set up a transitional government which took power in 2003. The peace pacts also called for elections in 2006, integration of rebel militias into the national army and allowed for an expansion of the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC).

The lull in violence accompanying this settlement was short-lived as tensions between Banyarwanda and indigenous Congolese groups escalated. This was illustrated in a conflict between the RCD’s Goma contingent and elements of the national army which erupted in February 2004. The simultaneous increase in Tutsi prominence in national politics sparked a Congolese campaign of discrimination aimed at the Tutsi and their allies. As the excesses of Rwandan soldiers during the First and Second Congo Wars came to light, the RCD’s Goma wing and their Tutsi allies were delegitimized and they began to lose political power in advance of the 2006 national elections.

The first democratic elections in forty years confirmed this delegitimization, with the RCD only polling a small portion of the population. As a result of this defeat, President Kabila had the political capital to attempt an integration Banyarwanda forces into the national army. However, hardliners on both sides were opposed to this move and ultimately prevented a resolution, and dissidents nominally under General Laurent Nkuda’s command began to attack the national army. A ceasefire agreement to integrate Nkuda’s forces into the army, brokered by Rwanda, only created a lull in tensions and failed to address the underlying grievances of the conflict.

Current Situation

In late August 2007, the forces of General Nkunda ambushed pro-government troops, reigniting heavy fighting in the Kivus. This violence produced massacres in several small villages and forced thousands of people from their homes. As government and rebel forces battled for supremacy in the region, MONUC assisted in the negotiation of a ceasefire, which quickly fell apart. By the end of 2007, a year which saw over 500,000 people displaced by fighting, MONUC, the government of the DRC and rebel groups were again negotiating a truce. This truce, ratified at the end of January, broke down after a week as violence continued to rage in eastern Congo between a patchwork of government soldiers, rebel armies and allied militias.

Centered on North Kivu, recent violence has displaced between 500,000 and 800,000 people since the resumption of hostilities in August of 2007. This brings the total number of displaced to over 1.4 million, with 1.1 million IDPs combined with an additional 350,000 refugees in neighboring countries. Since the breakdown of the ceasefire in January 2008, an additional 75,000 have been forced from their homes.

As the violence continues, the degenerating security situation has contributed to the sporadic delivery of humanitarian aid. Agencies such as UNHCR have suspended aid distribution due to violence, which has also caused a halt in registration of newly displaced people. Indiscriminate violence against civilians also includes a massive occurrence of sexual violence, with more than 40,000 reported rapes. Diseases such as malaria and cholera continue to rage in the area as a simultaneous reduction in foreign food aid compounds nutrition problems. These multiple challenges contribute to a situation that causes an average monthly mortality rate of 45,000. In total, nearly 5.4 million people have died since the beginning of the Second Congo War.