MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Alison des Forges, senior advisor to the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, was one of the few people drawing attention to the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Here she discusses the impact that event continues to have on its neighboring country, the Democratic Republic of Congo.
TRANSCRIPT:
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: This is Bridget Conley-Zilkic. With me today is Alison des Forges, who is senior advisor to the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch. Alison, thank you for joining me today.
ALISON DES FORGES: My pleasure.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: I wanted to ask you to start off today by giving our audiences a glimpse, in the time that we have, of what was happening in 1996 when the wars in Congo really began. How did Rwanda get involved in Congo?
ALISON DES FORGES: Well, after the 1994 genocide, of course, there had been an enormous outpouring of Rwandans. And most of them had gone in the direction of Congo, some to other surrounding countries but most to Congo where they had taken up residence in refugee camps, many of them very close to the border, which in fact was a violation of international convention. But it was a crisis situation and so that happened.
In the camps a certain number of the political and military leaders reorganized and rearmed and began to prepare to continue the war against Rwanda. Initially, Rwanda looked to the international community for some forms of assistance in diffusing what they saw as a growing threat in the Congo. And there was some discussion about actually using U.N. forces, but that fell flat.
In the end, Rwanda felt that it had more or less the go ahead from various international actors to take military action itself in the Congo. And it did this in part through a group, a proxy group of Congolese who themselves had reasons to be dissatisfied with the Congolese government. So they presented themselves as a revolutionary military group in opposition to Mobuto who had been the long standing dictator in Congo. And of course, many people wanted to get rid of him for many, many reasons by the late 1990’s. So the Rwandan forces in conjunction with their local proxy group, which was headed by Laurent Kabila, the father of the current president of Congo, began a military campaign.
They- the Rwandans-- actually invaded the Congo, crossed the border, attacked the refugee camps massively with the assistance of this small group of Congolese who had joined them, many of those Congolese being Tutsi but not all of them. Kabila, himself, for example, was not a Tutsi. And they had such great success in destroying the refugee camps and in scattering the people. They also had great success against whatever Congolese army forces gathered to attempt to oppose them, so they just rolled on forward. And from what was supposed to be, I understand, initially a small action more or less along the border against those refugee camps became in fact a takeover of the entire Congo. And Rwandan troops in association also with Ugandan troops rolled forward across the Congo and unseated Mobuto and installed Kabila in power. So you had a rather remarkable and dramatic turnover in the political situation in Central Africa as a result of this. You also had massive human rights violations with horrendous loss of human lives, of civilians, noncombatants. And this was, of course, a violation of international humanitarian law.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And what happened to the forces who had conducted the Rwandan genocide and who were regrouping in that area? Were they able to diffuse them or to at least take away their ability to launch attacks?
ALISON DES FORGES: Well, they certainly made a significant dent against them. But those groups continued to be sufficiently strong to infiltrate and bring the war back into Rwanda in 1997 and early 1998. Rwanda then put down that military activity in its northwest very ruthlessly. And so, this quasi-military organization of Rwandans based in the Congo then suffered another serious defeat.
Those groups have continued to-- some of them-- continued to operate as an organized military force initially under the name of ALIR and then subsequently under the name of the FDLR, which is a name used for them mostly today. But in the process-- we’re now 15 years along the way. In the process, most of the leaders associated with the genocide have either died or have fallen away in one way or another. And many of the forces of the FDLR today are very young. They are not genocidaires, that is participants in the genocide as officially defined, simply because they were too young and they’ve been recruited since.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: So can you bring us up to date? What are the dynamics today in terms of the goals and the interests of the FDLR or the goals and interests of forces, maybe not officially associated at all with the Rwandan government anymore, but people who are fighting in Congo under the general banner of trying to protect Tutsi from these forces formerly associated with the genocide?
ALISON DES FORGES: Right. Over the years, the initial group put in power by this Rwando-Ugandan alliance that is Laurent Kabila, turned against the Rwandans and fought against them. As a result, there were a new series of wars, terrible wars, at the end of the 1990s and finally put to rest in 2002 when Rwanda and Uganda agreed to withdraw their troops from the Congo.
But behind was left a group of people namely Tutsi, residents mainly in Eastern Congo, who had been part of the Rwandan military and political grouping, many of them trained militarily by the Rwandans. They’ve gone through a number of different forms of organization. But now, two groups of them are left, one in North Kivu under Laurent Nkunda, he’s called for short, really it’s Nkundabatware, I think literally. And then, in the south, another group in South Kivu. These groups have proclaimed their obligation, their mission to protect the Tutsi minority in Congo.
At various stages, they have had support from the Rwandan government. As recently as 2007, there were young Congolese refugees recruited in Rwandan refugee camps in violation of international law. Rwanda maintains that it had nothing officially to do with that. The latest U.N. report also says that arms have come across the border from Rwanda. But again, the Rwandan government says it has nothing to do with that. But the overarching issue of how to protect minority populations and particularly the Tutsi minority because of the heritage of their own genocide has complicated all of this situation in such a way that it makes it possible for Rwanda now to intervene or to claim to have the right to intervene, also to protect Tutsi elsewhere in the region should they be threatened by any military or political action. And it’s on that basis, they have supported Nkunda in the past.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And can you talk a little bit-- why are there Tutsi in Congo? When did they come and what were the issues regarding their status as a minority or their status, you know, their citizenship questions in Congo, formerly Zaire, that even predates the conflict that began in ’96?
ALISON DES FORGES: Yeah. Part of the problem is what does it mean to be Tutsi, right? And there are people who are speakers of Kinyarwanda, the language of Rwanda, who look like Tutsi and who see themselves Tutsi, who have been resident on the Congo side of the border, some of them for centuries. The ones in South Kivu and particularly at a place called Maniema. It had been there for a very, very long time. There are others who came during the course of the 20th century as economic migrants or in search of land. So you’ve had Congolese Tutsi living within the borders of Congo for a long time. And the question of whether or not they’re actually Congolese citizens has been decided in different ways by different governments. They’ve been granted citizenship. They’ve lost citizenship and they may have granted citizenship again. Currently, they do have citizenship.
But the problem is currently that because of the Rwandan invasion and because many Congolese Tutsi benefited from that invasion and sought to use it for their own end, this has created far greater hostility against them from other Congolese groups who say, “Wait a minute here, are you really Congolese or are you really with those guys on the other side of the border?” And the extent of hostility against Rwanda and Tutsi has transferred to Congolese Tutsi. And that has been given a basis for Nkunda to argue that the Tutsi and the Kivus are threatened and that he needs to protect them militarily and that’s why he organized his own military force and has been, from time to time, actually fighting the Congolese National Army and at other times, fighting the forces of the FDLR who remain in the region.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And so, the need to protect Tutsi has actually created, at least on the Nkunda side, a rationale for trying to militarily protect them which actually increases the general hostility towards the group.
ALISON DES FORGES: Exactly. The claim to be a minority in need of special protection has widened the gap between them and other Congolese who say, “Wait a minute, why do you need some special status? All of us are suffering from this wartime situation.”
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: But in the mix, I found a recent Human Rights Watch report that some Congolese Tutsi have been singled out, for instance, in the military.
ALISON DES FORGES: That’s true. There has been cases of discrimination and actual violence against Tutsi -- fortunately, on a relatively limited basis. As often happens in other parts of the world, it’s at election time when these kinds of issues resurface with the greatest vigor. And with the elections in the Congo, one of the issues we were very attentive to, that we were watching very, very carefully, was to not be a resurgence of rhetoric and violence against Tutsi. There was a small increase in fact of rhetoric but fortunately in most cases, there was not violence to follow that rhetoric. And as a result, the situation has remained relatively stable except in North Kivu where you have this standoff, this military standoff between Nkunda, who leads his own army in his own territory, saying that he is defending the Tutsi, and is engaged from time to time in combat against these rump Rwandan groups, the FDLR.
And you had asked at one point, “What is the FDLR aiming for, what’s the objective?” And officially, their objective is to use military force in order to persuade the Rwandan government to give them a share of the political pie.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Inside Rwanda?
ALISON DES FORGES: Yeah. To let them come home, to let them participate in the Rwandan political process and so on. But in fact, that idea is far, far removed from their conduct. There was no way that they had the force to invade Rwanda. And Rwanda itself admits this quite frequently but the FDLR militarily posed no threat, but that they posed a much great threat to the Congolese who live around them because they have become essentially a predatory force of war lords living on the local population.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And so their immediate goal is to simply protect the land, the ground, the wealth, the influence that they’ve created inside Congo?
ALISON DES FORGES: That they control, right. But as a result of the subsequent history of the genocide lines have hardened considerably. And the FDLR folks are now perceiving themselves to be a targeted minority, not that the ethnic group, the Hutu, are a minority, but that they represent a targeted minority of the Hutu. And because they feel they’ve been under attack now for 15 years and they feel this is an unjustified attack, they are increasingly cohesive around this idea of themselves being a sacrificial or a sacrificed population with the need to protect themselves. So the whole cycle of self-perception as a targeted group has become well entrenched in the region.
Unfortunately, the Rwandan government has, for the last five years, equated legitimate dissent against its policies with what it calls genocidal ideology. And anyone who expresses dissent from the government is libel to be called someone who has genocidal ideology. And this is very ironic because the government, is in fact, multi-ethnic and has made enormous efforts to portray itself as a government of reconciliation, which is multi-ethnic but yet if you oppose the government, you’ll automatically said to be guilty of genocidal ideology. So they themselves reinforce this idea that they are essentially a Tutsi group and that being opposed to them means being for genocide. So you get that how can you vote within Rwanda and in the Congo where there’s the ethnic label, the ethnic banner becomes increasingly important for people to justify or attempt to justify their actions.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And is that true among not only Rwanda-phones or so-called Congolese Tutsi and people who are formerly associated-- the FDLR for instance, with events in Rwanda but has it also increased ethnic tensions among the diversity of groups particularly in the Eastern Congo?
ALISON DES FORGES: Yes, it has definitely. As I mentioned before, because Congolese Tutsi were seen to have benefited from the military occupation, the invasion and military occupation of Eastern Congo by the Rwandan troops, other groups have turned on them and have identified them essentially as a traitor population who are more loyal to Rwanda than they are to Congo as this has made life much, much more difficult for ordinary Congolese Tutsi who are not at all interested in being identified with Rwanda.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And perhaps a final question, if you could talk also a little bit about the intense cruelty of the violence in Congo. I mean I’m sure you’ve seen more than I have, but the reports about rape where women are not simply attacked, as if that were not bad enough, but are mutilated. They’re destroyed or raped very violently in front of communities. It would seem like the level of violence has exceeded perpetration of violence and it moves beyond that into an intent to destroy communities.
ALISON DES FORGES: Yeah. In the end, I think we’re going to need the help of not even psychologists but even more psychiatrists perhaps and sociologists and so on to understand this phenomenon. But it is historically demonstrable that since the transfer into Congo of the kind of ethnic hostility that is in Rwanda, the violence has taken on not just a different quantity but a different quality. It has become not simply a military combat where you seek to eliminate a certain number of your enemies. It has taken on a vicious and sadistic character to it. And this on the part of all of the groups. So that it’s not simply one group that you single out for this, but many of them engage in this kind of behavior and often the object of the violence is a woman. It’s as if there is a destructive impulse as you say designed to root out that very force in society that permits reproduction.
And the Congolese themselves are of course, horrified and confused and find it’s very difficult to understand why this is happening. Fortunately, we do see now the beginnings of new consciousness among women, new awareness of how to protect themselves, a new willingness also to attempt to bring rapists to justice. So there is a small beginning of awareness here that may, in the end, prove somewhat helpful.
But it has focused itself, this kind of violence, primarily in terms of sexually related crimes. But there have also been instances for example, of cannibalism, which is quite rare in this region ordinarily and it’s not that all Congolese are cannibals. It’s not like what some people grew up seeing in their comic books. Cannibalism is regarded as equally despicable and horrible for Congolese as it is for us. But in some cases, that has also been incorporated into the violence. And as you say, it’s as if simply killing people is no longer enough to frighten them, to demoralize them. It’s looked as a fairly ordinary event. And so you have to go beyond that to demonstrate extraordinary violence in order to terrorize people into compliance.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Well, Alison, thank you very much for being here with us today. And we’ll try to talk with you more, I think, in the future. And I hope we can talk more about ways the violence is improving. That would be a good turn.
ALISON DES FORGES: Fine. Well, thanks very much for your call.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Okay, thank you.
ALISON DES FORGES: Mm-mm, bye-bye.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about preventing genocide, join us online at www.ushmm.org/conscience. There you’ll also find the Voices on Genocide Prevention weblog.
