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Yesterday's
documentary on the war in the Democratic Republic
of Congo broadcasted on Channel 4 brought light on
the deadliest conflict since world war two. Four million
people have been killed in the Congo since 1998. However,
the documentary did not emphasise enough the responsability
of Western powers and economic interests in creating
this war.
In
May 1997, Laurent Désiré Kabila, a long
time Congolese guerilla fighter against Mobutu's dictatorial
and kleptocratic regime took power in the Democratic
Republic of Congo. Soon, Kabila frustrated the Western
governments and multinationals' appetite for 'a second
scramble for Africa'. As soon as he settled in Kinshasa,
Kabila started to articulate clearly the aspirations
of his people and summoning them to take their own
destiny into their own hands, politically and economically.
This was perceived by Western powers and their African
allies as a covert declaration of independence. Kabila's
nationalist stance immediately clashed with their
interests, as he eventually reviewed all the contracts
he had signed with American and South African mineral
companies, demanded that they pay upfront for decades
of future profits and subsequently nationalised all
the mines.
The
people of Congo enjoyed a short-lived time of respite
during Kabila's first year in power. They could eat
three times a day again as prices of essential commodities
drastically dropped, roads and bridges were repaired,
public transport restored, electricity extended to
the suburbs of Kinshasa and people liberated from
Mobutu's ill paid soldiers' ransoming (67 members
of the new army who resumed the practice were arrested
and jailed). The new currency, the Congolese franc,
was launched and the inflation rate dropped from 8.828%
in 1993 to 6% in 1997. Embezzlers were thrown into
jail. Corruption was severely combated. All this was
achieved in the absence of any help from the IMF and
World Bank who conditioned their financial support
to Congo normalising its relations with the institutions
of Bretton Woods and pledging to pay all the debt
the old regime contracted.
The
new government embarked on an ambitious three year
programme of national reconstruction and during the
third summit of Comesa (common market community of
central and southern African countries) held in Kinshasa
on 29 June 1998, Kabila clearly outlined what role
Congo would play within the common market and in Africa
as a whole.
He
explained that "more than 40 years of African
independence have offered to the world a sad spectacle
of a continent looted and humiliated with the complicity
of its own sons and daughters". He expressed
the wish "to see Africa entering the 21st century
totally independent of foreign interference"
and declared that the battle for Congo's independence
and sovereignty is fought in the interest of Africa
as a whole.
"Our
country", he said, "has a vocation of exporting
peace, development and security to the rest of Africa.
A weak Congo means a vulnerable Africa from its centre,
an Africa without a heart." The stakes were then
raised. America and Britain branded Kabila a 'loose
cannon that had to be restrained. But as Colette Braeckman
(an expert who is for Congolese affairs what Robert
Fisk is for the Middle East) who reports for the Belgian
daily, Le Soir, wrote in her book, L'enjeu Congolais
- l'Afrique Centrale après Mobutu, this "sudden
animosity against Kabila could only be explained by
the fact that his nationalist stance collided with
or frustrated their economic interests in Congo…Kabila
opposed all forms of investments that did not represent
the interests of the people of Congo."
Upon
Laurent Désiré Kabila's assassination
in 2001, Michela Wrong, a former correspondent for
Reuters, BBC and The Financial Times, and author of
In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz, Living on the Brink
of Disaster in the Congo, wrote in the Financial Times:
"Laurent Kabila…alienated Western powers
and African allies in his three-and-half years in
power…He was welcomed as a liberator when his
rebel forces marched into Kinshasa in 1997, toppling
the late Mobutu Sese Seko, but diplomats and statesmen
had come to view him as a man impossible 'to do business
with', a key factor in central Africa's growing instability…The
World Bank and the IMF found him so obstructive, talks
on new aid were abandoned."
Consequently,
on 2 August 1998, a Rwandan-Ugandan-Burundian coalition
launched a war of invasion of the Democratic Republic
of Congo, logistically supported and financed by well
known Western powers and multinationals, as well as
with the complicity of the so-called Congolese 'rebels'.
They are systematically looting Congo's fauna and
flora, natural and mineral resources and destroying
or transferring what is left of Congo's infrastructure
to their own countries.
According
to Wayne Madsen, an American investigative journalist
and intelligence specialist, author of Genocide and
Covert Operations in Africa 1993 - 1999, the US military
has been covertly involved in the war in Congo. Madsen
on May 17 2002 told the US House subcommittee on International
Operations and Human Rights, that the US was using
Private Military Contractors (PMCs). Madsen said American
companies including one linked to former President
George Bush Snr are stoking the Congo conflict for
monetary gains.
It
should be made clear that what is at stake in this
war is not some "ethnic conflict" between
"rival tribes", but a fight between a popular
nationalist regime and a Western-backed invasion force.
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