ECAS 2013

The protracted conflict in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is situated within a wider regional conflict formation. Therefore, increased attention on the regional conflict dimensions is essential. However, a peacebuilding approach that would overemphasis reaching and maintaining regional stability is not likely to contribute to conflict transformation. Instead peacebuilding approaches should address the conflict dynamics at the regional, national and local level in a comphrensive manner. In this paper it is argued that over the last decade international actors adopted a stability focused approach and overemphasised the utility of the rapproachment between Kabila and Kagame to contribute to peace. Instead this approach led to the 'containment' of violence within the eastern part of the DRC creating a sense of stability within the region among international peacebuilders in the period 2009-2012. Due to an overemphasis on stability the underlying conflict system behind the violence was not being properly addresses leading to the next round of crisis within the region that emerged by the munity of M23 from the FARDC late 2012.

Long abstract

The eastern parts of the DR Congo have been the scene of continuing conflict since 1996. After a period of relative calm following the signing of the peace agreement between the CNDP and the Government in March 23, 2009, fighting flared up in the beginning of 2012, with the M23 rebellion claiming the Government did not live up to this agreement. This has resulted in a new wave of refugees into Rwanda, largely consisting of Congolese Rwandophone tutsis, whose interests (at least initially) the M23 claims to represent. Based on original field data, this article explores perceptions of the conflict and the M23 rebellion among the new Congolese refugees. It investigates the demands of the refugees in the light of M23 claims. To what extent do the refugees identify with and feel that the M23 represents their interests? By analyzing the issue of the demands and perceptions of the conflict held by this group, the article sheds light on the connection between the refugee population and the M23. Despite presenting the 2009 agreement and the time following after that in positive manner, the data reveals very high levels of identification with the M23 (which broke this period). This is reflected in the articulation of almost identical political claims, a strong conviction that the M23 is fighting for their cause, but also other forms of support. The article ends by discussing what this strong support implies for our efforts to understand conflict dynamics in the eastern DRC.

Last year, donors finally withdrew foreign aid from Rwanda, hoping to push President Kagame to dissolve the country's alleged relationship to the M23 rebel group. Sanctioning a country that has been lauded for its aid effectiveness and impressive performance in several governance indicators was an interesting move. But what effect does it have? This paper attempts to provide an understanding of how the withdrawal of foreign aid will affect Rwanda's 'delicate' elite bargain - a concept that most agree is key to understanding the conflict, but has not received enough detailed exploration.

President Paul Kagame derives his legitimacy and the stability of his own position through three sources: the people (through a commitment to economic development); the international community (through a perceived engagement with the Neoliberal Development Ideology); his own elite (through his elite bargain). In my view, any threat to Kagame's position can only arrive from the third source - his own elite. The other two sources could influence the elite to react but an eventual insurrection has most often been mounted by someone who was once a 'co-conspirator', as Verhoeven and Roessler (2012) find. Since a 'co-conspirator rupture' (Verhoeven and Roessler 2012) became evident, Kagame's elite bargain has become increasingly delicate. With the withdrawal of aid and a disaffected international community, all three sources of his stability are now threatened. As a result, his next moves in the Congo will have to balance between satisfying a disaffected elite, appeasing the international community and pushing forward with VISION 2020.

In 1994, in Rwanda, a rebel group became a government, and a government became a rebel group. Before, and after, both resemble nothing so much as networks of overlapping politico-military and commercial elites embedded within broader networks of security and primitive accumulation in the region. For both the RPF and the FDLR, being rebels or being a state was less significant than these networks, and the resources they could tap through them. Nonetheless, 1994 reveals - for both groups - what was and was not significant about their 'state-ness', and their experience shows us what is and is not significant about the legal-rational edifice of the African state. The survival and flourishing of the RPF, and the FDLR's contemporaneous degeneration into irrelevance reveals many underlying dynamics to political violence and intractable conflict in the region. In particular, the analytic lens of these two groups highlights that what is significant is (a) who is networked to whom, regardless of formal borders, (b) the manipulation of historical memory and discourses of indigeneity undergird or subvert such networks, and (c) the resources which flow through those networks as a result. State-centric models of conflict are thus unhelpful and misleading.

Rwanda is a key military power in the Great Lakes region, recognized for its effectiveness, as demonstrated by its different involvements in DRC. However, little is known about the determinants of such military strength. This paper will contribute to fill this gap by analysing how the Rwandan state has restored and managed salaries in the Rwandan army since genocide.

Non-payment of salaries arguably matters for military effectiveness, as it can be a source of great instability and indiscipline, as the case of the Congolese army has long shown. Whilst countries in the Great Lakes region have occasionally experienced problems of salary payment, Rwanda seems to have been able to systematically pay salaries on time and has even transformed salary payment into a tool of state building. It has done so despite the huge challenges the country faced in the post genocide period, such as dire lack of resources and the need to integrate a large number of ex-FAR soldiers to wage war in the DRC.

Through this analysis, we aim to shed a light on the broader phenomenon of the ideological and organizational culture of the Rwandan military force. This paper's contribution to understanding the security complex in the Great Lakes region will be double. First, it will contribute to a better understanding of the Rwandan military strength. Second, it will shed a new light on the ideological and organizational culture of the Rwandan army and draw consequences for security in the region.