Congo on the Knife-Edge: Kabila, Bemba and the 2018 Election

https://www.yahoo.com/news/dr-congos-kabila-promotes-blacklisted-generals-army-shake-155235623.html

At this point Joseph Kabila has nothing to lose, he knows everyone is scheming against him. His father was assassinated and while his motives are undoubtedly motivated (at least in part) by self-interest, his departure will also signal a serious change for the DRC.

As with many rebel leaders who end up taking power, Kabila has in some respects lost his way and abandoned the ideals he once fought for. He and his father fought to overthrow the erstwhile American backed dictator Mobutu in the mid 1990's. It was another case of an American ally abandoned and in fact overthrown by forces connected to Washington. Laurent Kabila worked in collaboration with Uganda and Rwanda and yet it quickly became a regional war. Rwanda sought revenge for the 1994 genocide as Mobutu had permitted the Interahamwe fighters to escape into Zaire/Congo where they could live and operate freely. Soon many of the regional players became involved.

Angola entered the war as they had long hated Mobutu due to his intervention during the years of their own civil war. Bitterly they remembered their long fight against Mobutu ally Jonas Savimbi of UNITA, another close ally of the United States. With the Kabila/Rwanda invasion of Zaire in 1996, Savimbi's UNITA guerillas rallied to support Mobutu and thus the First Congo War re-opened the wounds of the Angola Conflict.

Mobutu had been America's man in Sub-Saharan Africa since they (along with the Belgians) backed his overthrow of Patrice Lumumba in 1960. Mobutu and the US (perhaps with Belgian and British assistance) had Lumumba assassinated in 1961 making him a martyr to both African nationalism and the Black civil rights movement. Subsequently the US backed Mobutu's installation as president in 1965. He would rule as a brutal military dictator for over thirty years and yet Washington quickly abandoned him and other allies like UNITA's Savimbi in the wake of the Cold War's ending. The chaos that ensued is still being worked out.

Within a year of the First Congo War's end the situation exploded. Rwanda and Uganda had aided Laurent Kabila in overthrowing Mobutu and now they wanted a piece of the Congo and a stake in its government and resources. Kabila threw them out and the Second Congo War erupted leading to the deadliest conflict since WWII, a war largely ignored in the West. Midway through the war, Laurent Kabila was assassinated and his son Joseph quickly seized power and has held on to it to this day. After the fighting ended Kabila went on to win elections in 2006 and 2011, his second (and final) term due to end in 2016 but he intervened and postponed the elections. Now, after two years he has established a legal case for running again and under international pressure the DRC has scheduled elections for December 2018.

Kabila knows that his departure will mean that his country will be handed over once more to the forces that assassinated his father and that fought against the Kabila regime in the Second Congo War... a war which ended in stalemate but allowed the Kabila regime (which Joseph inherited) to survive.

If he steps down, who is waiting in the wings? Many point to figures like Moïse Katumbi and Felix Tshisekedi as the chief opposition leaders who are poised to take power. The fact that both of these figures are in some capacity affiliated with the American Atlantic Council think-tank gives clear indication as to what direction these men would take the country. They are supporters of pro-western and pro-business policy.

It's hard not to imagine the many global mineral firms just salivating at the thought of a pro-market government handing over the keys to Congo's vast resources.

Interestingly on August 3^rd Katumbi tried to re-enter the DRC from his exile in Belgium in order to register for the election but was denied entry. And yet the Kabila regime hasn't been able to stop everyone.

And then there's Jean-Pierre Bemba, a ghost from Kabila's past who surprisingly was just released from prison at The Hague and just arrived back in the Congo on 1 August 2018. Kabila was apparently not able to stop his plane from landing in Kinshasa. His somewhat dramatic arrival certainly spells trouble and may prove more ominous than Kabila's reinstatement of generals on Washington's Blacklist. Bemba is the one figure who probably has the power to make Kabila tremble and one cannot but wonder about the timing of his release from the ICC.

And what of Kabila? If he steps down or is defeated in the December election, will he be able to stay or will he die under mysterious circumstances? Will he be forced into exile? While he's corrupt to be sure I think there's probably an air of defiance about him.

Kabila in re-appointing generals Amisi and Numbi has decided to thumb his nose at the United States and thus risks escalation in the East at the hands of US proxies Uganda and Rwanda who even now sponsor some of the paramilitary rebel groups operating in resource rich areas such as Kivu, Ituri and the provinces that were once collectively known as Katanga. It might be suggested that in re-appointing the blacklisted generals Kabila is preparing for war, something he sees as inevitable, something he's willing to risk in order to hold on to power.

If civil war breaks out, the DRC could quickly slide into a regional proxy war. There are so many layers to the potential conflict. There are tribal feuds, local and regional politics, Great Powers who would become involved for their own reasons and yet their involvement would most likely be through proxy forces which have the potential to cause a chain reaction sparking new conflicts and expanding the regional footprint of the conflict. This is what happened in 1998 and led to millions of deaths. It's all about resources, everyone is scrambling to get a hold of them and a lot of innocent people are caught in the middle.

Alas for Congo. Adam Hochschild rightly spoke of King Leopold's Ghost, a reference to the legacy of colonialism and in the case of the Congo a specific reference to the atrocities committed by the Belgians. The country has never recovered.