The DRC1 (formally known as Zaire, Belgian Congo or Congo Free State) is the second largest country in Africa and is situated at centre of the Continent. It is as large as the whole of Eastern Europe and covers an area of more than 2 million square kilometres. It borders Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda in the east; the Republic of Congo to the west; the Central African Republic and South Sudan to the north; and Angola and Zambia to the south (CIA 2013). It is a former Belgian
1 In this thesis, three country names, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zaire, and Belgian Congo, are used to describe the current African state of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The appellation, DRC, is more used to refer to events or phenomenon that took place after the overthrow of President Mobutu, while the appellation, Zạre, is used to refer to the period of dictatorship when the country was called Zạre, and the appellation Belgian Congo is used more specifically to refer to events that took place during colonisation period. The name Congo refers only to the country without any reference to historical time or particular period in which the country was labelled with other appellations.
colony and is administratively divided into eleven provinces2, including Kinshasa the capital city, but according to the Constitution of 2006, the current administrative divisions were to be subdivided into 26 new provinces by 2009 but this has yet to be implemented (ibid).
The DRC population is estimated to be around 75 million made of over 200 ethnic groups – Bantus, Hamitic, Pygmies and Sudanese – who together speak four hundred and fifty dialects but have four national languages – Kikongo, Lingala, Swahili, and Tshiluba – and French as the official language (ibid).
The DRC is enormously rich in natural resources, including the much sought after tantalum or coltan, petroleum, uranium, industrial and gem diamonds, gold, silver, niobium, coal, cobalt, copper, zinc, manganese, cassiterite, hydropower and timber (ibid.). It is perhaps the richest country in the world as it has the highest number of mineral resources known to mankind.3 It possesses the largest diamond reserves in the world, world-class gold deposits and the largest known cobalt reserves in the world (World Bank 2008a). It also possesses the second richest copper reserves in the world and three per cent of the world zinc reserves (ibid.). Despite the DRC’s huge mineral wealth, its population lives in poverty and the country is classed amongst the poorest countries on the planet.4 This situation is caused among other factors by corruption and unequal distribution of the revenue from the exploitation of these resources.
The political history of the DRC, which will be provided in more detail in Chapter Four, demonstrates that since the 17th century the political governance of the DRC has been shaped by external forces including the need for Western powers to maintain control over its
2 The provinces are Bandundu, Bas-Congo (Lower Congo), Equateur, Kasai- Occidental (West Kasai), Kasai-Oriental (East Kasai), Katanga, Kinshasa, Maniema, Nord-Kivu (North Kivu), Orientale, Sud-Kivu (South Kivu)
3 The DRC holds over 1100 different mineral substances (World Bank 2008a)
4The DRC is last on the Human Development Index of 2013 and has been among the last 10 countries for over a decade.
abundant natural resources. Its intelligence services were mandated to serve this purpose and their missions have been adapted from time to time according to prevailing circumstances. From the pre-independence period the mission of the Congolese intelligence services varied from being of discouraging an idea of independence from the Congolese during the 1950s, to one of stabilising the newly established institutions so as to ensure that Western interests remain protected even after the independence, then to one of protecting the signed peace agreement and dealing with threats from rebels and neighbouring countries before becoming that of identifying security threats and advising the government or supporting policy-making after the process of intelligence reform that began in 2003.
Serious measures were taken by the West during the Cold War period to prevent Soviet Union’s influence in the DRC; these led to the assassination of the first democratically elected Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba on 17 January 1961 who was perceived as a threat to Western economic interests because of his ties to the Soviet Union.
To stop the chaos that followed the assassination of Lumumba, the then army commander in chief Colonel Mobutu, seized power in a coup d’état on 24 November 1965 and ruled the DRC for 3 decades with the help of the West more particularly the United States which provided him with more than 400 million dollars in weapons (Savage 2006:9) he used in killing his own people.
While in power, President Mobutu created a highly professional intelligence services that received training from the American Central Intelligence Agency, and from the Belgian, French and Israeli intelligence services respectively.
These services were very efficient but they were not democratically governed. They acted in total impunity but this was tolerated by both the Zairian government and Western countries – they did not see the
democratic governance of Congo’s intelligence services as a priority rather they were concerned about how successful these services were in the protecting their interests.
During his reign, President Mobutu established a network of patrimonial relations that gave him firm political control but the obligation to satisfying private interests of members of his network led to widespread corruption which contributed to economic malaise, human rights abuses and insecurity (Nest 2006:18), and eventually to his demise in May 1997 by rebels who received the backing of Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda.
The end of the Cold War marked the beginning of a new era during which a new Western policy agenda of democratisation had to be implemented throughout Africa. This new agenda came about at the time when there were more demands from better-educated populations for changes in the political governance of their countries and the introduction of a new system of governance in which those who govern can be held accountable for their actions. One of the expected outcomes of the introduction of democracy in Africa and particularly in the DRC was the subjection of intelligence services to democratic control so as to prevent them from working on the margin of the law and becoming a danger to democracy.
President Laurent Desire Kabila who replaced the dictator Mobutu was unfortunately not able to meet the expectations of the Congolese people who saw him as a liberator and a democrat. He failed in his strategic decisions of how to satisfy the needs of the population and at the same times meet his obligations vis-à-vis his regional friends and multinational companies that brought him onto power. He disassociated himself with his foreign masters in an uncivilised manner by removing all Rwandan and Ugandan nationals to whom he had given work in different government institutions and ordered them to live the DRC and returned to their country promising to pay their governments’ bills for
helping him to overthrow the dictator Mobutu. He also ethnicised the public administration and all security and defence institutions by appointing people from his home province of Katanga to senior positions.
His inefficient domestic and foreign policies triggered the second Congo war during which the regular armies of Rwanda and Uganda fought alongside new rebel groups in order to remove him from power.
Because of his Marxist-Leninist political ideologies President Kabila’s government was engaged into diplomatic and economic relations with countries such as North Korea, Cuba, Russia and China. Although it is perfectly right for a sovereign state to enter into diplomatic and economic relations with any states on the planet, his unfriendly critics of Western governments policies and international institutions were not advantageous to the DRC. He created so many enemies for himself within the international community just as within the DRC where he suspended all political parties and rejected proposals for dialogue with rebel groups and the political opposition. President Laurent Kabila thus became an enemy of democracy and regional stability who had to be dealt with.
The democratic process continued only after his assassination when his son Joseph Kabila who replaced him began direct peace negotiations with the governments of Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda. Joseph Kabila disbanded all political parties and continued the national dialogue which ended with the establishment of a transitional government in 2003 in which former rebel groups, the political opposition and civil society were represented and at the end of which the first ever democratic elections were held in 2006. It is during the transition period that the process of security sector reform began and consisted of the integration of rebel combatants and intelligence personnel into the national army and intelligence services.