A MURDER IN CONGO, PART 2 DB: Mobutu Seso Seko was following the French pattern whereas these new leaders were following the U.S. neoliberal model. So the U.S. government, and the Anglo-American media suddenly discovered that Mobutu, with whom they had had no complaints up til then, was very, very bad. They were hoping Kabila would turn out to be a controllable neoliberal when he was implanted. Jared: So you think initially that the US wanted Mobutu out. DB: It was part of a broader dynamic because Mobutu for the US had become rather inconvenient. He was hosting Hutu militias which were trying to overturn the Rwandan Patriotic Front's victory in Rwanda and they were staging attacks in Burundi against the Tutsi dominated government that has repressed Hutus in Burundi. And the United States has had a very active policy of trying to suppress these militias and trying to eliminate this Hutu influence and restore the Tutsi dominance in Central Africa. Jared: The Tutsi elite being the U.S. ally there. DB: Yes. The strategy is to create a sort of greater-Tutsi sphere of influence throughout Central Africa including the Tutsis in Eastern Congo, known as the Banyamulenge. The point here is the U.S. strategy requires that they heighten differences. make them more extreme. The Hutus and the Tutsi people in Eastern Congo were called Banyarwanda, without differentiation - a kind of a broad designation for people that share similar linguistic characteristics. With the Tutsis and the Hutus, the division is not linguistic, or cultural or national, you see, so much as it is a class division, between former elites and the lower classes, former serfs. Essentially, these are the same people, though the Hutus originally were farmers and the Tutsis were more often herdsmen. But what the colonialists in this area have done is a classic process of ethnogenesis. This was deliberately instigated. They literally created new ethnic groups to divide and rule. In the same way, in Kosovo you saw the Western media and supposed experts like Noel Malcolm popularize the term 'Kosovar'. Their problem was that since there is a functioning state known as Albania ethnic Albanians in Kosovo could hardly claim a right to national self-determination; they already had self-determination in the form of the Albanian state. The classic right to self-determination under International Law was already fulfilled for the Albanians as opposed, let us say, to the Kurds, who have no state. So to justify a separatist movement in Kosovo, the Western neo-colonialists had to mak-up a new national group, the 'Kosovars'. It's really rather absurd. But absurd or not, colonial powers have been doing it throughout history - creating ethnic groups or polarizing groups that might have some cleavage and emphasizing cleavages or differences to play groups off against each other. And this is precisely what they have been doing in Africa and South Asia, such as in Ceylon, for instance. Usually they will have a military race, and they will play up its supposed military characteristics, and they will have a ruling race and they will try to get them into the administration, and they will have a toiling race. Got to have a toiling race, don't you know? And they create these stereotypes that ethnic groups are encouraged to buy into. This sort of poison was injected into Africa by the colonialists. Jared: Just as they did in Bosnia, with the Muslims. They'd been the privileged section, both under the Ottoman Empire and the Nazis, and the U.S. played up their elitism versus the supposedly lower class Serbs. DB: Exactly. Divide et impera, the old Roman divide and rule. It's a classic tool of empire. In reality, the Congo is rather complex. It's got a big population, over fifty million over an immense area. Identities are ambiguous. What the Imperial forces have been trying to do is make the differences between the peoples in the region very sharp - exaggerate existing divisions as much as possible. Not just in Congo, but throughout Central Africa. An additional factor in this situation is the French-U.S. split. They have been supporting different sides and they had very different visions for the region; the civilians got caught in the middle of this Imperial struggle. And then suddenly you had Kabila doing an about-face and telling the entire West, "Hands off!" Though he does have more affinity for French diplomacy and the French have been willing to give him leeway. It's this whole idea that the French intellectuals have of resisting American hegemonism. They are advocating a multi-polar world as opposed to a Uni-polar world. They call the United States a Hyperpower. Jared: The term has a certain charm; it suggests a hyper-active child armed with Depleted Uranium weapons. Madeline Albright comes to mind. But getting back to this situation… DB: The root of the Tutsi-Hutu problem in Central Africa is that the West has created ethnic identities out of what were essentially caste differences. (3) The Tutsis are not a tribe, any more than say the Brahmins in India are a tribe. Jared: To give people a simplified description, would it be appropriate to translate Tutsi and Hutu as rulers and ruled? DB: It would. Jared: Let me read you a quote. A group of educated Hutu's wrote to the Tutsi royal court in Rwanda in 1958, asking for equality, for an end to feudal conditions. Here's how the court answer: "It might well be asked how it is that the Hutus now claim their rights to the redistribution of the common patrimony. It is a matter of fact that the relationship between ourselves (Tutsis) and themselves (Hutus) has always been based on serfdom; there is not, then, any basis for fraternity between us. If our kings conquered the Hutu's country, killing their petty kings, and thereby subjecting the Hutus to servitude, how can they now aspire to be our brothers?" (See footnote 3, below) DB: Yes, this was 1958. Attitudes had already hardened under the Belgian colonialists and it got worse after '58. There is a whole history of how Belgium manipulated the situation. When they were withdrawing they suddenly changed allegiance from the Tutsis to the Hutus and then they would change back and so on in order to increase the tensions. The consequence of all this has been quite terrible. A good deal of blood has been spilled between the Tutsis and the Hutus. It did not simply start in 1994 with the Rwandan Genocide, as the Anglo-American media would have us believe. 1994 wasn't the beginning or end of the story. By focusing only on that one period [the killings in 1994] the West is attempting to justify the current rule of the Rwandan Democratic Front [RPF], the pro-U.S. Tutsi group. That's the whole focus of the U.S.-dominated War Crimes Tribunal in Rwanda - to punish the Hutus and whitewash the Tutsi leaders, who are defined as innocent since they are allied with the U.S. Many people would argue that the terrible events in Rwanda were in fact triggered by the [Tutsi] RPF. When the RPF entered the country, they drove nearly a million people out of northern Rwanda. These were Hutus. Following that a cease-fire was agreed to and some of the Hutu people entered neutral buffer areas. But many had been disillusioned by the RTF invasion which created a radicalized population of nearly a million displaced Hutus. And this precipitated heightened ethnic tensions. The RTF was fully supported by Uganda and the United States. That of course was noticed by the Hutu elite who at that point ruled Rwanda and of course it created a very high degree of paranoia. Indeed, perhaps it was not entirely paranoia. In any case, there was a history of mistrust. What launched the so-called Rwandan Genocide was the shooting down of Rwandan President Habyarimana's plane. Habyarimana was a Hutu. Jared: I understand there is considerable evidence that the US supplied the SAM missiles that did the job. DB: Central African scholars generally agree that RTF shot down the plane, and the RTF was a U.S. ally. Let us say that every step of the way US policy makers took steps that strengthened the hand of the more extreme forces in the Hutu government. (4) Terrible killings did follow the assassination but it is wrong to simply blame the Hutus. When the [Tutsi] RTF entered Rwanda and displaced those million Hutus - one million mind you - they did it with considerable violence. The Hutus were driven from their homes, butchered, their property looted. And then, the Presidential plane was shot down - and it wasn't only President Habyarimana on board, there was also President Habyarimana, who was a Hutu and the democratically elected President of Burundi. (Continued, Part 3) _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
