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DRC: Interview with a warlord 11 July 2004 09:41 Officially Jules Mutebutsi is a colonel in Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) army, but he recently rose to a more senior rank -- warlord. A conflict the world hoped was over blazed up again last month when Mutebutsi's rebels led against the DRC government and turned the city of Bukavu into a battleground. The uprising was quelled and the colonel retreated with 300 men into Rwanda, where UK newspaper, The Observer found him at a rickety table in a glade playing cards with friends, considering his next move. Softly spoken and skinny, wearing a green tracksuit and black slippers, he did not look like a master of mayhem. So far his warlord stint had not been successful. After a week pillaging Bukavu, his force was chased out, along with the Congolese Tutsi civilians it claimed to be protecting, turning them all into refugees. Yet Mutebutsi knows the advantage of being a warlord is that the eventual loser may not be him but Congo. Traditionally you need victory for spoils, but in central Africa instability works just as well. The colonel's adventure shook a fragile peace which continues to wobble, prompting warnings last week from the African Union and European Union about the potential for a new conflagration. 'Bukavu was the start of the second half of the Congolese champions' league,' said a Western diplomat. A grim joke referring to the five-year war, supposedly brought to an end last year, which drew in six countries and killed three million people. With a second half, Mutebutsi would be back in business, accumulating wealth, power and status as his men grabbed what territory they could. He did not express it that way. His task, he said, was to defend Congo's Tutsis, known as Banyamulenge. 'There were plans for genocide against them; we made it possible for them to escape.' Investigators from Human Rights Watch found no evidence of genocide, planned or actual. Dozens of Banyamulenge were killed but that was retaliation for the uprising, according to witnesses. As a result, 30 000 fled into Burundi and Rwanda, but started trickling back last week, evidently not expecting to be slaughtered. But the colonel suggested that his services would be needed again: 'The government has ordered the killing of the people.' Mutebutsi wields limited power, but embodies what could be the undoing of Congo -- the human factor, the calculation of a few individuals that they have more to gain from war than peace. The peace deals brokered by South Africa were diplomatic triumphs. All six foreign armies withdrew from the former Belgian colony and all the major militias and rebel groups formed a transitional government to rule from the capital, Kinshasa, until elections in 2005. Former foes were to be integrated into a single army. Expecting such diverse factions to build a unified nation was ambitious, but it seemed to work. The UN bolstered its peacekeepers to more than 10 000, not much for a country the size of western Europe, but with extra French muscle they kept a lid on tensions in the eastern provinces. Under the peace accord, Mutebutsi, a rebel backed by Rwanda during the war, was reborn as a commander in the national army which owed allegiance to Kinshasa. But in late May the strategic city of Bukavu erupted when he took matters into his own hands and attacked loyalist troops. With help from another renegade, General Laurent Nkunda, he occupied the city in a week-long binge of rape, looting and killing which humiliated the UN's blue helmets and enraged Kinshasa. But Mutebutsi could not hold his prize and fled to Rwanda, where he was disarmed, and lodged in a military camp at Ntendeza. Kinshasa accused the colonel's hosts of sponsoring the rebellion and moved 10 000 troops to the border. Pressure from African and Western governments calmed talk of imminent all-out war but none of the underlying problems has been solved, said Susan Linnee, of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank. 'Bukavu could quickly fall again to the renegades, and the town of Goma could become the next centre of turmoil.' Aldo Ajello, the EU's envoy to the Great Lakes Region, said rival Congolese groups behaved as banana republics trying to control territory. 'That must stop. The country must be unified as quickly as possible,' he said. But when key players do not want unification, that is difficult. Unrest suits Rwanda's goal of keeping eastern Congo in its sphere of influence, as it suits factions in Kinshasa who want former foes out of the government. Mix overlapping micro-conflicts over mineral resources and disputes between tribal and ethnic groups, and Congo's brew turns very murky. But one ingredient is unmistakeable -- the ambition of men such as Mutebutsi. He signed up to peace expecting to become commander of Bukavu, said former friends-turned-refugees, only for Kinshasa to appoint him deputy and make another officer, General Felix Mbuza Mabe, the chief. Mutebutsi became a warlord not because he was a psychopath or bloodthirsty, or because he was following orders from Rwandan masters, or because he wanted to defend his ethnic group, but because he was disappointed that he did not get a better job. Out of uniform, the only thing that distinguished him as a leader was the mobile phone which his fingers fiddled with constantly. One nice thing about going freelance was that nobody could ring it and tell him what to do. He said: 'I have no boss.' - Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003 |
