The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa. Rene Lemarchand
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factors to the marginalization of youth and the rise of armed militias. The cumulative effect of these phenomena is nowhere more potentially disruptive than where specific ethnic communities bear the full brunt of economic and social exclusion.
Refugee flows provide the conceptual link among all three forms of exclusion. Not that refugees are always on the losing side economically, although in most cases they are. The more important point is that the side effects of large numbers of refugees moving into any given country of asylum translates into severe economic and social hardships for the host society. Rising commodity prices, the rapid depletion of environmental resources, and the frequency of petty crimes within and outside the camps, not to mention the systematic raiding of cattle, crops, and vehicles (as happened in eastern Congo in 1994), are all part of the catalogue of deprivations inflicted on the host communities. In such circumstances, refugees become an easy target for politicians eager to translate diffuse grievances into political capital. In different circumstances, however, they also can be mobilized by opposition groups to strengthen their hand against domestic foes, as indeed happened in Uganda in the 1980s and in Burundi in the 1960s. Refugee populations, in short, have served as a major political resource, either as foil or as a source of support.
The Politics of Mobilized Diasporas
Since 1959 the multiplicity of crises experienced by Rwanda and Burundi have generated four major refugee flows: (a) between 1959 and 1963 an estimated 150,000 Tutsis fled Rwanda in the wake of the Hutu revolution, the majority seeking asylum in Uganda, Burundi, and eastern Congo; (b) the second major exodus involved approximately 300,000 Hutu from Burundi fleeing the 1972 genocidal massacres of Hutu by the Tutsi-dominated army, most of them headed for Tanzania and Rwanda; (c) the next wave of Hutu refugees from Burundi, numbering perhaps as many as 400,000, of whom more than half ended up in Rwanda, followed the reciprocal massacres of Tutsi and Hutu, triggered by the assassination of President-elect Melchior Ndadaye on October 21, 1993, adding tens of thousands to the refugee camps in Tanzania, Rwanda, and South Kivu; (d) in 1994, the fourth and largest outpouring of refugees involved approximately two million Hutu from Rwanda fleeing the avenging arm of the FPR. Over a million settled in eastern Congo, the rest in Tanzania.
All of the above qualify as mobilized diasporas, in that they shared specific political objectives, were politically organized, and made a sustained effort to consolidate their grip on the refugee population. This is still the case for the Hutu diaspora from Burundi and what little is left of its counterpart from Rwanda. Ultimately, their overriding goal was to return to their homeland as citizens, by force if necessary. So far only the Tutsi refugees, under the banner of the FPR, after thirty-five years of exile were able to do so.
But if the saga of the Tutsi diaspora is a success story of sorts—but at what price!—its early history is a tale of consistent failure—political and military—causing enormous bloodshed inside Rwanda, a situation for which there are tragic recent parallels among the Hutu diasporas from Burundi and Rwanda.
Refugees are first and foremost an object of humanitarian concern; only at a later stage, after metamorphosing into a mobilized diaspora, do they emerge as a source of political concern for domestic, regional, and international actors. The obstacles in the way of effective political mobilization cover a wide gamut: the material and emotional costs of uprootedness, the geographical dispersal of the camps, the inadequacy of communication facilities, factional rivalries, and the constraints on political activities imposed by the host country are the usual handicaps faced by refugee diasporas. These disabilities vary enormously over time, however, and from one setting to another. The single most important conditioning factor, however, lies in the receptivity of the host country to the political goals and organizational efforts of refugee communities.
THE FIFTY-NINERS IN EASTERN CONGO: INYENZI AND MULELISTES
A brief comparative glance at the record of the first Tutsi diaspora, in the early sixties (the fifty-niners), with that of the second generation of refugee warriors in the 1990s, is instructive in this regard.12 Even more revealing is the comparison with the Hutu diasporas.
Organizational strength, internal cohesion, leadership skills, and the ability to draw maximum tactical advantage from the domestic politics of the host country; these are the key ingredients that spell the difference between success and failure. On each count, the record of the Tutsi fifty-niners can only be described as dismal. Though formally affiliated with the monarchist Union Nationale Rwandaise (UNAR), the party virtually disintegrated after its leadership was forced into exile. While some Unaristes joined hands with the Muleliste rebellion in eastern Congo in 1964–65, a small group went to Communist China for military training; others, labeled inyenzi (“cockroaches”) by the new Rwanda government, opted for a “direct action” strategy and proceeded to launch armed raids from Burundi, the Congo, and Uganda, only to be repulsed—at great cost to themselves and Tutsi civilians inside Rwanda—by the Rwandan National Guard and their Belgian advisers.13Despite substantial support from a group of radical Tutsi politicians in Bujumbura (but not from the Crown), they never were able to translate this informal alliance into an effective military posture. In eastern Congo, their tactical alliance with the Banyamulenge of South Kivu proved short-lived; the Banyamulenge rapidly switched sides after the setbacks inflicted to the Mulelistes by the Armée Nationale Congolaise (ANC). Even more damaging to their ultimate goals was their international image as crypto-communists in league with Communist China.
THE SECOND-GENERATION TUTSI DIASPORA: UGANDA
The second generation of Tutsi exiles drew important lessons from their elders' inability to get their act together. None were more aware of the necessity to clean up their act than the Ugandan exiles who provided the spearhead of the military crusade that ultimately led to the capture of power in Kigali in July 1994. Though space limitations do not permit a full discussion of their troubled history, most observers would agree that the key to their success lies as much in their organizational skills as in their ability to make the most of the opportunities offered by the rise in 1981 of the anti-Obote guerrilla movement headed by Yoweri Museveni, the National Resistance Army (NRA).14
Already in the 1970s, the Rwandan Alliance for National Unity (RANU) provided a coherent organizational frame for mobilizing support within and outside Uganda: collecting funds, coordinating cultural activities, reaching out to the international community, and lobbying for the right to return to Rwanda. Between 1981 and 1986, when the NRA seized power in Kampala, a solid phalanx of second generation fifty-niners joined Museveni's movement, fought pitched battles in the Luwero triangle at a cost of 60,000 killed in action, and ultimately gained strategic access to Museveni's security apparatus when two of their officers, Fred Rwigema and Paul Kagame, respectively, rose to the positions of Deputy Minister of Defence and Deputy Chief of Military Intelligence.
Meanwhile a series of initiatives from Tutsi exiles in Uganda and the United States led to the birth, in 1987, of the RPF and the tacit endorsement by many of its leaders of the military option of a return by force. By the eve of October 1, 1990 and the attack on Rwanda, the RPF had grown into a powerful politicomilitary organization, combining political mobilization and military training with wide-ranging lobbying activities in the United States and Europe. By then, its recruitment net extended to Tutsi exile communities in Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania, and eastern Congo, infusing further strength into its ranks. Only after its capture of power on July 4, 1994, did the RPA develop into a formidable military machine, capable of effectively projecting its muscle into eastern Congo and beyond.
THE HUTU DIASPORAS
If the destinies of the RPF were served by exceptionally good fortune, the same cannot be said of the Burundi Hutu diasporas. Although the 1972 diaspora gave birth to the Parti de la Libération du Peuple Hutu (Palipehutu) in the Mishamo refugee camp in Tanzania in 1980, at no time was the party able to aggregate a range of political and military resources comparable to the RPF; its leadership never was able to match the organizational and strategic talent of a Rwigema or a Paul Kagame, let alone the latter's diplomatic skill in reaching out to external actors.
At no time was the party able to capitalize on anything like the extraordinary good luck of the FPR in Uganda in the early 1980s. Burundi exiles are notorious for their lack of internal cohesion.15 Their history is one of incessant