Dancing in the Glory of Monsters (70 page)

13
Author’s telephone interview with Rwandan intelligence official, January 2008.

14
Author’s interview with Didier Mumengi, Kinshasa, October 2007.

15
Author’s interview with Todd Pitman, Associated Press correspondent who visited Kitona shortly after these events, Bukavu, July 2006.

16
Gérard Prunier,
Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 189; author’s interview with Donald Steinberg, former U.S. ambassador to Angola, New York, July 2007; author’s interview with U.S. State Department officials, Washington, DC, July 2007.

17
Interview with Steinberg.

18
Author’s interview with Angolan officer, Kinshasa, July 2009.

19
Ian Stewart, “Angolans Seize Congo Rebel Stronghold,” Associated Press, August 24, 1998. The same figure was advanced by Gérard Prunier in
Africa’s World War
, 421n59, citing an article in the South African magazine
Business Day
.

20
Prunier,
Africa’s World War
, 192.

21
Ibid., 189.

22
Mary Braid and Ross Herbert, “Congo Civil War Draws in Rival Neighbours,”
Independent
(London), August 23, 1998.

23
Gauthiers de Villers with Jean Omasombo and Erik Kennes,
Republique democratique du Congo: Guerre et politique: Les trente derniers mois de L. D. Kabila, août 1998–janvier 2001
(Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), 28 (my translation).

24
The decision was made by the Inter-State Defense and Security Commission, an SADC organ that Mugabe was presiding over. Only four of the fourteen members had sent their defense ministers, while other countries had sent lower-level delegates. According to SADC statutes, the decision to send a regional military force would have required an SADC presidential summit.

25
Patrick Lawrence, “Mugabe and Mandela Divided by Personalities and Policies,”
Irish Times,
August 21, 1998, quoted by Katharina P. Coleman,
International Organisations and Peace Enforcement: The Politics of International Legitimacy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 153.

26
The Congolese government tried to convince the Angolans that Rwanda was backing the UNITA rebels, but it is not clear that this was the case at the time of the Kitona offensive. However, when the Rwandan-led troops withdrew under Angolan fire, they found refuge in UNITA-controlled northern Angola, which fueled speculation about earlier contacts. There is overwhelming evidence, documented in UN reports and elsewhere, that UNITA began trading diamonds through Kigali by 1999 at the latest.

27
Norimitsu Onishi, “Congo Recaptures a Strategic Base,”
New York Times
, August 23, 1998.

28
Norimitsu Onishi, “Threat Eased, Congo Leader Arrives Back in His Capital,”
New York Times
, August 25, 1998.

29
“Race Charge Against Congo Minister,” BBC World Service, July 5, 2000.

30
Author’s interviews with Congolese in Masina neighborhood, October 2007.

31
Ross Herbert, “Rebel Suspects Die at Hands of Mob in Congo,”
Independent
(London), August 30, 1998. The Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers fled to northern Angola. In order to get back to Rwanda, they had to capture a local airstrip from the Angolan army with the help of UNITA rebels. As the airstrip was small, it took them a month and thirty airplane rotations to evacuate the last of their soldiers, during which time they were under constant attack by the well-armed Angolan army. See Charles Onyango-Obbo, “Daring RPA Raid in Congo, Angola; And a Heroic UPDF Unit,”
Sunday Monitor
(Kampala), April 16, 2000.

32
This section is based on interviews with Martin Sindabizera and Colonel Martin Nkurikiye (retired), the former Burundian ambassador to the Congo and the former head of the Burundian intelligence services, respectively, Bujumbura, March 2008.

CHAPTER 14

1
Much of this chapter is based on interviews with Wamba dia Wamba in November 2007 and July 2009. Information on the RCD was also provided by Delly Sessanga, Thomas Luhaka, Mbusa Nyamwisi, Moise Nyarugabo, Benjamin Serukiza, and José Endundo.

2
Randy Kennedy, “His Father Is a Rebel Leader ...,”
New York Times Magazine
, August 29, 1999.

3
Didier Kazadi Nyembwe, the future head of Kabila’s intelligence services, was married to Rashid Kawawa’s daughter.

4
Author’s interview with Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, Kinshasa, November 2007.

5
Author’s interview with former Tanzanian intelligence official, Dar es Salaam, January 2008.

6
Author’s interview with Patrick Karegeya, Dar es Salaam, January 2008.

7
Michael Colin Vazquez, “The Guerrilla Professor: A Conversation with Ernest Wamba dia Wamba,”
Transition
10, no. 1 (2000): 146.

8
Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, “On the State of African Philosophy and Development,”
Journal of African Philosophy
2 (2003),
www.africanphilosophy.com/issue2/diawamba.html
.

9
Author’s interview with Moise Nyarugabo, former vice president of the RCD, Kinshasa, November 2007.

10
The commander was General James Kazini. Author’s interview with former RCD leader, Kinshasa, October 2007.

11
Author’s interview with Thomas Luhaka, November 2007. The story is a version of a parable told about Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie.

12
Author’s interview with Luhaka.

13
Written copy of Ernest Wamba dia Wamba’s New Year’s speech, December 31, 1998.

14
Author’s interview with Moise Nyarugabo, Kinshasa, October 2007.

15
Author’s interview with Suliman Baldo, New York, December 2007.

16
This was the case of Desiré Lumbu Lumbu, who was accused of conspiring alternately with the Mai-Mai and with the original RCD and beaten to death in Butembo in December 1999.

17
Gauthiers de Villers with Jean Omasombo and Erik Kennes,
Republique democratique du Congo: Guerre et politique: Les trente derniers mois de L. D. Kabila, août 1998–janvier 2001
(Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), 79 (my translation).

CHAPTER 15

1
Author’s interview with Arnaud Zajtmann, former BBC correspondent, Kinshasa, May 2009.

2
Jean-Pierre Bemba,
Le choix de la liberté
(Gbadolite, D. R. Congo: Editions Venus, 2002), 241.

3
Author’s interview with Thomas Luhaka, Kinshasa, May 2009.

4
Christopher Clapham, ed.,
African Guerrillas
(Oxford: James Currey; Kampala: Fountain; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 5.

5
Bemba himself insists that he was shipping fish through Uganda to Europe on his airline, but many others maintain that it was weapons on the flights, and that they were going from Kampala to the Angolan warlord Jonas Savimbi in exchange for diamonds.

6
Bemba,
Le choix de la liberté
, 10.

7
Author’s interview with Colonel Shaban Bantariza, Kampala, December 2007.

8
Bemba,
Le choix de la liberté
, 35–36.

9
Author’s interview with a friend of Bemba’s, who wished to remain anonymous, Kinshasa, June 2008.

10
Author’s interview with a former MLC commander who wished to remain anonymous, Kinshasa, November 2007.

11
Author’s interview with José Endundo, Kinshasa, November 2007.

12
This was the case for an attack on Basankusu in 1999, which the Ugandans did not want to carry out.

13
Author’s interview with François Mwamba, Kinshasa, November 2007.

14
Author’s interviews with Thomas Luhaka and François Mwamba, Kinshasa, November 2007.

15
Tatiana Caryannis,
Elections in the Congo: The Bemba Surprise
, United States Institute of Peace Special Report, February 2008, 7.

16
The second exception was Katanga, the home province of Joseph Kabila, which voted overwhelmingly for him.

17
Ituri: “Covered in Blood”: Ethnically Targeted Violence in Northeastern DR Congo
, Human Rights Watch report, July 7, 2003, 32.

18
Author’s interview with MLC leader, Kinshasa, November 2007.

19
Ibid.

20
Ernesto “Che” Guevara,
The African Dream: The Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo
, trans. Patrick Camiller (New York: Grove, 2000), 227.

CHAPTER 16

1
V.S. Naipaul,
A Bend in the River
(London: Vintage, 1989), 27.

2
UN Security Council,
Report of the Inter-Agency Mission to Kisangani
, S/2000/ 1153, December 4, 2000, paragraph 51.

3
Author’s interview with Shaban Bantariza, Kampala, February 2008.

4
The commander of the army was Fred Rwigyema, who was one of thirty soldiers who had begun the NRM rebellion with Museveni; the head of medical services was Peter Bayingana, while the head of military police was Sam Kaka; the best man at Kagame’s wedding was Aronda Nyakairima, who later became the commander of the Ugandan army.

5
Author’s interview with Colonel James Mujira, acting head of Military Intelligence, Kampala, February 2008.

6
Mahmood Mamdani,
When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 174.

7
Other sources confirm that Kisase was killed by Rwandans, perhaps on Kabila’s prodding. A former member of his bodyguard told me that Rwandan security agents had tipped him off regarding the ambush, sparing his life. Gérard Prunier also has an account in his book based on two separate insider accounts,
Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 403n112.

8
Charles Onyango-Obbo, “Kabila Shouts Down Museveni,”
Monitor
(Kampala), June 2, 1999. The Ugandans were inspired by their own experience. Museveni’s rebellion had originally come to power in 1980, backed by the Tanzanian army, which was intent on overthrowing Idi Amin’s dictatorship. When the Tanzanians withdrew, the Ugandan alliance that had been put in place had no internal cohesion, and they broke into factions, forcing Museveni to return to the bush. During his second attempt, Museveni had little external support and over six years of guerrilla warfare was forced to develop grassroots support and strong internal organization. It was this second experience that convinced Museveni, at least on a theoretical level, that too much external influence would cause the rebellion to fail.

9
Author’s interview with presidential advisor, Kigali, February 2008.

10
Author’s interview with Wamba dia Wamba, Kinshasa, November 2007.

11
Author’s interview with Ugandan journalist, Kampala, February 2008.

12
Ibid.

13
Ibid.

14
Levi Ochieng, “Machtpoker am grossen Fluss,”
Die Tageszeitung
, June 22, 1999 (my translation).

15
Report of the United Nations Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
, S/2001/ 357, United Nations, April 12, 2001, 21.

16
Lara Santoro, “Behind the Congo War: Diamonds,”
Christian Science Monitor
, August 16, 1998.

17
Prunier,
Africa’s World War
, 215.

18
Author’s interview with Kisangani resident, June 2004.

19
Author’s interview with MLC leader who was in Kisangani at the time, Kinshasa, June 2009.