The ‘Pax Americana’ in the recent history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

My presentation is entitled: The Pax Americana in the Democratic Republic of Congo since the Lusaka Agreement of 10 July 1999. The Lusaka Agreement marks the beginning of the so-called Congolese peace process in the West following the two devastating Congo wars of 1996-2002, which are mislabelled as ‘rebellions’ but were in fact wars of intervention under American direction. In the case of these agreements, we are dealing with anything but a path to peace. It is a process controlled entirely by American interests, an American peace, a Pax Americana. Behind it is a sophisticated method of enslaving nations. What is not at all reflected in Western political circles and their media is the fact that these wars are fuelled and sustained by those great powers that use all forms of violence to secure control over smaller nations and their wealth.

Genocide in the Congo

In this respect, my country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaïre, is a textbook example. In fact, my country has been under violent occupation since 1885, subject to exploitation and the massive destruction of human life. The first contact with our European ‘explorers’ soon culminated in the first holocaust of our population, abused as cheap rubber slaves under the regime of the Belgian King Leopold II (1885-1908). In terms of the number of victims, this first genocide of our people is comparable to the current mass murder which has been going on over the last thirty years.
  The current genocide unfolding under our eyes goes hand in hand with the endless war of attrition in eastern Congo, which has been going on uninterruptedly since the Rwandan-Ugandan covert invasion of our country began in November 1996. Serious commentators have labelled this silent, hidden war in our country as the war that has claimed the highest blood toll of all the many wars of aggression waged by Western powers since the end of the Second World War.

‘Democracy’ as a cemetery peace

All these wars were falsely legitimised by the belligerent Western governments and the media in their pay under the pretext that they served freedom, democracy and peace. Where are freedom, democracy and peace in Libya, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine? Where are democracy and human rights in our country? I call such behaviour cynicism. And then the warlords in the background posed as our peacemakers. In truth, every single one of the so-called peace agreements after the two recent Congo wars of the 1990s did not bring peace to our people, but rather the continuation of the war to this day. Each of these agreements contained deliberately set deadly traps for the autonomy of our country.

‘Rebels’ and regime change

The starting point of the Congolese new martyrdom after the long Mobutu dictatorship was the Rwandan-Ugandan covert invasion of 1996 under the false flag of the AFDL (Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo). Even the name is a lie. This was not an alliance of democratic forces, but a mercenary army, equipped and advised by American specialists. It brought our country neither democratic elections nor liberation from the dictates of foreign mining rights. It resulted in the occupation of large chunks of the eastern part of the country, an occupation that was further stabilised by a subsequent war of attrition. Mobutu’s successor, Laurent-Désiré Kabila – who had served as a false figurehead for this invasion (mislabelling this as an “internal Congolese war of rebellion”) – was assassinated shortly after his installation as president, on 16 January 2001. To the surprise of his American and Rwandan backers, he had resumed the real process of liberating the Congo from foreign interests, which had been nipped in the bud immediately after the Congo’s declaration of independence by the assassination of Patrice Emery Lumumba on 17 January 1961, barely six months after he took office. Since this further political murder, my country has come under so-called international supervision. This was organised in such a way that the two attacking governments, Rwanda and Uganda, de facto shared this supervision. The attackers simply became “peace guarantors”.

Maintaining the chaos

They were supported by the creation of MONUC/MONUSCO, a sham UN peacekeeping force without any peacekeeping effect. In reality, it was a political instrument in the hands of the USA to enforce its interests in the Congo after the ousting of Mobuto. It is in this context that we must understand the endless peace agreements in the Congo, namely as disguised extensions of the war.¹ Among the first of these agreements are the following three: the Lusaka Agreement (Zambia) of 10 July 1999, the Sun City Agreement (South African Republic) of 9 April 2002 and the Pretoria Agreement (South Africa) of 17 December 2002.
  These agreements included a ceasefire, the recognition of Joseph Kabila as the successor to Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who was assassinated in 2001, and the division of power in the Congo between the newly formed government of Joseph Kabila, the pro-Rwandan and pro-Ugandan so-called rebel groups and the non-armed opposition. The design of these agreements, as well as those that followed, allowed the two American-allied governments of Rwanda and Uganda to infiltrate large numbers of their own people into the US-led international oversight. MONUC has taken on the sad role of serving as a safe haven for this institutionalised foreign takeover of Congo. Neither it nor the Congolese army fulfilled their main task of guaranteeing the ceasefire. Quite the opposite. The rampage of the so-called rebel groups against the eastern Congolese civilian population, in reality the extended terrorist arm of Uganda and Rwanda, increased steadily. The further agreements under international supervision in fact only served to maintain the military pressure exerted by the guerrilla groups on the Congolese government, following the recipes of this Pax Americana.

Escape to ‘death camps’

This was the main reason why numerous new ‘rebel formations’ of this type emerged in eastern Congo in the years that followed, following the tried and tested pattern. They fight under a false flag; in reality they are foreign-controlled combat groups with equipment and logistics from Uganda and Rwanda. Their appearance was always linked to the militarily imposed claim of the weak government in Kinshasa to sign agreements that allowed the international masterminds to place their agents in the institutions of the Congolese post-provisional government (from 2007-2013) and to settle large parts of the Rwandan population in the territories “cleaned” by the guerrilla groups in eastern Congo. As for the frightened and terrorised Congolese civilian population in the defenceless settlements of eastern Congo, especially in North Kivu, they have only been able to escape the massacres by fleeing to the displaced persons camps, for which the Congolese use the sad and unfortunately accurate term “death camps”.

Balkanisation as a programme

These are just a few examples of the many reasons why peace in eastern Congo is a distant prospect and why the many diplomatic “dance shows” and alleged peace talks that have been organised have only one goal: To distract the Congolese from what is really being played out: the balkanisation of Congo.
  One of the foreign policy strategies of the United States is to create chaos in the target countries and then to restructure the political order as well as the economy, social and cultural life according to its interests. This is also what has actually happened and continues to happen in my country. The Western media and governments are unwaveringly treating this as a peace process. In the 25 years of its existence (1999-2024), this process has not brought the Congolese people a single one of the results they so eagerly awaited. On the contrary, during these years, our governments have gambled away the decision-making autonomy of us Congolese and thus also the dignity of the Congolese people. They are still at the mercy of the dictates of the Anglo-Saxon West and their accomplices, the Hema-Tutsi elite in Uganda and Rwanda. The cynicism of this policy is unfortunately a tradition.

Pax Americana

Thus, the role of the United States in the peace negotiations of the Second World War, which prepared the post-war reconstruction phase and the European Union, clearly shows that even then its aim was to subordinate the European elites to the interests of the United States, a subordination that has become increasingly visible in recent times. Even then, subordination to American interests was disguised as reconstruction aid. In other places, things were just as brutal as here.
  One example of this is the fate of Kosovo, which was illegally separated from Serbia by means of an illegal imperialist war, in accordance with so-called peace negotiations dictated by Washington and Brussels. Today, Kosovo is effectively a NATO province under American rule.
  South Sudan has experienced the same fate. Today, it is at the mercy of the United States and Israel, which have a monopoly on its natural resources, while the South Sudanese are wearing each other out in order to survive. The rest of Sudan is in a war whose aim is to take Darfur from it.
  Iraq and Libya are destroyed. Their current situation is more terrible than that which prevailed under their two assassinated presidents, Saddam Hussein and Muammar al-Gaddafi. And what is currently happening in Ukraine, the Sahel and the Palestinian territories follows the same inhumane logic.
  The outcome is therefore bleak: The Congolese are still victims of their natural resources² instead of beneficiaries, as well as of an irresponsible and corrupt political leadership. A crucial question therefore arises: Can the Congolese people also have hope in the face of the changes that are currently taking place in this world of ours towards the reconquest of more autonomous decision-making by the peoples, more autonomy in their actions and thus more human dignity and self-determination? This is not impossible, but it is linked to a decisive condition. Our peoples must assume their own responsibility for solving the problems they face. To put it more concretely: They must face up to the following challenges:

Taking destiny into one’s own hands

Firstly, the development of a responsible and patriotic leadership, which must be able to make decisions with expertise and courage, both internally and externally. It is faced with the main task of creating a republican and professional Congolese army that is capable of facing the current geopolitical challenges and replacing the previous militia army with its generals, who have degenerated into mere profiteers³.
  It must then be able to place at the head of the state a personality with inner strength, who has the will and the power to expel the foreign invaders of our national institutions (especially in the army and the security forces) and to bring all traitors to the Republic to justice.

Multipolarity as an opportunity

It must continue to promote the recovery of our judiciary and persistently prosecute economic crimes, genocide against the indigenous population and crimes against humanity in our country. Our judicial authorities must be rid of corrupt office holders. They must be replaced by officials who have borne witness to their unimpeachable moral rectitude.
  It must also develop the strength to appoint women and men to those key positions in our social life where they are indispensable, and this on the basis of services and merits already rendered to the general public, and not on the basis of clientelism, family influences and ethnic, tribal or regional pressure.
  Finally, it must guarantee that our country’s political and economic agreements with international partners represent our country’s interests. The international development towards a multipolar world can no longer be stopped. This is also a favourable factor and an important opportunity for us. We have to seize it.  •

¹ C. Onana. Ces tueurs Tutsi. Au cœur de la tragédie congolaise, éditions Duboiris, 2009; J.-C. Willame. Les Faiseurs de paix au Congo. Gestion d’une crise internationale dans un Etat sous tutelle, Paris, GRIP/Editions Complexe, 2017; S. B. Mararo, La Monuc/Monusco: une réédition de l’Onuc? (2018)
² C. Pierret. ‘Les richesses minières de la République Démocratique du Congo suscitent l’avidité des puissances locales et globales’, in: Le Monde, of 12 June 2024. Quant à Freddy Mulumba Kabuyi, il soutient que la RDC a été érigé depuis 1885 en une entreprise qui n’a pas besoin d’un chef d’état mais plutôt d’un gérant. Cf. F. M. Kabuyi. ‘Situation en RDC: Une guerre entretenue par l’Occident pour piller les ressources’, Minute,bf of 6.8.2024
³ J.-J. Wondo Omanyundu. Les Armées au Congo-Kinshasa: Radioscopie de la Force publique aux FARDC, Monde Nouveau/Afrique Nouvelle, Seconde Edition, août 2019

(Translated from the French original)

* Professor Dr Stanislas Bucyalimwe Mararo is a Congolese historian, philosopher and political scientist. His profound academic analysis of the causes of the ongoing crisis in the countries of the African Great Lakes has resulted in a large number of fundamental publications. An esteemed teacher at teacher training colleges in eastern Congo, he was forced to leave his country after the AFDL invaded Congo in 1996 due to acute threats to his life and his family. For many years he worked as a researcher and editor of the scientific yearbook series “L’Afrique des Grands Lacs” at the Research Institute of the Great African Lakes Region at the University of Antwerp (BE). His uninterrupted witnessing of history has made a great impact on the younger generation of researchers in his home country. Prof Dr Stanislas Bucyalimwe came across the “Mut zur Ethik” working group at an early stage and has provided important impetus through his regular involvement.