Introduction
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the world witnessed how the Democratic Republic of Congo (hereafter DRC), a country endowed with an abundance of mineral wealth, turned into a battleground in which ‘national armies, liberation movements and political ideologies [were] replaced by warlords, informal economic networks, ethnic hatred and greed’ (Vlassenroot and Romkema 2002, p.1). Portrayed as ‘a classic victim of the resource curse’ (Mascarenhas 2010), competition for control of Congo's vast mineral resources is the main explanation provided for the massive human rights violations committed against the Congolese population (Moyroud and Katunga 2002, Herringshaw 2004, Olsson 2006) in what has been described as ‘the most deadly conflict since WWII’ (Coghlan et al. 2004, p. iii). The role of certain resources, particularly coltan, diamonds and gold, have been so intricately tied to violent conflict that they have been dubbed the ‘engines of chaos’ for the ongoing violence in eastern DRC (Katunga 2006–2007, p. 16).
Yet an increasing body of evidence suggests that, contrary to such discourses, minerals are not the primary source of conflict in the DRC (Mitchell and Garrett 2009). As Johnson (2009, p. 1) argues, ‘if mineral control lay at the heart of war in the DRC, the theatres of war would be those where minerals are most lucrative, but this is not the case’. Indeed, evidence suggests that minerals play a rather minor, and in some cases no, role in facilitating the activities of some armed groups. For example, during the RCD-K/ML (Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie-Kisangani/Mouvement de Libération) rebellion in Beni and Butembo at the start of the second Congolese war in 1998, Mbusa Nyamwisi's rebel government financed itself through cross-border trade (Tegera and Johnson 2007). Similarly, Laurent Nkunda's notorious CNDP (Congrès national pour la défense du peuple) movement (2006–09) received only limited profits from mining activities (Spittaels and Hilgert 2008). Studies of Ituri suggest that the control of land, not minerals, is more closely linked to conflict in the region (Vlassenroot and Huggins 2005). As Johnson (2009) argues, armed groups or other violent actors have no particular attraction to minerals and they will take advantage of whatever resource they can control: mineral, agricultural, financial or otherwise. The December 2008 and May 2009 reports by the UN Group of Experts likewise suggest that military groups benefit from a range of income sources ranging from the taxing of trade routes and local markets to control over border posts, as well as revenue from minerals trading and control over mining sites. The fact that violence and insecurity continue across mineral-poor regions of eastern DRC today also suggests the need to move beyond mineral-based explanations to understand Congo's wars. In addition, this analysis has policy consequences: breaking the link between the mineral trade and armed groups is unlikely to substantially reduce conflict (Johnson 2009).
Drawing on seven months of fieldwork by the author over a period of four years from 2009 to 2012 in Congo's Ituri and North and South Kivu provinces, this article argues for a comprehensive ‘economies of violence’ of Congo's divergent natural-resource wealth. The first main section of the paper sets out the wider economic context in which violence is taking place. Drawing on first-hand and secondary sources, it presents evidence of the diverse range of activities that rebel groups are engaged in beyond minerals: these include hemp, charcoal, timber, taxes, the pillaging of livestock, and the general looting of the population. The second section reveals the wide range of actors and interests engaged in such activities beyond combatants themselves. The third section then considers how the engagement of these different groups in these activities must be situated within the wider socio-economic and political reality of DRC's supposedly ‘failed state’. The conclusion argues that the current focus on mineral exploitation and the battle over control of Congo's precious minerals misses important alternative economic arrangements that may in fact be key to unravelling the persistent violence that continues to plague much of Congo's eastern territories.
Background: grounding DRC's resource wars
Conflict scholars are increasingly aware of a strong correlation between the incidence of violent conflict and struggles over critical resources (Herringshaw 2004). By one estimate, a quarter of the wars and armed conflicts taking place across the world in 2001 were triggered, exacerbated, or financed by legal or illegal resource exploitation (Renner 2002). In Africa, this link is particularly evident. According to the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research's (HIIK's) 2010 Conflict Barometer, resources were cited as predominant in 32 (38%) out of 85 cases of conflict across the continent – far more than elsewhere. Similar figures were recorded for 2011 (HIIK 2012). Furthermore, these numbers do not include conflicts involving ‘territory’, which was considered separately from resources, despite the obvious linkages between control over land and resources.
According to Collier and Hoeffler's (2000, 2004) greed theory, in countries of high natural-resource dependence, an abundance of natural resources heightens the risk of serious conflict – a phenomenon also known as the ‘resource curse’ (see Auty 1993). Natural resources represent a ‘prize’ of territorial control, thereby providing both motive and opportunity for greed-driven conflict by armed groups. This theory has been widely applied to the African continent where resources are believed to be intricately tied to violent conflict. However, interventions to disrupt the trade in ‘conflict minerals’, such as US President Barack Obama's Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010, have done little to resolve continuing insecurity in eastern DRC, which continues to present a severe and constant threat for its inhabitants (Autesserre 2012). Some scholars suggest that in the aftermath of the mining ban, incidents of banditry and looting against the civilian population will likely increase with the loss of the relatively secure and viable income provided by mining (Seay 2012). Thus, drawing attention to the wider economic systems utilised by armed groups is critical to understanding not only the persistence of violence, but also that engagement in these different economies shapes Congo's landscape of violence in very particular ways.
A broadened economies of violence
Despite scholarship which recognises that the economic dimension of conflict in eastern DRC has always been more diversified than recent debates on natural resources suggests, most studies continue to see minerals as the defining natural-resource foci driving violence and insecurity in the region. Numerous reports, including an International Alert report (2010) that argues for a more comprehensive understanding of the linkages of a diversity of natural resources beyond minerals, still prioritise the role of minerals. Evidence from fieldwork and a comprehensive review of the grey literature however shows that minerals often play a secondary role in stimulating the activities of Congo's military rebel movements. Mining activities generated a low percentage (15%) of CNDP's income (Garrett and Mitchell 2009) for example. Disputes over land were at the centre of fighting by PARECO (Coalition de Patriotes Résistants Congolais) forces in 2011–12 (Spittaels and Hilgert 2008). Support for the ADF/NALU (Allied Democratic Forces/National Army for the Liberation of Uganda) relied mainly on the harvesting and commercialisation of timber and coffee – there is little evidence that minerals played any role as a funding source (Romkema 2007). Evidence from fieldwork in 2010 demonstrates that for the Mayi-Mayi Kifuafua, who operate in an area of limited mining opportunities, ‘taxes’ extorted along the Southern Walikale–Itebero–Musenge–Karete–Hombo axis provide their main source of income. As an interviewee from a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working in Goma asserted, ‘[The war economy] is a volume market. That's how [armed groups] get the money. It's the old ladies and the guys on bicycles that carry charcoal. It's the everyday’.1 Institutional and grassroots studies of the region agree. The two United Nations (UN) Group of Experts reports referred to above acknowledge that military groups benefit from a range of income sources. A review of the FDLR's (Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda) income-generating activities in mineral-rich Walikale between 1997 and 2006 shows that it drew upon a wide repertoire of economic activities, including local market taxation, trade in livestock, local drinks, and petty trade; and benefited from engaging in agricultural activities, fish farming and small business ventures, in addition to mining. Recent NGO and academic findings point to the increasingly important role that (as the next section will demonstrate) alternative economies, particularly roadblock taxes, charcoal and hemp, play in the DRC's landscape of accumulation.
The road to insecurity: roadblock taxes and customs control
One of the most visible and ubiquitous feature of Congo's violent landscape is the péage route (roadblock). Revenues gained through roadblock taxes, particularly along important trading routes, have been critical in sustaining various rebel administrative structures and the war efforts of armed factions. The wealth generated is so substantial that scholarship demonstrates that the revenue it generates ‘transcends the realms of the mineral economy’ (Garrett 2008, p. 32). One of the main sources of income for Laurent Nkunda's CNDP was road-barrier taxes on the transport of minerals, timber and other goods. For example, a single barrier on the road from Walikale to Goma grossed US$10,000 per week from the tax levied on passing vehicles (Spittaels and Hilgert 2008). The use of roadblock taxes as a relatively reliable and stable source of income for military operations was highlighted in interviews with Mayi-Mayi Kifuafua, who considered taxation as a form of ‘permanent subsistence’. Such taxation schemes are not limited to wartime, nor are they the invention of the CNDP, nor limited to rebel armies. In spring 2010, FARDC (Forces Armées de la Republique Démocratique du Congo – government) troops collected road tolls from civilians at all checkpoints in Aru, Mahagi and Djugu in Ituri District and, at the time of writing, this practice is widely repeated across South Kivu. In some instances, the taxes charged are substantial – civilians passing through FDLR-controlled territory must pay US$20 per cow and US$2 per goat, pig or sheep (Pole Institute 2012).
Along with roadblock taxes, the collection of customs duties and control over border posts provides one of the most profitable non-mineral sources of revenue for armed groups. To briefly illustrate – in August 2001 RCD-Goma (Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie-Goma) generated approximately US$1.5 million a month, principally from customs duties at the borders with Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, and by direct and indirect taxes on business. In early 2002, when it still controlled the entire Ituri province, the RCD-ML (Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie-Mouvement de libération) also reportedly raised over US$2 million a month from custom duties at Mahagi, Bunia Aru and Butembo, some of which was then used to buy arms and for military training and recruitment.
Civilians on the frontline: civilian taxes
In addition to roadblock taxes, civilians have been taxed on their property, agricultural products, and even livelihoods. CNDP leaders, for example, collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in administrative taxes in the areas under their control. In September 2007, close to one million people were paying taxes to the CNDP. These included US$5 to US$10 per year for a mud or straw house, US$20 for a house with a corrugated-iron roof, and US$30 to US$50 per year for small-business owners (UN 2008). In addition, the CNDP imposed a poll tax, a land tax, a ‘security tax’ on merchandise that transits through its territory, and taxes on internally displaced persons leaving humanitarian camps to work on their land. Interviews in 2010 with ranching operators in Butembo, North Kivu, revealed that CNDP forces require ranchers to pay a monthly ‘tax’ of between US$20 and US$30 per farm.2 The FDLR similarly imposed a number of civilian tax schemes. In Mwenga territory they raised a ‘tax for the liberation of Rwanda’. Based on a census compiled by local chiefs under FDLR supervision, US$10 was collected per person over 17 each quarter (Pole Institute 2010).
As taxes are equal-opportunity ventures, poorer households are not exempt, but not all payments are monetary. The CNDP, for example, regularly collected 10 kilograms of beans, sorghum or corn per household per harvest to feed its soldiers (UN 2008). In Shabunda, South Kivu, women were routinely forced to hand over as much as 50% of the fuelwood or foodstuffs they transport between their fields and the marketplace (Vlassenroot and Huggins 2005). Fieldwork research suggests that the FARDC are also explicitly engaged in appropriating a range of contributions from civilians. Even today, areas under FARDC control or areas where they patrol are frequently asked to contribute weekly or monthly collections of basic foodstuffs such as cassava flour, fish, and meat. In Tchomia and Torges meanwhile, the Congolese naval force requires an obligatory contribution of two fresh kilograms of fish per boat, and two kilograms of dried fish (IKV Pax Christi 2007). Cattle ranchers in South Kivu must contribute milk rations on a daily basis to FARDC troops stationed in the area.3 In 2012, the frequent collection of goats in the villages of Nemba I, II, III, and IV, South Kivu created such hardship that village chiefs rallied against ‘what was supposed to be a security operation [but which] became “Operation Mbuzi”’.
Armed groups have demanded equally heavy and arbitrary taxes from businesses and NGO staff. The RCD-Goma, for example, levied a 10% tax for the ‘war effort’ on certain businesses. In April 2001, 68 pharmacies were closed down for failing to pay a US$166 ‘business operating tax’; they were charged a further US$150 before they could reopen. That same year, RCD-Goma decreed the requisition, for one month, of the income from all public companies, including electricity and water companies (Amnesty International 2003). The variation in taxes and the extent of their use seems to be limited only by the imagination of the collectors. NGO vehicles travelling between towns and along major axes are often stopped at roadblocks. Recalling one incident, an NGO staff member related how, after numerous failed attempts to extort cash, she was finally forced to pay a US$50 ‘baptism tax’ when she could not provide the demanded baptism card – because she was never baptised.4
From charcoal to chanvre: charcoal, timber, and hemp
Military groups benefit from rent-seeking mechanisms imposed on the trade in forest resources, most notably charcoal and timber, as well as chanvre (hemp). The 15th Integrated FARDC Brigade, in complicity with the FDLR, was found by the UN Group of Experts to be involved in the trade in hemp (UN 2008). With an estimated volume market of 200 tonnes per year moving from DRC to Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania, hemp may earn more than US$3 million for traffickers of this commodity (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2011). Farmers and traffickers also jointly benefit from an illegal charcoal trade in the Virunga National Park (UN 2008). The CNDP has also been implicated in taxing and trading in charcoal. Charcoal porters in Kingi market, on the edge of Virunga National park, pay up to CDF3000 (about US$5) to CNDP officers for every 30-kilogram bag of charcoal, worth about US$18. It is estimated that around US$36,000 is generated from this one charcoal market alone. By some estimates, the theft of timber (along with livestock) played a larger role than minerals in Uganda's first phase of plunder in the late 1990s. Military commander General James Kazini, for example, heavily plundered two substantial timber companies, Amex-Bois and La Forestiere, during 1998. The following year, Kazini and Jean-Pierre Bemba organised a large operation for the confiscation of coffee beans (Turner 2007). Following the outbreak of the second Congo war, Ugandan military commanders again played a leading role – facilitating a partnership between Ugandan businessmen and a Thai company to form a new export timber company, DARA-Forest (Renton et al. 2007). In some instances, timber concession contracts have been used to generate revenue. In 2001, RCD-Goma authorities awarded exclusive 25-year rights to a Kenya-based company with contacts in Kigali to fell timber on a 133,344-hectare site in Pinga, North Kivu province. Under the terms of the contract, the company would pay US$35,000 for the right to extract 43,750 cubic metres of wood, paying an annual tax of US$113,344 (US$1 per hectare) (Amnesty International 2003).
As Johnson (2009) states, ‘no commercial activity is immune to predation by the various armed forces in eastern DRC’. Even seemingly petty products such as dairy products, palm oil and fishing have been used by armed groups for income generation. For example, when mining profits became restricted in 2001, the RCD-Goma authorities in Kisangani turned to palm oil to supplement their revenue. In January 2002, the villagers of Ake I and II, Iyuwa and Swima (South Kivu) were forbidden by their chief to enter their fields for one month; Burundian government soldiers in Ake, collaborating with local administrators, harvested their palm oil and reportedly sold it in Uvira and in Burundi (Amnesty International 2003). Some scholars argue that commodities with domestic markets such as palm oil, charcoal, and hemp offer more sustainable income than export commodities such as diamonds, coltan, gold, and casserite.
Life and death by livestock: the pillaging of livestock
According to testimony presented at the trial of former Congolese rebel leader Thomas Lubanga at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the defendant had told his soldiers to get ‘women, cows, and vehicles’ – reassuring them that ‘everything belongs to soldiers’ (Wakabi 2010). The inclusion of cattle alongside other prominent resources sought by armed groups suggests the value of livestock as a significant form of accumulation in Congo. As Vlassenroot and Huggins (2005) argue, land, agricultural commodities, and livestock have been consistently highly valued, while minerals attained their importance to armed groups only once these resources became more inaccessible as a result of war – something that remains true today (see also Mitchell and Garrett 2009). When respondents from North Kivu, South Kivu, and Ituri were asked to recall the crimes of active armed groups from a nearly 15-year period between 1993 and 2007, the theft of cattle and/or livestock was the third most-cited reply (after murder and sexual violence) – ranked higher than land confiscation, torture, population displacement, forced recruitment, and the destruction of property (Vinck et al. 2008).
The significance of cattle as a lucrative asset for armed groups is illustrated by the disparity been taxes paid on cattle and human traffic. Along the FDLR-controlled ‘six barriers’ road between Bukavu and Shabunda, for example, travellers paid US$1 to pass while cows cost US$2 to cross (Spittaels and Hilgert 2008); the higher ‘cow tax’ remains in place for FARDC-controlled barriers today. Documents examined by the UN Group of Experts showed that CNDP officers owned over 1500 cows in a small area of their territory, worth between US$450,000 and US$750,000 (UN 2008). It is likely that these cattle were (and continue to be) partly owned by senior members of the RCD and Rwandan politico-military establishment (Vlassenroot and Huggins 2005); the movement of cattle from Rwanda to the DRC has been linked to grazing restrictions imposed by Rwandan authorities (UN 2008). Testimony from interviews suggests that the hiring of armed groups/gangs by businessmen around Butembo to protect their four-hoofed investments contributes to continuing insecurity in the region of North Kivu. Members of various Mayi-Mayi militia groups in South Kivu continue to benefit from taxes levied on cattle ranchers while more recently some have taken to stealing cattle numbering in the hundreds. Future conflicts may be intensified by the tying up of land for large ranching concessions, heightening existing socio-cultural tensions between those claiming to be ‘autochthons’ and those seen by many Congolese as Rwandan or non-originaires in the region.
Evidence in NGO and UN security databases and reports show that goats are also a popular object of theft for both armed militia and the military. In several testimonies provided by ex-combatants, the theft of goats was cited as one of the main ‘rebel’ activities. One teenage girl from North Kivu who joined the Mayi-Mayi told an Amnesty International researcher, ‘a man chose me as his “husband”, he forced me to carry heavy things, to steal goats, and even to fight with a gun’ (Amnesty International 2006, p. 39, emphasis added). Similarly, the fear that FARDC soldiers would steal goats has forced some ex-combatants to leave home and in some cases, return to the bush. A Mayi-Mayi fighter from North-Kivu explained: ‘my father was worried that I would attract [FARDC] soldiers who would steal our goats, so I was sent to [another village] where it wasn't known that I was Mayi-Mayi’ (quoted in Amnesty International 2006, p. 30, emphasis added). The theft of goats by military personnel reached such proportions in four villages in South Kivu early in 2012 that village chiefs met with high-ranking officers to decry what they stated turned from a military operation into ‘Operation Goats’. Spittaels and Hilgert (2008) also found the emergence of a trading link between goats and hemp in North Kivu in which goats (valued at US$30) are exchanged for 60-kilogram bags of chanvre (US$30 each) (see also Baregu 2011).
Whilst livestock has become a popular object of theft and pillaging for both rebel groups and the FARDC, it also represents a source of grassroots security against greater forms of violence. In Lubero territory, for example, the phrase ‘a goat is life’ was commonly used to describe to the author a local survival strategy in the face of continuing multiple occurrences of looting and harassment by armed groups. By ensuring that there is always something small to pillage or steal, such as a chèvre (goat), soldiers will be less likely to murder or rape household members.5
The everydayness of theft: looting and pillage
Looting is a common feature of the violence in eastern DRC. Thousands of households, villages, markets, health centres, church missions, and schools have been robbed since 1998 by all the forces involved in the conflict. The plunder of fields, the theft of harvests, and the occupation of houses has also been widely cited (IKV Pax Christi 2007). More than a decade ago, Colette Braeckman (1999) noted the prominence of looting and pillaging within Congo's landscape of violence, coining the phrase a ‘war of loot’. Today however, the commonality of looting as a feature of Congo's warscape has reduced attention to its causes. In the village of Musimiya, pillaged five times in the 11 months between October 2009 and August 2010, Mengestu (2011) relates one informant's indignation toward the international community's inattention: ‘How can you live, getting [repeatedly] pillaged? We are like abandoned people. How come there is no one that talks about our village?’ As Huggins notes, small-scale violence is seen as endemic to Congolese life, and therefore receives little attention from the international community. But precisely because acts of pillage are diffused, systematically practised and episodic, the impact on local populations is severe.
Instances of substantial household losses incurred during repeated raids on harvests or property theft may, for example, stifle local trade. One member of an adult men's focus group conducted by International Alert in Rutshuru described how he had given up his business after his goods had been stolen on seven occasions. A respondent from a youth focus group recounted how all the equipment in his milk shop was stolen days earlier, the fourth time he had been looted (Dolan 2010). The persistence, regularity, and everydayness of looting, often accompanied by the killing, torture and rape of civilians, has serious social as well as economic implications. In many areas people sleep out of doors at night or away from their homes for fear of attack. The continued presence and fear of armed groups have created numerous ‘no-go zones’ for the general population. Social festivities such as weddings are no longer held or are held in secret for fear that armed groups will target participants. Furthermore, the looting of harvests has deepened food insecurity and increased the potential for new conflicts, as households may attempt to increase production through expanding land holdings, creating new potential land disputes (Amnesty International 2003).
Just as armed groups have engaged in a wide range of commercial activity, objects of pillage have been equally appropriated. Items from harvests and livestock to textiles, mattresses, and roofing material – and as one respondent reported, ‘even the children's clothes’ – represent potential resources to plunder as low-level ‘war booty’. However, not all items of plunder serve the same purpose. In contrast to the theft of consumable items such as foodstuffs, livestock, clothing, batteries, and fuel, which provide the everyday necessities of armed groups, the theft of non-consumable items often serves a subsequent significant yet overlooked role.
Fishermen on Lake Tanganyika and Lake Kivu are frequent targets for attack, partly because their work takes them on waters regularly crossed by armed political groups, but also because they possess valuable equipment. During the second Congo war, fishermen had their equipment seized by RCD-Goma forces and had to pay up to US$200 to get it back. The seizure of private property, with the intent of charging return fees, is another widely used strategy. In June 2002, for example, RCD-Goma forces seized identity cards from more than 500 travellers on the road between Goma and Sake. One month later, the mayor of Goma announced that this measure had been taken for ‘security reasons’ and that cards or replacement papers would be returned to their owners on payment of US$2 (Amnesty International 2003). In some cases, individuals were seized, with monetary ransoms or the transfer of land titles demanded for their release. During the author's fieldwork, instances were recorded of civilians having to buy back household possessions (such as kitchen items) from nearby markets. Interviews with NGO and UN staff in Uvira and Baraka suggest that the theft of petrol from international organisations may be contributing to the growth of yet another valuable trade.
Contrary to popular portrayals of pillage as chaotic and unorganised, many pillaging initiatives have been carefully planned and coordinated by senior commanders, often over a wide geographical area. In October 2001, for example, RCD-Goma's Zulu Battalion confiscated about 100 tonnes of food aid intended for the civilian population around Kalonge in South Kivu. One observer reported:
This wasn't pillage in the usual anarchic fashion, where soldiers take only what they can carry. They knew how much foodstuff each household had received and made sure that they got everything. They also took the villagers' clothing and any livestock, and even cut down the crop of banana trees. Cultivated ground was trampled over. Everything was taken away in a convoy of trucks. The pillage was utterly systematic and organised. And it was very clear that the WFP [World Food Programme] delivery and the recently returned population had been deliberately targeted. (Quoted in Amnesty International 2003, p. 16, emphasis added)
On the backs of civilians: labour and service
As Vlassenroot and Huggins (2005) argue, conflicts involving natural resources involve not only physical control of the resources themselves, but also control of labour, capital, technology, trade routes, markets and other value-added factors. Such forms of control often fall on the backs of civilians. One of the most obvious forms of civilian service is the forced conscription of young men, in particular, as foot soldiers for military groups. During the second Congo war, the Rwandese army and RCD-Goma forced children as young as 13 to take part in a practice in which families provided one of their members on a daily basis to carry out security patrols (Amnesty International 2003). In addition to serving as fighters for armed groups, civilians provide a wide range of services and capital resulting in the forced relinquishment of their time, labour, wealth, and even their homes and land. The Ituri rebel group FNI (Front des nationalistes et intégrationnistes), for example, forced the local population to repair roads, collect firewood and clean their military camps (Renton et al. 2007). Examples of forced labour also implicate the FARDC, including the 811st Battalion in Ituri, who forced civilians to carry their equipment and physically assaulted those who refused to cooperate (US Department of State 2007). Local people have been pressed into service for the collection of palm oil for Burundian soldiers in South Kivu (Amnesty International 2003) and for locating water in Linga (IKV Pax Christi 2007). Recent interviews with households in Fizi territory, supported by the author's direct observation in 2012, showed that after involuntarily providing foodstuffs to FARDC soldiers stationed in the area, women are then forced to prepare the collected foodstuffs – pounding, grinding, and then cooking of cassava into bread. In such instances, local populations are forced to labour without pay or food. Thus civilians form a part of Congo's landscape of violence in multiple ways, sometimes as passive victims, but increasingly (as the next section shows) as active participants.
Beyond the real combatants: micro-level actors
Despite a general sense of victimisation in an environment of impunity of violence, there are significant variations between local communities in the DRC. The implications of these differentiated experiences for creating durable solutions for peace are substantial. The ability of some groups to access alternative networks of accumulation, whilst others experience a decline in status or economic situation, for example, may lead to forms of marginalisation, insecurity, and conflict. In North Kivu, where violence by armed groups continues, owners of large cattle herds have hired security forces composed of former militia to defend their property. Even those with little economic or political power have been able to capitalise on the continued insecurity. In recent years, squatters and people evicted from lands sold for large plantations and concessions for wealthier patrons have returned to their lands illegally, their occupation and seizures enabled by armed elements (Vlassenroot and Huggins 2005). These few examples demonstrate that a wider social network of actors is at play within the DRC's landscape of accumulation and violence, beyond the ‘real combatants’ (Spittaels and Hilgert 2008). This diverse set of actors, including women, civilian forces and ‘freelance militia’ (Pottier 2006), shapes the violence in the region in different ways. This section considers the roles that civilians in general and women in particular play within the DRC's conflicts.
Gend(ered) armes
In autumn 2009, humanitarian staff in the Lubero region revealed that those responsible for recent attacks on local aid distribution sites were not FARDC soldiers but rather their wives. One interviewee said, ‘Soldiers’ wives have been known to “hijack” humanitarian sites. They will wait for the end of distribution hoping they will get something and then when they don't they attack the sites'.6 Theft of non-food items (NFIs) destined for internally displaced persons (IDPs), direct attacks on NGO vehicles, the harassment of NGO staff, and attacks against the IDPs themselves, were apparently conducted in protest against the perceived neglect by international agencies of soldiers in favour of IDPs. Such findings support previous research showing that women have been prominent actors in Congo's illegal trading networks. Fieldwork by the author reveals that the principal traders in the hemp trade in both South and North Kivu are FARDC soldiers' wives. Soldiers' wives are also largely responsible for trading the illegal fishing catch of their husbands at local Ituri markets (Spittaels and Hilgert 2010). The role of soldiers' wives also extends to other commodity markets. Residents in Kitchanga reported that nearly all the charcoal from the Virunga National Park was sold to the wives of high-ranking FARDC officers within the 22nd Sector. Interviews with combatants demonstrate that wives of soldiers assist in other ways, namely theft from fields and help during roadblocks. This engagement is particularly noteworthy given that, according to NGO staff, they are the most vulnerable segment of the Congolese population – a situation perpetuated (unwillingly) by the very same NGOs that decry their conditions. Working within a mandate which explicitly prohibits funding armed groups including the FARDC, humanitarian workers are unable to provide food to soldiers' wives because this is regarded as synonymous with providing resources to soldiers.
The mélange of an uncontrolled, shifting, and unpredictable landscape of violence affects not only soldiers' wives. It is not uncommon, for example, for well-connected female ‘négociants’ to trade in precious stones (Spittaels and Hilgert 2008). Anecdotal evidence suggests that female actors are shaping Congo's violence in additional unexpected ways. For female victims of rape, who have been rejected by their husband and cast out from their local community, for example, the continuing violence presents a cover for stealing foodstuffs and procuring basic necessities (personal communication). At the same time that violence creates ‘opportunities’ for disenfranchised groups to gain access to entitlements otherwise unavailable during times of peace, these must be weighed against the violent context in which these women were raped and stigmatised in the first place.
Civilians as the frontline: victims as perpetrators
Despite the fact that armed groups survive through the pillaging of local resources or through local grassroots networks does not mean that local Congolese populations do not seek access to, and become dependent on, these very economic networks (Mitchell and Garrett 2009. Just as the multiple and sometimes contradictory shifting alliances between armed groups reflects their common interests in exploiting the region's natural-resource wealth, so too have supposedly rival ideological (and civic) groups collaborated in the trade of hemp, charcoal, timber, as well as roadblock collections. As Le Billon (2001) notes, local support, involving both government actors and the general population, is critical when militia are spread out over large areas. Such relationships are more likely to evolve in relation to resources such as hemp, charcoal, timber, and household collections, compared to concentrated resources such as minerals. As Hoffman relates (2007), Mayi-Mayi militias (who, as noted, utilise household collections) are reliant on native authorities, namely the Bwami or Chefs Coutumiers, to mobilise public support. A Mayi-Mayi fighter interviewed by Hoffman (2007) explains: ‘We were … obliged to rely on the support of the population. In order to ensure [that] support, it was necessary to be on good terms with [local] governors’ (p. 103). Ranching is similarly accomplished through business-oriented civilian networks (UN 2008). Such relationships resemble those formed during the period of FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) control in regions of Colombia (Zahar 2009, p. 200). Far from sitting on the sidelines of Congo's violence, local actors were as active in parallel networks of accumulation as they were engaged in the perpetuation of violence.
As Autesserre (2006) notes, local violence was motivated not only by regional or national causes but also by bottom-up agendas instigated by villagers, traditional chiefs, community chiefs or ethnic leaders. Civil society, including armed groups, humanitarian NGOs, and church groups, were as engaged as local and regional engineers of violence (Lemarchand 2009, Reyntjens 2009). A vast array of actors negotiate to improve their livelihood and well-being within this ‘hybrid political-socio-economic order’, including clans and clan leaders as well as businessmen and religious authorities (Renders and Terlinden 2010). The continuing insecurity in Ituri, for example, has been linked to roadblocks and armed robberies, carried out by collaborating police, members of the military, administrators, ‘the agents of order’, and armed groups (IKV Pax Christi 2007). Regarding the extent and depth of civic engagement in this violence, one UN informant commented that ‘civilians are part of Congo's new violence’. Thus this violence cannot be understood separately from the multiple actors that struggle for social, economic, or political control. The next section considers these struggles.
Securing livelihoods from insecurity: natural-resource struggles as social struggles
Wars may be fought over natural resources, but wars are themselves a resource through which people can claim access to resources, gain higher status levels, and even secure benefits in the aftermath of conflict through the provision of peace dividends and disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes. As Jackson (2002, 2005) relates, violence distorts, limits, or denies prevailing relationships to natural-resource assets while simultaneously nurturing alternate opportunities. New actors emerge in the political fray and negotiate with the social and political capital they have acquired during conflict and thus demand new positions within the state structure (Hagmann and Peclard 2010). Within Congo's violent landscape, marginalised groups seized opportunities to renegotiate their social status and/or to gain access to resources; new political actors including civil society actors entered the system, and entrepreneurs of insecurity at both local and regional levels exploited the possibilities created by instability, war, statelessness, and social and economic and political reorganisation. In explaining the proliferation of Mayi-Mayi armed groups in the region,7 Vlassenroot (2002) argues that individual's decisions to join these groups must be understood as a ‘viable employment option’ in the face of wider social and economic inequalities created by the looting of Congo's resources (see also Jackson 2005). In the absence of conventional state-dominated control of territory, Reyntjens (2009) argues, what emerged was a privatised and criminalised public space through which alternative networks of violence and accumulation evolved. The decision of many children to join and remain fighting within various militias is closely tied to household security, enabling them to send money or food as war remittances. Similarly, allegiance to particular groups may depend on which offers the greatest security and financial benefits, rather than ideology per se. Wartime activities, then, are a continuation of economics by other means, in which the fight for resources creates an alternative system of profit, power, and protection (Keen 2000). Within the context of DRC's longstanding violence, state failure, and the history of ‘la débrouillardise’, such actions are not only rational but offer one of the few viable livelihood strategies (see Baaz and Stern 2008). During the war, the military and the police were explicitly encouraged to fend for themselves, epitomised in the expression ‘civil azali bilanga ya militaire’ (‘the civilian is the [corn] field of the military’). The continuing use of such strategies by armed groups only continues abuses begun under (and instigated by) a supposedly ‘legitimate’ government. This section, in situating some of the most pervasive parallel economies, taxes and pillaging within a continuum of legitimacy and legality, seeks not to absolve the perpetrators of Congo's violence but to challenge the demonisation of those involved in Congo's parallel economies.
The legitimate side to illegal trade and taxation
In the DRC, it has long been easier to do business illegally than legally (PACT 2007). The RCD-K/ML during its reign in Beni (representing Nande interests) during the late 1990s instituted a taxation system known as système forfaitaire at the Kasindi border post. Under this system fixed taxes were levied on each cargo, without regard to their actual content. Thus a container of imported tissues and fabrics would be taxed at US$6000 – substantially lower than the legal official rate of US$45,000. This bypassed the Congolese state system which involved ‘not too few state actors (and thus a lack of control), but too many, some whom are earning money simply by being there when they shouldn't’ (Tegera and Johnson 2007, p. 34). The legal export of timber, for example, passed through a melange of state offices, each requiring some form of payment, including the four authorised governmental departments: the Office des Douanes et Accises (Customs Office); the Office Congolais de Contrôle (Office of Law Enforcement); the Direction Générale des Migration (Migration Office), and the Department of Hygiene. Other governmental departments such as the Office de Gestion et Fret Maritime (Office for the Management of Maritime Freight), Transport and Communication, or even the Direction Générale des Impôts (Tax Office) also become involved in export, depending on which particular border is being crossed. Finally, the Agence Nationale des Renseignements (National Information Office), the Decentralised Administrative Entity, the police and certain military factions also demand payments (Forests Monitor 2007). It is thus virtually impossible to make a legal profit in such circumstances. Traders are therefore effectively obliged to follow illegal practices in order to survive (PACT 2007). According to one respondent interviewed by Pole Institute, ‘If everybody paid all their [legal] tax everything would become too expensive for anybody’ (Tegera and Johnson 2007, p. 34). Interviews by the author in 2009 suggest that the high export taxes levied on Congolese commercial products (compared to neighbouring countries which charge approximately 400% less) have been largely responsible for the widespread smuggling of coffee and papain (a widely used enzyme processed from the peel of the papaya plant) across the border. The resulting trading system, which can be characterised as ‘fraud amongst consenting adults’ (Tegera and Johnson 2007, p. 7), has led individuals on both sides of the transaction into non-legality. In the North Kivu trading centre of Butembo, this rebel-run taxation scheme allowed imported goods to reach the markets at low prices, making the RCD- K/ML rebellion hugely popular (Tegera and Johnson 2007). In light of this, policy reforms that seek to reduce illegal exports, without simultaneously restructuring the legal process, must be re-evaluated. Furthermore, many ‘illegal’ activities, such as smuggling manioc flour across the border in an effort to make a living, do not in themselves further conflict (Jackson 2005). The illegal export of goods by Nande traders in Butembo (Kabamba n.d.) and illegal roadblocks set up by civil society groups to collect taxes for road improvement projects throughout the Kivus8 probably contribute more to community welfare and development than government-sanctioned (i.e. legal and legitimate) contractual agreements and tax systems.
Because of this, some scholars argue that these structures such as these are likely to remain in place for long periods of time, if not indefinitely. When the RCD-K/ML government in Beni was dissolved with the reincorporation of North Kivu into the DRC in 2003, the taxation structure described above remained in place for at least six months. Even today, state services, the military and the traders in Beni continue to use the old system, whilst official taxes are often not respected. Previous work assuming that such informal activities will disappear with the instalment of a formal economy (Marysse 2002) fails to recognise that such activities are not only survival strategies during periods of conflict, but represent legitimate forms of local opposition and socio-economic structures within a wider predatory state system (see MacGaffey 1991).
The business of looting
Whilst previous studies have demonstrated that the major beneficiaries of organised trade have been senior officers in Congo's various armed forces, the question remains of how such groups' thousands of foot soldiers survive on a day-to-day basis. In practice, rebel and state soldiers survive via various forms of low-level ‘tracasseries’9 (Justice Magazine 2009, Rouw and Willems 2010). Acts of pillage and extortion may in fact be the main (if not only) source of revenue for low-ranking soldiers and militia who lack access to the revenue generated by highly organised trade or extortion schemes. As an interviewee remarked, ‘For officers, it's the roadblock taxes and minerals. For troop soldiers looting and extortion is most important’. Even FARDC soldiers experience low (and often unpaid) salaries, along with a lack of food rations, accommodation, medical and other support. Lower-level troops, in both militia and the FARDC, remain one of the poorest segments of Congolese society (Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2010). In the face of such deprivations, then, pillage is not simply a negative symptom of war but may serve as the main instrument for troop retention. As Jourdan (2010, p. 12) relates:
Leaders of all armed movements use violence primarily to promote their personal interests and social ambitions, and combatants tend to reproduce this attitude at a lower scale. As a Mayi-Mayi informant stated, ‘looting is punctual everyday business’. Precisely because of this, such low-level acts of pillage and extortion may prove the most persistent form of violence. Local human rights organisations, including Justice Plus and Héritiers de la Justice, allege that the renewed upsurge in events of pillage, extortion and crime which occurred in 2003 was committed by ex-soldiers or ex-members of armed groups who had not been reintegrated into either their community or into the army. Such evidence suggests that one of the underlying reasons for continued insecurity in the region is these low level but highly functional forms of extortion and theft.Becoming legitimate: military posts and DDR
In December 2004, the transitional Congolese government appointed the most influential Ituri armed group commanders to senior posts in the national army – a strategy that has come under harsh criticism. Kodi (2007, p. 6) explains:
The former warlords and their external partners accepted the All-Inclusive Agreement because it … left their privileges intact. Business continued pretty much as usual [and] the agreement created additional lucrative opportunities for all the warlords: they were allocated positions in governments, in state enterprises and the armed forces. With the resources they were thereby able to access they could continue their private activities with some degree of legitimacy.
Conclusion
In a presentation on ‘Protecting civilians in fragile states’, Alex de Waal (2009) argued that the supposed recent ‘end of conflict’ in countries such as Sudan and the DRC has not enabled the reversion to normality that is often assumed. Indeed, for the people involved, the ‘end’ of overt conflict results less in the decline or ending of violence than in a change to the nature of the violence experienced. Overt combat may, for example, be replaced by a (more violent) criminality amongst soldiers who have been demobilised but who lack satisfactory alternative livelihoods. Despite peace agreements signalling the end of the conflict, violence continues at the local level because these agreements have not addressed the fundamental processes which have created and sustain the current environment of criminality and impunity.
This article has sought to examine what de Waal terms the ‘space between “war” and “peace”’ (de Waal 2009, p. 11) in ‘post-war’ DRC through a broadened ‘economies of violence’ approach. Firstly, it has demonstrated that grassroots actors rely on many additional parallel networks beyond minerals. It supports Englebert and Ron's (2004) argument for a more fine-grained understanding of the link between primary commodities and war, which understands that not all resources are created equal. Scholars must be cognisant of the ways different commodities are configured in widely divergent socio-economic and geographic contexts, as these lead to very different trajectories of war, arising from a multiple and variable set of existing incentives and opportunities for existent and aspirant warlords in resource-rich environments. The use of pillaging by low-level fighters may contribute more to a landscape of fear and violence for surrounding communities than the acquisition of minerals. Indeed, taking up arms reduces the efficiency of mineral exploitation, while promoting the efficiency of plunder. However, the hemp production harvest season is associated with a cessation of violence, as groups necessarily collaborate and labour together.
Secondly, this paper supports Reyntjens's (2009, p. 216) critique of simplistic explanations in studies of violence, ‘namely, that all the bad people somehow – and somehow unexpectedly – got in the way of all the good people’. In particular, this paper considered how the current context of DRC's continuing violence, insecurity, and uncertainty is shaping a new landscape through which a broader set of grassroots actors navigate and negotiate their lives, creating opportunities, alternative livelihoods, and new forms of governance, as well as conflict, in their search for survival. The failure of conflict studies to consider the panoply of actors, local histories and socio-political relations intimately tied to struggles over natural resources, neglects the vital role of local peoples in seeking meaningful socio-economic or political leverage through conflict, and denies their role as engaged and active actors in their own future, even if a violent one. Neglecting the potential of various grassroots actors as a powerful force of change in the creation of violence, simultaneously denies their significance as potential pathways to peace.
Thirdly, this article demonstrated that grassroots forms of extraction not only facilitate the rebel movements' continued military activities, but are for large parts of the population their sole coping mechanism for the present economic and social conditions in the DRC. Such strategies of diversification not only enable groups to survive but to remake themselves economically within complex and innovative social networks. This supports de Waal's argument that that achieving a more durable peace will require a better understanding of ‘what people actually had and actually did, than what they did not have and failed to do’ (2009, p. 1). The persistence and wide use of parallel systems demonstrated in this article challenges widespread characterisations of parallel networks of accumulation as unproductive, illegitimate and illegal, in artificial contrast to so-called legitimate forms of accumulation. It is critical to understand the complexity, depth, and divergence of Congo's broader ‘ecologies of violence’, as it is these parallel economies, and not mining activities, that will likely form the basis for the networks of economic arrangements that will persist during any transformation into a truly post-conflict period.