Introduction: borderlands, hybrid governance and states
This article hinges on four conceptual frameworks. The first is that of the fragile state, be it weak, failed or collapsed (Zartman 1995). The violent conflicts that have ravaged the Great Lakes Region since the early 1990s can be seen as domestic wars, such as in Rwanda (1990–94, 1997–99), Burundi (1993–2003) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (1996–today). However, they were also regional and even continental,1 with considerable inputs and outputs across national borders. The main reason for this extension is the nature of the Congolese state, which does not empirically perform essential state functions, chief among them the exercise of territorial control.2 Poor state presence enables non-state armed groups, both Congolese and foreign, as well as neighbouring governments' armies, to freely operate on Congolese soil. Likewise, ‘entrepreneurs of insecurity’ (Perrot 1999) seize the opportunities offered by a weak state to engage in illegal economic activities such as plunder and smuggling of natural resources.
The second framework is that of the greed versus grievance debate. The grievance model sees inequality, political oppression, and ethnic and religious divisions as causes of conflict, while the greed model focuses on the funding sources and economic motives of conflict. Based on a large N study,3 Collier and Hoeffler found little evidence for grievance as a determinant of conflict. As neither inequality nor political oppression increased the risk of conflict, they argue that their greed model provided much better explanatory power (Collier and Hoeffler 2004).
The third is that opposing the Weberian and Tillyan views on state formation. Weber's key characteristics of the modern state, in particular the monopoly of legitimate violence and the presence of a rational bureaucratic authority, are challenged by Charles Tilly's notion of ‘state making as organized crime’. Based on the experience of state formation in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe (while recognising the difference with the Third World at the end of the twentieth century), Tilly argues in short that there is an analogy between state making and organised crime. Rather than the product of a social contract, state formation is a contested, chaotic and generally violent process (Tilly 1985).
Fourth, this article seeks inspiration in modern borderland studies. In addition to porosity engendered by poor state performance, borders in the region – just like elsewhere in Africa and the world – unite as much as they divide. While in the past, border studies have often adopted a view from the centre, Baud and van Schendel argue for a view from the periphery. From that perspective, borderlands are broad scenes of intense interactions leading to accommodations between people from both sides of the frontier who manipulate and circumvent the constructed barriers that result from the territorialisation of modern states (Baud and van Schendel 1997, 216). Indeed, changing power relations emerge in the borderland, based on new local definitions of social and territorial boundaries, and new confrontations between social groups (Ibid., 220; also see Nugent and Asiwaju 1996).
These insights of modern borderland studies are particularly applicable to the entire eastern flank of the DRC, from Kalemie in the south to the Ituri district in the north. Focusing on the Kivu region, Jackson finds that borderlands have a number of characteristics that make them pivotal to regional conflict formations: (i) as they are relatively immune to central government control, borderlands are ready environments within which insurgencies can emerge; (ii) they are natural loci for flows and settlements of refugees; (iii) they tend to have long histories as nodes in trading routes; (iv) they are prone to ‘edge effects’, i.e. contrasts and discontinuities experienced by citizens on either side of the border as a result of aid programmes, legal frameworks or international responses to conflict; and (v) liminal populations are usually well placed to take advantage of the profit opportunities offered by borders (Jackson 2006, 439–440).
Ethnic and/or linguistic communities straddle Congo's international boundaries. Called ‘transborder peoples’ by Myron Weiner (Weiner 1985, quoted by Asiwaju 1996, 255), Hutu and Tutsi as well as Kinyarwanda and Kirundi speakers can be found in North and South Kivu, Rwanda and Burundi; the Congolese Nande in Beni-Butembo belong to the same ethnic group as the Ugandan Konjo in the Ruwenzori region; and the Lugbara live in the Congolese–Ugandan Aru-Arua region, to quote just a few examples. These linkages favour cross-border kinship ties and trade, but also (re)shape alliances in periods of conflict when local and national loyalties clash. This gave rise, for instance, to claims by Congolese groups defining themselves as ‘autochthonous’ that the Banyamulenge in South Kivu and the Banyarwanda in North Kivu were ‘of doubtful or dual citizenship’.4
While having their own merit, analyses focusing on macro-level structures and patterns of economic control insufficiently take into account the dynamic processes of renegotiation of the existing local political, social and economic space (Vlassenroot and Raeymaekers 2004). Autesserre (2010) has made a similar claim with regard to issues of conflict and attempts at peacebuilding. This article is not based on field research conducted by the author. Rather, it attempts to bring together hitherto scattered but excellent field data and analyses produced by other scholars, UN experts and human rights organisations which it organises in five themes: regulatory activities, including taxation; the straddling of public and private spheres; the struggles for control; the transnational nature of activities and, closely linked, profound regional integration; and non-state groups acting as proxies for states. Although this article focuses on regional links, it also looks at locally embedded dynamics of private governance and their articulation with the state and/or those occupying state functions. In addition to reviewing and presenting existing research in a coherent whole, this article challenges a recent strand in research that, adopting a Tillyan approach, sees criminal activities and forms of ‘hybrid governance’ as potential processes of state formation.5 It also engages with the greed versus grievance debate, showing that both are interconnected, but that the economisation of conflict tends to give prominence to the greed motive.
Regulation: setting the rules of the game
Informal cross-border trade offers the context for a vibrant production of norms and regulations, different from the state's framework but not unlinked to it. In the Semliki valley on the Congo–Uganda border, the transboundary economy generated institutional arrangements capable of offering certain levels of economic and social well-being. Raeymaekers found that non-official ‘governors’ of the border region, such as Nande smugglers, gradually became recognised as local ‘village lords’ involved in juridical and political negotiations and fulfilling state-like functions (Raeymaekers 2009a). In the Beni-Lubero (DRC)–Kasese (Uganda) area, the regulation of economic activity is constantly (re)negotiated, and formal (‘legal’) rules enmesh with informal, unofficial, ‘illegal’ norms (Raeymaekers 2009b). Likewise, khat dealers and consumers known as ‘Masai’ in the Uganda–DRC border town of Bwera play an important role in day-to-day processes of governance and security. They are major players in the local political arena, with a pivotal role in the regulation of violence (Titeca 2009a). In Butembo, a pact between a local trading cartel and the RCD–ML (Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie – Mouvement de libération) rebels included a ‘pre-financing scheme’ agreed with the local branch of the Fédération des entreprises du Congo (FEC). This pluralistic regulatory arrangement drew from state and non-state practices, and aimed at regulating transborder commercial activities (Raeymaekers 2010).
These regulatory frameworks often contain provisions on security or protection. A case study by Raeymaekers (2010) shows agreements between businessmen and non-state armed groups in the rebels' economy of protection put in place in the Congo–Uganda border zone near Butembo. A UN panel observed very positive relations between the Mai-Mai6 APCLS (Alliance des patriotes pour un Congo libre et souverain) in North Kivu and the local Hunde population. APCLS ‘General’ Janvier Buingo Karairi stated that ‘APCLS defends this population against invasions and land grabs of the former CNDP (Congrès national pour la défense du people)’ (United Nations 2010, para. 46). Titeca too found that the tycoons in north-western Uganda put a lot of effort into developing their relationships with the local population, inter alia by providing a number of services (Titeca 2012).
Although this has been neglected by much of the literature, which remains predominantly state centred, there is nothing extraordinary about strong regulatory activity in the margins (which, by the way, may well be located in the capital city). Indeed, all spaces are regulated, whether mainly by state or non-state players, and generally by both. All these players exercise institutional capacity, in the meaning proposed by North: Institutions are the ‘rules of the game’, consisting of both state and non-state norms that govern individual behaviour and structure social interactions (North 1990). This non-state regulatory activity can take quite advanced forms. Titeca (2011) describes how the rebel Forces armées du peuple congolais (FAPC), led by Jérôme Kakwavu, behaved like a state over a period of about two years in a small area of north-eastern Congo. Contrary to other groups, the FAPC did not ‘live off the land’, but rather tried to create a certain degree of predictability by putting into place a basic form of social and economic order, as well as by imposing a modicum of discipline and security in a harsh fashion. Trade was at the centre of the FAPC's activities on the border with Uganda. Therefore, harming trade practices would not only hurt the traders, but also the FAPC's own economic interests. It levied taxes that were much lower than the official ones, whence the nickname ‘Monaco’ given to FAPC land, where trading conditions were very favourable. The rebel movement even invested some of the taxes collected in a local development fund, built a football stadium and co-funded a university. No wonder people referred to the FAPC-controlled area as a Républiquette (small republic) (Titeca 2011). Likewise, Nande businessmen took over many functions previously assumed by the state, such as maintaining roads (against ‘user fees’), setting up their own court, constructing public infrastructure (offices, schools and universities, health care institutions) and distributing food, clothes and medicine to refugees etc. At the same time, they were the financiers of the wars around them (Kabamba 2010).
Another interesting example of semi-autonomous norm production is offered by the way in which the 85th FARDC (Forces armées de la République démocratique du Congo) Brigade, made up of former Mai-Mai militia, organised the economy in Walikale territory, controlling and regulating mining, mineral marketing and the taxation of transport routes. A strong illustration of the décharge of the Congolese state, it financed itself through these activities. Inside the cassiterite mine in Bisie, the 85th Brigade operated an indentured labour system and set up forms of ‘security governance’, providing protection to certain social and economic players and strategically using armed groups. A negotiated, mutual accommodation of economic and political interests was linked with the need to provide a minimum of security (Garrett, Sergiou, and Vlassenroot 2009). The outcome of regulatory activities is often paradoxical, even absurd, as certain institutions and functions of the state become imitations of what they are supposed to be (Titeca 2012). Thus, the FAPC maintained a customs revenue apparatus that mimicked the official customs regime. Customs officials were instructed not to permit the passage of goods until confirmation of revenue payment by the trader was received (United Nations 2005, para. 110).
Common to the setting up of regulatory frames is that even those possessing a monopoly of armed force cannot impose them unilaterally. Rather, norms are the result of negotiations between several players whose weight differs from one local situation to another. The FARDC revenue-generating practices are the outcome of negotiation both between the military and with civilian actors (Verweijen 2013). In Butembo, military actors had to establish a modus vivendi with local traders who monopolised access to vital resources, but at the same time these military actors became the intermediaries between local and global levels of capitalism (Raeymaekers 2010). Titeca too found that local networks had to be taken into account even by those possessing armed power. Instead of outright domination, this led to situations of mutual dependency between local traders, the FAPC and its Ugandan sponsors (Titeca 2011). In Bwera, public authority was constantly negotiated, and aimed at securing profit and protection for the ‘Masai’ themselves, for the town population, for local and foreign cross-border traders and even for local opposition politicians (Titeca 2009a).
Taxation is one common form of regulation. Taxation in and out of Bisie by the FARDC 85th Brigade generated up to US$350,000 per month, but other formal state authorities too were involved: in addition to the FARDC, the DGM (Direction générale de migration), the police, the ANR (Agence nationale de renseignements) and the Department of Health, but not – strangely enough – the Police des mines (Mining Police), manned internal tax barriers (péages) where all extorted a share of the cassiterite passing though. They were joined by local traditional authorities who claimed their share of the taxes (Garrett, Sergiou, and Vlassenroot 2009). Taxation rates differed widely. A Ugandan trader paid US$10,000 into the FAPC ‘development account’, and thus became a ‘creditor’, enabling him to justify a number of border crossings without payment of custom duties or other taxes (United Nations 2005, para. 113). The former CNDP 212th Brigade installed a tax regime whereby all diggers were obliged to provide a kilo of cassiterite each time they exited a pit, and it took US$20 every time a digger worked at night and US$15 every weekend (United Nations 2010, para. 191). An ‘official’ FDLR (Forces démocratiques pour la libération du Rwanda, a Rwandan Hutu rebel movement operating in eastern DRC) cassiterite tax amounted to US$20 per sack (Ibid., para. 209). Colonel Rugo Heshima, the commander of the FARDC 321st Brigade, appropriated roughly 40% of the production at the Itabi gold mine. His intelligence officers levied a daily tax of US$5 for every one of the thousands of diggers working at the Mulingote and Mobalo mines (Ibid., para. 210). Many more examples of taxation rates can be found in this report by the UN Group of Experts, as well as in Laudati (2013), who also shows that many sources of revenue are non-mineral, and include local markets, livestock, petty trade, agriculture, fishing and forestry.
One of the consequences of locally embedded private fiscal arrangements was competition between tax ‘authorities’. Using his political and business muscle on the DRC–Uganda border, Chief Kahwa tried to compel traders to use Kasenyi port as an entry point into the DRC rather than Tchomio, because there he lost out on taxes collected by Chief Kisembo. In addition to normal import taxes, a special ‘Kahwa tax’ was levied on merchants trading at Kasenyi (United Nations 2004, 12–13). Another form of tax competition existed within the FDLR. Through pillaging, the rebel group's Montana battalion had become one of the richest units in the movement, and its commanders allowed their soldiers to keep 50% of all looted goods. As a result, members of other FDLR units deserted their own commanders to join the Montana battalion (United Nations 2010, para. 181). Conflicts also led to the establishment of internal tax borders, such as between the territories held by the RCD–Goma and by the RCD–ML, where all sorts of taxes were levied that one would expect to see at international borders.7 It was easier under such circumstances to cross theoretical international boundaries than empirical internal ones.
This section has shown two types of non-state regulation: (i) that where the state is (almost) absent and where non-state actors formulate and enforce norms (e.g. the case of the FAPC); and (ii) that where state actors are involved but act outside of the state's regulatory framework (e.g. FARDC units). This distinction links up with the notion of the ‘negotiated state’ (Hagmann and Péclard 2010) and allows us to see the importance of locally defined power positions of those engaged in the production of norms. The cases presented here exhibit a strong regulatory local and unofficial activity in many areas: economic organisation, trade, security and protection, social relations and taxation. While we have seen that state and non-state actors intervene in this production of norms, the straddling between these two registers is addressed in the next section.
Straddling: public and private, formal and informal, state and non-state
Baud and van Schendel (1997) present the power relations between state, regional elites and local people as a triangle. In borderlands, this triangle is double, as shown in Figure 1.
Borderland power relations between state, regional elites and local people (Baud and van Schendel 1997, 219).
While states are separated by international borders,8 local elites and people are not. This scheme is well illustrated in the cases presented here. Most instances of smuggling, fraud and illegal taxation take place with the complicity or active involvement of certain agents or bodies of the state. Formal, ‘legal’ rules enmesh with informal, unofficial, ‘illegal’ regulations. Referring to the work of Paul Nugent and Janet Roitman, Raeymaekers points at the high level of overlap and complicity that often exists between different systems of survival and regulation and at the ambiguous relationship that exists between the state and the non-state, and between different systems of regulation (Raeymaekers 2009a). While antagonism often exists with regard to the state's regulatory ambition, the state is also dependent on various non-state forces for rents and the means of redistribution (Raeymaekers 2010, with reference to Roitman 2001). In fluid regulatory contexts, the state is indeed just one of the framers of norms, one of the users of force, and very often not even the most powerful one. Raeymaekers found that extraction of resources led to a restructuring of local politics in a way that worked to the benefit of local power-brokers that mediate between state and non-state sectors of the economy.
Informal economic activity does not necessarily have to occur in opposition to ruling political or economic regimes (Raeymaekers 2009b). Quite the contrary, during a meeting in 1999 between the local branch of the FEC, the state administration and the Vice-Governor of North Kivu, it was collectively decided to accept the RCD–ML rebels' offer of private ‘protection’ in the Beni-Lubero region. The meeting drew from state and non-state practices aiming at regulating the transborder commercial activities that formed the core of Butembo's capitalist economic development. The straddling became particularly clear after the formal end of the war, when local business wished to recover the dette publique incurred by the rebels, which was claimed to be the state's responsibility (Raeymaekers 2010). Similarly, when attempts were made to restore official fiscal and border practices in former ‘FAPC land’, the local business network claimed reimbursements for uncompensated pre-financing transactions with the FAPC from the national government (Vlassenroot and Raeymaekers 2008).
Titeca (2012) observed how large-scale contraband in the borderlands is to a large extent dominated by a number of powerful businessmen in coalition with particular state officials. In line with the Baud and van Schendel triangle, he sees strong interaction between government officials, local/regional tycoons and the wider population. In exchange for direct participation in the tycoons' commercial activities, state actors regulated the border trade. The fluidity of registers showed in that traders needed to engage with both political elites and the wider population in order to guarantee the functioning of their informal commercial activities. Indeed, the participation of state officials allowed the illegal trade to function (Titeca 2012). Strong interconnections of particular networks within formal state structures can be seen elsewhere, as officials simultaneously keep one foot in the ‘bush and border’ and another in the state bureaucracy and the national economy (Vlassenroot, Perrot, and Cuvelier 2012), such as when diverse ‘official’ instances exploit informal taxation points in Bisie (see above). The case of the Nande shows the ambiguous relationship with the state (or what is left of it): they did not desire full autonomy or complete separation from the DRC state, and even welcomed its stabilisation, but only insofar as it remained relatively weak and unobtrusive, thus leaving them unencumbered by state surveillance and the unwelcome taxation of their trade (Kabamba 2010, 277).
The UN Group of Experts quoted a FARDC commander as saying that he could not comment on business ventures of officials ‘because we all have our private affairs’ (United Nations 2010, para. 212). The straddling showed very well in the way in which patron–client relationships common in the Congolese state extended to officials' private business. For instance, the position of brigade commander in Kamituga was a much-desired function in the FARDC. According to several FARDC sources and mineral traders, to secure this posting, army officers often made arrangements with higher-ranking commanders, promising to return to them a significant percentage of their local earnings. Under constant threat of redeployment to a less economically attractive area, officers were pressured to gather as much money for their superiors as quickly as possible (United Nations 2010, para. 221). Verweijen too notes that the fear of finding themselves in less lucrative positions and zones caused commanders to ‘frantically try to reap the benefits of their position as long as it lasts’ (Verweijen 2013, 72).
State officials have at their disposal what Englebert calls their ‘legal command (i.e. their) capacity to control, dominate, extract or dictate via the law’. Despite its weakness, the state still has residual command, meaning that ‘the institutions and officers of the failed state continue to carry some authority. This authority is derived mainly from the fact that the state is the law’ (Englebert 2009, quoted by Titeca and Kimanuka 2012, 30). In other words, state authority (or what remains of it) is used for non-state purposes, thus further weakening the state. According to Meagher,
the state itself is more a collaborator than an opponent in the game of transborder trade. … [S]uccessful accumulation through transborder channels is highly dependent on connections and collaboration with state officials. … [In addition, the state is an] arbiter of the distribution of rents from illicit activities.
(Meagher 2003, 67)
The use of capacity conferred by the state to further non-state normative orderings has also been observed in other situations of legal pluralism, even in contexts where the state is not weak. For instance, Sally Falk Moore has shown that the threat of using official law by union representatives in the New York garment industry is a means of reinforcing their position in the application of non-state law in this semi-autonomous social field (Moore 1978, 54–81).
Struggles for control
The FDLR set up exploitation of gold mines in the jungles west of Kasugho, Lubero territory. These activities were only briefly disrupted during operation Umoja Wetu,9 and FDLR units reoccupied the gold fields in June 2009. The FDLR and various Mai-Mai groups formed an alliance covering parts of Lubero and Walikale territories, where they jointly exploited significant gold reserves (United Nations 2009, paras 126–127). Control of the Bisie area led to major power struggles between FARDC officers such as Colonel Bindu and his direct superior, General Vainqueur Mayala, the overall commander of the 8th Military Region of North Kivu. These struggles culminated in the massacre of several dozen people by FDLR fighters in conjunction with a Mai-Mai leader who was previously connected to three private companies interested in exploiting the Bisie mine (Ibid., para. 220). In early 2009, military control of the area was awarded to former CNDP networks to encourage their integration in the FARDC. The replacement of the (former Mai-Mai) 85th Brigade by the (former CNDP) 212nd Brigade was of course a threat to the interests of the 85th Brigade, which created an armed group to undermine the control of CNDP networks by fostering insecurity (United Nations 2010, para. 35).
Claiming military reasons for deployment was one way of establishing control in mining areas. Thus, the commander of the FARDC 321st Brigade used the pretext of operations against the FDLR to take control of exploitation, for instance at the Itabi gold mine near Kamituga, where his soldiers supervised production and extortion (United Nations 2010, para. 210). Numerous sources within the FARDC, mineral traders and local civil society told the UN Group of Experts that the 321st Brigade was at a minimum complacent or at a maximum complicit in the security threats posed by the FDLR, and that FDLR and FARDC officers agreed on a ‘security arrangement’ regarding the Zombe mine (Ibid., para. 220). There were reports of active cooperation between the 85th FARDC Brigade and local FDLR contingents at the Bisie mine (Garrett, Sergiou, and Vlassenroot 2009). A major working in the intelligence office of the 10th Military Region was widely alleged by local officials to be mounting fake operations against the FDLR as a pretext to visit mining sites and survey which pits were producing or not, apparently for purposes of extortion (United Nations 2010, para. 218). In a similar vein, a unit in the Amani Leo 10 operation structure was created for the explicit purpose of benefiting from the mineral trade (Ibid., para. 226). Just like in Bisie, these practices led to insubordination. Thus, after Colonel Jean-Pierre Biyoyo was ordered to redeploy from Walungu in early 2010, he paid his superiors to cancel these orders, and he remained in control of the mining activities there (Ibid., para. 229).
These are clear cases of ‘military commercialism’ (Dietrich 2001), where economic criteria invade military decision-making, for example with regard to troop deployment or withdrawal, and areas of operation. The UN Group of Experts learned that FARDC units were not interested in pursuing armed groups or protecting civilians. The first thing newly arrived officers often asked was ‘Where are the mines?’ (United Nations 2010, 75). This shows the purpose, including by the national army, of establishing control, in the interest not of the state's territorial integrity, but of private gain by individuals occupying state functions.
Regional integration
Just like elsewhere in Africa, exchange preceded the formal establishment of international borders. Not only have these not put an end to pre-colonial trade patterns, but they have created new opportunities that can be seen in many borderlands, and have been allowed to link up with the global economy. All major trading routes in the region are transboundary: Aru–Arua (DRC–Uganda), Beni/Butembo–Kasindi (DRC–Uganda), Goma–Gisenyi (DRC–Rwanda), Bukavu–Cyangugu (DRC–Rwanda), Cibitoke–Bugarama (Burundi–Rwanda), Uvira–Gatumba (DRC–Burundi). Schomerus and Titeca (2012) now observe similar phenomena in the Uganda–South Sudan borderland.
Attempts at formal regional economic integration in Africa have not been very successful, but informal integration is quite profound. Thus, while Uganda and the DRC are not part of a common regional organisation, the Congolese–Ugandan borderland is not an isolated periphery but rather forms part of a highly integrated regional political economy. In that integrated borderland, ‘governable spaces’ have arisen, characterised by a ‘specific configuration of territory, identity, and rule’ (Raeymaekers 2009b, 19). Several elements are favourable to integration. The reality of ‘transborder peoples’ mentioned earlier plays an important role. Most cases presented here insist on the interactions between similar groups on both sides of the border and on the importance of ethnic interconnectedness (e.g. Titeca 2009b, 2012). Vlassenroot and Büscher even found that a ‘supranational identity’ developed in the Goma borderland, connected with multiple, scaled places, and even with mobility itself (Vlassenroot and Büscher 2009).
Titeca offers an illustration of the intensity of integration in the DRC–Uganda–(South) Sudan border zone, where the economy on one side of the border cannot be understood without analysing what happens on the other side. In Ariwara, Ugandans, Congolese and Sudanese established a triangular trade: the Congolese bought gold from the mines in north-eastern Congo; with the income from the gold, they purchased manufactured goods or foodstuffs from Ugandan traders; the Sudanese used dollars to purchase foodstuffs, manufactured goods and coffee, supplied by Congolese and Ugandan farmers, who smuggled their coffee to Congo (Titeca 2009b).
Regional integration also explains why non-state armed groups are no longer strictly domestic but embedded across formal borders. In other words, rebel movements are often transnational. Titeca and Vlassenroot (2012) describe the ‘Congolisation’ of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). Originally a Ugandan movement, it has been based for most of its existence in the DRC, where it has become part of local power struggles and conflicts. This ‘Congolisation’ expressed itself in the recruitment of Congolese, a degree of collaboration with the Congolese population, contacts with local authorities, and its involvement in the local economy and in informal transborder trade. There were many inter-marriages, and ADF elements cultivated land and commercialised timber and coffee, which were often illegally exported to Uganda through local commercial networks. Being part of the local scene, the ADF struck shifting alliances with the FDLR, the Mai-Mai, deserters from the CNDP and Lendu armed groups in Ituri. It even enjoyed some popular support when facing FARDC offensives. In 2010, a UN report claimed that ‘nearly half of the population of Beni territory’ supported the ADF. This integration was all the more evident in the Rwenzori region as the Bakonjo of Uganda and the Banande of the DRC are one and the same transborder people (Titeca and Vlassenroot 2012). Rafti (2006) comes to similar findings with regard to the FDLR, a Rwandan movement that has been operating in eastern DRC for over a decade. They mingle with the local population and engage in agriculture. Some are married to local women and have been integrated in their host communities. Others resort to predatory and criminal activities. Some localities in the Rusizi plain are called ‘FDLR villages’. Rafti concludes that the FDLR is, in many ways, a ‘Congolese’ movement (Rafti 2006). This can also be said about the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which includes a large number of Congolese abductees since it entered the DRC.11
Rebels as proxies
When intervening in the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda in particular have used rebel organisations as proxies and they continue doing so, as their support throughout 2012 for the new rebel movement M23 shows (United Nations 2012). During the first war, 1996–97, Rwanda and Uganda discovered a ‘Mini Eldorado’ (Vlassenroot, Perrot, and Cuvelier 2012, 5) in eastern Zaire, but only after 1998 did the exploitation of Congolese resources become systematic. It was no longer a by-product of war, but its major driving force. In Ituri, external sponsors backed local warlords and rebel leaders who exploited local issues of land, economy and power. As Uganda was unable to protect its economic and security interests on its own, it had to rely on cooperation with these groups. When one rebel movement, the Union des patriotes congolais (UPC), rallied with Rwanda after having enjoyed Ugandan support, Uganda engineered the creation of the Parti de l'unité et de la sauvegarde de l'intégrité du Congo (PUSIC) and of the FAPC (see above) (Vlassenroot and Raeymaekers 2004; Titeca 2011). Vlassenroot and Raeymaekers show that the intervention of the Ugandan (and later Rwandan) army in Ituri not only created opportunities for members of these countries' military elites, but also allowed local elites to (re)position themselves in local and regional markets.
These alliances can affect the polities of the occupying neighbour: the strong collaboration between individual UPDF (Uganda People's Defence Forces) officers and local Ituri businessmen created a privatised political economy that increasingly escaped the control of the Ugandan state. The UPDF's mercantile conduct across the border turned out to pose serious threats to the coherence of the UPDF and even to the Ugandan state as such (Vlassenroot and Raeymaekers 2004). Despite its linking up with Congolese players, the UPDF were however never in full control, partly because of the complexity of local conflicts but also because of a lack of political leadership over the expeditionary force, which eventually led to an open rift within the UPDF itself (Vlassenroot, Perrot, and Cuvelier 2012). Just like other alliances in the region, those linking state regimes and local proxies shifted considerably. For instance, after the ADF had been created with the support of the Mobutu regime and Sudan, it was later supported by the Kabila regime for holding ground against the CNDP (Titeca and Vlassenroot 2012).
Proxy rebels served the business interests of their sponsors. Vlassenroot and Romkema (2002) describe how a new group of regional, in particular Rwandan, businesspeople emerged during the 1996–97 war. However, as the Congolese regime that seized power in May 1997 became more efficient, local businesspeople gradually recuperated their former positions. After the start of the RCD rebellion in August 1998, the Rwandan businesspeople were granted renewed access to the lucrative Congolese informal economy. Rwandan agents ran the revenue-generating services in RCD-held territory, thus consolidating control of the rebels' financial resources and the local trading networks. Even Hutu insurgents, predecessors to the FDLR, were brought into these activities: ‘Interahamwe’ who mined coltan were required to sell their produce to the RPA (Rwanda Patriotic Army) commanders via local intermediaries (Vlassenroot and Romkema 2002). Later on, the RPA put several mining centres under its direct command, and even moved in Rwandan prisoners, among them former insurgents, to operate the mines (Ibid.).
Alliances were sometimes ideological, for instance that bringing together strange bedfellows such as the ADF, the FDLR, Mai-Mai, deserters from the CNDP, and Lendu armed groups in Ituri (Titeca and Vlassenroot 2012). This could indeed by seen as an ‘anti-Tutsi’ front (at one point, the ADF aimed to save Uganda from ‘Tutsism’) (UN DHA 1997). More generally, however, alliances were based on more mercantile considerations, even when they seemed to have ethnic overtones at first sight, such as the power struggles between Nande and Banyarwanda elites in North Kivu. Although during the war this rivalry partly explained the division of North Kivu between the Banyarwanda-backed RCD–Goma and the Nande-supported RCD–ML, Vlassenroot and Büscher (2009) show that competition was essentially economic. The Ugandan overall commander in the DRC from 1998 to 2000, General James Kazini, closely collaborated with local rebel leaders such as Mbusa Nyamwisi, John Tibasiima, Roger Lumbala and Jean-Pierre Bemba, all of whom facilitated his illegal dealings in diamonds, coltan, timber, counterfeit currency, gold and coffee (Vlassenroot and Raeymaekers 2004). Battlefield enemies traded extensively, such as the FDLR with the FARDC, Mai-Mai groups with the FARDC, M23 with the FDLR. The FDLR even traded with their supposed archenemies, the RDF (Rwanda Defence Forces, the new name of the Rwandan army since 2002), and intermediaries in Kigali participated in FDLR gold deals (United Nations 2010, para. 181).
Conclusion
In 2010, a report of the UN Group of Experts identified four typologies of military and armed group involvement in the illegal mineral trade: taxation, protection, commercial control and coercive control (United Nations 2010, para. 178). All these forms have been seen operating in this article, but they were by no means limited to official or unofficial armed groups. Quite to the contrary, they can also be found among state or traditional authorities, local and regional traders, and ordinary people trying to make a living in conditions of state collapse, instability and war. Given the strong links between local exploitation of resources and the wider regional and international economy, players far away from the conflict areas also seize these opportunities.
The cases presented here seem at first sight to confirm the Collier/Hoeffler thesis in the greed versus grievance debate. However, this is true only if one looks at the eventual outcome. There have been instances of grievance in the Great Lakes Region, particularly as a result of ethnic resentment between Tutsi and other groups claiming to be ‘autochthonous’ in the Kivu provinces or of frustration among insurgent Hutu with the political situation in Rwanda. Rebel groups in Ituri and the Kivus have formulated political aims. Some of the non-state groups discussed here started as an expression of grievance (e.g. the ADF) or were created for political reasons (e.g. the proxies of Rwanda and Uganda). However, the economisation of conflict gave prominence to the greed motive, as the main driving force became the gaining of benefit from the exploitation of mineral and other resources, as seen in cases involving taxation, smuggling and the mineral trade. So greed and grievance can be interconnected over time, and conflict does not always start because of greed. Contrary to what is often suggested, these activities are not even per se linked to conflict; in the region discussed here they existed well before acute violence started in the early 1990s, as shown among others by Janet McGaffey (1999), and they continued after the (formal) end of the conflicts.12
Some features of insurgent governance discussed by Mampilly (2011) can be found in the cases discussed here. These included the provision of security and the regulation of market transactions, as well as, to some extent, the resolution of disputes and dealing with criminal behaviour. Other functions, such as meeting education and health needs, allocating land and other resources, and providing shelter, were rarely met (Ibid., 4). But the non-state actors (or the state actors behaving in a ‘private’ fashion) were not rebel movements that attempted, as analysed by Mampilly, to assume governmental functions in the territory they controlled. Even rebel movements such as the RCD that, at certain moments, controlled sizeable space and a considerable population did not achieve anything close to the exercise of empirical sovereignty. In addition, the prevailing Zairean/Congolese prebendary context was such that they mimicked the behaviour of the state, which, empirically speaking, did not generally perform those functions of sovereignty either. So, contrary to what some have argued, the criminal activities described here could not be a factor of state formation.
In recent years, informal and illegal economic activities have been diversely interpreted. A classical approach considers them as a consequence and cause of state decline. Normatively speaking, these activities must be reined in, ‘formalised’ and brought back within the confines of the state and its normative ordering. A second, more ‘activist’ approach sees unofficial trade and extraction as a way to deal with a predatory and violent state. It is a strategy of the weak and oppressed, and can be seen as alternative political structuring. It is presented as a political site of resistance and protection, a reaction against the state and the domination of a political class. In a more radical formulation, (transnational) criminality is an instrument of state formation. Thus Raeymaekers claims that ‘the actions and tactics of the poor do not necessarily undermine state sovereignty as such, but instead mould and transform it in the process of generating local livelihoods’ (Raeymaekers 2009a, 57, 2009b).
My more cynical and, I believe, more realistic view is that elites use the informal economy for their personal profit, that criminal activities further destroy an already weak state and that the poor are not the main beneficiaries of these ‘actions and tactics’. They are not a weapon of the weak, but a weapon of the (relatively) strong: local and national elites have no interest in state reconstruction, public taxation and social-economic order. The informal economy is part of the criminal state rather than a departure from it, and those who benefit most are the powerful, state and non-state actors alike (cf. Chabal and Daloz 1999). This position echoes the critical reflection that Kate Meagher suggests should accompany the ‘strength of weak states’ perspective. She questions the link between state formation in pre-modern Europe with violent political disorder in contemporary Africa, has doubts about the legitimate, or at least acceptable, nature of local orders in the eyes of those who live under them and wonders in whose interest the blurring of boundaries between formal and informal regulation is (Meagher 2012, 1077). The legitimacy issue is particularly problematic when, as in a number of cases discussed here, foreign players with no interest in popular support use local proxies to carry out their military–commercial endeavours. Despite the use made by, for example, small traders of new regulatory frameworks, the real powerless are better off in a functioning state, free from arbitrary and often violent rackets, ‘fees’ and ‘tolls’. ‘Tilly's famous aphorism, after all, is about the winners that were made by war, not the losers that were destroyed by it’ (Taylor and Botea 2008, quoted by Meagher 2012, 1079).