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- Convenors:
-
Suda Perera
(SOAS)
Danielle Beswick (University of Birmingham)
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- Location:
- C6.09
- Start time:
- 28 June, 2013 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel explores the complexities of the security interconnectedness between Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC. It discusses the military dynamics, resource control, and autochthonous tropes which drive the security dynamics of the region, and examines what is to be done to improve regional stability.
Long Abstract:
Despite decades of aid and peacebuilding efforts in the region, instability and pervasive conflict prevails in the African Great Lakes - one of Africa's most volatile regional security complexes. The idea of the security complex is used by Buzan and Wæver (1998; 2003) to describe situations where 'states or other units link together sufficiently closely that their securities cannot be considered separate from each other'(2003: 43). This panel will explore the complexities of the security interconnectedness between Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC, which play out in the eastern Congo. Papers will explore topics such as Rwanda's and Uganda's military strength in the region and their role in perpetuating conflict; the use of autochthonous discourses by both rebel groups and incumbent governments; and the role of natural resources in funding all conflicting parties involved in the eastern DRC. From these discussions, the papers may also seek to make suggestions regarding what is to be done to break the cycles of conflict in the eastern DRC. In particular the bimodal statuses of Rwanda and Uganda as both a donor-darlings (for their domestic development achievements and roles in peace-building efforts), and as a growing pariahs due to their belligerent activities in the DRC, will be examined. Through exploring the complex security dilemmas facing the Rwandan and Ugandan regimes and how these play out in eastern DRC, this panel will consider how these complex security conundrums can be resolved, and how a more lasting peace can be brought to the African Great Lakes.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
An increased focus on the regional dynamics of the protracted conflict in the eastern part of the DRC is essential. However, this focus will not reach sustainable peace if the conflict dynamics at the regional level are not being connected to the national and local level.
Paper long abstract:
The protracted conflict in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is situated within a wider regional conflict formation. Therefore, increased attention on the regional conflict dimensions is essential. However, a peacebuilding approach that would overemphasis reaching and maintaining regional stability is not likely to contribute to conflict transformation. Instead peacebuilding approaches should address the conflict dynamics at the regional, national and local level in a comphrensive manner. In this paper it is argued that over the last decade international actors adopted a stability focused approach and overemphasised the utility of the rapproachment between Kabila and Kagame to contribute to peace. Instead this approach led to the 'containment' of violence within the eastern part of the DRC creating a sense of stability within the region among international peacebuilders in the period 2009-2012. Due to an overemphasis on stability the underlying conflict system behind the violence was not being properly addresses leading to the next round of crisis within the region that emerged by the munity of M23 from the FARDC late 2012.
Paper short abstract:
The paper attempts to judge the effects of the withdrawal of foreign aid on Rwanda’s already delicate 'elite bargain'. It specifically analyzes the effects it may have on the sources of President Kagame’s stability: economic development, perceived neoliberal ideology and management of the elite.
Paper long abstract:
Last year, donors finally withdrew foreign aid from Rwanda, hoping to push President Kagame to dissolve the country's alleged relationship to the M23 rebel group. Sanctioning a country that has been lauded for its aid effectiveness and impressive performance in several governance indicators was an interesting move. But what effect does it have? This paper attempts to provide an understanding of how the withdrawal of foreign aid will affect Rwanda's 'delicate' elite bargain - a concept that most agree is key to understanding the conflict, but has not received enough detailed exploration.
President Paul Kagame derives his legitimacy and the stability of his own position through three sources: the people (through a commitment to economic development); the international community (through a perceived engagement with the Neoliberal Development Ideology); his own elite (through his elite bargain). In my view, any threat to Kagame's position can only arrive from the third source - his own elite. The other two sources could influence the elite to react but an eventual insurrection has most often been mounted by someone who was once a 'co-conspirator', as Verhoeven and Roessler (2012) find. Since a 'co-conspirator rupture' (Verhoeven and Roessler 2012) became evident, Kagame's elite bargain has become increasingly delicate. With the withdrawal of aid and a disaffected international community, all three sources of his stability are now threatened. As a result, his next moves in the Congo will have to balance between satisfying a disaffected elite, appeasing the international community and pushing forward with VISION 2020.
Paper short abstract:
Short abstract Based on original and recently collected field data, this article explores perceptions of the conflict and the M23 rebellion among the new Congolese refugees in Rwanda.
Paper long abstract:
Long abstract
The eastern parts of the DR Congo have been the scene of continuing conflict since 1996. After a period of relative calm following the signing of the peace agreement between the CNDP and the Government in March 23, 2009, fighting flared up in the beginning of 2012, with the M23 rebellion claiming the Government did not live up to this agreement. This has resulted in a new wave of refugees into Rwanda, largely consisting of Congolese Rwandophone tutsis, whose interests (at least initially) the M23 claims to represent. Based on original field data, this article explores perceptions of the conflict and the M23 rebellion among the new Congolese refugees. It investigates the demands of the refugees in the light of M23 claims. To what extent do the refugees identify with and feel that the M23 represents their interests? By analyzing the issue of the demands and perceptions of the conflict held by this group, the article sheds light on the connection between the refugee population and the M23. Despite presenting the 2009 agreement and the time following after that in positive manner, the data reveals very high levels of identification with the M23 (which broke this period). This is reflected in the articulation of almost identical political claims, a strong conviction that the M23 is fighting for their cause, but also other forms of support. The article ends by discussing what this strong support implies for our efforts to understand conflict dynamics in the eastern DRC.
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the contemporaneous transformations of the RPF from rebel group into state and the FDLR from state to rebel group, questioning the significance of state-centric models of conflict to understanding the dynamics of intractable political violence in the region.
Paper long abstract:
In 1994, in Rwanda, a rebel group became a government, and a government became a rebel group. Before, and after, both resemble nothing so much as networks of overlapping politico-military and commercial elites embedded within broader networks of security and primitive accumulation in the region. For both the RPF and the FDLR, being rebels or being a state was less significant than these networks, and the resources they could tap through them. Nonetheless, 1994 reveals - for both groups - what was and was not significant about their 'state-ness', and their experience shows us what is and is not significant about the legal-rational edifice of the African state. The survival and flourishing of the RPF, and the FDLR's contemporaneous degeneration into irrelevance reveals many underlying dynamics to political violence and intractable conflict in the region. In particular, the analytic lens of these two groups highlights that what is significant is (a) who is networked to whom, regardless of formal borders, (b) the manipulation of historical memory and discourses of indigeneity undergird or subvert such networks, and (c) the resources which flow through those networks as a result. State-centric models of conflict are thus unhelpful and misleading.
Paper short abstract:
Whilst Rwanda is a strong military actor, little is known about the determinants of such strength. By analysing how the Rwandan state has managed salaries in the army, we will explore the organizational and ideological drivers of the Rwandan military power.
Paper long abstract:
Rwanda is a key military power in the Great Lakes region, recognized for its effectiveness, as demonstrated by its different involvements in DRC. However, little is known about the determinants of such military strength. This paper will contribute to fill this gap by analysing how the Rwandan state has restored and managed salaries in the Rwandan army since genocide.
Non-payment of salaries arguably matters for military effectiveness, as it can be a source of great instability and indiscipline, as the case of the Congolese army has long shown. Whilst countries in the Great Lakes region have occasionally experienced problems of salary payment, Rwanda seems to have been able to systematically pay salaries on time and has even transformed salary payment into a tool of state building. It has done so despite the huge challenges the country faced in the post genocide period, such as dire lack of resources and the need to integrate a large number of ex-FAR soldiers to wage war in the DRC.
Through this analysis, we aim to shed a light on the broader phenomenon of the ideological and organizational culture of the Rwandan military force. This paper's contribution to understanding the security complex in the Great Lakes region will be double. First, it will contribute to a better understanding of the Rwandan military strength. Second, it will shed a new light on the ideological and organizational culture of the Rwandan army and draw consequences for security in the region.