Counting the dead 

Rwanda and Uganda are occupying Congo for largely bogus reasons - yet Britain continues to back them 

James Astill
Thursday April 10, 2003
The Guardian 

So now we know: up to 4.7 million people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo's four-and-a-half-year civil war. The figure was announced this week by the International Rescue Committee, an American aid agency. Its lower estimate was 3.1 million; calculated via a more hopeful assumption about the vast areas of eastern Congo too murderous for its researchers to visit. 
This modern tragedy receives hardly a mention in western parliaments and press, for two reasons. The first is odious: since the cold war, Congo has had no strategic value for any rich country. The second is more forgivable: with, at one time, nine national armies, a dozen rebel groups, and myriad local militias at war in Congo, its crisis is considered too complicated - and too hopeless - to comprehend. 

It was not always so. During the cold war, Mobutu Sese Seko was furnished with western arms and cash, to encourage his anti-communist zeal. With such friends, he could rule Congo - or Zaire, as it was then called - for 32 years. By the time of his demise in 1997, the Congolese state was unable to protect its people from the mayhem that was to come. 

In 1998, Rwanda invaded in pursuit of the fugitive Hutu militiamen who had carried out the Rwandan genocide four years before. Its main ally, Uganda, also invaded. Other regional powers - chiefly, Angola and Zimbabwe - scrambled to save Congo's government. In the chaos, rebels and resistance fighters mushroomed, looting and murdering civilians in the process. 

Four years on, only Rwanda and Uganda - sworn enemies now - remain in Congo. Their scattered garrisons occupy about a third of the country. Rwanda withdrew most of its troops last October. But having seconded at least 5,000 soldiers to its rebel proxy, the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD) maintains the same nihilistic control. 

Congo has now become a convenient battleground for a war between its two occupiers. Each is arming the other's enemies and stealing Congolese minerals to the tune of at least £150m a year. 

While Rwanda and Uganda remain in Congo, peace will be impossible. Yet both continue to receive more than half their budgets in western aid, and only an occasional chiding for their role in the slaughter. How do they get away with it? 

The answer is because of the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Rwanda claims that the Hutu militiamen hiding in eastern Congo remain a grave security threat. And its donors, of which the biggest is Britain, which gives £30m a year, seem to believe it. Uganda - another key recipient of British aid money - is cashing in, equating a handful of Ugandan insurgents with the Hutu mass-murderers. 

No donor, diplomat, aid worker or journalist confronted by the genocide, let alone the shattered Rwandans, can stop it colouring their judgment. In 100 days, 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were butchered. 

Rwanda says around 50,000 Hutu militiamen remain in Congo. Independent estimates put their number at about 15,000, of whom at least 80% could not have been involved because they are children. Rwanda knows well that the Hutus present it with no substantial security threat. An extended stay in Congo's rainforest has left most of the Hutus demoralised and poorly armed. Meanwhile, pillaged Congolese minerals have helped Rwanda maintain one of the best armies in the region. 

Rwanda has not launched any major offensives against the Hutus in Congo for years. Mostly, it monitors their positions and leaves them be. And with its army now predominantly Hutu, there are many alleged incidents of collaboration between Rwandan soldiers and their supposedly mass-murdering enemies. 

Midway through last year, I emerged from eastern Congo, astounded by these findings. I put them to British and American diplomats, and virtually all - off the record, of course - corroborated them. I put them to Clare Short, and she refused to comment; though perhaps I got off lightly. When Richard Dowden, a respected Africa hack, once asked Ms Short why Rwanda needed to occupy a diamond-rich town 700 miles into Congo to protect its border, she threatened to throw him off her "fucking plane". 

Since its partial withdrawal, Rwanda has conceded the job of disarming the Hutus to the UN, though it still has a hand in the process. UN officers complain that whenever they make contact with one of the Hutu militias, the RCD attacks and scatters it. Nor can the UN guarantee Hutu boy soldiers security in Rwanda; because the UN commissioner on human rights was effectively expelled after attempting to investigate the Rwandan government's atrocities after the genocide. Human Rights Watch puts that death toll at 150,000 Hutus in Rwanda and 350,000 Hutu refugees in Congo. Most were civilians. 

British diplomats now say Ms Short is getting "better information". She had better be. Two weeks ago, Rwanda's parliament authorised President Paul Kagame to reinvade Congo. The reason given was of course the Hutus; though most observers noted the RCD was about to agree a power-sharing deal with Congo's government. Uganda was, meanwhile, defeating a militia in Congo, allegedly supplied with Rwandan landmines. 

· James Astill is an Africa correspondent for the Guardian 

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