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Abstract
Since the start of reporting during the ‘Congo wars’ in 1998 the International Crisis Group (icg) has been one of the most important sources of information for Western analysts, UN agencies and ngos dealing with the political and economic challenges of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This article takes a closer look at the way Congolese government politics is analysed in icg reports. It shows that the logics of government and the dilemmas of rule in a country with the size, geography and history of the DRC receive hardly any attention in icg reporting. Building on Klaus Schlichte’s approach to the dilemmas of rule, the article argues that President Joseph Kabila has in fact responded skilfully to the dilemmas of elite inclusion across the different hubs of power and wealth from the Kivus to Katanga to the capital Kinshasa. While his political and human rights records are by no means impeccable, not all is rotten in the state of Congo, and the Kabila government deserves more analytical rigor and openness than is offered by the pathologising modes of analysis used by the icg.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks the research network ‘Knowledge and power in international security governance’ and in particular Berit Bliesemann de Guevara for their great way of doing academia cooperatively and for their ideas during the authors’ workshop at Aberystwyth University in October 2013. Special thanks to Morten Bøås for his suggestions and to Maria Eriksson-Baaz and Stylianos Moshonas for their poignant and supportive comments on this article in an earlier form. I am grateful to the Käte Hamburger Kolleg, Duisburg, for the postdoc fellowship funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research, which made this research possible, and to my colleagues there for their suggestions during the research colloquium.
Notes
1. See http://kongomani.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/some-thoughts-and-facts-about-the-ongoing-crisis-in-the-drc-part-1/; http://christophvogel.net/2013/12/31/kinshasa-on-the-verge-ofwhat-exactly/; and http://blogs.taz.de/kongo-echo/2013/12/30/ein-operettenputsch-zum-jahresende/, accessed March 6, 2014.
2. See icg, CrisisWatch, no. 125.
3. Prunier, Africa’s World War, 249.
4. Koddenbrock, Recipes for Intervention.
5. The Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (rcd), the Conseil National du Peuple (cndp) and the Mouvement du 23 Mars (M23) have consecutively occupied parts of eastern Congo between 1998 and 2013.
6. Young and Turner, The Rise and Decline; and Schatzberg, The Dialectics of Oppression.
7. Koddenbrock, “The Failed-state Effect,” 118.
8. Although there is considerable scientific controversy about this figure, most think-tanks continue to quote it, sometimes accompanied by a footnote mentioning the controversy. See International Rescue Committee, Mortality in the Congo; and Human Security Report Project, Human Security Report 2009/2010, 15ff.
9. Prunier, Africa’s World War; Turner, The Congo Wars; Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters; Veit, Intervention as Indirect Rule; and Autesserre, The Trouble with the Congo.
10. icg, The Kivus. The most recent report on Understanding Conflict in Eastern Congo (1) (2013) focuses nearly exclusively on the local issues in the east. Judith Verweijen has published a useful critique at http://matsutas.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/anatomy-of-a-feeble-analysis-a-critical-reading-of-crisis-groups-latest-report-on-the-dr-congo-by-judith-verweijen/, accessed January 7, 2014.
11. Chandler, International Statebuilding; Autesserre, The Trouble with Congo; Vlassenroot, ‘Why local dynamics’; and MacGinty and Richmond, “The Local Turn in Peacebuilding.”
12. Titeca and Herdt, “Real Governance beyond the Failed State.”
13. Herbst and Mills, “There is no Congo”; and Herbst and Mills, “The Invisible State.”
14. Englebert and Tull, “Contestation, Négociation, et Résistance,” 15.
15. Trefon, Congo Masquerade, 18.
16. Reno, “Congo,” 46.
17. Ibid., 51.
18. Multiparty democracy in the Germany of European austerity politics operates in a similarly structured way. Compare the recent discussions about the former chief of the German chancellery, Roland Pofalla, joining the German Railway company Die Bahn. Suddenly, commentators realised that a number of people who had been very close to Angela Merkel in the past have ended up in influential posts outside the political field. Eckard von Klaeden went to Daimler, Jens Wiedemann to the European Central Bank, etc. This is the personal component of rule, which is a sign of patrimonialism in most analysis of Congolese and African politics. It turns into a question of ‘style’ when analysing the German political system and the strategies of rule employed by chancellor Merkel. See, for example, Nico Fried, ‘Nicht gerade ein feiner Zug, Sueddeutsche.de. Accessed January 6, 2014. http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/merkel-und-der-fall-pofalla-nicht-gerade-ein-feiner-zug-1.1855769.
19. Schlichte, Der Staat in der Weltgesellschaft, 261–275.
20. Schlichte, “Der Streit der Legitimitäten,” 21.
21. See the introduction to this special issue.
22. See also Koddenbrock, The Two Spheres of Intervention. Alexander Cooley and James Ron have pioneered this analysis in looking at the development ngo sector, which functions in a very similar way. Cooley and Ron, “The ngo Scramble.”
23. See Koddenbrock, The Two Spheres of Intervention, for an extended argument on this.
24. See Koddenbrock, ‘The Failed-state Effect,” for my take on how this ‘failed-state effect’ comes about.
25. For an exception, see Tull, Weak States and Successful Elites; and most particularly, Baaz and Stern, “Willing Reform?”; and Baaz and Verweijen, “The Volatility of a Half-cooked Bouillabaisse.”
26. Baaz and Stern, “Willing Reform?,” 204.
27. Baaz and Verweijen, The Volatility of a Half-cooked Bouillabaisse,” 577–580.
28. The author interviewed 50 UN and ngo staff members about their main sources of information during field research in 2008 and 2009. The icg was mostly the main source, sometimes in tandem with the UN Group of Expert Reports. See Koddenbrock, The Two Spheres.
29. Joseph Kabila was 27 years old when he first assumed office.
30. Interview with Congolese intellectual, Goma, 29 September 2009.
31. The following analysis is based on a content analysis of all icg reports since 1998, focusing on the way they portray Congolese politics. The three key problems – a lack of attention to politics as multi-layered, to the politics of inclusion and exclusion, as well as the use of the term ‘inner circle’ – were identified as the most recurrent features among these reports.
32. icg, The Congo's Transition is Failing.
33. icg, A Congo Action Plan; icg, Disarmament in the Congo: Investing; icg, Disarmament in the Congo: Jump-starting; icg, Security Sector Reform in the Congo; icg, Scramble for the Congo; icg, Democratic Republic of Congo; icg, Africa’s Seven-nation War; icg, How Kabila Lost His Way; icg, Congo: Staying Engaged; icg, Securing Congo’s Elections; and icg, Congo: The Electoral Dilemma.
34. Vlassenroot, “Why Local Dynamics”; Stearns, Dancing in the Glory; and Reyntjens, The Great African War.
35. I thank Morten Bøås for this idea.
36. icg, The Kivus, 2, 4.
37. Because of its dependence on democratic elections, however, it remains important for the Kinshasa government to secure some kind of support from the densely populated Kivus. Joseph Kabila won the 2006 elections in the east. He was on the brink of defeat in 2011, and some say he only won by rigging the elections because his eastern voter base had started to crumble.
38. icg, The Congo’s Transition is Failing.
39. Then speaker of the parliament, Vital Kamhere – now one of Kabila’s major contenders – made the same argument at the time, positioning himself against Kabila. This highlights the fact that the icg could much rather be seen as a political actor trying to act on the Congolese political scene by making Western intervention adopt certain stances than as an ‘independent’ analyst.
40. icg, Congo: No Stability in Kivu, 3.
41. He won 23% of the votes in the Kivus, Kabila 38%. Commission Electorale Nationale Independente (ceni), “Graphique des partis ayant obtenus plus de 5 députés.” Accessed January 7, 2014. http://www.ceni.gouv.cd/resultats.aspx.
42. Kamhere was recently physically attacked during a rally in Bukavu, South Kivu. It is unclear who was behind this attack.
43. icg, Congo: The Electoral Process, 8.
44. Ibid.
45. icg, Black Gold in the Congo, 21.
46. See http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20120704-rdc-gabriel-kyungu-federalite-petition-autonomie-provinces-katanga-kumwanza, accessed January 7, 2014.
47. This seems currently to be changing because Katumbi is starting to increase his independence from Kabila in order to prepare for the next presidential elections in 2016. He is excluding himself from the Kabila camp in order to be able to run as a non-Kabila contender.
48. See http://kongomani.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/some-thoughts-and-facts-about-the-ongoing-crisis-in-the-drc-part-1/, accessed March 11, 2014, for another take on the events around New Year’s Eve 2013.
49. icg, From Kabila to Kabila, 21, 31; icg, A Congo Action Plan, 3; icg , Congo: Consolidating the Peace, 15; icg, Congo: Five Priorities, 12; icg, Congo: No Stability in Kivu, 3.
50. In a 2001 book, Thomas Preston analysed The President and his Inner Circle to study the ‘leadership style and the advisory process in foreign affairs’ of six consecutive US presidents. Using Margaret Hermann’s ‘personality assessment-at-a-distance’ profiling technique, Preston gives an account of US presidents’ leadership style, ending with Bill Clinton. This personality approach to governing had already been used by James Barber in his 1972 The Presidential Character.
51. icg, quoted in Prunier, Africa’s World War, 319.
52. Prunier, Africa’s World War, 315.
53. See, for example, Schatzberg, ‘Ethnicity and Class’, 461.
54. See http://africanarguments.org/2012/12/20/analysis-of-internal-workings-of-congos-kabila-regime-wins-african-argument-of-the-year/, accessed January 7, 2014.
55. Baaz and Verweijen, The Volatility of a Half-cooked Bouillabaisse,” 578.
56. Ibid., 578.
57. See http://wikileaks.org/cablegate.html.
58. World Bank, Resilience of an African Giant.
59. Bräutigam, Rogue Donors, 146–147; Global Witness, China and Congo, 4; and World Bank, Resilience, 6. On the more recent South Korean deals, see http://www.consultancyafrica.com/index.php?option=com_contentandview=articleandid=801:south-korea-in-africa-understanding-south-koreas-interest-in-africa-part-iiandcatid=90:optimistic-africaandItemid=295, accessed March 13, 2014.
60. For more on the massive economic cooperation between South Africa and the DRC announced in late 2013, see http://mg.co.za/article/2013-10-31-sa-squeezes-water-power-out-of-drc; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24856000, accessed January 8, 2014.