In the balance: External troop support and rebel fragmentation in the Second Congo War

ABSTRACT

The two main rebel groups in the Second Congo War (1998–2003) evolved in remarkably different ways. While the MLC maintained organisational cohesion throughout the war, the RCD split into two rival groups within less than a year. The larger of these rivals then remained cohesive, whereas the smaller group experienced further fragmentation. This article draws on interviews with key protagonists to show that these cross-group differences resulted from different patterns of state sponsorship. Fragmentation occurred when the intra-group distribution of power between a rebel leader and an internal rival hung in the balance because external troops supported both sides.

KEYWORDS:

• External support
• rebel groups
• fragmentation
• cohesion
• Democratic Republic of Congo

Supplemental Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Seamus Duggan, Ferdinand Eibl, Quint Hoekstra, Corinna Jentzsch, Zoe Marks, Lee Seymour, Duncan Snidal, and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on (much) earlier drafts. The interviews for this article were conducted while the author was based at St Antony’s College and Nuffield College, Oxford. He gratefully acknowledges travel grants from the Cyril Foster Fund and the Alastair Buchan Subsidiary Fund of the Department of Politics and International Relations, the Peter Fitzpatrick Fund of St Antony’s College, and the John Fell OUP Research Fund, all at the University of Oxford.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Walter C. Soderlund et al., Africa’s Deadliest Conflict: Media Coverage of the Humanitarian Disaster in the Congo and the United Nations Response, 1997–2008 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2012); Philip Roessler and Harry Verhoeven, Why Comrades Go To War: Liberation Politics and the Outbreak of Africa’s Deadliest Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press 2016).

² Henning Tamm, ‘Rebel Leaders, Internal Rivals, and External Resources: How State Sponsors Affect Insurgent Cohesion’, International Studies Quarterly 60/4 (2016), 599–610.

³ The highest self-reported troop figures are 23,760 for Rwanda and 9,600 for Uganda. See United Nations Security Council (UNSC), ‘Twelfth Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’, S/2002/1180, New York, 18 October 2002, para. 10; Republic of Uganda, ‘Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations into Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth in the Democratic Republic of Congo 2001 (May 2001 – June 2002): Transcript’, June 2002, 82, 94 (on file with the author). These figures match the estimates in International Crisis Group (ICG), ‘Scramble for the Congo: Anatomy of an Ugly War’, Nairobi/Brussels, 20 December 2000, 4.

⁴ Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History (London: Zed Books 2002), 229.

⁵ On external bases, see Idean Salehyan, ‘Transnational Rebels: Neighboring States as Sanctuary for Rebel Groups’, World Politics 59/2 (2007), 217–42. On money and weapons, see Katherine Sawyer, Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, and William Reed, ‘The Role of External Support in Civil War Termination’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 61/6 (2017), 1174–202.

⁶ David E. Cunningham, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, and Idean Salehyan, ‘Non-State Actors in Civil Wars: A New Dataset’, Conflict Management and Peace Science 30/5 (2013), 516–31.

⁷ Stephen J. Morris, Why Vietnam Invaded Cambodia: Political Culture and the Causes of War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1999), 48–50; Gebru Tareke, ‘The Ethiopia-Somalia War of 1977 Revisited’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 33/3 (2000), 635–67, 642–44; George Roberts, ‘The Uganda–Tanzania War, the Fall of Idi Amin, and the Failure of African Diplomacy, 1978–1979’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 8/4 (2014), 692–709, 699; Sam C. Nolutshungu, Limits of Anarchy: Intervention and State Formation in Chad (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia 1996), Ch. 4–7; Thomas De Waal, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War (New York: New York University Press 2003), 210.

⁸ Maksymilian Czuperski et al., ‘Hiding in Plain Sight: Putin’s War in Ukraine’, Atlantic Council, Washington DC, May 2015, 15. For background, see Andrew S. Bowen, ‘Coercive Diplomacy and the Donbas: Explaining Russian Strategy in Eastern Ukraine’, Journal of Strategic Studies 42/3–4 (2019), 312–43.

⁹ On the challenges of this methodology, see Jeffrey M. Berry, ‘Validity and Reliability Issues in Elite Interviewing’, PS: Political Science & Politics 35/4 (2002), 679–82.

¹⁰ Wendy Pearlman and Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, ‘Nonstate Actors, Fragmentation, and Conflict Processes’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 56/1 (2012), 3–15; Caitriona Dowd, ‘Actor Proliferation and the Fragmentation of Violent Groups in Conflict’, Research and Politics 2/4 (2015), 1–7.

¹¹ Kristin M. Bakke, Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, and Lee J. M. Seymour, ‘A Plague of Initials: Fragmentation, Cohesion, and Infighting in Civil Wars’, Perspectives on Politics 10/2 (2012), 265–83; Peter Krause, ‘The Structure of Success: How the Internal Distribution of Power Drives Armed Group Behavior and National Movement Effectiveness’, International Security 38/3 (2013/14), 72–116.

¹² Gauthier de Villers, Jean Omasombo, and Erik Kennes, République démocratique du Congo: Guerre et politique – Les trente derniers mois de L. D. Kabila (août 1998-janvier 2001) (Tervuren: Institut africain 2001), 110.

¹³ Paul D. Kenny, ‘Structural Integrity and Cohesion in Insurgent Organizations: Evidence from Protracted Conflicts in Ireland and Burma’, International Studies Review 12/4 (2010), 533–55; Paul Staniland, Networks of Rebellion: Explaining Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2014); Michael Woldemariam, Insurgent Fragmentation in the Horn of Africa: Rebellion and Its Discontents (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2018).

¹⁴ Tamm, ‘Rebel Leaders’, 600.

¹⁵ Scott Gates, ‘Recruitment and Allegiance: The Microfoundations of Rebellion’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 46/1 (2002), 111–30; Patrick Johnston, ‘The Geography of Insurgent Organization and its Consequences for Civil Wars: Evidence from Liberia and Sierra Leone’, Security Studies 17/1 (2008), 107–37.

¹⁶ Jeremy M. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007); Nicholai Hart Lidow, Violent Order: Understanding Rebel Governance through Liberia’s Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press 2016).

¹⁷ Wendy Pearlman, ‘Spoiling Inside and Out: Internal Political Contestation and the Middle East Peace Process’, International Security 33/3 (2008/9), 79–109; Marie Olson Lounsbery and Alethia H. Cook, ‘Rebellion, Mediation, and Group Change: An Empirical Investigation of Competing Hypotheses’, Journal of Peace Research 48/1 (2011), 73–84.

¹⁸ Fotini Christia, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012); Woldemariam, Insurgent Fragmentation.

¹⁹ Kristin M. Bakke, ‘Help Wanted? The Mixed Record of Foreign Fighters in Domestic Insurgencies’, International Security 38/4 (2014), 150–87.

²⁰ Staniland, Networks of Rebellion.

²¹ Livia Isabella Schubiger, ‘One for All? State Violence and Insurgent Cohesion’, Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, New Orleans, LA, Feb. 2015.

²² Marie Olson Lounsbery, ‘Foreign Military Intervention, Power Dynamics, and Rebel Group Cohesion’, Journal of Global Security Studies 1/2 (2016), 127–41; Tamm, ‘Rebel Leaders’.

²³ Aisha Ahmad, ‘Going Global: Islamist Competition in Contemporary Civil Wars’, Security Studies 25/2 (2016), 353–84; Mohammed M. Hafez, ‘Fratricidal Rebels: Ideological Extremity and Warring Factionalism in Civil Wars’, Terrorism and Political Violence, published online on 29 November 2017.

²⁴ Eric S. Mosinger, ‘Balance of Loyalties: Explaining Rebel Factional Struggles in the Nicaraguan Revolution’, Security Studies 28/5 (2019), 935–75.

²⁵ The theory was originally developed on the basis of some of these cases, which explains its perfect ‘predictive’ record. This article provides an elaboration and detailed illustration of the theory; it does not ‘test’ the theory.

²⁶ This section builds on Tamm, ‘Rebel Leaders’, 600–03.

²⁷ For example, in 2009, Rwanda arrested Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda on its own territory, thereby helping his internal rival, Bosco Ntaganda, take over the group. Jason Stearns, From CNDP to M23: The Evolution of an Armed Movement in Eastern Congo (London: Rift Valley Institute 2012), 34–35.

²⁸ On defection and exit, see Stathis N. Kalyvas, ‘Ethnic Defection in Civil War’, Comparative Political Studies 41/8 (2008), 1043–68; Ben Oppenheim et al., ‘True Believers, Deserters, and Traitors: Who Leaves Insurgent Groups and Why’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 59/5 (2015), 794–823. On the desertion of low-level combatants during and after the Congo Wars, see Joanne Richards, ‘Troop Retention in Civil Wars: Desertion, Denunciation, and Military Organization in the Democratic Republic of Congo’, Journal of Global Security Studies 3/1 (2018), 38–55.

²⁹ Christia, Alliance Formation, 11.

³⁰ For detailed accounts of the background summarised in the following paragraphs, see Gérard Prunier, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe (New York: Oxford University Press 2009); Filip Reyntjens, The Great African War: Congo and Regional Geopolitics, 1996–2006 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009); Jason K. Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa (New York: Public Affairs 2011); and Roessler and Verhoeven, Why Comrades Go To War.

³¹ Sidney G. Tarrow, ‘The Strategy of Paired Comparison: Toward a Theory of Practice’, Comparative Political Studies 43/2 (2010), 230–59.

³² Dan Slater and Daniel Ziblatt, ‘The Enduring Indispensability of the Controlled Comparison’, Comparative Political Studies 46/10 (2013), 1301–27.

³³ Jason Lyall, ‘Process Tracing, Causal Inference, and Civil War’, in Andrew Bennett and Jeffrey T. Checkel (eds.), Process Tracing: From Metaphor to Analytic Tool (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2015), 192.

³⁴ Interview with Thomas Luhaka, Kinshasa, 23 July 2014 (my translation from French).

³⁵ Interview with Tito Rutaremara (RPF parliamentary leader, 1994–2000), Kigali, 12 August 2011.

³⁶ Jean-Pierre Bemba, Le choix de la Liberté (Gbadolite: Editions Vénus 2001), 10 (my translation).

³⁷ Reyntjens, The Great African War, 243.

³⁸ Tatiana Carayannis, ‘Elections in the DRC: The Bemba Surprise’, Washington, DC, February 2008, 3–7.

³⁹ Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, 225.

⁴⁰ Interview with Gen. Jeje Odongo (Uganda’s Commander of the Army, 1998–2001), Kampala, 7 March 2012.

⁴¹ Henning Tamm, ‘The Origins of Transnational Alliances: Rulers, Rebels, and Political Survival in the Congo Wars’, International Security 41/1 (2016), 147–81, 173–75.

⁴² Interview with Odongo.

⁴³ Interview with Dominique Kanku, Kinshasa, 28 July 2014.

⁴⁴ Mehdi Belaid, Le Mouvement de Libération du Congo en RDC: De la guérilla au parti politique (Paris: L’Harmattan 2008), 148–57.

⁴⁵ Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, 233.

⁴⁶ Roessler and Verhoeven, Why Comrades Go To War, 361–62.

⁴⁷ Interview with Emile Ilunga, Kinshasa, 19 August 2014 (my translation).

⁴⁸ Interviews with Ilunga; Jean-Baptiste Sondji (Congolese Minister of Health and Social Affairs, 1997–99), Kinshasa, 9 July 2011; and Moïse Nyarugabo (RCD vice-president, 1998–2000), Kinshasa, 18 August 2014.

⁴⁹ Interview with Rutaremara.

⁵⁰ Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, ‘Crisis in the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD): Struggle of antagonist political lines’, June 1999 (copy obtained from the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium).

⁵¹ Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, 209.

⁵² Interview with Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, Kinshasa, 4 July 2011.

⁵³ Filip Reyntjens, Political Governance in Post-Genocide Rwanda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013), 7, 21, 81.

⁵⁴ Interview with Wamba.

⁵⁵ Interview with Patrick Mazimhaka (Minister in the Office of the Rwandan President in 1999 and present at these meetings), Kigali, 9 May 2014; Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), ‘Update No. 672 for Central and Eastern Africa’ and ‘Update No. 675 for Central and Eastern Africa’, Nairobi, 17 and 20 May 1999, http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Hornet/irin672.html and http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Hornet/irin52099b.html.

⁵⁶ Wamba, ‘Crisis’.

⁵⁷ Henning Tamm, ‘Status Competition in Africa: Explaining the Rwandan–Ugandan Clashes in the Democratic Republic of Congo’, African Affairs 118/472 (2019), 509–30, 522.

⁵⁸ Interviews with Nyarugabo; Antipas Mbusa Nyamwisi, Kinshasa, 14 July 2011; and Azarias Ruberwa, Kinshasa, 2 August 2014.

⁵⁹ Interview with Azarias Ruberwa, Kinshasa, 2 August 2014; Gauthier de Villers, République démocratique du Congo: De la guerre aux élections – L’ascension de Joseph Kabila et la naissance de la Troisième République (janvier 2001-août 2008) (Tervuren: Institut africain 2009), 120–21. In line with the RCD’s own interpretation (interviews with Nyarugabo and Ruberwa), I treat the case of Pacifique Masunzu as a military defection rather than an organisational split because he joined forces with an existing group. See Jason Stearns, Banyamulenge: Insurgency and Exclusion in the Mountains of South Kivu (London: Rift Valley Institute 2013), 26–27.

⁶⁰ Interview with Ilunga (my translation).

⁶¹ Reyntjens, Political Governance, 80.

⁶² De Villers et al., Guerre et politique, 70.

⁶³ ICG, ‘The Kivus: The Forgotten Crucible of the Congo Conflict’, Nairobi/Brussels, 24 January 2003, 10–11.

⁶⁴ Interview with José Endundo, Kinshasa, 31 August 2012 (my translation).

⁶⁵ Jean Omasombo, République démocratique du Congo: Biographies des acteurs de la Troisième République (Tervuren: Royal Museum for Central Africa 2009), 261.

⁶⁶ IRIN, ‘DRC: Rebel Leader Resigns Admitting “Errors”’, Nairobi, 30 October 2000, https://reliefweb.int/report/democratic-republic-congo/drc-rebel-leader-resigns-admitting-errors; de Villers et al., Guerre et politique, 75 (my translation).

⁶⁷ Interview with Ruberwa (my translation).

⁶⁸ ICG, ‘Scramble for the Congo’, 23, 28. Mazimhaka, the Rwandan president’s point man on the RCD, indeed told me that Ilunga ‘was not an effective leader’ (interview).

⁶⁹ On internal criticism against Onusumba, see de Villers, De la guerre aux élections, 131 (note 42), 135.

⁷⁰ IRIN, ‘DRC: Wrangling Hits Dialogue again over Leadership Roles’, Sun City/Nairobi, 16 April 2002, https://reliefweb.int/report/democratic-republic-congo/drc-wrangling-hits-dialogue-again-over-leadership-roles.

⁷¹ De Villers, De la guerre aux élections, 155.

⁷² Interview with Ruberwa (my translation).

⁷³ ICG, ‘The Kivus’, 18.

⁷⁴ Interview with Ruberwa.

⁷⁵ De Villers et al., Guerre et politique, 78–86.

⁷⁶ Prunier, Africa’s World War, 229.

⁷⁷ Omasombo, Troisième République, 154.

⁷⁸ IRIN, ‘Update No. 1042 for the Great Lakes’, Nairobi, 30 October 2000, http://reliefweb.int/report/burundi/irin-update-1042-great-lakes; Human Rights Watch (HRW), ‘Uganda in Eastern DRC: Fueling Political and Ethnic Strife’, March 2001, 23–24.

⁷⁹ Bemba, Le choix de la Liberté, 159; Belaid, Le Mouvement, 77.

⁸⁰ Quoted in Prunier, Africa’s World War, 431 (note 5).

⁸¹ Koen Vlassenroot, Sandrine Perrot, and Jeroen Cuvelier, ‘Doing Business Out of War: An Analysis of the UPDF’s Presence in the Democratic Republic of Congo’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 6/1 (2012), 2–21, 3.

⁸² Interview with Esdras Kambale Bahekwa, Kinshasa, 2 August 2014.

⁸³ Aili Mari Tripp, Museveni’s Uganda: Paradoxes of Power in a Hybrid Regime (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2010), 6, 4.

⁸⁴ Timothy Raeymaekers, ‘The Political Economy of Beni-Lubero’, in Koen Vlassenroot and Timothy Raeymaekers (eds.), Conflict and Social Transformation in Eastern DR Congo (Gent: Academia Press 2004).

⁸⁵ Dan Fahey, Ituri: Gold, Land, and Ethnicity in North-Eastern Congo (London: Rift Valley Institute 2013).

⁸⁶ HRW, ‘Uganda in Eastern DRC’, 17.

⁸⁷ Henning Tamm, UPC in Ituri: The External Militarization of Local Politics in North-Eastern Congo (London: Rift Valley Institute 2013), 17–21.

⁸⁸ Interview with Wamba.

⁸⁹ ICG, ‘Scramble for the Congo’, 36.

⁹⁰ De Villers, De la guerre aux élections, 123–25.

⁹¹ Interview with Mbusa (my translation).

⁹² Gérard Prunier, ‘The “Ethnic” Conflict in Ituri District: Overlapping of Local and International in Congo-Kinshasa’, in Jean-Pierre Chrétien and Richard Banégas, eds., The Recurring Great Lakes Crisis: Identity, Violence and Power (London: Hurst & Co. 2008), 192.

⁹³ Tamm, UPC in Ituri, 19–23.

⁹⁴ International Criminal Court (ICC), ‘Situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the Case of the Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo: Judgment pursuant to Article 74 of the Statute’, The Hague, 14 March 2012, paras. 1089–97.

⁹⁵ UNSC, ‘Twelfth Report’, para. 8.

⁹⁶ Tamm, UPC in Ituri, 25–26.

⁹⁷ Interview with Daniel Litsha, Bunia, 8 August 2012.

⁹⁸ Raeymaekers, ‘The Political Economy of Beni-Lubero’, 67.

⁹⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰⁰ Interview with Nelson Paluku (a long-term political ally of the Nyamwisi family who joined the RCD-K/ML after the war and took up Mbusa’s parliamentary seat in 2013), Kinshasa, 27 July 2014 (my translation). On the other hand, Raeymaekers (ibid.) claims that ‘Nyamwisi’s opportunistic shift to Kinshasa also led to growing discontent from RCD-ML leaders’.

¹⁰¹ HRW, ‘Ituri: “Covered in Blood”. Ethnically Targeted Violence in Northeastern DR Congo’, July 2003, 9.

¹⁰² Ibid.; Raeymaekers, ‘The Political Economy of Beni-Lubero’, 77 (note 22).

¹⁰³ Interviews with Paluku; Eric Kamavu (the RCD-K/ML’s mayor of Butembo from 2001 to 2003, then its Beni-based provincial governor in 2003), Kinshasa, 31 July 2014.

¹⁰⁴ HRW, ‘Ituri: “Covered in Blood”’, 21; Koen Vlassenroot and Timothy Raeymaekers, ‘The Politics of Rebellion and Intervention in Ituri: The Emergence of a New Political Complex?’, African Affairs 103/412 (2004), 385–412, 396.

¹⁰⁵ Tamm, UPC in Ituri, 35–36.

¹⁰⁶ Ibid., 36–37.

¹⁰⁷ Email correspondence with a former PUSIC official, August 2014.

¹⁰⁸ HRW, ‘Ituri: “Covered in Blood”’, 17; Tamm, UPC in Ituri, 35–36.

¹⁰⁹ Kahwa also received financial support from the Congolese government at the time of the split. Interviews with former PUSIC officials, Bunia and Kinshasa, August 2012.

¹¹⁰ Omasombo, Troisième République, 76; Kristof Titeca, ‘Access to Resources and Predictability in Armed Rebellion: The FAPC’s Short-lived “Monaco” in Eastern Congo’, Africa Spectrum 62/2 (2011), 43–70, 49; Tamm, UPC in Ituri, 36–37.

¹¹¹ Interview with Daniel Litsha, Bunia, 10 August 2012. See also ICG, ‘Congo Crisis: Military Intervention in Ituri’, Nairobi/New York/Brussels, 14 June 2003, 10.

¹¹² ICC, ‘Lubanga Judgment’, para. 554.

¹¹³ HRW, ‘The Curse of Gold: Democratic Republic of Congo’, 2 June 2005, 89.

¹¹⁴ ICG, ‘Scramble for the Congo’, 4.

¹¹⁵ Prunier, Africa’s World War, 431 (note 5).

¹¹⁶ Quoted in Omasombo, Troisième République, 154 (my translation).

¹¹⁷ See the discussion in Tamm, ‘Rebel Leaders’, 602.

¹¹⁸ Anton Zverev, ‘Ex-Rebel Leaders Detail Role Played by Putin Aide in East Ukraine’, Reuters, 11 May 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-russia-surkov-insight-idUSKBN1870TJ.

¹¹⁹ ICG, ‘Russia and the Separatists in Eastern Ukraine’, Kyiv/Brussels, 5 February 2016, 4, 7.

¹²⁰ Ibid., 8. See also Ivan Katchanovski, ‘The Separatist War in Donbas: A Violent Break-up of Ukraine?’ European Politics and Society 17/4 (2016), 473–489, 482–483.

¹²¹ North Vietnamese document from April 1970, quoted in Morris, Why Vietnam Invaded Cambodia, 50.

¹²² Gebru Tareke, The Ethiopian Revolution: War in the Horn of Africa (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2009), 188.

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Henning Tamm

Henning Tamm is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of St Andrews. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, and a Predoctoral Fellow with the Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence at Yale University’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford.