The Democratic Republic of the Congo is once again at war with Rwanda. Resurgent since late 2021, the Rwanda-backed Mouvement du 23 Mars (M23) has in recent months taken control of strategic areas in the east of the country, from the major cities of Goma and Bukavu to the provinces of North and South Kivu. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by the fighting and several thousand have been killed. The M23 accuses the Congolese government of failing to meet promises made during previous peace agreements, including the reintegration of former rebels into the national army and the protection of Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese Tutsi communities. Against all evidence, Rwandan president Paul Kagame and his ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front deny that they support the M23. They claim that their aim in the eastern DRC is simply to protect such vulnerable Tutsi minorities, who are threatened by the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR) – the group linked to the 1994 Rwanda genocide, which remains active in the region.
DRC president Félix Tshisekedi, meanwhile, has described Kagame’s support for the M23 as an attempt to advance Rwanda’s expansionist ambitions – in the hope of establishing a ‘Greater Rwanda’ or at least a ‘buffer zone’ to protect the country’s political and economic interests. The latest escalation follows more than three decades of conflict. What are its underlying causes? Some commentators have pointed to the weakness of the Congolese state and its inability to defend its borders, placing a narrow emphasis on internal governance failures. But to understand why the Congolese state is weak, it is necessary to take a more expansive view – such as that of Jason Stearns in his recent Sidecar essay, which situates the DRC–Rwanda relationship in a global economic system where Congo is trapped on the peripheries, subject to predation by foreign investors, commodities traders and multinational corporations. In what follows, we will try to extend this analysis of the DRC’s subordinate position within the imperial order, explaining its historical genealogy and how it has shaped the current conflict.
Belgium conceded independence to the Congo in 1960 under pressure from various national liberation movements, yet the new polity was blighted by the legacies of its colonial past: an authoritarian state designed to force people into exploitative agricultural labour; severe restrictions for Congolese on secondary and tertiary education as well as public administration; ongoing Belgian paternalism; and the encouragement of ethnic associations, which allowed ethnic parties to dominate the popular mobilizations leading up to independence. After it ejected Belgium, the Congo quickly became a Cold War battleground, with the US supporting hard-right military factions in an effort to stave off left-sovereigntism or non-alignment. This led to a pervasive institutional crisis and the secession of two provinces, as American proxies vied for control of the state, assassinating the country’s democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, in 1961.
Another important colonial legacy was the Congolese economy: an extroverted structure geared towards mineral extraction and the export of agricultural produce. Between 1920 and 1932, four Belgian financial groups controlled three-quarters of all investment in the Congo, the vast majority of it in mining and related infrastructure. Despite boasting the highest industrialization rates of the sub-continent after South Africa, by the 1950s ownership was overwhelmingly in the hands of the colonial minority, which represented only 1% of the population. This group controlled an astonishing 95% of the invested capital stock, plus 82% of productive enterprises and 70% of commercialized production. A series of measures was used to systematically undermine economic opportunities for local populations: land expropriation, restrictions on private property and credit, confiscations of produce, forced labour and fixed prices.
Among the upshots was an acute agrarian crisis. Colonial policies geared towards growing the agricultural surplus through coerced cultivation, while ensuring a steady supply of cheap labour for mines and plantations, led to the stagnation of the rural economy. Belgian rule forced rural regions to produce for the international market on highly exploitative terms, suppressing precolonial economic activity in favour of colonial finance capital, which was used primarily to develop the mining and transport sectors. As such, the development of the market in the countryside was thwarted, preventing the rise of an indigenous agrarian capitalism and prompting an exodus to the cities. This, too, impeded the postcolonial Congolese nation as it sought to carve out some degree of autonomy from the West. Formal independence did little to change its position in this predatory global system.
Once Mobutu finally seized power in 1965, with the support of Belgium and the US, authority was dramatically recentralized in the state, which inflicted savage repression on its political opponents. Now renamed Zaire, the country embarked on a brief state-led industrialization drive, aided by a favourable economic conjuncture. Yet Mobutu’s policies failed to address the structural problems inherited from the colonial period, from the extroverted economy to the neglect of indigenous agriculture. By the mid-1970s, these issues had been compounded by economic mismanagement, collapsing copper prices, the oil shock and spiraling debt. With few options left, the government decided to follow the path of structural adjustment, parting with any independentist ambitions and deepening its reliance on the capitalist core.
Overseen by the IMF and the World Bank, Zaire spent the following years pursuing a programme of austerity and retrenchment which wreaked havoc on the public sector. Under the watchword of ‘market efficiency’, health and education services were decimated: informally privatized and forced to become self-financing. With more than ten rounds of loans and debt renegotiations by the end of the 1980s, Zaire was kept afloat financially, but the effect on its political life was disastrous, as the US and other creditors worked hand-in-glove with an increasingly rapacious domestic elite, whose main aim was to reproduce its rentier wealth. This dynamic allowed Mobutu to cast himself as a guarantor of local and regional stability – a leader with a keen understanding of the politics of international finance, and a knack for ensuring his political survival by playing off his international patrons.
The end of the Cold War undermined this precarious settlement, as the Zairian regime lost much of its geopolitical utility for the US. Facing strong domestic opposition, Mobutu officially terminated one-party rule in 1990 but managed to cling to power for most of the next decade, albeit at a terrible cost to the country. Copper production plummeted after the collapse of the Kamoto mine in 1990, following years of under-investment in maintenance as well as social unrest in Katanga province. Donors withdrew development aid. The remnants of the formal sector had been destroyed amid hyperinflation and mass riots. State institutions were hollowed out and civil servants were pushed into the survival economy. By 1996, when the First Congo War broke out, Zaire was on the brink.
In the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide and the mass influx of refugees, the long-time dissident Laurent Désiré Kabila fronted an insurgency with the backing of various regional actors, Rwanda chief among them, which succeeded in toppling Mobutu and bringing an end to the Zairian state. Yet Rwanda’s allegiances were soon to shift. Kabila turned out to be less malleable than assumed, and expelled the forces of his erstwhile regional patron, prompting Rwanda and Uganda to turn on him. They then lent their support to new rebel groups which sought to topple Kabila’s regime, seizing vast portions of Congolese territory in the process. Kabila mustered support from several regional states including Angola and Zimbabwe, which helped him fight the insurgents to a stalemate. Yet he became increasingly isolated over the course of the conflict, and was eventually assassinated in 2001 in circumstances that remain murky. This period of violence, which became known as the Second Congo War and ran from 1998 to 2003, was fuelled by regional states and rebels alike who sought to profit from Congo’s rich mineral soil: gold, diamonds, coltan. The collision of these clashing forces often led to deadlock.
Laurent Kabila’s son Joseph assumed the presidency after his father’s death and set about normalizing relations with donors as well as signing peace agreements with the rebel forces. Under pressure from the West, the Congo embarked on what was described as a ‘triple transition’ towards peace, democratization and economic liberalization. The latter part of the agenda was based on a particular narrative of the 1990s economic collapse which blamed Congolese state mismanagement and inefficiencies. The IMF and its allies argued that to avoid any repetition of this scenario, and allow the mining sector to thrive, ownership of the country’s mineral resources must be handed over to private enterprise. Because colonialism and external dependency had stifled the development of a Congolese capitalist class, however, there was no domestic elite that could take control of the sector – so the task fell to transnational mining corporations.
Although peace remained elusive in the east, the situation was militarily contained, with armed actors brought into the power sharing transitional government of 2003-2006, presided over by Kabila. Chief among them were the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD-Goma), led by Azarias Ruberwa, and the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), led by Jean-Pierre Bemba, both of whom became vice-presidents. This period saw a number of tentative gains. Hyperinflation was curbed, growth restarted and spending on social sectors resumed, while the bulk of Congo’s debts were eventually written off in 2010.
Yet major contradictions remained. The DRC’s economic recovery was premised on the growth model of the Mobutu years: integration into the world-system as a minerals exporter, but without a serious programme for land reform or a coherent strategy to diversify the economy. With the mining sector now firmly in the hands of foreign corporations, billions of dollars were syphoned out of the country, depriving the state of vital resources. Western financial institutions helped to ensure that much of this capital ended up in offshore tax havens.
With wealth draining away from the DRC thanks to its position on the global periphery, domestic politics became increasingly cut-throat. Corruption soared, from shady deals over mining concessions to economic clientelism to kickbacks for political cronies – all of which was tolerated by the international actors overseeing the Congo’s supposed transition, including the EU and the UN Security Council states. For them, the overarching goal has been to maintain open access to the country’s economy. In 2011 and 2018, Western powers (the US, UK, Belgium, France) recognized the official results of the Congolese presidential elections, despite well-documented irregularities and evidence of electoral fraud. In the first instance, Kabila won against the opposition leader Étienne Tshisekedi, who had vowed to pursue a sovereign national project hostile to foreign interests. In the second, the former ExxonMobil executive Martin Fayulu – who had indicated his intention to revisit mining contracts and relations with foreign investors – was beaten by Tshisekedi’s son, Félix. Many have naturally come to believe that the system is rigged to prevent heterodox politicians from winning power.
Hopes of a genuinely democratic and sovereign DRC now seem like a distant memory. The logic of Congolese politics remains winner-take-all. The state is at the centre of a spoils system and the economy is largely dependent on mining revenues, with no domestic capitalist class strong enough to challenge its outward-looking orientation. In office, Tshisekedi has pulled many of the same levers as Kabila to uphold this dismal status quo, from managing political coalitions to using state institutions and financing campaigns. Wary of what he perceives as Kabila’s continuing influence over his commanders and generals, Tshisekedi has made little use of the regular army, instead assembling a ragtag alliance of non-state armed groups and foreign mercenaries – which has proved unable to provide security or stability.
Today, as the ongoing war in the east threatens to upset the prospects of continued stability for the extraction of copper and cobalt in the Katanga region – the mining heartland of the country – imperial and corporate interests have become increasingly concerned. China, whose companies own most of the industrial copper and cobalt mines in the Congo, usually maintains a stance of political non-interference; but it has recently called on Rwanda to end its support for the M23 and voted in favour of a UN Security Council resolution condemning Rwandan involvement in the conflict.
The DRC – born under Belgian colonial rule, remade as a Cold War theatre, now shaped by external financial flows – thus remains deprived of anything resembling real sovereignty. International donors have facilitated the country’s transition out of the Congo Wars and its reinsertion into the world economy on terms not dramatically dissimilar to those forced upon it at inception, as an exporter of low-cost minerals to drive capitalist development elsewhere. While many commentators highlight the weakness of the Congolese state as a major contributory factor to the current conflict, they often fail to contextualize this weakness in the broader, long-run history of imperial intervention and interference in the country. Instead, they place the blame, either explicitly or implicitly, on Congolese failures alone. To develop a deeper understanding of the unfolding tragedy, it is essential to acknowledge the enduring role of imperialism in producing such a vitiated Congolese state. Now, without a sovereign national project to unite the Congo, likely through some combination of struggle from below and leadership from above, it is difficult to imagine a brighter future.
Read on: Jason Stearns, ‘Causes of War’, Sidecar.