African violence = ethnic violence?

In their article “Ethnic and Nationalist Violence,” Brubaker and Laitin argue that two major factors have caused the more recent ethnicization of conflicts that entail the use of violence. According to them the first is the “decay of the Weberian state” whereby the state is incapable of repressing violence of any kind, including ethnic violence. The second is the dissolution of the Soviet bloc and, with it, the ideological framing of conflicts.

In the news today, the front page of The New York Times runs a story headlined “Rwanda Stirs Deadly Brew of Troubles in Congo” that lacks any form of non-ethnic reasoning. The article focuses on Rwanda’s past ethnic struggles and the role that the Congo has played in sheltering ex-genocidaires. It states how “mainly Tutsi” Rwandan soldiers are streaming into the Congo to pay back the Hutus that “want to come back and finish the job.” What is mentioned but never emphasized is that this conflict has a backdrop of a struggle for power and natural resources. Rwanda is a small state highly populated and perennially poor, while its large neighbor, although one of the poorest states in Africa, has a natural supply of valuable minerals and resources that give it a large potential for wealth. For the last decade, the Congo has been in a constant state of unrest fueled by various political agendas, as well as conflicts over the control of water and other resources.

The heavy death toll in the Congo over the last 10 years reaches now to over 5.4 million, the deadliest since World War II. While the article mentions that the Rwandan genocide launched the then Zaire into turmoil due to the heavy influx of refugees, it fails to mention that the vast majority of these deaths have been non-violent losses – caused by malnutrition and preventable health conditions that were untended during the turmoil. Instead, the article would make it appear as though the conflict is a continuation of Rwandan genocide when over 800,000 Tutsis were killed for being Tutsis in 100 days.

Therefore, I argue that, as Brubaker and Laitin contend, the Congo is incapable of repressing the rebel forces at all - either helped by Rwandans or not. Unfortunately, its own Congolese military is blamed for much of the looting and raping of women in Goma. Furthermore, with the scar of an appalling ethnic conflict in the region it easy to categorize the violence in an ethnic framework. It appears that this classification has finally brought attention to the conflict that has been waging for the last 10 years. Yet, it may be problematic if policy makers try to diffuse tensions between ethnic groups rather than supply healthcare and food for the hundreds of thousands of displaced refugees within the country, both Hutu and Tutsi.