A-Infos (en) Italy, UCADI #194: Delocalized Wars (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

While a conflict, the one in Gaza, is on hold, news is emerging of new 
forgotten wars that have long been active in various parts of the 
planet. Many of these conflicts are linked by a common thread, sometimes 
invisible, which nevertheless holds them together and makes the actors 
operating on the different battlefields interact: this is when it 
happens in the clash taking place in Central Africa. Unravelling this 
thread is essential to understanding what is happening. ---- It seems 
surprising to learn that the M 23 movement (composed of former rebels of 
the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), once part of 
the Congolese army, who mutinied in April 2012), trained and supported 
by the Rwandan government, has taken over a vast territory on the border 
of the region, between Congo and Rwanda, taking control of the city of 
Goma, capital of the province of North Kivu, with a population of 
750,000. We are located in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic 
of Congo, in the Great Lakes area, with the city located a short 
distance from the Rwandan border. It is a coveted territory, as it has 
deposits of gold, diamonds, uranium, copper, random cobalt, thallium, 
valuable wood, oil; a highly disputed area, where both the first and 
second Congo wars took place, which ended in 2003, which is linked to 
the events of one of the largest genocides of the modern era, the one 
resulting from the conflict between Tutsis and Hutus, the two ethnic 
groups of Rwanda, as refugees who escaped the massacre organized by 
Belgian colonialists in the African country and were victims of that 
genocide poured into this area, contributing to the instability of the area.

The dirty deeds of Belgian colonialism

To better understand the characteristics of the territory in which the 
conflict developed, it is worth remembering that this area of central 
Africa was subject to Belgian colonization that was characterized by 
unprecedented ferocity. The territory of the Congo had been attributed 
to the sovereign of Belgium, as a personal possession, who exercised 
absolute dominion over the territory and the peoples. The colonial 
powers, following the Berlin Conference of 1880, divided Africa and the 
world, drew the borders of the States, transferring their power 
relations and the interests of the occupants of those territories onto 
the map, rather than taking into account the distribution of the 
populations, the ethnic groups on the territory of the history of those 
peoples. Rwanda, formerly a German colony, was assigned to Belgium in 
1946 for administration, by mandate of the League of Nations, in 
trusteeship. The country is located in the highland region between the 
north-eastern shores of Lake Tanganyika and the upper reaches of the 
Kagera, a tributary of Lake Victoria. The territory was originally 
inhabited by Hutus, who mainly carried out agricultural activities, and 
by Tutsis dedicated to livestock breeding: between these two components 
of the population, exchanges and mixed marriages were common and the 
different tribes were part of a single kingdom.
In order to control the country, the colonial criminal administration, 
unlike what it did in neighboring Cameroon[1], decided that it was 
appropriate to divide the population and did its best to spread the 
idea, constructed at the table, of a racial difference based on the 
physical appearance of individuals. Thus, the idea was spread that the 
greater height of the Tutsis was the consequence of their Caucasian 
origin, the fruit of ancient migrations towards those areas of Africa (a 
thesis which is, however, completely scientifically inconsistent), and 
therefore they were as close as possible to whites, and therefore 
genetically superior, while the shorter stature that characterizes the 
Hutus brought them closer to the third ethnic group in the area, the Twa 
pygmies, (1%) of the population, considered a genetic degeneration. From 
this racial element descended the right of the Tutsis to be a ruling 
class, to own land and livestock and to manage political power, while 
the Hutus were supposed to carry out agricultural work and supervise 
religious worship: they were reserved for the most humble and least paid 
tasks.
The artfully nourished hatred bore fruit and so, after bloody revolts 
and massacres, the Hutus took power in 1959-1962, and this coincided 
with the beginning of the long persecution of the Tutsis. Many of them 
fled to neighboring countries, especially Uganda, others took refuge in 
Congo. During the genocide in 1994, Hutus were the largest population 
group, but Tutsis controlled the army and paramilitary groups formed on 
both sides: the country was torn apart by a ferocious civil war. The 
assassination of the Hutu president of Rwanda was the trigger for the 
genocide during which Hutu extremists killed between 500,000 and 
1,000,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Paul Kagame, President of the 
Rwandan Patriotic Front and current President of Rwanda, grew up in a 
camp for displaced people in Congo, took over the leadership of the Hutu 
component, resumed the civil war and ended the genocide with a military 
victory, remaining in power until today: his last mandate was renewed in 
2024. He is behind the military training of the M 23 and the 
stabilization of the territory in which mercenary companies and 
militiamen of the most diverse origins have always raged. The enormous 
riches present in that territory make it convenient for the companies 
that have appropriated the rights to exploit these resources to invest 
part of the profits in security, equipping themselves with private 
armies, to guarantee the possibility of maintaining control of their 
investments. The Congolese central government does not want to give up 
its jurisdiction over these rich territories and therefore, like many of 
the governments of Central Africa, has resorted to mercenaries, unwisely 
opting for the services offered by Amani Sarl, a mercenary company, a 
Congolese branch of the Bulgarian company Agemira, controlled by the 
French secret services, created in imitation of Wagner by Horatiu Potra, 
a Romanian mercenary who was part of the French Foreign Legion in the 
1990s, was the main bodyguard of the Emir of Qatar until the end of the 
1990s and served in the Central African Republic under former President 
Ange-Félix Patassé. He plays a role in the Romanian crisis by providing 
bodyguard services to the candidate Georgescu who is against the war in 
Ukraine. The satisfaction of the M 23 militants must have been great 
when, without a fight and demonstrating efficiency and discipline, they 
accepted the surrender of the white mercenaries, putting them on buses 
to expel them from the country, but guaranteeing their lives without 
fighting.
By thus orienting the work of M 23, Kagame, President of Rwanda, has 
shown that he has learned the lesson well on the use of proxies, sending 
the message that he is able to guarantee control of the territory Much 
better and more effectively than private militias serving the exploiters 
of the territory's resources can do. The presence of a regular military 
force, controlled by a State, in fact protects against the not 
infrequent initiatives of these mercenary groups who suddenly decide to 
break the contract with the client, setting up their own business, and 
going into hiding, after having drained or conveniently exploited the 
deposits and resources they control.
The seizure of the territory was completed by the simultaneous 
dissolution of the military units of the Congolese army dependent on the 
central government who, in order to save their lives, handed themselves 
over to the UN mission present on the territory with a peacekeeping 
function, after having handed them their weapons and having worn 
civilian clothes provided by the population.

The irreversible crisis of French neo-colonialism

If it is true that at the moment what has happened in Congo highlights 
the novelty of an African national army that is capable of stemming the 
role and function of mercenaries in supporting the control of African 
territory, this is not what happened in the band of Central African 
States located to the north of the Congolese borders. In countries such 
as Burkina Faso, Mali, the Central African Republic, Niger, Chad, Sudan, 
and South Sudan, the Russian military presence is becoming increasingly 
pervasive and determined, having recently managed to land an unspecified 
number of armored vehicles in Ghana that headed towards Mali to support 
the forces deployed there. This is while the construction of Russian 
airports and bases has been reported in southern Libya, at the 
intersection with the countries of Central Africa where armored vehicles 
and convoys on the move have also been spotted here to guarantee the 
Russian presence in the exploitation of resources.
It is quite clear that Russia intends to strike at France's interests in 
Africa, which must register the failure of its neo-colonial policy and 
take note of the deep hatred and resentment that it has left in the 
populations, who welcome the departure of the French soldiers as a 
liberation. If you look at what is happening, you understand the reasons 
for Macron's apparently sudden outbursts, who at alternating stages does 
not miss an opportunity to declare the need for armed intervention in 
Ukraine with the intent of militarily opposing Russia on the 
battlefield, thus showing that he is cultivating a geostrategic interest 
in confronting it on a global level.

Raw and strategic materials, trade corridors and infrastructure between 
China and the USA

When it is happening in Goma, it interacts with the action of other 
important actors who operate in the territory immediately adjacent to 
this area and which should host the logistics structures intended to 
serve it. The USA is interested in the construction of the Lobito 
Corridor, a railway about 1,600 kilometers long that will connect the 
town of Kalumbila, in northern Zambia, to the Angolan coast, passing 
through the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The project, 
which has an expected cost of around 1 billion dollars, some of which 
allocated by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Africa Finance 
Corporation - would improve the transport of critical minerals from the 
so-called African Copper Belt (Southern Congo, Northern Zambia) to the 
Atlantic ports of southern Africa. The railway line will be built by a 
consortium called "Lobito Atlantic Railway", headed by the Swiss company 
Trafigura. The construction of this infrastructure would reduce the 
travel times of goods, improve their safety and the volume transported 
and therefore strengthen the global supply chain for the Western 
economy. Furthermore, the infrastructure renewal would achieve the 
ancillary purpose of encouraging foreign investment in the mining 
sector, both extractive and refining, possibly increasing the share of 
Western companies. A secondary objective of this initiative is to 
counteract Chinese economic penetration, which, for its part, intends to 
revitalize the TAZARA railway (Tanzania-Zambia Railway), modernizing it: 
Goma is a fundamental part of the route. The initiative would allow 
Beijing to counterbalance the Lobito corridor on the eastern side and to 
cut east towards the Tanzanian port of Dar Es Salaam.
But the Chinese seek stability to invest, without having any prejudice 
on the orientation of the governments with which they collaborate and 
intervene in their internal affairs. Rwanda has understood this and 
intends to do its part by offering them the guarantees of political 
stability that they seek.

[1]The Editorial Staff, Assault on Africa, Newsletter Political Growth, 
n. 182 February 2024.

The Editorial Staff

https://www.ucadi.org/2025/03/02/guerre-delocalizzate/
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