It was 1998 and President Laurent-Désiré Kabila was desperate. He had been in power for just a year, after overthrowing Zaire’s former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko with the help of Rwanda and Uganda.
But his East African allies had turned against him and were supporting rebel militias closing in on the capital, Kinshasa. He needed help. So he looked to the southern African regional bloc for help. Troops from Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe responded to the call, and by August 1998, the Second Congo War had begun.
The conflict lasted a decade and attracted nine African countries and 25 armed groups. By its end, in 2003, some 350,000 people had been killed in fighting and more than five million had died in the resulting humanitarian crises.
Nearly two decades later, the country, renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is on the brink of another war. The Kinshasa government is at an impasse with a rebel group, the March 23 Movement (M23), which has seized territories in the east and advanced on the regional capital, Goma.
The group allegedly receives financial and military support from Rwanda, which is also accused of profiting from the region’s reserves of rare metals such as cobalt and coltan. Rwanda denies providing any such support or trading in conflict minerals.
Congolese troops have been powerless to stop the rebel advances. A former United Nations peacekeeping mission, Monusco, is active in the area but has no mandate to go on the offensive. It includes soldiers and police from more than 20 countries, including large contingents from South Africa, Morocco, Tanzania and Malawi.
Now it is DRC President Felix Tshisekedi’s turn to despair. He is looking east to the East African Community, which has vowed to intervene militarily if a peaceful solution is not found. Kenyan troops have begun arriving in the country, with more promised from Burundi and Tanzania.
Peace talks are underway in Nairobi, with the presidents of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda in virtual attendance.
The M23, which appears to be respecting a ceasefire called for by these leaders but rejecting their call to withdraw from controlled territories, is largely absent from the talks.
If the talks don’t work out, Kenyan President William Ruto has promised to send nearly 1,000 Kenyan soldiers into action to “enforce peace.”
This won’t be as easy as he makes it seem.
Clever Gunyani* was a Zimbabwean soldier in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as part of the intervention force in the late 1990s.
“Kenya has chosen a difficult war,” he said. “The eastern front is a jungle and it rains almost every day. It’s damp and wet. Imagine trying to drive an armored car in the mud, you just can’t. The equipment is useless. Aerial bombardment is impossible even with infrared.”
Gunyani said the harsh conditions mean the battle is as mental as it is physical, and soldiers who are unprepared risk collapsing. “We ended up holding our lines and declaring a ceasefire. It is useless to waste bullets on invisible targets.”
Davestone Nyoni*, also a Zimbabwean soldier, spent three years in eastern DRC. He said that he would come back if necessary. “God forbid, but if Zimbabwe is attacked today, we will need the support of other nations, alliances have always existed. Of course, there are other interests at stake, like the economy, for example. We went to war so the Zimbabweans could trade with the Congolese and vice versa.”
Nyoni warned: “If the force lacks discipline, the soldiers will end up being merchants and couriers of ill-gotten wealth.”
In the case of Zimbabwe, the enormous cost of the military intervention nearly bankrupted the country. To finance the fighting, which cost about $1 million a day, the government began printing money it did not have, a major contributing factor to the hyperinflation that destroyed the economy in 2008.
But some Zimbabweans were profiting or profiting from the war. As an incentive to intervene, Kabila had offered mining concessions and profit-sharing deals to Zimbabwe’s politically connected elite.
“It provided all sorts of off-budget revenue generation for elements of the ruling party, and also the commercial interests of the military,” said Piers Pigou, International Crisis Group senior consultant for South Africa.
This allowed the ruling Zanu-PF to bolster his own power, even amid economic devastation, and contributed to the increasing militarization of the state.
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa played a key role in overseeing these deals: As justice minister, he visited the Kasaï region of the Democratic Republic of Congo to check on Zimbabwean business interests, according to a United Nations report. about how the Second Congo War was financed.
The stakes are even higher this time.
In addition to vast gold and copper reserves, the land beneath the Democratic Republic of the Congo contains more than half of the world’s cobalt and coltan, minerals that are vital to nearly all renewable energy technologies such as electric cars and batteries. . Together, these untapped reserves are worth an estimated $24 trillion.
Kenya has made no secret of its economic interests in the country. Nelson Koech, chairman of the foreign relations committee of the Kenyan parliament, put it bluntly in an interview with east african.
He said: “Through this deployment, Kenya will also secure its vital interests, including Kenyan businesses such as banks operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, numerous Kenyan businessmen in the country, bilateral trade with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the use of the port of Mombasa by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among others. .”
But the economic calculation of war is never that simple, and Kenya may not have anticipated all the costs. “War is a very expensive business. It has ramifications on the economy of any nation that decides or is brave enough to intervene,” said Prolific Mataruse, a professor of political science at the University of Zimbabwe.
He warned Kenya that military interventions can have unintended consequences and are “difficult to budget for.”
After all, Zimbabwe is still paying the price.
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the sources.
This article first appeared on The continentthe pan-African weekly produced in collaboration with the mail and guardian. It is designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp. Download your free copy here.
