par Stanislas Bucyalimwe Mararo<\/p>\n
Abstract in English, Article in French:<\/p>\n
The present study stems from three obvious facts. One: Northern Kivu is the only province in the DRC that suffered from an uninterrupted war in the last nine years (1993-2002). Two: the war itself is the result and\/or the expression of \u00abmultilayered conflicts\u00bb although some outdo others in historical depth, scale and consequences. Three: the actors are always the same. What changed in the years of war is only the stakes involved and the strategies set up to cope with them. To review the nine-year events and scrutinize these changes in the light of today\u2019s crisis in the country is our chief objective.<\/p>\n
Between 1990 and 1992, localized clashes were recorded in some areas of the territories of Northern Kivu province: widespread incidents over the population census called \u00abidentification des nationaux\u00bb within Masisi, Hunde against Hutu in Bukumbiriri (Kibabi, Masisi), Tutsi against Hutu in Jomba (Bwisha, Rutshuru) and Kihondo (Bwito, Rutshuru) while the RPF was intensively involved in recruitment, training and military building up for its war in Rwanda beginning 1987\/1988.The 1993 war was the next stage in the ongoing instability as the entire territory of Masisi, some parts of Walikale (Wanyanga chieftaincy) and Rutshuru (Bwito) were driven into bloody violences. Later developments brought, at each stage, new revelations, the last one being the assassination of Laurent-D\u00e9sir\u00e9 Kabila (Mobutu\u2019s \u00abbreaker\u00bb and successor) in Kinshasa (january 2001) and the advent of an unknown young \u00abwarlord\u00bb, Joseph Kabila, at the head of the country after a short and \u00abcontroversial process\u00bb.<\/p>\n
As some observers early underlined, the post-1993 chaos of Masisi and Bwito (Rutshuru) territories was the big destabilizing factor of Northern Kivu Province. The study discusses this localized crisis and the extent to which the manipulation of provincial affairs from the capital gave to local ingredients (issue of citizenship, political and economic rivalries, struggle for the control of the transitional institutions) a national dimension. In addition, it shows how the October 1990-July 1994 war of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and the July 1994 – September\/October 1996 Rwandan Hutu refugees\u2019s crisis obscured the local stakes by putting, from the very beginning, the Masisi-Bwito territories and automatically Northern Kivu Province into the heart of both national and regional stakes.<\/p>\n
The intermingling of local and external stakes was the potential for a big and wide crisis. Thus, the so-called \u00abMasisi war\u00bb that began in March 1993 led, little by little, to what came to be called respectively the Eastern Za\u00efre crisis and the Za\u00efrian\/Congolese crisis. In this whole process, one sees the collusion between local actors and outside interests (D.G. Becker\u2019s concept of \u00abtransnational bourgeoisie\u00bb) with the aim of keeping or taking power by force and serving the plundering of national resources. Today\u2019s division of the DRC into different zones of influence by competing mining companies and armies is the last stage of this dangerous and disturbing course of events.<\/p>\n