Ethnonationalism and Conflict Intractability in Africa: The case of the Banyarwanda/Banyamulenge (Bany2) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Paths to Silencing the Guns
摘要
Since 1996, the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), especially, Ituri, North-Kivu, and South-Kivu suffer incalculable violence and mass atrocities following their invasion by Rwandan forces along with their Ugandan and Burundian allies. Since then, Rwanda repeatedly leads wars in the DRC using proxy militia groups led by extremist ethnic Tutsi leaders, the Banyarwanda/ Banyamulenge (Bany2) who create a chronic instability in those provinces. The ongoing large-scale fights resumed in November 2021 by the Mouvement du 23 Mars (in short, M23), the 5th and 4th episodes of the invasion wars by Rwanda disguised into a rebellion, which was yet defeated in 2013. M23 is now leading mass atrocities that claim the lives of millions of civilians, displace millions of others, destroy peoples’ property, and sustain the plundering of the DRC’s natural resources, as confirmed by the United Nations Group of Experts’ (UNGoE) reports. Textual and audiovisual data processed through a deductive qualitative content analysis (DQlCA) provides evidence that Bany2 leaders are secessionist and hegemonic/supremacist ethno-nationalists according to Stephen van Evera’s (1994/1998) hypotheses on nationalism and war. Thus, they are fighting, in confluence of interests with Rwanda, their motherland, to carve out smaller states under their Tutsi ethnic control on the DRC’s territory and to disintegrate it. Because they are more loyal to their ethnic group and Rwanda than to the DRC and backed by strong world powers, they will keep fighting for that end as long current structural and contextual conditions will prevail. Alternatively, defeating them or exploring the proposed solutions is vital, including, acknowledging ongoing genocides in DRC and bringing to justice perpetrators; leading anti-ethnonationalism education; erecting a walled border and sending away from the DRC-Rwanda borders all waging Bany2 leaders.