The 1996 European Union aid programme for the Great Lakes area of Africa is 284 million ecus (£230 million). Only 75 per cent of this money has gone to the people of the region: NGOs take 25 per cent to finance their operations. Of the money distributed 65 per cent has gone to the two million refugees living in camps, surrounded by Hutu militias. Seven million Rwandans have received the other 35 per cent. This leaves nothing for the Rwandan government to facilitate the return to Rwanda of Hutu refugees not involved in genocide. Without massive aid any return of refugees is impossible. Hundreds of thousands of refugees are now threatened further by the spread of fighting and famine to Zaïre. CLAUDE GABRIEL explains the reasons for the crises in Burundi, Rwanda and Zaire. Rouge: Was the conflict one which could have been foreseen? CG: The current situation was to be expected, not just foreseen, for several reasons.
The first element is the reality of the refugee camos. Thev throw together several hundred thousand people, for the most part totally disarmed. Immediately, the different cliques present try to pull strings. The Zairean army, unpaid and without officers. use the camps for their own ends: promoting the black market, trading on connections. The leading figures in the ex-Rwandan regime, and notably the militia, also various others, come to do business and mount their own politico-military operations.
There is a combination of massive and incomparable poverty and enormous despair on the one hand, and on the other, the refugee camps, which trom the star have heen arena tor power struggles. The stakes are not only military but also economic, which is all-important in a situation of such poverty. The reality is that the people in the region effectively fight over the morsels of poverty. The camps in themselves are a powder-keg.
The second element that makes this situation predictable is the fact that the Zairean state is only a state in name On the one hand the regime is totalitarian, "kleptocratic', the country's resources have been pillaged for nearly 30 years by one family, one clan one man. On the other hand outside the presidential guard, the Zairean army is non-existent in operational terms, and seems to act more as a gang dedicated to using its force against the people. Rouge: What are the roots of this situation? CG: Two things appear important.
First of all the question of Zaïre. Mobutu has been in power now for 31 years. It is an unspeakable regimetotalitarian would be a euphemismresponsible for the assassination of thousands of people.
It has not allowed the slightest opposition, and has plundered the basic resources of the country to accumulate wealth for itself. It would otherwise have neen threatened with. the destabilising of its power, if there had been the slightest attempt to construct a real Zairean state in the 1960s. It is no longer today the state of Zaire today to which the governments of Europe and North America have more or less continuous vient sunnon It is clear that the absence of state and economic factors weighs heavily Mobutu has been in power now for 31 years. "His is an unspeakable regime - totalitarian would be a euphemism" on the current situation in Kivu, which is in the east of Zaire, bordering on Rwanda and Burundi. These are elements aggravating destabilisation and deterioration of the situation. It is one thing to have camps containing hundreds or thousands or people in a real country; it is a completely different matter to have them in a country that is an abstraction, a virtual country, where no legitimate power exercises control over daily existence.
The second element relates to the aggravation of this situation by the genocide in 1994 in Rwanda, which has gone totally unpunished. Such impunity impacts at several levels; for those who have already committed crimes and are ready to commit new ones as they form new alliances. Today they are candidates for receiving arms or for again becoming linked to this or that state, this or that diplomacy.
However this impunity also works in favour of the new rulers who know that because of a past that has gone unpunished they too can indulge in extortion or opt for military responses rather than the necessary political and social solutions.
Obviously all that flows not only from the responsibility of the regimes or ot Atrican polltical movements; It also flows from the responsibility of the great powers, who have played an essential role in supporting these regimes. Rouge: Do opposition forces exist? CG: The oppositions which appeared, particularly in Zaire, during the wave of democratic pressure in 1990-1991 are more or less totally absent or accomplices of the regimes.
They play absolutely no role as a counter-force. The situation in Kinshasa, where part of the opposition is participating in demonstrations against Rwandan aggression demonstrates the role and nature of the majority of the opposition forces. It illustrates to what extent the political and social situation has deteriorated in these countries. There regimes are extremely unstable, even imploding, yet at the same time the oppositions do not represent a credible alternative. down and a willingness to look for controntations.
The major problem is land, which is becoming more and more rare because of excess population. The financial returns are falling ever lower and the social surpius product is consequenty stunted. This level of poverty, combined with the crisis and actual aismemberment or tnese economies and states, ensures that conflicts inevitably break out over the division or wnal remains Social criteria no longer have any reality so people attach themselves to the nearest, most immediate entity -village, clan, different ethnic group. inese are the sole reterence points inat remain for them.
The reaction today is one of panic and withdrawal into this identification with 'otherness'. There is above all a desire to take Irom or keep trom tne 'other' - who equally wants to take trom or keep from vou.
It is essential to understand that. Within this framework fragmentation is therefore inevitable. We are not heading for a war between Tutsis and Hutus. If things continue to deteriorate there will be, as elsewhere in Africa, fifteen or twenty small groups who will fight among themselves. An array of temporary alliances will be formed, based primarily on material interests which appear to us utterly derisory. It is for this reason that what needs to be recognised by both the Rwandan regime and the 'international community' is a regional solution. There can be no Rwandan solutions to the problems of Rwanda, just as there can be no Burundian solutions to the problems of Burundi.
There can only be regional solutions: not for reasons of immediate ethnic identity but simply because the problem results from poverty. One can develop neither Rwanda not Burundi with just their resources.
It is also necessarv to separate oft the east of Zaire, which is a long way from Kinshasa. For natural geographical reasons it needs, in any case, to have an intense economic and social relationship with the other countries of the Great Lakes Therefore it is necessary to think about economic and social solutions which affect the region. But in order to do that it is obviously not a question of proposing, as has the French government, a conference of these states and regimes. The problem also revolves around the nature of these regimes. What is the Burundian regime today?
The French government supported a boycott of the Burundi regime after the last coup d'etat. Today it claims that a political solution for the region involves a conference of those statesi.e. a conference of the very states it proposed to boycott. None of this makes any sense.
Resolving the problems of Africa in the medium term requires a halting of any sort of support for regimes such as that in Zaire, as well as all the existing cliques who will inevitably engage in similar policies. The only way is to put an end to these manoeuvres which, in the name of strategies and alliances, support profiteering and money-grubbing. Thirty years of these policies have created a humanitarian disaster without precedent and which is now the third or fourth such in the region. • (This article was originally published in November 7 edition of Rouge, weekly paper of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, French Section of the Fourth International).
Socialist Outlook I|/ • November 23 1996.
Gerry Foley BORIS YELTSIN may have formally resumed office in Russia after his supposedly successful operation but this will not stem the speculation either in Russia or internationally about who will succeed him. Below we publish the analysis of some of the main factors at work in the unravelling crisis from the November edition of the American paper Socialist Action YELTSIN'S dramatic firing of Aleksandr Lebed from the post of security chief highlighted the growing instability of the capitalist restorationist regime in Russia.
A worn out and trembling Russian president went on national TV on October 17 to announce that he was dropping Lebed - essentially, he indicated, because the former general was not a team player. In particular, Yeltsin accused Lebed of creating a sort of "pre-electoral atmosphere", when the next presidential elections are not untii the vear zikki.
Lebed himself seemed to regard Yeltsin's repudiation as a launch Tater tnan a setback. Adam Laszyn. Moscow correspondent of the Polish daily Zycie Warszawy, wrote in the October 18 issue of his paper:
"At the press conference called early yesterday, Lebed smiled broadly and seemed relaxed. He said, "My separation from the government is reminiscent of the way that Boris Yeltsin was driven out of the [Communist] Party elite of the time"
It was Yeltsin's removal from his party post by Gorbachev in 1988, in fact, that enabled the former Sverdlovsk party boss to ride the wave of opposition to the bureaucratic system to the summit of political Lebed's ambitions are apparently no more modest than were Yeltsin's. The former general has a history of being an adventurer and not a bureaucratic climber. He is clearly alming tor the top or nothing. He knows that the country is on the verge of an explosion and he wants to be able to rice the wave "We are on the verge of a very hot fall", Lebed said at his news conference. "There is no doubt about that."
The approaching catastrophe Zycie Warszawy put the sub headwritten on the eve of the October 1917 revolution. She saw an oncoming confrontation between the government and various categories of workers as an immediate cause for Lebed's ouster There are severat reasons chat led the government to close ranks. One of them is the protest actions scheduled in ear v November by the most varied groups of workers, from judges to airline workers.
"Moreover, in this connection, the turbulent Lebed was removed before these events. because his ill-wishers in the Kremlin believed chat he was quite capable of taking advantage of them for his own purposes by taking the leadership of all the malcontents."
Koshkareva's article led off with a report from a recent meeting of the Temporary Emergency Commission (TEC): "A lot has been said in recent times about the impossibility of changing the economic course. But it was in fact overturned at the first meeting of the TEC"
"We don't have time to concern ourselves with theory," said Premier Viktor Chernomyrdin. And shortly after, taking about the basic approach to the situation, he said that it would be "strict government regulation'"
Koshkareva commented: "The government has been forced to make such sharp turns (above all in its own world view) by the approaching economic catastrophe and what promises to be unprecedented popular outbursts.
"The very fact of the TEC's existence testifies to the presence, with centain reservations, ot a prerevolutionary situation. "The lower orders" do not want and the "upper orders" are no longer able to live in Aleksandr Lebed: sacked or set free? His departure gives him the chance to pose as a man "too honest" for Yeltsin tormented masses. Up until this time in their numerous strikes they have not raised political slogans. That is, they did not have a single ideological leader. The threat today is that the "lower orders" have reached the point that they will accept any leader who is able to offer a general idea for the country, a clear road however utopian) that the society can follow in the coming years."
Credit drying up
At about the same time this was written, the International Monetary Fund refused to deliver the $350 million in aid funds that were due for October, and the World Bank rejected a request from the Russian national bank for a $1billion loan.
in the detoner la issue ot Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Koshkareva and Rustam Narzikulov wrote that "Russia is already living in the conditions of an economic catastrophe." In an interview in the same issue, Grigory Yavlinski said that one of the reasons for the drying up of international credit was that only 30 members of the parliament voted for the government's budget.
He also pointed out that the international supporters or capitalist restoration in Russia had poured money into the country at the time of the elections in order to preserve the Yeltsin government, and that political motivation was now gone. Of course, the capitalist money bags will continue to use their financial power to try to assure the economic course they want in Russia But it is a vast country, and their resources-to say nothing of their altruism-are not unlimited. if Lebed ran for president today he would be elected by 90 per cent of the vote. But a 35 per cent to 40 per cent approval rating, in the present circumstances, does not represent overwhelming support, even if the other political personalities are discredited.
Uner commentators argued that Lebed was foolish to play to the gallery because the next elections are too tar away. As Il the desperate masses are going to wait quietly until the presidential elections in the year 2000 to seek a solution to the crisis that is destroying their means of existence!
Koshkareva and Narzikulov made a more serious argument for the government's ability to freeze out rivals Ilke Lebed and retain powerthat is, that it controls all the money available for political show business through the support it gets from foreign capitalists, as well as by its domination of the banks and the major exporters. Ine latter are mainly producers of raw materials, such as the oil and gas combine formerly headed by the premier, Victor Chernomyrdin.
In the October 22 issue of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Koshkareva and Narzikulov wrote: 'The political events of the present year have definitively confirmed money as the main tactor in the tight tor power.
Propaganda, political advertising shows, and other forms of ideological "mass" work [sic], and even personally appealing to voters, depend in the last analysis on the size of investments in politics."
"This financial monopoly means', the journalists wrote, "that the only means of changing the government is military force". However, the military is also dependent on money, and the army Is raing apart for lack or l Lebed frightened Yeltsin's entourage, according to the Russian press, by openly opposing cuts in the armed forces.
Spectre of a popular uprising In fact, the impoverishment of the Russian masses by the attempt to restore capitalism has had a powerful effect in demobilising them. On the other hand, if they are pushed too far and rise up in desperation they have the power to seize whatever resources are available in the country. That is the possibility the Russian press is now openly discussing.
It is not, of course, that the former general has any intentions of organising the masses. There is nothing in his history that indicates that he has any desire or ability to do Inal. but ne nas gotten into a position where, in the absence of a revolutionary leadership, he can hope lo lake avanlaze or a boboular explosion to gain power.
In that event, money would be no problem. The bureaucrats who have been robbing the country to turn themselves into plutocrats would pay anything to anyone who might save them from a social revolution.
The shadow of a popular uprising is now talling over all the corrupt bureaucrats. They are all manoeuvring in their various ways to try to deflect it.
One of the accusations against Lebed, for example, was that he supported a scheme for forming an elite force out of the most brutalised elements of the Russian armed forces - embittered Afghan war veterans, former volunteers on the Serbian chauvinist side of the Bosnian war, and so on No one in the government has denied that such a plan existed. It was, in fact, a scheme for creating something like the reactionary armed forces that were used against the workers and the left in the revolutionary period in Germany in the earl 1920's. That is. it would be a special creation for civil war, since the army as a whole can no longer de relied on.
But it is also clear that Lebed had no copyright on this plan. It was a scheme of the military command and the government in general.
And the fact that such a scheme was conceived is an indication of how explosive the situation in Russia has become. SPECIAL OFFER