Kivu and Ituri in the Congo War: The Roots and Nature of a Linkage

The war in the DRC began in 1993 in Walikale, Masisi and Bwito/Rutshuru in Northern Kivu. The conflict, also known as the ‘Masisi war’, took a new turn in 1996, with the start of the Tutsi-led uprising in Kivu, the so-called ‘First Banyamulenge Rebellion’. This first wave of the Tutsi rebellion, which began simultaneously at the Congo-Uganda borders in Rutshuru (Northern Kivu) and the Congo-Burundi borders in Uvira (Southern Kivu), attracted the attention of the international community early on. It was referred to in the media and in official discourses, not as the war in Kivu, but as ‘the Eastern Congo crisis’. Then, in 1999, when the second wave expanded to Ituri, in the Northeast, the international community’s interest in the Banyamulenge Rebellion dwindled, as the focus shifted to the conflict in Ituri, which for many people was synonymous with the Congo war. Despite the particularities of the two seats of the Congo war, that is Kivu and Ituri, they do have certain common characteristics, which can be traced back to the end of the nineteenth century: (1) the eccentricity of Kivu and Ituri vis-à-vis the capital of the country and, consequently, their peripheral positions in relation to the centre of power; (2) the wide implementation of the 1920 circular of the Minister of Colonies, Louis Franck, on the reshaping of the traditional political power structure by the colonial authorities of the Eastern Province in Stanleyville and the introduction of sectors as the local unit of government, more specifically between 1922 and 1933; (3) the economic and social history of Congo’s easternmost province since the 1920s; (4) the demographic composition of the population and the existence of cross-border communities with stakes in events in two or more countries; (5) the presence of regional and international key players who are, in one way or another, involved in events in Kivu as well as Ituri; (6) the vast scale of deliberate killing; (7) the proximity of Uganda and Rwanda, two countries where armed conflict became the chosen way for bringing about political change (cf. Uganda’s National Resistance Army or NRA from 1981 and the Rwandan Patriotic Army or RPA from 1990).