IEA

Fellowship from October 2010 to June 2011

Research project:

"Mutations and new faces of the regional administration shaped by lucrative and armed conflicts and the dynamics of globalization: an anthropological and political approach"

"The Democratic Republic of Congo has the particularity of being a society that is post-conflict and plagued by a dynamic of conflict and of recurring conflictualization. Despite the signing of the Sun City agreement that officially sanctioned the end of the long war of 1998-2002 and the organization of the recent elections wrongly described as "democratic", the DRC post-election and post-transition society is still torn and weakened by micro-conflicts.
It was in 1996 that the East of the country was experiencing an armed conflict triggered by the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo, ADFL, led by Laurent Desire Kabila. The completion point of the insurgency was the collapse of authoritarian monocentric regime of Marshal Mobutu, forced into exile in Morocco where he found death two months later. On August 2, 1998, one year only after its installation, the Kabila regime is facing a new war imposed by its eastern neighbors (Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda) supported of course by Western powers and multinational corporations. Security reasons are cited to justify this aggression. But, as in the first war, some political-military movements will emerge a few days later claiming to have recourse to arms to fight the dictatorship restored by LD Kabila in Kinshasa. But the implication in the belligerence of some of the SADC countries come to the rescue of his regime prevented the aggressors and rebels taking the capital. Consequently, the rebels set up camp in their positions, controlling almost 60% of the national territory against the 40 remained under the control of the Kinshasa government.
Over time, these politico-military movements that we have called "political brokers" in some of our scientific deliveries, will installed self-managed structures in provinces that look like "micro-states", administering rich territories, plundering resources and working with political regimes governed by statutes that were in fact like constitutions. The leaders of these rebels "micro-states" have developed laws, regulations and asked judicial proceedings, they set themselves up as public power and signed with foreign investors mining and forestry contracts. Therefore "Real political regimes" underpinned by legal texts functioned in these self-administered provinces in the fight against Kabila, evoking all the necessities of democracy and economic imperatives as justification for their wars.

Yet, the breaks and changes reported by the rebel forces hid undeniable continuities, the constants being gone hand in hand with mutations, as shown by the functioning of all those territories and the political and institutional forms installed, strongly marked by the monolithic power. In the same vein, decorative or cosmetic changes in facade institutions or in ideological denomination seem not to have affected the real power in its logic and its arrangement in rebel areas. In a different register, we must point out that throughout the period of war, local political rebelled spaces remained dictatorial backers. Far from being a system exceptional and temporary, an institutional aberration, the martial power in DR Congo is clearly a standard.
This self-management of local rebels territorial entities who founded the relevance of this reflection and on which we will return in the following lines, is still hidden or ignored in the literature devoted to the dynamics of armed conflict in DRC since 1996. Indeed, issues of identity, land issues, looting of natural resources, manipulation of ethnic resources, but also geopolitical issues and those relating to regional integration or the research of leadership in the lakes sub-region are still placed at the heart of analysis and every current scientific transactions.

This research project proposes to leave the beaten track and trace another path. The dynamics of its relevance and its reflection is founded on analysis of local bodies that were eventually the theaters of hostilities with environmental and human damage (more than three million people) often highlighted. The issue is to understand the regional context in both its political and administrative dimension, but as it was and is still shaped by the social dynamics at work in the DRC and the various socio-political tremors and convulsions. What is involved here is a "conflictualized regional administration", better still worked within by the dynamics of armed and lucrative conflicts which today present a very ambiguous face. Our research is therefore at the heart of the armed conflict between 1998 and 2002.
But this "conflictualized regional administration" is analyzed in interaction with the dynamics of globalization that works from outside. This is a regional administration on the one hand shaped by the armed conflict that is to say by the structures and logic of the rebels who administered these very rich areas in the war, on the other hand it is a regional administration structured by the logic of neo-liberal players of the globalization (mainly foreign multinationals, but also the IMF and World Bank) and the regional dynamics of globalization. The interaction between the regional and the global is now obvious for many researchers. In a report published in September 1999 by the World Bank (quoted by Leclerc-Olive 2001), we can read as follows: the notions of globalization and "regionalization" are the two major phenomena of the twenty-first century. But if both are unavoidable, if globalization is considered a desirable trend, the future of this phenomenon of "regionalization", however, remains very uncertain. According to this report, it can revolutionize prospects for human development, but it can also lead to chaos and increased human suffering. "

Biographical elements:

Political Scientist and Researcher, Jacques Tshibwabwa Kuditshini teaches Political Science and Public Administration at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Kinshasa (DRC) since 1997. Winner of several competitions organized by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), he is also a member of several scientific societies. His most recent publications are: "Global Governance and Local Congolese government " in International Review of Administrative Sciences, June 2007 and "intercultural dynamics, government policies and processes of globalization: A Perspective on Indigenous Pygmies Minorities ", in Journal of Intercultural Studies, UNESCO Chair at the University of Lyon, in February 2009, in collaboration with Catherine Odimba. He participates in research programs including: Armed Conflict and reconstruction of the DRC government (initiated by CODESRIA), Transverse Gaze on multiparty elections in the DRC (CODESRIA), Migration and Urban Governance in Africa (cross-Chairs of the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and the French Institute of South Africa Johannesburg / France). Co-director with Catherine Odimba (for the Congolese side) of the research project "Gender and Armed Conflict in Africa", for which UMR CRESPPA GTM-Paris is the partner institution. His current research focuses on conflicts in the Great Lakes region, the political history of the DRC, issues relating to globalization processes and those relating to social gender relations. He participated in several international conferences.