The DR Congo is an extremely poor, troubled country and it may not even be able to pay its dues. Also, they're having a bitter dispute with Rwanda right now.
Similarly, Ukraine is having a bitter dispute with Russia.
Rwanda itself mines a fair chunk of the world's tantalum, and then a lot of minerals from neighboring Congo pass through Rwanda en route to the world.
Rwandan production is trivial. The exports (not just of tantalum, a bunch of stuff, tin, gold, coltan) are almost all Congolese production. The minerals don't just "pass through" Rwanda. They are mined under the guns of Rwandan soldiers and auxiliaries, laundered in Rwanda* and shipped out illegally. UN estimated this costs DRC IIRC ~$1bn/year. It's naked resource imperialism. Rwanda gets 40% of its budget from western aid.
*And Uganda, another core EAC member.
Rwanda is at this very moment in an undeclared war against EAC members Burundi, Tanzania, and the DRC. Uganda as mentioned is also colluding in Rwandan predation. Kenya hosted the meeting where the current Rwandan proxy force was announced.
Annie ticked most of them. She was a fortyish Rwandan woman with deep experience in doing IT stuff for Rwandan Customs
[...]
Annie, for instance, was a refugee in Uganda until she was ten years old; her family only came back to Rwanda some time after the genocide.
So, a Rwandan born in Uganda in approximately 1985, returning to Rwanda quite soon after the genocide; ie. shortly after Rwanda was conquered by Rwandan refugees from Uganda, who continue to run the country today, under their President-for-life Kagame.
Sometimes they only want projects that serve the President-for-life's ethnic group, or his home province.
Kagame's ethnic group is the Ugandan returnees. I won't impugn Annie's abilities, but there's no way she got that education and that parastatal career by ability alone.
The last time things went badly wrong in Rwanda, it killed half a million people within Rwanda itself, and then set off a chain reaction that reached the Atlantic Ocean and killed a couple of million more.
The passive voice here is quite something. Wars aren't chain reactions that just get "set off", any more than minerals just "pass through" a country. The Congo Wars happened, and are happening, due to conscious policies. Lots of actors are responsible, but I'll focus on Rwanda since that's who other Doug is sugarcoating.
The First Congo War was colorably defensive on the RPF's part, but they waged it atrociously, killing perhaps hundreds of thousands of civilians in a campaign probably amounting to genocide.
The second and subsequent wars (in which the great bulk of those "couple of million more" were killed) weren't and aren't defensive at all, they are predatory and expansionist. USAID has fucking loved Rwanda through all of this.
And yes, Rwanda is worth influencing. Despite being small, Rwanda is strategically very important -- they sit right in the middle of everything
And sponsor incessant wars which destabilize the entire region. Backing Rwanda is severe short-termism, whether in realpolitik or humanitarian terms. The Congolese are throwing Molotovs at your embassies.
All this said, the EAC is indeed a very real and good thing and I wish it success. I have a set of news alerts to keep my Congo rage on the boil, and EAC stuff turns up regularly in the bycatch.
Frex:
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2024_05_26.html#018622
And:
https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/africa/drc-sues-rwanda-at-east-african-court-over-crisis-in-east-4558310
https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/ugandan-lawyer-sues-dr-congo-govt-over-makala-prison-atrocities-4806928
Thanks, MC. It was obvious, reading the post that Doug was omitting a fair amount. I think it's still reasonable for him to feel proud of his work (and frustrated to see it cut), but the additional context is much appreciated.
11: Yes, he is he is right to proud. It is good work, and the policy stuff I'm talking about was out of his hands.
What was in his hands was how he chose to frame Rwanda, and his framing is very misleading.
Yes, and the entire sector he worked in has been illegally and suddenly blown to pieces by the Trump administration. It's kind of a wonder he can put two sentences together, I'm not sure that I could in a similar situtaion.
https://www.independent.co.ug/eac-minister-deploy-kiswahili-language-teachers/
Why does Rwanda have such military reach and apparent impunity when it's a quarter the size of Kenya and even smaller compared to Tanzania?
15: it isn't militarily reaching into Kenya or Tanzania, though. It's reaching into DRC, which is pretty chaotic.
("The US is giving millions of dollars in aid every year to a country which is invading and brutalising its neighbours in what pretty much amounts to genocide!"
"Shall we cut off the aid then?"
"Yes! And also: no!")
Right, but do the larger countries in EAC not see that actively used military as something to balance against? Or are they like "We can easily defend ourselves against Rwanda if it comes down to it, they can go wild in DRC for all we care"?
DRC is huge, and the relevant part of DRC is immediately next to Rwanda and very far from the main power centers of the DRC government.
Also the Great Lakes are very dense, Rwanda has 14m people despite its small size.
The Rwandan traditional elite was very heavily favored by both the German and Belgian colonial regimes, and their approach to both domestic and foreign policy during the postcolonial periods when they've been in power reflects that heritage. (As well as their precolonial heritage as a predatory expansionist state; the Germans coopted a system that was already there and used it to conquer Burundi.)
The British did the same thing in Uganda, with similar effects on its postcolonial history.
The colonial history of the Great Lakes is basically a whole series of Europeans showing up in various areas and saying "Hey, these guys are super into conquering and exploiting their neighbors! They're just like us! They must be white somehow." And then partnering with them on further conquest and exploitation.
"Also the Great Lakes are very dense"
Roughly 1000 kg per cubic metre.
Give or take the total density of all the fish.
Fish are, on average, as dense as water, for one fairly crucial reason.