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Hegemonic Ethno-Nationalism versus the Instrumentalization of Armed Groups
NTANYOMA, Rukumbuzi Delphin
NTANYOMA, Rukumbuzi Delphin
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Abstract
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been undergoing a cycle of violent and armed conflict for nearly three decades. Recently the DRC’s conflict has been portrayed as the African mostly devastating war with millions of deaths besides of huge collateral damages as well as the displacement of population. Since 1996, the conflict has been taking different shapes to extent that researchers and scholars are constantly trying to understand its intractability and capture motivations behind these armed confrontations. The eastern part of the Congo (Hereafter eastern Congo) has mostly been affected by the violent conflict. The complexity of the Eastern Congo violent conflict is its multifaceted dimensions originating from different factors and countless actors. Besides the internationalization dimension, the DRC conflict has been generally debated as related to natural resources plundering, triggered by ethnic identity claims as well as land management but largely exploiting the relative deprivation of its local population (Gurr 1970, Murshed 2010, Nathan 2005, Nzongola-Ntalaja 2002, Prunier 2009, Stearns 2011, Turner 2007). During the three decades, the conflict that had involved DRC’s neighboring countries keeps breeding countless armed groups whose benchmarks are largely their ethnic identities (Braathen et al 2000, Stearns 2011, Verweijen and Brabant 2017, Weis and Carayannis 2004). Since the colonial period, it is widely agreed that the country has also been administratively―ethnically divided to the extent that ethnic communities do dominate local customary chieftaincies linked the colonial “indirect rule” (Fetter 1969, Vogel 2011, Turner 2007, Young 1965). The socio-cultural landscape influences mostly the composition of armed group’s formation. Consequently, the setting and militia landscape can strongly disagree with the viewpoint discussed in Kibiswa’s thesis1 referring to the Banyamulenge/Banyarwanda’s ethnonationalism―ethnic loyalty, circumscribing into one causal-effect relationship.
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Book review
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2017
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With permission of the license/copyright holder