Engagement as practitioner and research rationale

The year 2010 was the turning point in the international community’s paradigm to deal with the Congolese political crisis, which was termed the ‘local turn’. In that year, the UN peacekeeping mission in DR Congo (MONUC) was transformed into MONUSCO (UN Mission for Stabilization in Congo), emphasizing the ‘stabilization’ dimension and assuming that the DR Congo, as a post-conflict country, should shift from the post-post-conflict phase to stabilization as a bridge towards development. This shift has not only brought a change in the relationship between UN agencies and the Congolese government on the diplomatic and military level, but also caused several peacebuilding NGOs to readjust their programs accordingly. This thesis is rooted in my own professional experience with international peacebuilding organizations in the DR Congo since 2010, when I was recruited by Life & Peace Institute (LPI), a peacebuilding organization based in Sweden, as Technical Advisor in Conflict Transformation.

LPI had chosen the Conflict Transformation (CT) process inspired by the work of Jean Paul Lederach (1995). Unlike conflict management and conflict resolution approaches, Lederach suggests that Conflict Transformation can reflect a better understanding of the nature of conflict.

He posits that conflict transformation, as a process, goes beyond merely seeking to contain and manage conflict, instead seeking to transform the root causes themselves – or the perceptions of the root causes – of a particular conflict. To engage with this process, LPI opted for Participatory Action Research (PAR) as a methodological tool to identify and to involve diverse stakeholders in the process of Conflict transformation. In 2008, LPI decided to work with local Congolese organizations as partners to support the implementation of its program in several areas affected by violent conflict, both in North and South Kivu provinces. It was in this phase of the program that I was recruited to support Congolese partner organizations of LPI in the implementation activities both in North and South Kivu provinces.

One of the LPI partner organizations in North Kivu was Action Solidaire pour la Paix (ASP). ASP has been working in Bashali (in Masisi Territory) on a Conflict Transformation process since 2008.

My role was to provide ASP program staff with technical and methodological support in conflict transformation and to facilitate communication on the program’s progress between LPI and ASP.

40 Working with both LPI and ASP shaped my research in two ways. Firstly, this job was an opportunity to enrich my theoretical knowledge in peace and conflict studies with experience from the field, especially in such a challenging and volatile political and security context. During my fieldwork for LPI in rural areas, Bashali and Masisi were almost entirely controlled by armed groups.

Map 3 Armed groups around the research areas in 2015

In this risky working environment, I got to know diverse actors directly involved in or affected by violent conflict, including military, some armed groups and victims. I also interacted with other peacebuilding organizations working in Bashali, implementing different programs and using other

41 approaches to address the causes of violent conflict.

On a personal level, getting to know different community groups and the relations between them, their culture and historical background and how different wars affected them was a valuable entry point for further studies. Although the above aspects were not part of my work at that time, they later strongly informed my empirical research in Bashali and other places in Masisi.

Besides this experience in the villages, my interest in how the ‘local’ is connected to other levels started in late 2011 when I was hired by International Alert, a British peacebuilding organization working in the DR Congo since 2000. My experience with International Alert allowed me to get to know several organizations and actors in Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. For example, I represented International Alert at a workshop on ‘Regional dimensions of conflict in the Great Lakes Region’ organized in Nairobi. With that experience, I gained a comprehensive understanding of how both regional and other levels are connected and shape the conflict dynamics in Masisi and North Kivu.

The second way in which my professional experience motivated and shaped this thesis was the dissatisfaction and even frustrations arising from my work for both LPI and International Alert organizations. Dissatisfaction because the program implemented and the approach used by LPI in Bashali, for example, has done very little, in my eyes, to address the complex nature of the conflict setting. Frustrations because the Participatory Action Research has failed to bring new knowledge about the conflict in Bashali, but has merely reproduced what already existed in academic work and policy papers. Even the outcome of the PAR process such as the committees for dialogue and conflict management hardly function and members of these committees have little trust in peacebuilding organizations.

Another aspect of my frustration was that a number of key actors were left out of the PAR process and their role in conflict dynamics has been largely underestimated. One category of these actors is ‘string pullers’, powerful individuals who are linked to armed groups and have a strong control on local populations, they possess huge tracts of land, and more importantly they hold strategic positions in state institutions. Some of them are members of national or provincial parliaments, others are Ministers or senior officers in the national army.

It is, however, important to note that this study does not aim to assess the impact of the programs or the approaches used by peacebuilding organizations. I rather use the experience with LPI and

42 ASP in chapter six as an illustration to support my argument. I also consider other peacebuilding programs implemented by other organizations beyond Bashali to better grasp a broader picture of peacebuilding approaches.

I have chosen to extend the study beyond Bashali for two reasons. The first reason is that some of the objectives of the study would have not been achieved by staying only in Bashali. While Bashali is very important in many respects (such as peacebuilding interventions, power competition and struggle over access to land by different groups, the Banyarwanda immigration) the analysis of key actors in different research sites and their networks in this study would have lacked enough empirical evidence to support the central argument. Investigating political processes and power relations or the question of identity necessitated going beyond Bashali in order to fill this gap.

Second, the methodological and theoretical approach and its usefulness for this study led me to consider other research sites to reach diverse actors who are not located in Bashali as well as organizations and institutions beyond Bashali.

To maximize evidence and to get a comprehensive understanding of the dimensions of conflicts as well as actors and networks, this study includes four more sites: Kilolirwe in Bashali Mokoto, Rubaya and Sake in Bahunde chieftaincy; and Masisi Center as the political and administrative main city of Masisi Territory. The second reason is that certain powerful and influential individuals do not live in Bashali. Many of them are Ministers in both national and provincial governments, others are members of the national or provincial parliament and others are businessmen. For this reason, I also worked in Goma and Gisenyi (Rwanda) where some of these individuals live.