Armed rebellion, smuggling, cross border trade - and state-making in eastern Congo

Timothy Raeymaekers has spent eight years doing fieldwork in the Congolese-Ugandan borderlands, a region that often calls up images of isolation and remoteness, where predatory and armed men ravage, and where death arrives suddenly and unexpectedly. To most people, the eastern Congolese borderlands represent a perversion of economic development, where criminal gangs and looting militias rule on the ruins of state collapse.

But rather than collapsed statehood and economic development-in-reverse, Raeymaekers in this DIIS Working Paper argues that the interdependencies and accumulation strategies developed during Congo's protracted crisis have gradually made this borderland a crucial pillar in the equilibrium forces between formal and informal, state and non state actors and regulations in this territorial periphery - which has subsequently become a central margin in today's regional processes of state formation.

The constant enmeshment and collaboration between state and non-state agencies in the Congolese-Ugandan borderland suggests that the constant face-to-face engagement of people and communities in cross-border practices and regulations can potentially generate more long-standing solidarities that not only give shape to new occupational and class identities, but can eventually realign existing power relations – including the state.

This DIIS Working Paper appears in a series of working papers emerged from the “Markets for Peace? Informal economic networks and political agency” research network sponsored by the Danish Social Science Research Council (FSE) and hosted by DIIS between 2007 and 2009. The aim of the interdisciplinary research network was to gain a better understanding of the role and significance of informal economic networks and activities on political processes. The research network explored the dynamics of informal economic networks and activities; national, regional and international attempts to regulate informal economic activities; and the ways in which informal economic networks and activities are or are not converted into political influence. Presently a book is under preparation, in which the working papers published in this series will all feature with some changes anticipated. The book is edited by Lars Buur, Dennis Rodgers, Finn Stepputat and Christian Højbjerg.