TY - JOUR
AU - Sweet,, Rachel
AB - Abstract Rebels often portray themselves as state-like to legitimize their rule, yet little is known about their on-the-ground relations with the administrators of state power—official bureaucrats. Drawing on internal armed group records from the Democratic Republic of Congo, this article argues that rebels’ state-like image is more than a simple veneer: Bureaucrats actively sustain state institutions and recruit rebel support during war. It develops a theory of the sources of leverage that bureaucrats use to negotiate with rebels. These interactions entail dual struggles to sustain the structures and symbols of state power and to shape the distribution of control over these institutions during war. On first front, bureaucrats can use their official status to market the symbols of state legitimacy—official certificates, codes, and paperwork—to rebels. On a second, to recruit protection for administrative posts. Pre-existing routines of noncompliance, like parallel taxes and sabotaged information, can use bureaucratic discretion and opacity to limit rebels’ takeover of state structures. This view from the ground demonstrates the real-time continuity of bureaucratic practice through daily paperwork and exchange during war. It contributes to research on rebel governance by illustrating new competitions for wartime statehood and illustrates the empirical practices of states seen as ‘juridical’ or weak. An emerging research agenda demonstrates that armed groups often use symbols of statehood to legitimize their rule.1 Rebels in countries ranging from Liberia to El Salvador to Sri Lanka portray themselves as ‘states in the making’, dispatch diplomatic missions, and bedeck leaders with official titles to earn international recognition and seats at negotiation tables. Yet little is known about the on-the-ground relations between rebels and the administrators of state power—official bureaucrats.2 Without this knowledge, important questions remain: Do rebels simply use a state-like image as a veneer, or does borrowing this legitimacy resource come with costs?3 Taking up this agenda, this article examines the bureaucratic practices that sustain and defend state institutions in conflict zones. It builds from the puzzling challenges that rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo confronted at the height of conflict. Despite limited central state power, armed groups contended with bureaucrats to regulate cross-border trade and tax mineral flows and monitor local populations. Rebels’ internal records warned that a ‘plethora of agents in the public administration’ interfered with taxation,4 and that ‘massive fraud’ by customs agents diverted spoils from its treasury.5 In conflict zones, where state institutions should be weakest, bureaucrats vied to influence wartime order. Using these original records, this article argues that rebels’ symbolic claims to state legitimacy are more than just a simple gloss. Bureaucrats can actively recruit rebel support for state institutions and shape their choices about systems of rule. It develops a theory to explain the levers of control and negotiations that these interactions entail. Although bureaucrats’ official uniforms, stamps, and seals may seem a poor match against rebel coercion, Kalashnikovs, and illicit markets, they harbor a strategic resource that rebels cannot produce: state affiliation. This image of the state, or the recognized authority to define legality and make the rules, is strategic on international and domestic scales.6 Bureaucrats can use official agencies, certificates, and codes to produce this legitimacy resource in conflict zones and market it to rebels in exchange for protection. With these practices, bureaucrats recruit rebel buy-in to state institutions, but they also seek to limit rebels’ influence over these structures. Pre-existing administrative routines, including quotidian practices of evasion, parallel taxes, and sabotaged information, provide ways for low-level agents to maintain discretion over state institutions. These dual struggles to keep administrations alive and to shape the distribution of control over them place bureaucrats on the frontlines of competition for statehood during war. I examine these interactions in eastern Congo, a seeming ‘least likely’ case for state survival that offers a theoretical contribution beyond its immediate context.7 Congo is often portrayed as a prototypical weak or ‘warlord’ state marked by kleptocracy and parallel economies.8 Scholars of state failure expect bureaucrats to hold limited sway under such conditions.9 Likewise studies of Congo’s conflicts often emphasize foreign sponsors, smuggling, and non-state authorities that fill in for defunct state systems.10 With these attributes, observing how bureaucrats maintain administrations and negotiate with rebels here helps rethink scope conditions around when and how state institutions take effect. To examine patterns in administrative practice, I trace bureaucrats’ interactions with four armed groups in the First and Second Congo Wars (1996–1997, 1998–2003): the Alliance des forces démocratiques pour la libération du Congo/Zaïre (AFDL), Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie (RCD), Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie/Kisangani-mouvement pour la libération (RCD/K-ML), and Front de liberation du Congo (FLC).11 Observing bureaucratic practices in varied locations and with different rebels provides a systematic view of the challenges rebels face appropriating state symbols. It also offers insight into whether bureaucratic practices across these differences reflect patterns from a common state affiliation or simply mirror local social relationships. Doing so examines the contention that bureaucrats, and the paperwork they produce, ‘are not simply the instruments of already existing social organizations’, but warrant their own focus as agents mediating state power.12 Methodologically, this article examines bureaucrats’ engagement with rebels through the tools wielded in these interactions: real-time administrative files. Over 26 months of fieldwork from 2009–2015, I gathered internal documents from armed groups in eastern Congo. My broader project used open-ended interviews in Swahili and French to construct narratives of war and corroborate sources.13 Initially, I expected rebel records would contain only traces of informal relationships. To my surprise, they also revealed dense interactions with bureaucrats. Records included internal memos, tax slips, and correspondences with diverse state agencies. This article uses files from rebels’ finance divisions and state taxation bureaus to examine how bureaucrats negotiated with rebels to manage conflict economies.14 By analyzing textual sources, the article matches its data with its theoretical contribution. Studies of bureaucracy emphasize the everyday production of paperwork as a core practice of the state. Paperwork is the ‘tool’ that ‘mediates’ state relationships and that marks practices as legitimate or legal.15 Written files illustrate how bureaucrats produce the symbols of state legitimacy and how rebels mimic them. Studying these files places the symbols of the state upfront in analysis: Quoting and depicting these records enables readers to enter this world of mediation and evaluate links between sources and state practice. This approach complements more conventional surveys or ethnographic work to extend the range of data to study wartime governance. Examining bureaucrats’ active but overlooked roles in war contributes to research on state authority and rebel governance. Bureaucrats’ actions challenge conventional wisdom that state structures fade away in unstable environments and illustrate the role of low-level actors—rather than central governments—in shaping state institutions. Images of ‘juridical statehood’ suggest that institutions dissolve in states like Congo’s when central rulers rely on a recognized sovereign status for control.16 Yet tracing how bureaucrats preserve their agencies and recruit rebel support demonstrates the empirical foundations of even the most fragile states. This insight builds on emerging research on the actual practice of the state.17 It also contributes to research on rebel governance by showing that rebels borrow state symbols not just for their own legitimacy but also in response to the agendas of other state gatekeepers. Sources of state survival and legitimate rule The role of state structures in fragile or violent settings is the source of heated debate.18 Literature on state failure expects official institutions to fade in importance. Yet, emerging work on public authority from below and the symbolic aspects of rebel governance demonstrates that the image of statehood remains a source of legitimacy even in states seen as failed or weak. The first, mainstream, approach to fragile states holds that rulers earn de facto statehood and build legitimacy by providing public goods such as security, economic growth, and predictable rules.19 Formal institutions are the vehicles that deliver these goods. These institutions are considered strong or ‘Weberian’ insofar as they secure populations and property and operate in relatively standardized ways. Weak institutions fail to deliver these goods and lose legitimacy, and as Robert Rotberg and William Zartman argue, this loss deepens state failure.20 The second stream of literature traces how personal relations substitute for formal institutions in weak states.21 Where formal institutions fail to deliver public goods, leaders build legitimacy through clientelism and patronage. In these settings, a ‘rhizome state’ of informal ties replaces bureaucratic practice.22 Scholars describe state institutions in these settings as ‘no more than a décor, a pseudo-Western façade’ under which informal networks direct power.23 These approaches to state failure depict real politics as shifting away from official institutions in weak states. They also frame conflict zones as lacking state structures able to confer legitimacy or influence rulers: Weak institutions create areas where rebels can organize relatively freely, while patronage networks undermine bureaucracy.24 Following this logic, studies of rebel governance often focus on the negotiation strategies between armed groups and civilian power holders.25 Rebels are seen to legitimize their rule by providing the same goods that a state would deliver26 or by drawing on ‘charisma’ and informal relations with civilians.27 Some scholars note that state administrations can persist into war, but typically expect that this occurs in ‘stronger’ states.28 An alternative view of public authority ‘from below’ argues that legitimate rule, even in fragile states, is often intertwined with the imagery and practice of statehood.29 Instead of measuring public good outcomes, this literature examines the range of actors involved in ‘doing’ the state.30 It demonstrates that public authority—or the legitimate right to govern, voluntary compliance, and a mechanism to coordinate behavior—does not only flow from public goods or reciprocal relations with civilians. The image of the state—or the legality of rules and the recognized authority to make the rules—is itself a source of legitimacy.31 Juridical recognition is the basis of state power in the international arena,32 and metaphors of statehood are also embedded in domestic imaginaries and routines.33 Diverse social actors claim a state-like status to validate their power. As Lars Buur and Helene Kyed demonstrate in Mozambique, for example, chiefs rely not only on traditional notions: Their ‘[i]nfluence, status, and legitimacy also derive from the symbols and performative skills related to the domain of state-administration’.34 Similarly, as Islamic, customary, and official structures overlay to regulate security and taxation in Somalia,35 the boundary between formal and informal became ‘an instrument in the struggle for political power and control’.36 Hence, rather than a ‘deficit of the state’, this literature suggests there may be ‘an excess of statehood: too many actors competing to perform the state’.37 Armed groups join these struggles to blur the line between state and non-state participation. Research on the symbolic aspects of rebel governance demonstrates that rebels also use state imagery to build legitimacy, or the recognized right to rule.38 For instance, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia stylized its leader as its ‘President’ and used the civil administration to project an image of state function to foreigners.39 Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers made sovereignty claims to the seas and the skies to boost leverage at international negotiations, while ex-Séléka officers in Central African Republic wore national symbols when reorganizing rebellion: ‘the red beret, the flag of the CAR as a badge or the Forces centreafricanes insigne’.40 Vigilantes in South Africa that incorporate official procedures into internal codes of conduct also illustrate this search for recognized markers of statehood as a source of insurgent legitimacy.41 This emerging research challenges expectations that state institutions fade in importance in weak states. But it lacks a clear theory of the actors who work explicitly in the name of the state. Little is known about the preferences or capabilities of the rank-and-file bureaucrats who animate official structures. Without this knowledge, it is unclear whether state symbols are a façade that rebels can easily maneuver, or whether they also shape and constrain rebel governance. As Thomas Bierschenk and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan contend, more work on the empirical practices of bureaucracy is needed to resolve these questions.42 The following section helps fill this gap by accounting for the agents who wear the uniform of the state. Bureaucrats at war: bartering state affiliation during conflict This section develops the argument that bureaucrats play active roles in sustaining state institutions and integrating them into wartime order. It suggests that bureaucrats play what scholars like Janet MacGaffey, Thomas Bierschenk, and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan describe as a ‘strategic game’ of survival to keep state institutions alive and shape the relations of authority within them.43 This game can continue during war through struggles on two fronts. On the first front, bureaucrats can produce the recognized symbols of the state—certificates, regulations, and official forms—and market them to rebels to build buy-in to official institutions.44 These actions recruit rebel support for state structures in a legitimacy-for-protection exchange.45 On the second front, bureaucrats can use low-level noncompliance practices to place limits on rebels’ use of state symbols. Doing so uses bureaucratic discretion and opacity as tools of leverage against new rulers. The argument is in line with civil wars research showing that civilians seek to maintain prewar institutions and limit rebel encroachment,46 but it suggests that the tools bureaucrats use are specific to their official posts. Rather than rebels generating their own claims to statehood, it also suggest that rebels can achieve this status through negotiations with the agents who administer state symbols. Bureaucrats are equipped to negotiate with rebels in these ways because they participate in these struggles as part of daily routines prior to war. Scholars note how bureaucrats commonly preserve state institutions in times of political change. Scholars describe how bureaucrats Agents in colonial bureaucracies ‘acquired an interest in their preservation’ so maintained administrations at independence,47 while ‘bureaucrats at work’ keep state administrations afloat across contemporary Africa.48 This keeping-alive happens through bureaucrats’ continued use of state symbols, which reinvests in the image of the state. As Joel Migdal and Klaus Schlichte describe, the image of the state is one of the ultimate rule-maker and rule-enforcer, a coherent actor with a recognized claim to authority.49 Bureaucrats develop their own interests in maintaining this image to preserve their rights to regulate and extract. Trefon illustrates this point in Congo, where: The survival of agents depended also on the perpetuation of the state apparatus. They justify the importance of their work and their own positions by their services delivered, however minimal, and by their diverse symbols of power including authorizations, attestations, certificates, stamps, and seals… The bureaucrats have, in effect, succeeded in maintaining the value of these symbols through their own use of them.50 A second struggle targets the distribution of control within state administrations. Bureaucrats, as agents in institutions, exercise discretion in implementing rules. They can benefit from safeguarding and expanding this room for maneuver.51 Civil servants in Ghana who insist that, ‘I take an oath to the state, not the government’,52 and agents in Senegal who selectively enforce smuggling laws to pocket undeclared revenue, illustrate this discretion.53 Through quotidian noncompliance practices like fudging statistics, purposefully misplacing files, and exploiting loopholes, bureaucrats can expand their discretion over state practice. These low-level acts of noncompliance build ‘opacity’54 or ‘ambiguity’55 into administrative practice. They enable bureaucrats to use their positions to ‘evade’ the procedures set by a central state or hierarchy.56 Across these practices, bureaucrats exercise power by shaping where, when, and how state symbols are used. These state symbols—official letterhead, seals, and authorizations—are the everyday work of bureaucracy.57 By using paperwork toward new ends, bureaucrats can expand their roles mediating relations with society and carve out influence over state practice vis-à-vis hierarchies. Bureaucrats in post-Soviet Georgia and Congo who act as ‘vendeurs du papier’ (‘sellers of paperwork’) to facilitate smuggling illustrate these roles.58 At play in these interactions is the legal weight of the state, which is traded through bargaining and exchange. These markets remain open during war. On the one hand, bureaucrats can maintain a role for state administrations in conflict zones by recruiting partnerships with rebels. Bureaucrats’ everyday tools—official letterhead, seals, and authorizations—are the recognized symbols of state legitimacy. During war, bureaucrats can continue to produce these symbols and market them to rebels to integrate into changing governance arrangements. These symbols are strategic for rebels across domestic and transboundary scales. At the international level, letterhead, certificates, and stamps offer markers of legitimacy to access to humanitarian deployments, negotiating tables, and transnational markets.59 Domestically, bureaucrats can invoke state codes to validate rebel rules and issue tax slips to legitimize extraction. Armed groups in Central African Republic who purchased official licenses from bureaucrats to sell diamonds demonstrate this act of buying-in.60 Bureaucrats can back up the deal with a range of services that are useful to rebels, like information networks, taxation systems, and specialized knowledge in parallel markets.61 Hence, rebels’ use of state structures or symbols is not merely opportunistic; it can reflect bureaucratic strategies to keep their agencies alive. Bureaucrats also seeks to shape the distribution of control over institutions during war.62 Their survival depends on rebels purchasing a legitimate status from them, rather than appropriating state symbols outright. To maintain discretion, Quotidian noncompliance practices like evasion, falsified statistics, and omitted information can prevent new rulers from dictating how state symbols and structures are used. In the aggregate, these practices can keep power at the ‘street level’ by obstructing the effective implementation of rebel policy.63 These practices may seem mundane, but Jacob Shapiro shows how even the most violent groups face such management challenges over low-level agents.64 Through these practices, bureaucrats seek to hold onto power within institutions not by mounting visible collective action, but by under-the-table practices of resistance and evasion that shield individual agents from detection.65 At the same time, state codes can conceal power struggles with rebels as matters of technical procedure.66 These actions reinforce official bureaucrats as brokers of a recognized state status and rebel paths to statehood as lying through exchange. These dual struggles to preserve institutions while limiting rebel takeover suggest that bureaucrats maneuver between compliance and resistance, selectively conferring legitimacy and limiting it when rebels overstep. This argument does not claim that state institutions are the sole or even primary factors to shape public authority in conflict zones. Informal trade, social norms, and customary authorities shape civilian life and rebel behavior. Neither is the goal to reify a contested line between state and non-state. Instead, the goal is to demonstrate a complementary struggle over the symbols and structures of statehood. These struggles may return little by way of public goods—making state survival an empirical, not normative, reality. The argument is restricted to conflicts where rank-and-file bureaucrats can keep institutions afloat. The presence of cocoa marketing boards in northern Côte d’Ivoire, civil administrations in Sri Lanka and India, and Ministry of Agriculture bureaucrats in Iraq suggests that state agencies endure across a variety of conflicts.67 Yet where rulers never laid bureaucracy, political competition is less likely to play out over official institutions.68 Where these struggles do occur, they preserve state structures as an economic resource and source of political competition. Background to the Congo Wars: bureaucratic survival amidst central state decline At first glance, bureaucrats may seem powerless in the face of rebellion. However, the remainder of this article demonstrates their strategies in action. This background section traces how Congolese bureaucrats maintained state agencies amidst waning central state power. The following sections then trace struggles for statehood during war across three steps. The first examines how bureaucrats across different locations sustained institutions as war broke out. It assesses the argument that bureaucrats continue to use state symbols—paperwork—to maintain their roles and recruit support in changing environments. The second step illustrates rebels’ symbolic claims to statehood and how bureaucratic noncompliance placed limits on these claims. The third uses structured comparisons of two groups to probe the mechanisms of bureaucratic resistance to rebel attempts to shift authority over state institutions. The late 1970s marked the beginning of protracted central state decline in Congo (then, Zaire). But instead of fading in importance, state administrations remained arenas of competition.69 As Kinshasa’s power waned, President Mobutu halted administrative and military pay. Official uniforms still conferred rights for extraction, and bureaucrats used this status to collect fees. By selling authorizations to pass goods such as ivory and cocoa across borders, bureaucrats created parallel markets for official paperwork that traders needed to clear customs in neighboring countries.70 They increased the number of taxes levied and multiplied checkpoints along roads and at borders, even while infrastructure and public goods crumbled.71 A business association in North Kivu complained at this discrepancy: ‘As a result of the non-payment of military and State bureaucrat salaries, multiple State agencies at Kasindi [on the Congo-Uganda border] collect, often illegally, colossal sums to profit themselves, despite the total degradation of [the] road’.72 Through these actions, bureaucrats kept agencies alive while expanding discretion over state practice. Bureaucrats under-declared goods, used preferential rates to build partnerships with traders, and pocketed the difference. Meanwhile, falsified reports to Kinshasa concealed side deals and masked revenue diversions.73 Despite a blind eye to salary, Kinshasa viewed its slipping control with concern. In the last days of Mobutu’s rule, the head of the country’s largest revenue agency, the Office des douanes et accises (OFIDA) customs bureau, still implored bureaucrats in the Kivus and Orientale Province to end their side deals and ‘fraud’.74 These struggles set the institutional backdrop for war. Backed by regional sponsors, AFDL launched the First Congo War (October 1996–May 1997) from Goma, the capital of North Kivu Province. This location along the Rwandan border was far from Kinshasa and offered immediate access to transnational markets and sponsors. Scholars sometimes expect these factors to correlate with defunct state structures, but rebels voiced the opposite concern. Instead of absent institutions, AFDL complained of too many bureaucrats: ‘nowhere in the world will you find so many customs officials at border posts!’75 Alongside funding from better-known mining concessions, AFDL’s internal records also show that it enlisted state agencies to monitor trade and fund war expenditures and secure needed supplies like petrol.76 This first rebellion quickly toppled Mobutu. AFDL took over Kinshasa and installed a contentious government that soon gave way to the Second Congo War (1998–2003). The RCD launched a rebellion in August 1998, again with external backing and headquarters in Goma. The RCD/K-ML splinter faction defected from the RCD in mid-1999, and the FLC formed in 2001 as a brief merger of the RCD/K-ML and other proxy groups sponsored by Uganda. First months of war: strategic survival and recruiting rebel support This section examines the opening days of the Second Congo War. It holds time (August–December 1998) and rebels (RCD) constant to identify patterns in bureaucratic survival at a time when uncertainty was highest. The RCD and its backers expected to replicate the easy victory of the first war, and as troops swept across territory, many sought easy spoils by looting businesses and state coffers. This period helps answer whether bureaucrats acted independently to sustain state administrations and how their actions recruited rebel support for state symbols and structures. Patterns indicate that bureaucrats across rebel territory sought survival by maintaining official paperwork and marketing these symbols of state legitimacy to local partners. In North Kivu, heads of three revenue agencies met in Goma the month war broke out to discuss how to adapt to conflict. These agencies—the OFIDA customs agency, the Direction générale des contributions (DGC), and Direction générale des recettes administrativeset domaniales (DGRAD)—searched for ways to levy taxes and ‘enlarge the financial plate’ of their bureaus.77 Minutes from this meeting capture debates over how to use official paperwork to validate economic transactions and maintain a regulatory role during war. The agency heads stressed a continued need to ‘distinguish formality from informality’ and to use state affiliation to market this status in rebel territory. They offered a ‘financial certification document… to designate an economic actor as operating formally’ and incentivized businesses to purchase these forms by offering preferential rates (1 versus 3% of the value of declared goods) for the papers. Bureaucrats facing a wave of looting in South Kivu used similar strategies. OFIDA customs agents in Uvira produced ‘Certificates of Losses of Merchandise’ to sell to businesses that RCD troops looted. These certificates attested to ‘systematic pillage during the war’, cashing in on businesses’ (perhaps misplaced) hopes of using official documentation to claim restitution.78 In Orientale, bureaucrats also maintained markets for paperwork to legitimate exchange. Orientale houses a lucrative diamond trade that crisscrosses through the provincial capital, Kisangani. The trade is typically cast as rife with rebels and foreign sponsors.79 But as war separated the area from Kinshasa, bureaucrats fought to sustain notions of state authority. The head of the provincial Division of Mines maintained that diamond buyers remained legally bound to ‘be covered by an Official Document in good and due form’.80 With the national bureau of the Ministry of Mines in Kinshasa unable to operate in rebel territory, the provincial division claimed the right to issue authorizations, writing: ‘An exceptional situation, an exceptional solution. It is naïve to believe that in this period of war, and given the urgent need to maximize revenue, that official procedures [requiring Kinshasa’s authorization] can be respected to the letter’.81 By assuming rights to issue export certificates, set taxes, and allocate diamond mining concessions, Kisangani’s administrators claimed the ability to market state legitimacy in wartime trade. Bureaucrats adapted to conflict by finding new ways to expand their role in mediating state practice. They used official positions to produce recognized state symbols—official paperwork—that could confer a legitimate status and used this paperwork to market participation in statehood to partners. They also used this status to purchase protection from rebels. In October, heads of the Office Congolais de contrôle (OCC, an agency monitoring cross-border trade) bureau in North Kivu, South Kivu, and Orientale wrote to RCD leadership to recruit rebel support. In a memo to RCD leadership, they invoked the agency’s legal right to operate (writing, ‘OCC… was created by ordinance-law no 074/013’ with a ‘legislative mandate’ to ‘control the quality of import-export goods’) and suggested it play a role in RCD taxation (‘we propose that RCD create a Coordination for the OCC in the territory under its control’).82 They asked the RCD to expand OCC branches to foreign ports and new sectors like petrol. Doing so would provide the RCD a legal claim to import–export duties and access to the state symbols that regulated these markets. Emphasizing the benefits of this legal status to rebels, governors of North Kivu, South Kivu, and Orientale wrote a memo to RCD leadership describing that if the group worked through state channels, rebels’ own economic procedures could be ‘render[ed] legal and liable to be one day adopted at the national level’.83 Bureaucrats sought support for their agencies even in places where rebels were unpopular, like the Grand Nord in northern North Kivu.84 RCD leadership drew largely from the Kinyarwanda-speaking minority (known as the Banyarwanda) in Congo, whose status as political clients under Mobutu fed worries of land and political dispossession of surrounding groups.85 Relations were especially fraught in the Grand Nord, where the Nande ethnic majority also saw Banyarwanda as economic rivals in cross-border trade.86 As war broke out, networks of Grand Nord traders and Nande rebel commanders smuggled gold and timber across the border to Uganda, behind the back of RCD leadership and local bureaucrats.87 This smuggling circuit allows us to observe whether bureaucrats acted to preserve their agencies or followed social connections to tolerate the trade of local elites. Despite a shared ethnic identity with traders and Nande rebel officers, bureaucrats gathered information on smugglers and transmitted it to RCD leadership—crossing ethnic divisions to preserve their regulatory roles. Bureaucrats wrote that they needed a way ‘to guarantee their security’ and sought RCD support to keep their agencies going.88 Customs agents documented the trafficking with bureaucratic precision, casting it as a threat to bureaucrats and RCD leaders alike. As an excerpt from an OFIDA report shows: To inform you that on this day, today the 24th December 1998, at 16 hours, 50 minutes, the commander Monsieur Kakolele Bwambale passed [the border] at Kasindi, coming from Beni… A few moments later (around 10 minutes), a 26/44 Mercedes Benz truck, of the color yellow, license plate number KV 3278C, presented itself at the barrier… this truck transporting merchandise that should be sold for the financial needs of the operations of the RCD.89 Symbols of statehood are evident in the presentation of the written file. Figure 1 illustrates how customs officials at Kasindi carried out surveillance and sent reports up the hierarchy to the administrative center in nearby Beni. From Beni, reports continued another step up the bureaucratic ladder to OFIDA’s provincial headquarters in Goma, where bureaucrats transmitted reports to the RCD Department of Finance, Budget, and Public Purse.90 With each step up administrative ranks, reports illustrate a commensurate step in officialdom, moving from rudimentary handwritten reports at Kasindi to typewriter in Beni to computer-generated reports in Goma. Basic technocratic features unite files along the bureaucratic chain, with care to present the OFIDA seal—even in handwritten reports from Kasindi. With these actions, bureaucrats offered RCD leadership participation in performing the state, its official symbols and structures, and a legitimate claim to taxation if they intervened for protection. Figure 1 Open in new tabDownload slide OFIDA customs officials report on ‘fraudulent and illicit trafficking’ to request RCD support. Reports transmitted up the administrative hierarchy from bureaucrats at Kasindi to Beni (left), from Beni to Goma (center), and from OFIDA bureaucrats at Goma to the RCD Department of Finance (right). Figure 1 Open in new tabDownload slide OFIDA customs officials report on ‘fraudulent and illicit trafficking’ to request RCD support. Reports transmitted up the administrative hierarchy from bureaucrats at Kasindi to Beni (left), from Beni to Goma (center), and from OFIDA bureaucrats at Goma to the RCD Department of Finance (right). Bureaucrats used these practices to seek rebel support for state institutions. Receiving reports from customs agents, RCD leadership denounced the ‘fraudulent and illicit trafficking’ in the Grand Nord—mimicking bureaucrats’ official language—and resolved to dispatch troops to reinforce OFIDA.91 The RCD also incorporated state revenue bureaus (OFIDA, DCG, DGRAD) into its tax systems and extended the OCC’s reach to include petrol, as agents had requested.92 Records from across the Kivus and Orientale reveal that rebels used official paperwork and receipts to collect taxes.93 These interactions do not imply that bureaucratic practices were the only reason that rebels used state agencies, but they do suggest a role for bureaucrats in shaping rebel actions. They demonstrate that bureaucrats sought to defend a role for state legitimation in conflict zones and built common purpose with rebels to use these symbols. Cross-group comparisons: rebels’ symbolic claims and bureaucratic resistance Rebels also made their own efforts to portray themselves as state-like. During the Congo Wars, AFDL, RCD, RCD/K-ML, and FLC all referred to themselves as ‘the State’. All generated their own letterhead, stamps, and seals that mimicked the national government in Kinshasa. As Denis Tull shows, this image proved useful in international negotiations.94 Figure 2 Open in new tabDownload slide Claiming state legitimacy: Armed group ministries of finance. Clockwise from upper left: AFDL, RCD, RCD/K-ML, FLC. Figure 2 Open in new tabDownload slide Claiming state legitimacy: Armed group ministries of finance. Clockwise from upper left: AFDL, RCD, RCD/K-ML, FLC. This mimicry also had a domestic purpose. Rebels’ image of being ‘the State’ made authority claims not only to a fictive idea of statehood but also to persisting state structures of revenue and surveillance. Armed groups created internal ministries that replicated official hierarchies. As an example, Kinshasa’s Ministry of Finance oversaw the lucrative OFIDA customs bureau. Rebels in turn created their own ‘finance ministries’ to project rightful ownership of customs revenue and regulations. These included AFDL’s Commissariat de l’Economie et des Finance; RCD’s Département des Finances, Economie, et Portefeuille; the RCD/K-ML’s Commissariat aux Finance; and the FLC’s Exécutif Chargé des Finances, Economie et Portefeuille. By forming their own ministries in ways that mimicked the national government, rebels claimed to replace Kinshasa as new governors atop hierarchies of revenue, surveillance, and paperwork. All groups used these tax agencies to collect revenue for rebel coffers, which they labeled their ‘public treasury’ to mimic state systems. As Figure 2 shows, files from rebels’ respective finance ministries bore the signs of statehood, including imitation letterhead and stamps. Table 1 Levers of bureaucratic control. Group . Location . Excerpt . Index . AFDL Goma, North Kivu ‘Nowhere in the world will you find so many public agencies at border posts... Here, we have a name of this state of affairs: disorder, anarchy, and above all, administrative treachery’ (1997, cross-border trade) 3/4 RCD-Goma Goma, North Kivu ‘...arbitrary and illegal taxation of petrol products by OFIDA [which]... applied its own tax structure toward an unknown end but one certainly contrary to the respect of the movement’ (1999, petrol) 4/4 Bukavu, South Kivu ‘The mining sector of South Kivu is an economic pillar of our Movement, but we face handicaps: the lack of rigor from customs officials... fraud’ (2000, mining) 4/4 Uvira, South Kivu ‘under-evaluation [of imports] leads to an under-taxation to the detriment of the Public Treasury’ (2002, cross-border trade) 1/4 Kisangani, Orientale ‘interference of many public agencies in the management of mining activities; steep increase in fraud; the clandestine export of precious materials and minerals to neighboring countries with the complicity of certain authorities...’ (1999, minerals) 4/4 Kindu, Maniema ‘usurpation by bureaucrats of the State in Maniema, who have proven themselves incapable of enacting decisions promulgated to maximize revenue, or to simply respect them as law.... revenue is remitted in a fashion prohibited by the RCD: only unusable bills are sent, others are withheld at the source’ (2001) 4/4 Lodja, Kasai Orientale ‘Disappearance of official documents and authorizations... fraudulently injected in the mining sector... and parallel economy’ (2001, diamonds)... ‘lack of transparency and an obscurity in finances’ (2002, diamonds) 2/2 Kalemie, Katanga ‘capricious exonerations due to interference from local authorities...fraud has not abated... [OFIDA] pillaged funds and official documents... continued confusion and encroachment by agencies on the duties of others’ (1999, cross-border trade) 3/3 RCD/K-ML Beni, North Kivu ‘unrestrained agency [activity] escapes control... leads to forgery and counterfeit documents, systematically reduces assets and leads to the ipso facto loss of profit for the agency and the [RCD/K-ML] Public Treasury’ (2003, general taxation). 3/4 Bunia, Ituri ‘...deliberately maintained confusion, with the complicity of businesses who pay taxes via small advances... Multiple interpretations of the tax code deepen the confusion of this situation’ (2001, general taxation) 3/3 FLC Beni, North Kivu ‘several hindrances have plagued tax collection. The [FLC] inspector reveals that the said tax continued to be collected [by OFIDA] while [FLC President Bemba] suspended it’ (2001, general taxation) 2/4 Bunia, Ituri ‘...massive fraud in customs declarations at the Mahagi border, where certain merchandise disappears... lack of transparency in the management of revenue by the OFIDA office, the quasi-total absence of a clear accounting, not respecting customs tariffs, withholding revenue...’ (2001, cross-border trade) 2/3 Group . Location . Excerpt . Index . AFDL Goma, North Kivu ‘Nowhere in the world will you find so many public agencies at border posts... Here, we have a name of this state of affairs: disorder, anarchy, and above all, administrative treachery’ (1997, cross-border trade) 3/4 RCD-Goma Goma, North Kivu ‘...arbitrary and illegal taxation of petrol products by OFIDA [which]... applied its own tax structure toward an unknown end but one certainly contrary to the respect of the movement’ (1999, petrol) 4/4 Bukavu, South Kivu ‘The mining sector of South Kivu is an economic pillar of our Movement, but we face handicaps: the lack of rigor from customs officials... fraud’ (2000, mining) 4/4 Uvira, South Kivu ‘under-evaluation [of imports] leads to an under-taxation to the detriment of the Public Treasury’ (2002, cross-border trade) 1/4 Kisangani, Orientale ‘interference of many public agencies in the management of mining activities; steep increase in fraud; the clandestine export of precious materials and minerals to neighboring countries with the complicity of certain authorities...’ (1999, minerals) 4/4 Kindu, Maniema ‘usurpation by bureaucrats of the State in Maniema, who have proven themselves incapable of enacting decisions promulgated to maximize revenue, or to simply respect them as law.... revenue is remitted in a fashion prohibited by the RCD: only unusable bills are sent, others are withheld at the source’ (2001) 4/4 Lodja, Kasai Orientale ‘Disappearance of official documents and authorizations... fraudulently injected in the mining sector... and parallel economy’ (2001, diamonds)... ‘lack of transparency and an obscurity in finances’ (2002, diamonds) 2/2 Kalemie, Katanga ‘capricious exonerations due to interference from local authorities...fraud has not abated... [OFIDA] pillaged funds and official documents... continued confusion and encroachment by agencies on the duties of others’ (1999, cross-border trade) 3/3 RCD/K-ML Beni, North Kivu ‘unrestrained agency [activity] escapes control... leads to forgery and counterfeit documents, systematically reduces assets and leads to the ipso facto loss of profit for the agency and the [RCD/K-ML] Public Treasury’ (2003, general taxation). 3/4 Bunia, Ituri ‘...deliberately maintained confusion, with the complicity of businesses who pay taxes via small advances... Multiple interpretations of the tax code deepen the confusion of this situation’ (2001, general taxation) 3/3 FLC Beni, North Kivu ‘several hindrances have plagued tax collection. The [FLC] inspector reveals that the said tax continued to be collected [by OFIDA] while [FLC President Bemba] suspended it’ (2001, general taxation) 2/4 Bunia, Ituri ‘...massive fraud in customs declarations at the Mahagi border, where certain merchandise disappears... lack of transparency in the management of revenue by the OFIDA office, the quasi-total absence of a clear accounting, not respecting customs tariffs, withholding revenue...’ (2001, cross-border trade) 2/3 Sources: AFDL: see above; RCD: ‘Taxation arbitraire et illégale des produits pétroliers par l’OFIDA’ Département de l’Economie, RCD, 23 July 1999, Goma; ‘Compte-Rendu de la Réunion du 26 juillet 2000 à l’Intention des Agents et Operateurs Economiques du Secteur Minier de Bukavu’ Département des Terres, Mines et Energie, RCD, 26 Bukavu, July 2000; ‘Accusé de réception’ RCD Département de l’Economie, Plan, Industrie, et Commerce, [Letter regarding Uvira], 4 June 2002, Goma; Lodja: ‘Utilisation 15 carnets LPI’ [Letter to DGRAD/Lodja] Département des Finances, RCD, 19 September 2001, Goma; ‘Nos doléances’ Banque Centrale du Congo, Agence de Kindu [Letter to the Coordinateur des Régies Financières du RCD], 21 June 2001, Kindu; ‘Etude d’une nouvelle structure des prix et d’une révision à la baisse des taux des taxes’ Département des Terres, Mines, et Energie, RCD, 14 January 2003, Goma; ‘Transmission Rapport Circonstancié’ Division des Mines et Géologie, Province Orientale, [Letter to Département des Mines, RCD], 2 February 1999, Kisangani; FLC: ‘Considération sur la Suspension de la Taxe Conjoncturelle’ FLC, 26 July 2001, Beni; ‘Création un Sous-Poste Douanier’ Secrétariat National des Finances et Budget, FLC [Letter to OFIDA-Bunia], 29 October 2001, Bunia. Open in new tab Table 1 Levers of bureaucratic control. Group . Location . Excerpt . Index . AFDL Goma, North Kivu ‘Nowhere in the world will you find so many public agencies at border posts... Here, we have a name of this state of affairs: disorder, anarchy, and above all, administrative treachery’ (1997, cross-border trade) 3/4 RCD-Goma Goma, North Kivu ‘...arbitrary and illegal taxation of petrol products by OFIDA [which]... applied its own tax structure toward an unknown end but one certainly contrary to the respect of the movement’ (1999, petrol) 4/4 Bukavu, South Kivu ‘The mining sector of South Kivu is an economic pillar of our Movement, but we face handicaps: the lack of rigor from customs officials... fraud’ (2000, mining) 4/4 Uvira, South Kivu ‘under-evaluation [of imports] leads to an under-taxation to the detriment of the Public Treasury’ (2002, cross-border trade) 1/4 Kisangani, Orientale ‘interference of many public agencies in the management of mining activities; steep increase in fraud; the clandestine export of precious materials and minerals to neighboring countries with the complicity of certain authorities...’ (1999, minerals) 4/4 Kindu, Maniema ‘usurpation by bureaucrats of the State in Maniema, who have proven themselves incapable of enacting decisions promulgated to maximize revenue, or to simply respect them as law.... revenue is remitted in a fashion prohibited by the RCD: only unusable bills are sent, others are withheld at the source’ (2001) 4/4 Lodja, Kasai Orientale ‘Disappearance of official documents and authorizations... fraudulently injected in the mining sector... and parallel economy’ (2001, diamonds)... ‘lack of transparency and an obscurity in finances’ (2002, diamonds) 2/2 Kalemie, Katanga ‘capricious exonerations due to interference from local authorities...fraud has not abated... [OFIDA] pillaged funds and official documents... continued confusion and encroachment by agencies on the duties of others’ (1999, cross-border trade) 3/3 RCD/K-ML Beni, North Kivu ‘unrestrained agency [activity] escapes control... leads to forgery and counterfeit documents, systematically reduces assets and leads to the ipso facto loss of profit for the agency and the [RCD/K-ML] Public Treasury’ (2003, general taxation). 3/4 Bunia, Ituri ‘...deliberately maintained confusion, with the complicity of businesses who pay taxes via small advances... Multiple interpretations of the tax code deepen the confusion of this situation’ (2001, general taxation) 3/3 FLC Beni, North Kivu ‘several hindrances have plagued tax collection. The [FLC] inspector reveals that the said tax continued to be collected [by OFIDA] while [FLC President Bemba] suspended it’ (2001, general taxation) 2/4 Bunia, Ituri ‘...massive fraud in customs declarations at the Mahagi border, where certain merchandise disappears... lack of transparency in the management of revenue by the OFIDA office, the quasi-total absence of a clear accounting, not respecting customs tariffs, withholding revenue...’ (2001, cross-border trade) 2/3 Group . Location . Excerpt . Index . AFDL Goma, North Kivu ‘Nowhere in the world will you find so many public agencies at border posts... Here, we have a name of this state of affairs: disorder, anarchy, and above all, administrative treachery’ (1997, cross-border trade) 3/4 RCD-Goma Goma, North Kivu ‘...arbitrary and illegal taxation of petrol products by OFIDA [which]... applied its own tax structure toward an unknown end but one certainly contrary to the respect of the movement’ (1999, petrol) 4/4 Bukavu, South Kivu ‘The mining sector of South Kivu is an economic pillar of our Movement, but we face handicaps: the lack of rigor from customs officials... fraud’ (2000, mining) 4/4 Uvira, South Kivu ‘under-evaluation [of imports] leads to an under-taxation to the detriment of the Public Treasury’ (2002, cross-border trade) 1/4 Kisangani, Orientale ‘interference of many public agencies in the management of mining activities; steep increase in fraud; the clandestine export of precious materials and minerals to neighboring countries with the complicity of certain authorities...’ (1999, minerals) 4/4 Kindu, Maniema ‘usurpation by bureaucrats of the State in Maniema, who have proven themselves incapable of enacting decisions promulgated to maximize revenue, or to simply respect them as law.... revenue is remitted in a fashion prohibited by the RCD: only unusable bills are sent, others are withheld at the source’ (2001) 4/4 Lodja, Kasai Orientale ‘Disappearance of official documents and authorizations... fraudulently injected in the mining sector... and parallel economy’ (2001, diamonds)... ‘lack of transparency and an obscurity in finances’ (2002, diamonds) 2/2 Kalemie, Katanga ‘capricious exonerations due to interference from local authorities...fraud has not abated... [OFIDA] pillaged funds and official documents... continued confusion and encroachment by agencies on the duties of others’ (1999, cross-border trade) 3/3 RCD/K-ML Beni, North Kivu ‘unrestrained agency [activity] escapes control... leads to forgery and counterfeit documents, systematically reduces assets and leads to the ipso facto loss of profit for the agency and the [RCD/K-ML] Public Treasury’ (2003, general taxation). 3/4 Bunia, Ituri ‘...deliberately maintained confusion, with the complicity of businesses who pay taxes via small advances... Multiple interpretations of the tax code deepen the confusion of this situation’ (2001, general taxation) 3/3 FLC Beni, North Kivu ‘several hindrances have plagued tax collection. The [FLC] inspector reveals that the said tax continued to be collected [by OFIDA] while [FLC President Bemba] suspended it’ (2001, general taxation) 2/4 Bunia, Ituri ‘...massive fraud in customs declarations at the Mahagi border, where certain merchandise disappears... lack of transparency in the management of revenue by the OFIDA office, the quasi-total absence of a clear accounting, not respecting customs tariffs, withholding revenue...’ (2001, cross-border trade) 2/3 Sources: AFDL: see above; RCD: ‘Taxation arbitraire et illégale des produits pétroliers par l’OFIDA’ Département de l’Economie, RCD, 23 July 1999, Goma; ‘Compte-Rendu de la Réunion du 26 juillet 2000 à l’Intention des Agents et Operateurs Economiques du Secteur Minier de Bukavu’ Département des Terres, Mines et Energie, RCD, 26 Bukavu, July 2000; ‘Accusé de réception’ RCD Département de l’Economie, Plan, Industrie, et Commerce, [Letter regarding Uvira], 4 June 2002, Goma; Lodja: ‘Utilisation 15 carnets LPI’ [Letter to DGRAD/Lodja] Département des Finances, RCD, 19 September 2001, Goma; ‘Nos doléances’ Banque Centrale du Congo, Agence de Kindu [Letter to the Coordinateur des Régies Financières du RCD], 21 June 2001, Kindu; ‘Etude d’une nouvelle structure des prix et d’une révision à la baisse des taux des taxes’ Département des Terres, Mines, et Energie, RCD, 14 January 2003, Goma; ‘Transmission Rapport Circonstancié’ Division des Mines et Géologie, Province Orientale, [Letter to Département des Mines, RCD], 2 February 1999, Kisangani; FLC: ‘Considération sur la Suspension de la Taxe Conjoncturelle’ FLC, 26 July 2001, Beni; ‘Création un Sous-Poste Douanier’ Secrétariat National des Finances et Budget, FLC [Letter to OFIDA-Bunia], 29 October 2001, Bunia. Open in new tab Rebel claims to these agencies helped guarantee a role for state administrations during war, but also raised questions of who held power to shape how official structures and symbols were used. Armed groups faced bureaucrats’ continued struggles to use these posts for their own ends. Bureaucrats regularly rerouted revenue and made parallel deals to build influence over state institutions prior to war, and they sought to safeguard this discretion.95 To assess whether these struggles limited armed groups’ influence over state structures in actual practice, I consulted rebel records.96 Bureaucratic noncompliance relies on low-level strategies of ‘opacity’ and concealment, so these practices would need to take place on a broad, systemic scale for rebels to perceive them as threats. I identified strategic towns at trading nodes of war economies and compiled a list of the major revenue agencies (DGC, DGRAD, OCC, and OFIDA) operating in each. I then examined what proportion of these agencies rebels identified as complicit in noncompliance (indicated through descriptions like ‘fraud’ or ‘evasion’) in ways that negatively impacted rebel objectives (like through statements like ‘revenue leakages’). Table 1 provides the results. Cases span four armed groups, nine locations, and varied resource chains including diamonds and petrol. It illustrates that bureaucrats participated in noncompliance in systematic ways that rebels viewed as damaging, like through side deals, falsified statistics, and parallel fees. The table offers excerpts from rebel files that recount these struggles, allowing readers to engage descriptions own in rebels’ own, real-time words. Armed groups warned that bureaucrats caused a massive ‘dissipation of revenue’ and described them—not just military rivals—with the language of threat like ‘treachery’ and duplicity.97 The final column of Table 1 presents an index to estimate how widespread these practices were. Available rebel records implicated 81% of the major bureaus in the towns under study. Results suggest that these were not simply minor or ad hoc hassles, but pervasive struggles. This broad assessment helps reveal a pattern: Rebels viewed bureaucratic noncompliance as limiting their ability to direct how state symbols and structures were used. But it does not show why bureaucrats made these decisions. To illustrate the mechanisms of resistance, the following section provides a closer look into these struggles by comparing bureaucrats’ interactions with RCD and RCD/K-ML rebels at specific moments of dispute. The groups span distinct social environments: The RCD was seen as an occupying force, while the RCD/K-ML was a ‘son of the soil’ rebellion, so similar strategies would suggest that bureaucrats acted from a shared state affiliation. Comparisons demonstrate that bureaucrats who had recruited rebel support shifted to resistance when rebels threatened their ability to collect taxes or control paperwork. To limit rebel influence over institutions, bureaucrats used low-level acts of noncompliance while invoking the image of the state—as a coherent rule-making authority—in direct confrontations.98 At stake in these struggles was the ability to control state symbols and to confer a status of participation in statehood. Illustrating bureaucratic resistance to rebel encroachment: the RCD and RCD/K-ML Kisangani’s diamond trade offers the first window into rebel attempts to tip the balance of control over institutions. Facing competition from foreign patrons and rival rebels, the RCD tried to tighten its grip on diamond markets by relocating licensing and exports channels to its headquarter city, Goma. The decision cut out Kisangani’s bureaucrats from taxing the trade. Kisangani’s mining division responded to RCD leadership by maintaining that war did not interrupt the legal reach of state: I have the honor to inform you that an oversight seems to have slipped in your formulation of Article 13 [of the RCD mining code]…. the regulatory texts on the matter (Ordinance no 84-056 and 082 of 18 February and 30 March 1984 and the Ministerial Statute 00208/CAB/Min.Mines/92 of 28 February 1992) stipulate that all operations are to be conducted under the authority and supervision of the Agency of Mines who validates reports with CNE [diamond verification agency] and/or OFIDA.99 To preserve their ability to deal in this legal status, bureaucrats cast their involvement in diamond markets as a matter of technical procedure that rebels lacked jurisdiction to change. Invoking regulations did not imply that bureaucrats acted as technocrats: They collected informal fees, like a 1% tax on diamond buyers.100 Meanwhile, bureaucrats continued low-level noncompliance behind the backs of the RCD as the group took other steps to build control over state agencies. For instance, RCD leadership voided side deals that OFIDA, DGC, and DGRAD provided to gold and tin exporters101 and then reissued its own exonerations for the same traders. In doing so, they sought to exchange bureaucrats for rebels as the actors to set state practice.102 But bureaucrats continued their own side deals. They under-declared transactions in sectors ranging from coffee to minerals and fudged reports to conceal revenue streams.103 When the RCD took steps to improve monitoring over state structures by gathering lists of personnel, bureaucrats sought to shield administrations from oversight. Bureaucrats reported unreliable numbers, which spurred RCD complaints that for ‘each report that concerns statistics of personnel, new numbers, in total contradiction to previous one, are produced… such a situation is evidently completely out of control’.104Table 2 illustrates these dynamics. It shows, for example, that Maniema’s provincial commission reported 13,418 agents in January 2001, but had requested funds to pay 20,000 agents just one month before. Table 2 Administrative illegibility: RCD estimates of bureaucrats across its territory. . July 2000 . December 2000 . January 2001 . North Kivu (Petit Nord only) 17,239 13,180 12,324 South Kivu 27,223 18,192 23,374 Maniema 12,753 20,000 13,418 Katanga (Tanganyika only) 4,242 4,242 3,088 Kasai Orientale (Sankuru, Kabinda–Lubao) 13,263 13,263 16,548 . July 2000 . December 2000 . January 2001 . North Kivu (Petit Nord only) 17,239 13,180 12,324 South Kivu 27,223 18,192 23,374 Maniema 12,753 20,000 13,418 Katanga (Tanganyika only) 4,242 4,242 3,088 Kasai Orientale (Sankuru, Kabinda–Lubao) 13,263 13,263 16,548 SOURCES: ‘Rapport de la Commission Interdépartementale de Paie de la Prime aux Agents et Fonctionnaires des Services Publics de l’Etat du Territoire Sous Contrôle du RCD’ Département de la Fonction Publique, Travail et Prévoyance Sociale, RCD, 8 March 2001, Goma; ‘Note Technique sur le Payement de la Prime aux fonctionnaires des Services Publics de l’Etat’ Département de la Fonction Publique, Travail, et Prévoyance Sociale, RCD, 16 December 2000, Goma. Open in new tab Table 2 Administrative illegibility: RCD estimates of bureaucrats across its territory. . July 2000 . December 2000 . January 2001 . North Kivu (Petit Nord only) 17,239 13,180 12,324 South Kivu 27,223 18,192 23,374 Maniema 12,753 20,000 13,418 Katanga (Tanganyika only) 4,242 4,242 3,088 Kasai Orientale (Sankuru, Kabinda–Lubao) 13,263 13,263 16,548 . July 2000 . December 2000 . January 2001 . North Kivu (Petit Nord only) 17,239 13,180 12,324 South Kivu 27,223 18,192 23,374 Maniema 12,753 20,000 13,418 Katanga (Tanganyika only) 4,242 4,242 3,088 Kasai Orientale (Sankuru, Kabinda–Lubao) 13,263 13,263 16,548 SOURCES: ‘Rapport de la Commission Interdépartementale de Paie de la Prime aux Agents et Fonctionnaires des Services Publics de l’Etat du Territoire Sous Contrôle du RCD’ Département de la Fonction Publique, Travail et Prévoyance Sociale, RCD, 8 March 2001, Goma; ‘Note Technique sur le Payement de la Prime aux fonctionnaires des Services Publics de l’Etat’ Département de la Fonction Publique, Travail, et Prévoyance Sociale, RCD, 16 December 2000, Goma. Open in new tab In mid-1999, the RCD/K-ML split from the RCD and laid a base in the Grand Nord, where it shared a predominantly Nande affiliation with the population. But bureaucrats here also maneuvred between cultivating rebel buy-in and resistance when rebels overstepped. In 2001, the RCD/K-ML tried to streamline revenue flows by requisitioning bureaucrats’ tax forms and accounting books. OFIDA customs agents responded by invoking the image of the state as unified across territory to explain they could not turn over paperwork to rebels: the [RCD/K-ML] wants us to believe that the country is partitioned, so all institutions and documents of Kinshasa must be turned over to the [RCD/K-ML] cabinet director. We believe that this is in contradiction to the… recognition that the Democratic Republic of Congo is one and indivisible.105 Bureaucrats invoked this image again when the RCD/K-ML tried to block some agencies from taxing petrol. Bureaucrats wrote to the RCD/K-ML president to remind him of official procedures for tax policy: ‘the petrol sector has always been directed by three commissariats: Finance, Economy, and Energy. Therefore, any decision on petrol products must be approved by these three commissariats’.106 Since only the RCD/K-ML’s Commissariat of Finance issued the reform, bureaucrats argued that rebels failed to follow procedure so the regulation lacked effect. Beneath the official language, OFIDA agents diverted revenue.107 They siphoned off taxes from import–export transactions and petrol imports.108 Bureaucrats used a portrait of officialdom to cover the evasions. When the RCD/K-ML tried to hold some liable, bureaucrats suggested that state codes disqualified rebels from penalizing bureaucratic graft: ‘Customs legislation stipulates that, in the case of fraud, litigation shall be initiated that will compensate the damages and interests by exacting them from the authors of fraud and their accomplices’.109 Bureaucrats maintained that state symbols represented a source of authority that stood outside of rebel rule and took action to preserve their influence over institutions and their legitimacy resource during war. Conclusion Rebels often portray themselves as state-like to legitimize their rule. This article has argued that this state-like image is more than just a simple veneer. Drawing on new evidence from Congo, it has shown how bureaucrats actively sustain state institutions and recruit rebel support during war. The symbols of statehood—official certificates, codes, and paperwork—provide tools to barter state legitimacy in exchange for protection for administrative posts. Bureaucrats cultivate rebel support but also seek to limit rebels’ takeover of state structures through the same pathways of obscurity and concealment that can undermine the enforcement of central state codes prior to war. This view from the ground demonstrates the real-time continuity of bureaucratic practice in war through daily paperwork. Bringing these relationships into focus contributes to research on state authority and rebel governance. For studies of state authority, the article demonstrates the empirical grounding of institutions conventionally viewed as weak. States like Congo’s are described as lacking ‘self-sustaining structures with domestic foundations’.110 But bureaucrats that maintain official files, laws, and regalia fortify the image of the state and the value of its symbols even where central governments are weak. These practices suggest that state structures are not just external or artificial, but embedded into local governance. They also illustrate a paradox,: bureaucrats market participation in statehood to keep their agencies alive, but these survival strategies can undermine the ability to use the state for a coherent purpose. Their actions help illustrate why institutional reform in fragile states can be difficult, not due to the deficit of the state but to too many agents using its structures for diverse ends. These relations move away from the state as a unitary actor to give texture to how different levels and interests interact with erstwhile state competitors. Bureaucrats’ wartime practices also clarify the governing opportunities and challenges that rebels confront. Growing research demonstrates that rebels rely on more than military force but also make symbolic claims to statehood to build their legitimacy. This research can improve precision by incorporating official administrators into discussions of the ‘state’ and ‘statehood’.111 Incorporating bureaucratic action into the study of wartime statehood demonstrates that rebel attempts to appear state-like are not just symbolic, but can be linked to the actual practice of the state. Moreover, this is a two-way exchange. Bureaucrats seek to preserve a role for state symbols in rebel territory. Bureaucrats are strategic actors that draw lines about participation in a state status and exchange state affiliation to guarantee a role for their work in difficult environments. The article invites future research into how state structures shape wartime governance more broadly. Armed groups interact with bureaucrats across diverse conflicts including in Sri Lanka, India, Colombia, and Iraq, yet there is no systematic study of these interactions. Further work is needed to understand how these interactions may reconfigure relations of state authority or have lasting institutional effects that outlast war. Footnotes 1 " See, for example, Kasper Hoffman, Koen Vlassenroot, and Gauthier Marchais, ‘Taxation, stateness and armed groups: Public authority and resource extraction in eastern Congo’, Development and Change 47, 6 (2016), pp. 1434–1456; Reyko Huang, ‘Rebel diplomacy in civil war’, International Security 40, 4 (2016), pp. 89–126; Zachariah Mampilly, ‘Performing the nation-state: Rebel governance and symbolic processes’, in Ana Arjona, Nelson Kasfir and Zachariah Mampilly (eds), Rebel governance in civil war (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2015), pp. 74–97; William Reno, ‘Predatory rebels and governance: The National Patriotic Front of Liberia, 1989–1992’, in Ana Arjona, Nelson Kasfir and Zachariah Mampilly (eds), Rebel governance in civil war (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2015), pp. 265–85; Denis Tull, ‘A reconfiguration of political order? The state of the state in North Kivu (DR Congo)’, African Affairs 102, 408 (2003), pp. 429–446. 2 " For an excellent exception, see Bart Klem, ‘In the eye of the storm: Sri-Lanka’s front-line civil servants in transition’, Development and Change 43, 3 (2012), pp. 695–717. 3 " Political legitimacy is defined as the ‘acceptance of the right to rule’. See James Putzel, ‘Survival of an imperfect democracy in the Philippines’, Democratization 6, 1 (1999), pp. 198–223, p. 201. 4 " Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie (Katanga mission finance report, RCD Département des Finances, Budget et Portefeuille, Goma, 1999) 5 " Front de liberation du Congo, ‘Création un sous-poste douanier’ (Letter to the Directeur Géneral de l’Office des douanes et accises, FLC Secrétariat National aux Finances et Budget, Bunia, 2001) 6 " On the image of the state, see Joel Migdal and Klaus Schlichte, ‘Rethinking the state’, in Klaus Schlichte (ed.), The dynamics of states: The formation and crises of state domination (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2005), pp. 1–40. 7 " John Gerring, Case study research (Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2007), pp. 115–119. 8 " William Reno, Warlord politics and African states (Lynne Rienner Press, Boulder, CO, 1998). Area scholars of the Congolese state offer a more nuanced view. See Thomas Callaghy, ‘State-subject communication in Zaire: Domination and the concept of domain consensus’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 18, 3 (1980), pp. 469–492; Pierre Englebert, Africa: Unity, sovereignty, sorrow (Lynne Rienner Press, Boulder, CO, 2009); Michael Schatzberg, The dialectics of oppression in Zaire (University of Indiana Press, Bloomington, IN, 1988); Theodore Trefon, Parcours administratif dans un état en faillite: Récits populaires de Lubumbashi (RDC) (L’Harmattan, Paris, 2007) 9 " Robert Rotberg (ed.), When states fail: Causes and consequences (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2004); William Zartman (ed.), Collapsed states (Lynne Rienner Press, Boulder, CO, 1995). See also Severine Autessere, ‘Dangerous tales: Dominant narratives on the Congo and their unintended consequences’, African Affairs 111, 443 (2012), pp. 202–222 10 " Michael Nest, The Democratic Republic of Congo: Economic dimensions of war and peace (Lynne Rienner Press, Boulder, CO, 2006); Timothy Raeymaekers, Violent capitalism and hybrid identity in eastern Congo: Power to the margins (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014); Koen Vlassenroot and Hans Romkema, ‘The emergence of a new order? Resources and war in eastern Congo’, Journal of Humanitarian Assistance (2002). 11 " The RCD is also known as the RCD-Goma following the 1999 split of the RCD/K-ML faction. 12 " Matthew Hull, Government of paper: The materiality of bureaucracy in urban Pakistan (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2012), p. 21. Hull continues, bureaucratic files, while shaped by other ‘forms of sociality... are not merely materializations, projections, or realizations of these relationships constituted by other means.’ Ibid. 13 " This article does not aim to provide an ethnography of bureaucracy, although I relied on relationship building and linguistic expertise consistent with an ethnographic approach to learn and access the rebel records. For the broader project, I conducted 111 interviews, including 42 combatants, 22 state agents, 12 local authorities (e.g., customary chiefs and religious leaders), 18 cross-traders and business leaders, 11 civil society members, and 9 United Nations peacekeepers. Respondents were located in North Kivu (Beni, Butembo, Goma), South Kivu (Bukavu), and Orientale Provinces (Bunia and Aru in Ituri district) and were asked about their work experiences during the Congo Wars. Respondents were selected through snowball sampling, building out from an original series of lists compiled with local customary chiefs, state administrators, and local businesses who were members of the Fédération des Entreprises du Congo in each location. Respondents were members of or interacted with varied armed groups and represent different ethnic backgrounds, state positions, and economic sectors. The sampling strategy was not intended to provide a representative sample of communities but to capture different perspectives across the main cleavages in each. On this style of sampling, see Elisabeth Wood, Insurgent collective action and civil war in El Salvador (Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2003). 14 " Since taxation ‘not only constitutes a significant economic dynamic for public authorities; it also entails processes of recognition of their authority’, it helps illumine struggles for legitimate rule. Christian Lund, ‘Twilight institutions: Public authority and local politics in Africa’, Development and Change 37, 4 (2006), pp. 685–705, p. 696. 15 " Hull, Government of paper, p. 1. As Raman Bhavani writes, ‘the very protocols of law that underwrote the modern state are constituted in the micropractices of writing’. Raman Bhavani, Document Raj: Writing and scribes in early colonial south India (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2012), p. 2. See also Ilana Feldman, Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, authority, and the work of rule, 1917–1967 (Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2008). 16 " Robert Jackson, ‘Juridical statehood in sub-Saharan Africa’, Journal of International Affairs 46, 1 (1992), pp. 1–16. 17 " See, for instance, Thomas Bierschenk and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan (eds), States at work: Dynamics of African bureaucracy (Brill, Leiden, 2014). 18 " For a review, see Kasper Hoffman and Tom Kirk, ‘Public authority and the provision of public goods in conflict-affected and transitioning regions’ (Justice and security research programme, London School of Economics, 2013). 19 " Peter Evans and James Rauch, ‘Bureaucracy and growth: A cross-national analysis of the effects of “Weberian” state structures on economic growth’, American Sociological Review 64, 5 (1999), pp. 748–765. 20 " Rotberg, When states fail; Zartman, Collapsed states. 21 " Reno, Warlord politics. 22 " Jean-François Bayart, The state in Africa: The politics of the belly (Polity, Cambridge, 2009). 23 " Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa works: Disorder as political instrument (James Currey, Oxford, 1999), p. 16. 24 " James Fearon and David Laitin, ‘Ethnicity, insurgency, and civil war’, American Political Science Review 97, 1 (2003), pp. 75–90. 25 " Kenneth Menkhaus, ‘Governance without government in Somalia: Spoilers, state building, and the politics of coping’, International Security 31, 3 (2006/7), pp. 74–106; Raeymaekers, Violent capitalism. 26 " Ana Arjona, ‘Wartime institutions: A research agenda’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 58, 8 (2014), pp. 1360–1389; Zachariah Mampilly, Rebel rulers: Insurgent governance and civilian life during war (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2011); Jeremy Weinstein, Inside rebellion: The politics of insurgent violence (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2007). 27 " On charisma, see Kimberly Marten, ‘Warlordism in comparative perspective’, International Security 31, 3 (2006/7), pp. 41–73. On social ties, Nelson Kasfir, ‘Guerrillas and civilian participation: The National Resistance Army in Uganda, 1981–86’, Journal of Modern African Studies 43, 2 (2005), pp. 271–296; Paul Staniland, ‘Organizing insurgency: Networks, resources, and rebellion in South Asia’, International Security 37, 1 (2012), pp. 142–177. 28 " Arjona writes ‘in countries with stronger states, public agencies may operate even when rebels own the monopoly over the use of violence, as the cases of India and Colombia indicate’. (Arjona, ‘Wartime institutions’, p. 1373). Klem suggests bureaucrats continued working under the Tamil Tigers because Sri Lanka’s bureaucracy was fairly ‘well-developed... [u]nlike some of the oft-cited examples in the debate around state failure’ (Klem, ‘In the eye of the storm’, p. 700). Mampilly argues that the presence of state administrations prior to war can help civilians bargain with rebels but expects this occurs in places where the central government was strong (Mampilly, Rebel rulers.) 29 " Public authority is ‘power which seeks at least a minimum of voluntary compliance and thus is legitimated in some way.’ (Christian Lund, ‘Twilight institutions: An introduction’, Development and Change 37, 4 (2006), pp. 673–684, p. 678). I use the term ‘from below’ to reference work on ‘negotiated’ and ‘mediated’ states, ‘power poles’, and bureaucrats at work. This work aims to historicize the state, challenge the idea of Weberian states as a normative goal, and trace how the appropriation of sovereignty transforms the nature of statehood and regulation. See, for example, Tobias Hagmann and Didier Péclard (eds), Negotiating statehood: Dynamics of power and domination in Africa (Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011); Menkhaus, ‘Governance without government’; Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, ‘Researching the practical norms of real governance in Africa’ (Discussion Paper 5, Overseas Development Institute, 2008); Janet Roitman, Fiscal disobedience: An anthropology of economic regulation in Central Africa (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2005); Nel Vandekerckhove, ‘The state, the rebel and the chief: Public authority and land disputes in Assam, India’, Development and Change 42, 3 (2001), pp. 759–779. 30 " Migdal and Schlichte, ‘Rethinking the state’. 31 " Ibid. 32 " Robert Jackson, Quasi-states: Sovereignty, international relations, and the third world (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990). 33 " Englebert, Africa; Morten Nielsen, ‘Filling in the blanks: The potency of fragmented imageries of the state’, Review of African Political Economy 34, 114 (2007), pp. 675–708. 34 " Lars Buur and Helene Kyed, ‘Contested sources of authority: Re-claiming state sovereignty by formalizing traditional authority in Mozambique’, Development and Change 37, 4 (2006), pp. 847–869, p. 849. 35 " Tobias Hagmann and Markus Hoehne, ‘Failures of the state failure debate: Evidence from the Somali territories’, Journal of International Development 21, 1 (2009), pp. 42–57. 36 " Marleen Renders, ‘Appropriate “governance-technology”? Somali clan elders and institutions in the making of the “Republic of Somaliland”’, Africa Spectrum 42, 3 (2007), pp. 439–459, p. 454. 37 " Begoña Aretxaga, ‘Maddening states’, Annual Review of Anthropology 32 (2003), pp. 393–410, p. 396. 38 " Hoffman et al., ‘Taxation, stateness and armed groups’; Huang, ‘Rebel diplomacy’; Mampilly, ‘Performing the nation-state’. 39 " Reno, ‘Predatory rebels and governance’. 40 " Respectively, Jayadeva Uyangoda, ‘Government-LTTE peace negotiations in 2002–2005 and the clash state formation projects’, in Spencer Goodhand and Benedict Korf (eds), Conflict and peacebuilding in Sri Lanka: Caught in the peace trap? (Routledge, New York, NY, 2011); United Nations Security Council, ‘Report of the panel of experts on the Central African Republic’ (S/2014/452, 2014), Annex 6. 41 " Lars Buur, ‘Reordering society: Vigilantism and expressions of sovereignty in Port Elizabeth’s townships’, Development and Change 37, 4 (2006), pp. 735–757. 42 " Bierschenk and Oliver de Sardan, States at Work, p. 52. 43 " Ibid, p. 36. As MacGaffey describes, bureaucrats ‘use their position in the state as a privileged means to access and extract resources in the second economy’ (or extract from and influence societal actors) and ‘participate in it in order to evade a predatory state’ (or to resist the encroachment of hierarchies). Janet MacGaffey, ‘Fending-for-yourself: The organization of the second economy in Zaire’, in Georges Nzongola-Ntajala (ed.), The crisis in Zaire: Myths and realities (Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ, 1986), pp. 141–156, p. 143. 44 " For the argument that bureaucratic files cannot be reduced to societal relations, see Hull, Government of paper. 45 " On bureaucrats’ exchange relationships, see Thomas Callaghy, ‘State-subject communication in Zaire’. The language of exchange to trace power relations is consistent with Alex de Waal’s political marketplace framework. Alex de Waal, The real politics of the horn of Africa: Money, war and the business of power (Polity, Cambridge, 2015). 46 " Arjona, ‘Wartime institutions’; Menkhaus, ‘Governance without government’; Raeymaekers, Violent capitalism. 47 " Christopher Clapham, Africa and the international system: The politics of state survival (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996), p. 35. 48 " Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan, States at work. 49 " Migdal and Schlichte, ‘Rethinking the state’, p. 16–19. 50 " Trefon, Parcours administratif, p. 26. 51 " Michael Lipsky, Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public service (Russell Sage, New York, NY, 1980); James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen (eds), Explaining institutional change: Ambiguity, agency, and power (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2009). 52 " Carola Lentz, ‘“I take an oath to the state, not the government”: Career trajectories and professional ethics of Ghanaian public servants’, in Thomas Bierschenk and Jean-Pierre Oliver de Sardan (eds), States at work: Dynamics of African bureaucracy (Brill, Leiden, 2014), pp. 175–204. 53 " Giorgio Blundo, ‘Dealing with the local state: The informal privatization of street-level bureaucracies in Senegal’, Development and Change 37, 4 (2006), pp. 799–819, p. 807. 54 " Ibid. 55 " Mahoney and Thelen, Explaining institutional change. 56 " MacGaffey, ‘Fending-for-yourself’, p. 143. See also Olivier de Sardan, ‘Researching the practical norms’. 57 " Or the ‘paper mediation of relations’ of the state. Hull, Government of Paper, p. 1. Also, Bhavani, Document raj. 58 " Alexandre Kukhianidze, Alexandre Kupatadze and Roman Gotsiridze, ‘Smuggling through Abkhazia and Tskhinvali of Georgia’ (American University, Tbilisi, 2004), p. 54; MacGaffey, ‘Fending-for-yourself’, p. 148. 59 " Reno, ‘Predatory rebels and governance’; Tull, ‘A reconfiguration of political order?’. 60 " United Nations Security Council, ‘Report of the panel of experts on the Central African Republic’ (S/2015/936, 2015), Annex 5.14. 61 " Schatzberg, The dialectics of oppression; Mukohya Vwakyanakazi, ‘Import and export in the second economy in North Kivu’, in Janet MacGaffey (ed.), The real economy of Zaire (James Currey, London, 1991), pp. 43–71. 62 " Like civilians seeking to limit rebel intervention into their affairs more generally. Arjona, ‘Wartime institutions’. 63 " Lipsky, Street-level bureaucracy. 64 " Jacob Shapiro, The terrorist’s dilemma: Managing violent covert organizations (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2013). 65 " Civil wars research typically emphasizes collective action as how civilians resist rebels. Arjona, ‘Wartime institutions’; Mampilly, Rebel rulers; Menkhaus, ‘Governance without government.’ This article suggests bureaucrats can use a different pathway that operates through concealment and opacity. 66 " As Klem ‘In the eye of the storm’ shows in wartime Sri Lanka. 67 " Englebert, Africa, p. 43; Rukmini Callimachi, ‘The ISIS files: When terrorists control city hall’, New York Times, 4 April 2018, <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/04/world/middleeast/isis-documents-mosul-iraq.htm> (30 April 2018); Klem, ‘In the eye of the storm’; Vandekerckhove, ‘The state’. 68 " Author is grateful to Alex de Waal for this observation. 69 " Borrowing from the concept of negotiation arena as ‘the broader political space in which relations of power and authority are vested.’ Didier Péclard and Tobias Hagmann, ‘Negotiating statehood: Dynamics of power and domination in Africa’, Development and Change 41, 4 (2010), pp. 539–562, p. 561. 70 " Vwakyanakazi, ‘Import and export’. 71 " James Fairhead, ‘Paths of authority: Roads, the state and the market in eastern Zaire’, European Journal of Development Research (1992), pp. 17–35; MacGaffey, ‘Fending-for-yourself’. 72 " Association nationale des entrepreneurs Zaïrois, ‘Multiplicité des taxes et services au poste frontalier de Kasindi’ (Beni, 19 October 1993). Callaghy, ‘State-subject communication in Zaire’ helps interpret these interactions . 73 " Schatzberg, The dialectics of oppression in Zaire, ch 3. 74 " Office des douanes et accises, ‘Mise à jour et harmonisation de la liste des prix moyens de référence’ (Kinshasa, 28 March 1996). 75 " Governor of North Kivu, ‘Postes frontaliers’ (Letter to the AFDL Commissaire de l’Economie et des Finances, Goma, 22 March 1997). 76 " AFDL, ‘Conclusions des concertations entre ANEZA-l’APENOKI et les services étatiques et paraétatiques’ (Goma, 24 April 1997); AFDL Commissaire de l’Economie et des Finances, ‘Structure du prix JET-A-1’ (Goma, 30 April 1997). 77 " Provincial bureaus of DGC, OFIDA, and DGRAD, ‘Compte-rendu de la réunion technique d’examen du taux de l’imposition’ (Goma, 21 August 1998). The remainder of this paragraph draws from this source. 78 " OFIDA South-Kivu, ‘Attestation de perte des marchandises’ (Uvira, 18 August 1998). 79 " Nest, The Democratic Republic of Congo. 80 " Division Provinciale des Mines et Géologie, ‘Note technique M.354/.1/002/PO/98’ (Kisangani, 12 December 1998). 81 " Ibid. 82 " OCC Départements Provinciaux Est, Nord-Kivu, et Orientale, ‘Note technique au Département des Finances du RCD’ (Goma, 13 October 1998). 83 " Governors of North Kivu, South Kivu, and Orientale, ‘Mémorandum des gouverneurs des provinces sous contrôle du RCD à leurs excellences Messieurs le Président et les membres du directoire du RCD’ (Goma, 30 December 1998). 84 " Beni and Lubero territories in northern North Kivu are known as the Grand Nord. 85 " On the political history of the Banyarwanda in Congo, see Jean-Claude Willame, Banyarwanda et Banyamulenge: Violences ethniques et gestion de l’identitaire au Kivu (L’Harmattan, Paris, 1997). 86 " Aloys Tegera and Dominic Johnson, ‘Democratic Republic of Congo: Peace tomorrow?’ (Pole Institute, Goma, 2003). 87 " For more on this network, see Raeymaekers, Violent capitalism; Vwakyanakazi, ‘Import and export’. 88 " OFIDA-Beni, ‘Trafic illicite opéré à Kasindi par les hommes en armes’ (Beni, 25 January 1999). 89 " OFIDA-Kasindi, ‘Rapport circonstancie de service’ (Kasindi, 24 December 1998). 90 " Specifically, to Emmanuel Kamanzi, who was a lynchpin in Rwanda’s financial networks. See Vlassenroot and Romkema, ‘The emergence of a new order?’ 91 " RCD Département des Finances, Budget, et Portefeuille, ‘Trafic frauduleux des marchandises par les hommes en armes bases à Beni et à Kasindi’ (Note to the RCD Executive Comittee, Goma, 25 April 1999). 92 " RCD Département des Finances, ‘Instruction No003/DF/RCD/98 aux institutions bancaires et financières’ (Goma, 20 October 1998); RCD Département des Finances, ‘Decision portant suspension de l’arrêté ministériel no005/CAB/MINEIC/97 portant fixation des prix de vente des carburants terrestres’ (Goma, 1 November 1998). 93 " Over 500 tax slips and bank statements in possession of the author. 94 " Tull, ‘A reconfiguration of political order?’ 95 " Bureaucrats seek to ‘hang on to the discretionary capacities that they have enjoyed in the past.’ Lipsky, Street-level bureaucracy, p. 19. 96 " Interviews with bureaucrats can illumine a single agent or agency’s strategies, but they do not indicate broad patterns or resolve whether rebels perceived them as threats. 97 " See sources in Table 1. 98 " Migdal and Schlichte, ‘Rethinking the state’, pp. 16–19. 99 " Division Provinciale des Mines et Géologie, ‘Décision no031/DPF/RCD/98 du 19/11/98’ (Letter to the RCD Département des Finances, Kisangani, 4 December 1998). 100 " RCD Département des Finances, Budget et Portefeuille, ‘Rétrocession de 25% sur le taxe ad valorem’ (Letter to the Governor of Orientale Province, Goma, 20 February 1999). 101 " RCD Département des Finances, Budget et Portefeuille, ‘Suspension des contrats de préfinancement’ (Letter to OFIDA, DGC and DGRAD, Goma, 10 November 1999). 102 " For example, RCD documents recognized over $200,000 in prefinancing agreements with Kotecha in April 1999, $337,000 to Shenimed in September 2000, and $20,000 to Datco in October 2001. 103 " RCD Département des Terres, Mines, et Energie, ‘Compte-rendu de la réunion du 26 juillet 2000’ (Bukavu, 26 July 2000), p. 5; RCD Département des Finances, Budget, et Portefeuille, ‘Inspection des finances’ (Goma, April 2001). 104 " Sources in Table 2. 105 " Association des déclarants du Grand Nord-OFIDA, ‘Reaction à letter no146/CAB/Pres/RCD-KIS/2001’ (Letter to the RCD/K-ML Secretary General, Beni, 10 November 2001). 106 " Association des déclarants du Grand Nord-OFIDA, ‘Monopole de dédouanement des produits pétroliers’ (Letter to the RCD/K-ML President, Beni, 20 December 2001). 107 " RCD/K-ML Governor, ‘Perception de la taxe conjoncturelle sur les importations et le trafic aérien’ (Letter to OFIDA-Beni, Beni, 15 December 2000). 108 " Association des déclarants du Grand Nord-OFIDA, ‘Monopole de dédouanement’. 109 " Association des transitaires et commissionnaires en douane, ‘Remerciements’ (Letter to the RCD/K-ML President, Beni, 27 March 2002). 110 " Robert Jackson, Quasi-states, p. 5. 111 " Biershenk and Oliver de Sardan, States at work. © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Bureaucrats at war: The resilient state in the Congo
JF - African Affairs
DO - 10.1093/afraf/adaa001
DA - 2020-04-23
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/bureaucrats-at-war-the-resilient-state-in-the-congo-sT0zkPixNj
SP - 224
VL - 119
IS - 475
DP - DeepDyve
ER -