By Norm Dixon
Massive and immediate aid is needed to prevent starvation and disease among 500,000 refugees held captive by the genocidal Rwandan former regime and the interahamwe death squads in eastern Zaire. The western powers and most international aid agencies have brushed aside assurances of safety from anti-Mobutu rebels, who defeated the interahamwe and their Zairean army allies, and insist that military intervention take place.
On November 13, the US announced it would join a military force "to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid". Under US command, 1000 US infantry troops backed by assault helicopters will enter Zaire, and another 5000 will provide logistics in neighbouring states. The US contingent would be part of a larger Canadian-led force of 10,000-20,000 troops drawn from European and African countries. France offered 1200 troops.
Leaders of the rebel Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire sharply criticised the failure of the UN and aid agencies to take advantage of a unilateral cease-fire and guarantees of safe passage through liberated areas to deliver aid to rebel-held areas and the interahamwe-controlled Mugunga refugee camp, 15 kilometres from Goma. A military force to protect aid deliveries in rebel areas was not needed, they argued.
"We have given them the chance they need to help those people", guerilla leader Andre Ngande Kissasse told a reporter for the London Times on November 8. "I cannot understand why there are no relief agencies now in eastern Zaire. I can guarantee their safety up to the front line. From then on it is up to the aid agencies to negotiate with the interahamwe."
According to the Times, aid agencies had not entered rebel-held territory because the UN High Commission for Refugees, which contracts out aid missions to the agencies, had banned relief workers from entering Zaire until permission had been negotiated with President Mobutu Sese Seko's dictatorship.
Before the US-Canadian force was announced, France had been campaigning for the rapid entry of a 5000-strong force led by its troops. Rebel leaders charged that the aim of a French-dominated force would be to protect the former Rwandan regime and the interahamwe, and shore up the brutal Mobutu dictatorship. The real target of a French intervention, they said, would be to defeat, or at least halt, the advance of the rebels.
French record
Neighbouring countries, most notably Rwanda, and the rebels feared a repeat of France's 1994 intervention in Rwanda, which allowed the pro-French, Hutu-chauvinist regime and the interahamwe — the murderers of more than 500,000 Tutsis and anti-government Hutus — to escape the advance of Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels, who now govern Rwanda. Once in Zaire, these murderers were placed in control of vast refugee camps with the tacit approval of the French government and the Mobutu dictatorship, and with the full knowledge of the UN and most international aid agencies.
More than $US1 billion was poured into these camps despite the fact that the interahamwe and the former army openly trained, stored weapons and regularly mounted armed raids into Rwanda and surrounding areas of Zaire from the camps. Refugees became hostages. Those who attempted to return to Rwanda were executed.
The protection afforded these killers by France and Mobutu led directly to the current crisis, which was triggered when the Banyamulenge people of Zaire's South Kivu province fought back against ethnic cleansing by the interahamwe, allied to corrupt Zairean politicians and the brutal Zairean army. The Banyamulenge joined forces with a range of anti-Mobutu forces to chase the interahamwe and the Zairean army from the border region.
The French plan became increasingly untenable as it became clear that the threat to the refugees and aid workers came not from the rebels but from the interahamwe and the Zaire regime.
"If there is to be military intervention", Kissasse challenged, "it should be to go into the camps and separate the [Rwandan former] military and [interahamwe] militia from the civilians".
The interahamwe, charged Kissasse, "are using the [Mugunga] refugee camp as a human shield. They shell our positions from the hills and we cannot counter-attack because the refugees are in the way." On November 13, shells fired from within Mugunga slammed into rebel-held Goma. Kissasse demanded that the vast Mugunga camp, where an estimated 500,000 refugees are being held, be dismantled and its residents allowed to return home to Rwanda and Burundi.
According to local people, hundreds of Zairean children have been kidnapped by the interahamwe from villages surrounding the camp. They are being held as hostages to discourage attacks on the camp.
Mobutu, relaxing in his villa on the French Riviera and in daily contact with French government officials, quickly backed the French intervention plan. He also made it plain that French intervention would not interfere with crushing the rebels and that he would continue the ethnic cleansing that sparked the rebellion in eastern Zaire. The revolt "was an aggression by Rwanda with the complicity of the Banyamulenge, who have played the role of a fifth column", he complained to the French daily Libération.
When aid agencies finally began delivering a trickle of aid into rebel areas, Zaire denounced the action as a violation of "sovereignty" and a contribution to the eastern peoples' "treason". Aid agencies which dealt with the rebels would be barred from Zaire, information minister Boguo Makeli threatened.
Faced with the threat of French intervention, the Rwandan government, neighbouring countries and the Zaire rebels reluctantly proposed an alternative "neutral" force which would concentrate on disarming the interahamwe in the Mugunga camp to allow aid workers to enter, separate the "intimidators" from the refugees and allow the refugees to return home.
On November 11, rebel leader Kabila said that unless action was taken to disarm the interahamwe in Mugunga, guerilla forces would be forced to break up the camp. "If there is no solution from the outside, how can we wait?", Kabila asked. The only reason the rebels had not yet acted was because if "we attack the camps to push out the killers, the international community will say, 'Why do you kill people in the camp?'."
US rivalry
The French plan became bogged down in the UN Security Council due to opposition from the US, despite endorsement by Spain and other European Union allies and UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. British Prime Minister John Major also agreed to send 1500 troops following a meeting with French President Jacques Chirac on November 8.
The US backed the dismantling of the camps and the refugees' return home, while the French sought "security zones" to protect their brutal allies in the camps. The US was also keen that African countries, especially South Africa, provide a considerable component of any "peacekeeping" force rather than the former colonial powers. France described the US refusal to back its plan as "spineless".
The US blocked the French plan, not because it supports the rebels' aims or has any deep compassion for the refugees, but to extend its political interests. The events in Zaire take place against the backdrop of heightened rivalry between Washington and Paris for influence in the Middle East and Africa.
In October, US secretary of state Warren Christopher openly challenged France on its own "turf" by making a whistlestop tour through the continent to promote the creation of a US-backed African Crisis Response Force. Christopher proposed that this 10,000-strong force would be drawn from African armies and funded by the US. Its role would be to intervene in regional conflicts.
The plan was greeted positively by the Organisation of African Unity and the Ethiopian and Tanzanian governments. Mali, traditionally in the French sphere of influence, also backed the idea. South Africa, whose support was crucial, was sceptical.
France, which is the dominant economic, political and military imperialist power in French-speaking Africa, saw this as a threat to its entrenched interests and criticised the plan.
In reply, US State Department spokesperson Nick Burns said: "Some people in Paris seem to live under the delusion that certain parts of Africa can be the preserve or domain of a certain colonial power ... That is a far-fetched notion. The time has passed when Africa could be carved up into spheres of influence, or when outside powers could view whole groups of states as their private domain."
Since the fall of the French-backed, Hutu-chauvinist regime in Rwanda in 1994, Washington has sought to take advantage of the new regime's hostility to France. The US set up a military installation in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, in 1994 and has developed friendly relations with neighbouring countries.
The US, seeing the writing on the wall for its loyal Zairean ally Mobutu, has sought to find a moderate "democratic" replacement while France has chosen to back the tottering dictator. Zaire is a rich prize for imperialism despite its virtual economic collapse. Its southern Shaba province, which borders rebel-held South Kivu, produces two-thirds of the world's cobalt. Zaire is the world's number one diamond producer and number six in copper production. It has large deposits of uranium, manganese, gold, tin and zinc, and oil reserves off shore.
Dangers
While exploiting this inter-imperialist rivalry may give the Zaire rebels and the Rwandan government a breathing space from their French-backed opponents, such a strategy may backfire. The US military plan is a compromise. French troops will be involved, and the US has specifically ruled out entering the refugee camps or disarming the interahamwe by force. It is not guaranteed that the former Rwandan regime, its army and the interahamwe will not be preserved, albeit deeper inside Zaire, for future attacks on Rwanda.
And while the US may also prefer to see Mobutu depart, it is unlikely to allow the revolt begun in eastern Zaire to spread much further. The US will more than likely back "Mobutuism without Mobutu" and support the rise to power of a reliable pro-US politician who will eventually try to crush the revolt.
The rebels would do well to remember the fate of the country's first prime minister and leader of the liberation struggle, Patrice Lumumba, from whom several of their leaders draw inspiration. Desperate to keep control of the country's resources, in 1960 Belgium backed a counter-revolution. Lumumba appealed to the UN for help. Instead of fighting the reactionary rebellion, the UN "peacekeepers" disarmed Lumumba's forces.
In September that year, Mobutu and the military, with US support, carried out a coup against Lumumba. The UN forces did nothing as the elected government they were supposed to be defending was swept aside. At the urging of the CIA, Lumumba was murdered on the orders of Mobutu in 1961. In 1964, the UN troops withdrew, leaving Mobutu firmly in control. Washington and Paris have both relied on Mobutu to defend imperialist interests in Africa ever since.