Rebels advance after fall of Kindu
October 16, 1998
Johannesburg - Robert Mugabe is desperately trying to shore up the teetering Laurent Kabila, write Howard Barrell and Iden Wetherell
Congolese rebels, flushed by their victory this week over thousands of government and foreign troops in an eight-day battle for the key town of Kindu, are regrouping for a two-pronged assault southwards on the diamond-mining centre of Mbuji-Mayi and the Democratic Republic of Congo's second-biggest city, Lubumbashi.
The rebels, backed by Rwandan troops, want to bankroll their war against President Laurent Kabila's government with diamond and other mineral revenues, in much the same way as Unita leader Jonas Savimbi has done in Angola.
Reports from the Congo indicate that roads in the east of the country are in better condition than usual at this stage of the annual rainy season. If the weather holds, the rebel advance could therefore be quite rapid.
South African-based security analysts say Kabila's regime in Congo is now in a perilous situation and its survival until Christmas is in doubt. Unconfirmed reports say that the rebels have already deployed reconnaissance units of up to 250 soldiers who are now probing the surrounds of Mbuji-Mayi and Lubumbashi.
The loss of Kindu has crippled Kabila's ability to mount an offensive against rebel strongholds in eastern Congo or to launch an attack into Rwanda - a response intelligence sources suggest he was planning.
News agency reports quote rebel commanders as saying their forces took 1 337 Angolan, Chadian and Sudanese troops prisoner at Kindu.
South African-based security analysts say they now have evidence that Angolan rebels from Unita have been training and fighting alongside Congolese rebel forces for a month or two. This lends a further dimension to the internationalization of the imbroglio in the Congo.
Zimbabwean troops, who had been fighting alongside Kabila's forces in Kindu, are understood to have been withdrawn from the battle late last e country hitherto, mainly around Kinshasa.
Allied forces would never allow the rebels to take control of the Congo, Mugabe declared. "Do they think a country as vast as the [Congo] could ever be subject to the wiles and guiles of little Rwanda, or even Uganda? It's absolutely stupid," he said at the conclusion of the talks.
Mugabe gave every indication he had been provoked into adopting a more hardline stance by the events of recent days. He said the understanding was the war in eastern Congo would be resolved by diplomacy.
"But the more we negotiate peace, the more they take advantage to extend their area of control," he said, calling on the international community to denounce the rebels and their Rwandan/Ugandan sponsors as aggressors.
In Lubumbashi, Kabila was anxious to emphasise the economic ties being forged between Zimbabwe and Congo. He will be going to Harare at the end of the month to sign trade agreements. An energetic official campaign has been persuading Zimbabwean businesspeople to take advantage of the Congo market before South Africa gets in. Speculation has been rife that individuals close to Zimbabwe's political leadership have secured lucrative trade and mining deals.
Zimbabwe is currently experiencing its most serious economic crisis since independence in 1980 and the International Monetary Fund, upon whose largesse the government depends, is tightening its reins. Political commentators and civil society representatives have all pointed to what the country's crumbling infrastructure and social services could do with $1-million a day.
South African-based security analysts believe Mugabe also raised with Kabila the security of Zimbabwean business interests in the Congo, and the recovery of the estimated $250-million Kabila's government owes Zimbabwe for military assistance.
They believe the sensible path for Mugabe now is to try to reposition himself in the Congo conflict. If he were to play a key role in forcing Kabila to the negotiating table, he might be able to secure several important objectives. One would be to guarantee repayment of the Congo's debt to Zimbabwe by whoever might succeed Kabila if he were suddenly thrown out.
Another objective would be to avoid what is now a very real chance of a comprehensive military defeat being inflicted on the Southern African Development Community-sanctioned forces in Congo. As the loudest advocate of military support from community states for Kabila's regime, Mugabe would suffer a major blow to his reputation through a defeat when his position within Zimbabwe is weakening markedly.
Rwanda, whose troops have been heavily involved on the rebel side, is thought now to want to destroy as fast as possible the retreating pro- Kabila forces finally defeated at Kindu on Tuesday. "They will want to wrap things up fast," said Richard Cornwell of the Institute of Security Studies, "probably through night attacks - a devastating tactic in unfamiliar terrain."
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