Congo Kriegspiel Update (1997 A.D.)
US/ZAIRE CRISIS
The latest reports from Zaire, as we go to press, indicate that the Mobutu regime is continuing to wage a counteroffensive against the rebels in the Kivu area, with the support of white mercenaries.
According to the Jan. 27 issue of the Brussels daily Le Soir, most of the mercenaries are from the former Yugoslavia, presumably recruited from the reactionary Serbian and Croatian forces that got their baptism of blood in the assault on the oppressed people of Bosnia. However, the London Times reported Jan. 8 that the mercenaries included British subjects. It said that the mercenaries were being led by Alain Le Carro, former head of the personal guard of French president Mitterrand.
The Times estimated that 1,000 French military men were involved. Mobutu, suffering from terminal cancer, briefly resumed direct control of the government in December, but was soon forced to return to Europe for continuing treatment. He reshuffled his government, and there have been attempts to restore discipline in the army by trials of deserters, including officers. It remains to be seen if support from Mobutu's imperialist patrons can halt the disintegration of this pillar of neocolonialism in the heart of Africa.
By ALAIN MATHIEU
A crisis is now underway in Zaire. It is the agony of the dictatorial regime that the CIA and imperialism imposed on the country in the 1960s in the wake of the murder of Patrice Lumumba, the leader of the fight for independence.
This terroristic regime, an accomplice of Belgian and French neocolonialism, has lasted for 30 years, killing thousands of oppositionists. It supported Salazar's fascist and colonial regime in Portugal, which, along with apartheid South Africa, created and backed Jonas Savimbi's UNITA in Angola. It inspired and backed the regime that organized the genocide in Rwanda.
Coming at the same time as the rebellion in Kivu, the illness of the dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, opened up a crisis for the regime. (He was operated on for cancer in Switzerland, near his bank accounts, and went to recover in France, near his protectors and friends). No successor to Mobutu is in sight. The Zairean army has been in a process of disintegration. Mobutu has remained the key to safeguarding French interests. Paris prepared the way for his return, hoping, with the help of mercenaries and the French military, to restore the prestige of his army by a ''reconquest'' of Kivu.
Last summer, when the former Rwandan government forces, backed by the Zairean army, attacked the people in Kivu, the guerrilla forces came to the aid of the resistance of the Banyamulenge people. (These people are called ''Tutsis'' in the capitalist press after a traditional group in Rwanda and Burundi; the Banyamulenge have lived in their present home in Zaire for centuries.)
These armed organizations came out of the Lumumba movement. They have kept on fighting for 30 years. They have managed to arm themselves without outside help by selling gold from Kivu.
When the capitalist press portrays the guerrilla leader Kabila as a ''self-proclaimed chief'' set up by the Rwandans, nothing could be further from the truth. Kabila began his struggle in 1960, fighting in the name of the central government headed by Lumumba against the Katanga secession organized by Tshombe, and supported by France, among others. In 1963, Kabila took the leadership of the Lumumbist forces. They were defeated by the imperialist counteroffensive following Mobutu's seizure of power in 1965, which was aided by mercenaries. The Alliance of Democratic Forces of the Congo, which was formed in Kivu, includes four parties. Its stated goal is to overthrow Mobutu and replace his regime with a democratic state organization. This is supposed to open the way for social justice and development by breaking from the system of corruption and neocolonialism. The Alliance is distinguished from the official opposition (led by Tshikedi) by its rejection of any compromise with Mobutu.
The Rwandan army gave it logistical aid and training so that it could break the grip of the genocidal militias on the refugee camps. After it accomplished this, it went on to pursue its own objective of overthrowing the Zairean regime. Hundreds of Zairean army men, including officers, began deserting to the rebels, and the guerrillas started recruiting civilians as they advanced. They have been helping the populations of the liberated territories to organize themselves --thereby leading the people themselves to assume more and more control of the struggle to overthrow Mobutu. The Alliance seeks to combine liberation of the eastern territories with a resumption of mass mobilizations in the cities.
France backs the dictatorship
The French leaders' determined support of Mobutu is explained by the
special ties that France has established with its former colonies in
Africa. France has based its role of a middle-sized capitalist power on its possession of the atom bomb and its former empire in Africa. The successive French presidents have had their ''African team'' functioning outside the purview of the government and the parliament, answerable only to the president.
De Gaulle and his special advisor on African affairs, Jacques Foccart, established the French presence and influence on the basis of a patronage system involving inextricable ties between French and African leaders. This system degenerated into extortion and Mafia-type criminality, which infected the French politicians themselves.
The African bosses, like Mobutu, accumulated enormous fortunes --which they used to bribe French businessmen and politicians. But then the world economic crisis and the fall in raw materials prices reduced the size of the cake, with manifold consequences.
In order to maintain their resources, the African strongmen resorted to all sorts of traffic (drugs, arms, precious minerals). The transfer of the resulting wealth abroad created a class of thieves, totally tied to French interests and completely unconcerned about industrialization and development of their own countries. Mobutu lost any illusions about building a modern country or restoring an already deeply undermined economic stability. His ambitions became limited to amassing a personal fortune, which came to equal Zaire's total foreign debt.
In order to maintain themselves in power, the African neocolonialists had no other recourse than to resort to manipulating clan and ethnic differences. The ruling factions appropriated the state apparatus and created ethnically-based forces. In Rwanda, this led to genocide and the subsequent defeat and flight of the murderous government. The genocide in Rwanda in 1992 exposed the degeneration of the French system of domination. Mitterrand then tried to camouflage French complicity by a so-called humanitarian mission, which in fact was a military intervention. It was this operation that set up a genocidal counterrevolutionary force across the Zairean border from Rwanda, which controlled the refugee camps.
The defeat of this force in November and the return home of a million and half Rwandan refugees, the crisis of the Mobutu regime, and the rebellion of part of the army in the Republic of Central Africa --a pillar of the French military establishment in Africa-- are shaking the foundations of this system of domination.
Washington makes a turn
France's European partners and the United States did not march in step with Paris. The policy of the United States in the region has been to promote stable regimes, neocolonial domination regulated by the market, the IMF, and the World Bank --instead of the dangerous and archaic French system with its parasitic dictators. The United States sharply criticized French policy.
However, at the start this year, Washington made a turn. It endorsed the French military intervention in Central Africa. It has recognized that it has no alternative to Mobutu. It has warned the rebels in Kivu not to go too far. In short, the United States seems to have given a blank check to France. [By now, we know that such a turn on the part of Washington was just a diplomatic front] Is this because they think that no one else can maintain the ''order'' so necessary to business? They would like to get rid of Mobutu, but only if this be accomplished in a nonrevolutionary way.
French imperialism failed to draw the UN into a ''military-humanitarian'' intervention. But it has not said its last word. It has too many interests at stake. France's ''networks'' and its army, along with the remains of Mobutu's army, are mounting an assault to ''reconquer'' Kivu. The French press has confirmed that hundreds of mercenaries have been recruited by French agents. Tons of weapons have been delivered, among with military helicopters piloted by white mercenaries. Fierce fighting has been underway for weeks. The military relationship of forces may be favorable to Mobutu at the moment, but his social base is weakening. The moderate opposition has stayed out of the government and is calling for negotiations with Kabila.
We have to redouble our solidarity with the Zairean resistance and mobilize against the French imperialist intervention that is being tacitly supported by the United States. [Again, by now we know that the US planned from the start to snooker the French who were left holding the Mobutu bag....] It is essential to prevent a repetition of what happened in the 1960s, when imperialist intervention managed to kill the hopes of all the peoples of the region for a better future. In France, the Revolutionary Communist League, French section of the Fourth International, is appealing to democratic and left forces to build a movement to demand the withdrawal of French troops.
That's it!
Gustave. |
