Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe

by Gerard Prunier

  Interviewer: This morning on Radio France Internationale we heard Mr Prunier who pretends to be a specialist in African and Congolese questions. He said that the situation in Kivu is verging on an explosion and that the Head of State has no more control over the region. What do you say?

  Didier Mumengi, minister of information: This is one more example of the villainy of those adventurers who want to deal with an Africa without Africans… . The situation in the East is getting more and more stable. The Mayi Mayi warriors are disarming.142 . . . This Mr Prunier is only a specialist in lies… . Any danger of the country breaking up exists only in that man’s head… . His Congo is a pure figment of his imagination.143

  What finally triggered the explosion was the decision by President Kabila to bring things to a head and to get rid of his Rwandese minders. On July 23 he flew to Havana in the company of Godefroid Chamuleso.144 Probably reinvigorated by his contact with the old Marxist certainties, he went on the air on the evening of his return (July 27) and read a bizarre midnight communiqué ordering all Rwandese troops to leave the Congo. He thanked the Rwandese for their “solidarity” and the Congolese people “for tolerating and sheltering the Rwandese troops,” a curious double back-handed compliment.145 The next day the Rwandese troops started to leave. In Kigali Emmanuel Ndahiro, Kagame’s righthand all-purpose man, pretended to take it coolly, saying that the withdrawal “had been already planned” and that only about one hundred RPA troops were left in the DRC. Kabila said that the decision had been made “to satisfy those who found it uncomfortable to be in the presence of foreigners.” For good measure he added that FAC strength was now up to 140,000, an obvious gross exaggeration.146

  There was one last little incident with their former chief, as James Kabarebe came to bid good-bye to the president.147 The bodyguard in Kabila’s office, which until recently had been made up of Rwandese Tutsi, had been changed to Balubakat soldiers. The colonel who commanded them asked Kabarebe to leave his sidearm at the guard’s desk before entering the president’s office, which he did. But the colonel had a doubt at the last minute and asked Kabarebe to let himself be frisked. “Commander James” reluctantly agreed and was found to carry a small .32 caliber pistol in his boot. The colonel confiscated it, fuming. Kabarebe grinned and said he had to be careful about his security. As he was about to step into Kabila’s office the colonel shouted at him to take off his beret, saying that out of respect he had to appear bare-headed in front of the president. Kabarebe refused and a scuffle ensued. In the scuffle the beret was torn off his head—and a very small .22 caliber automatic fell to the floor. Had “Commander James” intended to assassinate Kabila? It seemed likely, even though he denied it heatedly. “In fact it really scared us,” my informant told me, “it showed how daring these fellows were. He did not have a chance of coming out of there alive after he would have shot the President. And yet he was willing to try it.”148 Four days later the war broke out and “Commander James” was leading the attack.

  6 A CONTINENTAL WAR (AUGUST 1998–AUGUST 1999)

  Commander Kabarebe’s failed Blitzkrieg

  Once more, the Kivus had been, if not the cause, at least the catalyst for a major conflict in the Congo.1 Nevertheless, from the start antigovernment forces presented the new war not as a local problem but as a national and patriotic military uprising against an unworthy regime.2 And indeed, the mutiny was not limited to the Kivus: in addition to fighting in Bukavu, Goma, and Baraka, there were also clashes in Kindu and Kisangani and, clear across the country, at Camp Tsatshi and Camp Kokolo in Kinshasa itself. Shooting was also heard at the Kitona base in Bas Congo Province, where the ex-FAZ were being “reeducated.” Even though there was no mention of Rwanda, the almost perfect synchronism of the mutiny with the expulsion of Rwandese Hutu forces from the Congo could not but lead to suspicions of collusion between the DRC rebels and the Kigali government. Both sides strenuously denied the obvious.3 But by August 3 RPA troops were moving across the border in support of the “rebels,” and the first of three airplanes highjacked by the Rwandese army landed at Kitona on August 4 with “Commander James” on board.4 Rwando-rebel forces fared differently in their various zones of operation, the troubled east proving to be the easiest, with all the key points in the Kivus falling within the first forty-eight hours.

  The behavior of the “liberators” differed widely according to the style of the commanders and the local conditions: violence was very limited in Goma and moderate at first in Bukavu. But when some troops from the Bukavu garrison, which had remained faithful to the central government, withdrew to Camp Kavumu, the RPA unit that surrounded them arrested all the officers and their bodyguards and shot them on the spot.5 In Kisangani the rebels were defeated and loyal FAC forces retook control of the city. The same thing happened at Camps Tshatshi and Kokolo in Kinshasa itself, where the limited numbers of Rwandese troops who had not yet been evacuated tried to fight their way out but were all killed.6 The whole thing gave an impression of confusion, of lack of preparation, and the RPA-Banyamulenge forces left behind in Kinshasa seem to have been caught completely unaware by the actions of their comrades in Goma and Kigali.7 Which in turn begs a question: What was the amount of planning on Kigali’s side?

  The answers seem to point at a very limited and improvised decision-making sequence. Two of my informants who were eyewitnesses to the facts concur on that point: “James [Kabarebe] came back from Kinshasa quite flustered and eager to strike back. Paul [Kagame] asked him what was going on and James told him bluntly: ‘You are our chief; if you want to go on being our chief just let me handle this.’ Paul was worried because contingency plans had been made before for such a situation but now James seemed decided to improvise.”8 And from another source: “I had been out of town and then I met James [Kabarebe], whom I had not seen for a few days, in the street in Kigali. I asked him what was going on and he laughed and said: ‘Do you want to witness the taking of Kinshasa?’ I said yes and he told me to go to the airport in Goma; we were leaving right away. Soon we were on our way to Kitona in one of the highjacked planes.”9

  Could such a major political and military operation be that spontaneously organized? Well, yes and no. As we saw in chapter 4 Kabarebe had used his position as commander in chief of the FAC to modify the ethnic composition of some of the army units in the east, especially the 10th Battalion and the 222nd Brigade, so as to have a majority of favorable forces.10 Where he failed to do this, such as in Kisangani, where the 25th Brigade retained a largely local ethnic composition, the uprising failed.11 As for the Kitona operation, it had a recklessness that seemed right out of a Hollywood action movie: Commander James and his boys landed in the middle of the camp, on a runway surrounded by troops with mortars and machine guns. But Kabarebe knew very well that the gaggle of troops in Kitona were in bad shape and not ready to fight unless somebody gave them food and weapons, along with the promise of some money and looting opportunities.12 The soldiers present contented themselves with shooting the aircraft nose-wheel tire to prevent it from taking off again, and then they started talking. Within half an hour James had won them over to his side. He then immediately started to move on to Kinshasa with his motley force of twelve hundred airlifted RPA troops, plus whoever among the Kitona dwellers was fit enough to follow him.13

  The first signs of a political organization of the rebellion came on August 6, when Arthur Z’Ahidi Ngoma claimed leadership of the uprising, declaring, “This is not a struggle of the Banyamulenge or a struggle of the Rwandese, it is a struggle of the Congolese people.”14 The rebels took Uvira on the same day, prompting Burundi’s minister of defense to deny that FAB troops had crossed the border to help them.15 On the west coast Kabarebe and his men took Moanda and Banana and President Kabila told his fellow countrymen to “prepare for a long war.” Panic hit the region. President Nujoma of Namibia announced a special Southern African Development Community (SADC) meeting on August 5, and Robert Mugabe, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, Pasteur Bizimungu,
Yoweri Museveni, Frederick Chiluba, Sam Nujoma, and Benjamin Mkapa all met at Victoria Falls on the 8th. The atmosphere was tense, with Bizimungu and Museveni, the “aggressors,” considered with suspicion by all the others. The absence of Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos made everybody nervous because nobody was quite sure of which side he would be on. Zimbabwe Defense Minister Moven Mahachi officially promised military aid to the embattled Congolese president.16 Anti-Tutsi pogroms had started in the streets of Kinshasa, during which hundreds were arrested and dozens killed.17 Congolese authorities were panicking; knowing that anti-Tutsi feelings ran high they often resorted to a shrill rhetoric, evoking sinister memories of the Rwandese genocide.18 Rebel forces occupied Beni on August 10; Uganda denied any involvement.19 The giant hydroelectric Inga dam was captured on the 13th, enabling Kabarebe to cut off the power to Kinshasa. Fearing for his safety in the capital President Kabila flew out to Lubumbashi, from where he was hoping to organize a last stand if he lost Kinshasa.20 Never given to under-statement, Bizima Karaha went on the air to say, “Kabila has fled after looting the Central Bank.”

  On August 16 the rebels went public as the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD) and announced the names of their leaders. The politicians were a strange mixture of former Mobutists, such as Alexis Tambwe and Lunda Bululu,21 together with radical left-wingers (Jacques Depelchin, Ernest Wamba dia Wamba), regional barons (Mbusa Nyamwisi), UN and NGO figures (Z’Ahidi Ngoma, Joseph Mudumbi), and wellknown representatives of Rwandese interests (Bizima Karaha, Déogratias Bugera, Moïse Nyarugabo). As for the military leaders, they were mostly known for owing their careers to their good relations with the RPA: Ilunga Kabangi had been a secondary school student in 1997 when he joined the AFDL. He then became Kabarebe’s personal bodyguard, which led to his being put in charge of RPA-FAC relations during Commander James’s tenure as FAC chief of staff. As for the soon-to-be-declared RCD military commander Jean-Pierre Ondekane, he was a former DSP officer from Mbandaka and later an agent of the Service d’Action et de Renseignement Militaire in Kinshasa who had been arrested by the AFDL in 1997. During his time of “reeducation” he had struck up a friendship with some Tutsi officers in charge of the program who got him out of the Kitona hell hole and put him at the head of the 10th Brigade in Goma in June 1998. In the words of the Belgian Congo specialist Jean-Claude Willame, “It was a team of well-known people but with even less coherence than the group which had been present around Kabila at the time of his emergence less than two years before. Their only common denominator was the frustration of having been excluded from power.”22

  The emergence of this hodgepodge organization caused the region to fret because the “rebels” were so obviously incapable of military or even political autonomy that the whole thing looked more like an invasion than a genuine Congolese uprising, and the political agenda of its sponsors was questioned. The key undecided player was, of course, President dos Santos, whose choice could tip the situation either way. On August 16 Kabila rushed to Luanda for an emergency meeting with him and with Namibian President Sam Nujoma. Etienne Tshisekedi immediately asked the Angolan president “not to rush to the rescue of Kabila,” even as the OAU condemned what it termed “an external intervention in the Congo.”23

  Meanwhile the rebels kept progressing. They occupied Aru near the Sudanese border, Lobutu on the edge of Province Orientale, Fizi on the road to Katanga, and Mbanza-Ngungu, 130 kilometers from Kinshasa, all on August 16. Foreigners started to evacuate the capital. The next day SADC defense ministers met in Harare in the presence of Joseph Kabila, Laurent-Désiré’s son,24 and decided to help the beleaguered regime. But South Africa was less than happy with this decision; South African Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad declared on the 18th, “A military solution is not possible… . We don’t want a whole new surge of ethnic violence erupting. This is not an ethnic problem.” Several of the SADC members close to South Africa (Lesotho, Swaziland, Mauritius, Botswana, the Seychelles) began to dissociate themselves from what looked more and more like a Zimbabwean-driven initiative. On August 19 a first contingent of four hundred Zimbabwean troops disembarked at Kinshasa’s Ndjili Airport, and the next day two Congolese cargo planes flew to Grootfontein in northern Namibia and brought back twenty-one tons of weapons.25 Rwandese Ambassador in Pretoria Benjamin Karenzi declared that his country was ready for fullscale war if Zimbabwe and Namibia did not withdraw their forces from the DRC, which prompted French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine to say, “This is not just a DRC crisis anymore, it is a regional crisis and therefore one should take into account the strategies of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola and others.” This was the first official acknowledgment that the war had indeed gone continental.

  Then, on August 21, President dos Santos finally decided to make his move: Angolan cargo planes flew large numbers of troops to Cabinda, from where they immediately attacked Moanda across the border. President Museveni threatened intervention, and Republic of Congo President Sassou-Nguesso, who had been hesitating, gave reassurance to Kabila’s envoy Didier Mumengi that he was indeed on Kinshasa’s side.26 Mandela called a SADC summit in Pretoria, which neither Kabila nor his new allies attended. Congolese justice minister Mwenze Kongolo commented, “Young African fighters once relied enormously on President Nelson Mandela but now it seems that age has taken its toll,” to which Mandela’s aide Parks Mankhlana replied, “Comments like those are not worth responding to.” Even Mandela’s iconic status was no longer enough to prevent SADC from splitting right down the middle on the Congo issue, between a pro-Kinshasa camp (Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe) and all the others lined up behind South Africa on a line of “understanding” for the Rwando-Ugandan-rebel side. As we will see later, the split went even further and deeper than within the confines of the SADC and was in fact threatening to engulf at least one-third of the African continent.

  But in the meantime guns mattered more than words and the big ones were on the Angolan side. The Angolan expeditionary force in the Cabinda Enclave was supported by tanks, MiG 23 fighter bombers, and Mi-17 combat helicopters flown by South African mercenaries. Those proved to be particularly deadly: the Rwandese expeditionary force lost 50 percent of its men in the first two days. The Forças Armadas Angolanas (FAA) soon smashed their way into the western front: Banana, Boma, and Kitona all fell within forty-eight hours. Commander James was now largely cut off from any possibility of resupply from Rwanda,27 and he lost no time in withdrawing his mauled battle corps to Matadi, where, during the next three days, several cargo flights landed to pick up the wounded and the survivors.28 Some of these flights landed for refueling on UNITA-controlled airfields inside Angola.29

  By now reassured, President Kabila flew back to Kinshasa on August 25. FAA helicopters kept attacking rebel columns that, strangely enough, kept rushing toward Kinshasa in a mad, headlong flight forward. These armed elements entered the capital on August 26, desperately trying to get to Ndjili Airport.30 The lucky ones were killed on the outskirts of the city; the others fell into the hands of the Kinshasa populace, driven frantic by fear and hatred. The hapless soldiers plus a number of arbitrarily tagged civilian “rebels” were grabbed and beaten to death or burned alive with old tires.31 Presidential Adviser Yerodia Ndombasi did not help quiet things down when he declared on the radio, “The rebels are scum, microbes which must be methodically eradicated. We are decided to use the most effective medicine.”32 These words, with their Rwandese genocide echoes, were immediately picked up by Rwandese propaganda and, perhaps more important, by the international media.33 The Zimbabwean troops, which by now numbered twenty-eight hundred men, retook control of the Ndjili area in three days of fierce fighting (August 26–28) but did not venture outside Kinshasa to fully clear the Lower Congo province.34 Elsewhere in the country the rebels were still progressing. They had taken Kisangani on the 23rd, Kalemie on the 26th, and Moba on the 30th. An RCD spokesman declared, “When we have taken Lubumbashi, we will be at ease.”35


  These were brave words indeed, but it was now obvious that Kabarebe’s Blitzkrieg had failed.36 Everybody began to realize that this was probably going to be a long drawn-out conflict, involving many different protagonists. All of Congo’s neighbors were by now nervously eyeing the situation because they all realized that the tangle of alliances and interests was reaching from the Mediterranean to the Cape of Good Hope and that nobody could predict exactly how and where the chips were going to fall. And, with the cold war over, there was no clear “tactical map” of the situation. The French were vaguely supposed to be favorable to the rebellion,37 but so were the Americans, a convergence of purpose that was rather unlikely. Africa’s radar screen was blurred and the foreigners had turned theirs off. The continent was now largely on its own.

  Heading for an African war

  The regime of Laurent-Désiré Kabila had survived only because of the military intervention of foreigners. Without the Angolan combat helicopters and without the Zimbabwean troops, Commander James would have succeeded in taking Kinshasa before the end of August. Although given the open hatred of the Rwandese that had developed over the past fifteen months and the fact that his attack had exasperated these sentiments even further, what Kabila could have done with it would have been quite another matter. The whole adventure was fearfully improvised, like a second-rate remake of the events of late 1996, when the enemy was Mobutu and a large chunk of Africa stood united behind those who wanted to remove him. This time around the situation was much more complex because there was no single purpose behind either the attempt at overthrowing Kabila or the decision of some of his peers to help him stagger on. The continent was fractured, not only for or against Kabila, but within each of the two camps.