Zaire’s Continuing Chaos: After Mobutu, the Deluge

As rebels and troops from neighboring states continue their rout of the Zairian army, U.S. officials now expect President Mobutu Sese Seko’s regime to end in the nezt fews days. Focused on Mobutu’s departure, few have asked the obvious question, “What’s next for Zaire?” Most assume conditions are so bad that any change will be for the better.

But no one should assume Mobutu’s departure will usher in an era of rule of law, democracy and economic growth. The history of Africa indicates Zaire may be on the verge of a reign of terror, with destructive civil and tribal violence, human-rights atrocities and massive refugee flows and at least 1 million deaths.

After an African dictatorship disintegrates and is replaced by a new regime, there are a few months of euphoria in the major cities and among foreign diplomats. But before the regime can consolidate authority, the vanquished and disappointed invariably gather to fight for their share of the spoils and to redress ethnic or personal wrongs. The slaughter begins, and continues until all sides have reached exhaustion. As the Roman historian Tacitus wrote, “They make a wasteland and call it peace.”

Levels of destruction are staggering.

After Liberian dictator Samuel K. Doe was toppled in 1990, his country entered seven years of chaos, in which rival warlords commanding armies of child soldiers used ritual human sacrifice and other weapons of terror against the Liberian people. Of a population of 2.5 million, at least 150,000 (6%) have died.

After Siad Barre’s government collapsed in 1991, Somalia descended into famine and bloodshed as rival warlords struggled for their share of power and wealth. The U.S. Agency for International Development estimates that, despite U.S. and U.N. intervention, 240,000 (3% of the population) died in the first two years after Siad Barre’s departure. The war continues.

After Idi Amin fled in 1979, Uganda endured eight years of civil war, in which up to 1 million Ugandans (5% of the population) died of violence, famine and disease. Peace has yet to be fully restored.

The sudden collapse of the Portuguese colonial empire in 1975 was followed by 15 years of civil war in Mozambique and 20 in Angola. Of a combined population of 24 million, 1.5 million (6%) died in the post-colonial civil wars. A durable peace has yet to be restored to Angola.

If Zaire suffers the same fate as these countries, out of its population of 40 million, 1 million or 2 million may perish in the post-Mobutu turmoil. There are many reasons to fear this could happen.

Those with the power to start the civil war will find that, once they have taken over the government, they will inherit a collapsed state apparatus without the power to stop the warfare they began. The violent acts of the rebel soldiers--violence is what civil war is about--will inevitably have created new grievances and reignited the long-simmering ethnic and regional antagonisms always present in an African state.

Other than toppling Mobutu, the rebellion lacks political cohesion. The rebel alliance’s leader, Kabila, was a minor political figure in a remote region near Lake Tanganika until last year. Neither Kabila nor any other anti-Mobutu leader has a national political organization capable of filling the vacuum left by the collapse of a national government, and they are unwilling to work with other anti-Mobutu elements to fill that void.

The principal rebel army is commanded by an officer cadre of Tutsis from Zaire and Rwandans and Ugandans. According to a recent visitor to rebel areas, this army is viewed by the Zairian people as foreign. They are accepted now because of their role in defeating Mobutu, but it is doubtful Zairians will long accept being ruled by foreign soldiers.

There are, in fact, doubts this army is under Kabila’s authority. Foreign diplomats, U.N. officials and private humanitarian relief workers have negotiated with Kabila since the civil war began last fall, yet agreements reached with Kabila have had little impact on the rebel army.

In the past few months, a new element has been added to the Zairian situation: Several thousand well-armed and trained Portuguese-speaking troops have arrived from Angola. These are both Angolan army regulars and soldiers of a new generation of Katangan gendarmes. Angolan generals are playing a key role in the rebel military command. So there are now two essentially distinct armed rebel groups--one sponsored by Uganda and Rwanda, another by Angola. It is the classic recipe for a post-Mobutu civil war.

The Katangan gendarmes in Zaire are children and grandchildren of the Katangans who went into exile in Angola 35 years ago, after their unsuccessful rebellion against the central government when the Congo gained independence in 1960. In 1977 and 1978, the gendarmes invaded Zaire from Angola and were successful against a crumbling army until French, Belgian, Egyptian, Moroccan and U.S. intervention saved the day for Mobutu’s regime. No U.S. government official has spoken to the Katangan gendarmes in exile in almost two decades, so their current political goals are unclear. But there is no evidence that they have abandoned their original goal of an independent Katangan Republic.

These Katangans may not accept a Kabila government. Although Kabila was born in Katanga/Shaba, he is a Luba, a group originally from Kasai brought into Katanga by the Belgians and hated by locals. In the 1960s, the U.N. intervened after Katangans began to massacre Luba living among them. As recently as four years ago, a threatened genocide led 600,000 Luba to flee Katanga.

A third military force must be considered. Elements of the former Rwandan army being hunted down by the Rwandan army in Zaire are headed northwest to Mobutu’s stronghold in Equateur province, near the Central African border. Though Mobutu’s army crumbled whenever it was attacked, these Hutus could become a force to be reckoned with if they reach Equateur, receive arms from Mobutu’s men and join them. The U.N. reports that Rwandans execute rather than take prisoners, so these Hutus know that to surrender is to die, and have nothing to lose in making a stand.

The Clinton administration response to the rapidly changing situation in Zaire has been weak and confused, fractured by those who believe any change in Zaire is for the better and those who expect Zaire to become another Liberia or Somalia. Beyond making plans for the withdrawal of U.S. and Canadian citizens from Kinshasa, there has been little effort to prepare for a post-Mobutu situation.

Zaire does not have to tumble into chaos over the next few years. Today, there is a brief window of opportunity through which a principled, activist, strong-willed, realistic U.S. diplomacy can save a million or more Zairians from dying in the post-Mobutu turmoil.

Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has shown more interest in sub-Saharan Africa than any secretary since the Kennedy administration, but the United States needs a policy that amounts to more than an effort to remain in the shadows of South Africa, which had sponsored negotiations between Mobutu and Kabila.

Despite the respect Americans have for President Nelson Mandela, South Africa does not have the diplomatic clout to manage a Zairian crisis involving multiple neighboring states. While U.S. policy assumes a major military and political role for South Africa throughout Africa, most African states do not accept South Africa in that role. National and personal rivalries come into play.

The United States must accept that Kabila will soon be in Kinshasa as head of the new government. He will need U.S. assistance to help maintain a level of stability and to launch a program of reconstruction. The more quickly the new government can begin such rebuilding, the more we reduce the likelihood that civil war will erupt.

In a recent meeting with a group of international investors, Kabila and his advisors made it clear that their goal was a new Zaire, in which the government is both competent and honest, yet it was equally clear that they lacked the management and administrative skills necessary to build government agencies free of the corruption and inefficiency of the Mobutu regime. U.S. technical aid can help them give the Zairian people their first honest government since independence.

The new government will also need international assistance to build a police force and army that protects rather than preys on the people. Those institutions are so corrupt that new police and military organizations will have to be created if the Zairian people are ever to be secure from human-rights abuses perpetuated by their own officials. This will require substantial U.S. aid.

In the early 1960s, Zaire was the scene of events that made the world cringe in horror. It does not have to happen again. If we move quickly to help the new Zairian government fill the void left by the collapsed Mobutu regime, we can prevent a civil war. Assertive U.S. diplomacy, not troops, can save Zaire from descending even farther into the horrors of civil war seen so often in Africa.