The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.18           May 5, 1997 
 
 
UN Officials Push For Zaire Intervention  

BY MEGAN ARNEY
United Nations officials - backed by Washington - have stepped up their propaganda campaign aimed at justifying military intervention in Zaire. On April 21 Sadako Ogata, head of the UN High Commission on Refugees, assailed the Alliance for Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo/Zaire (AFDL), accusing the antigovernment rebels of killing Rwandan refugees and blocking efforts to repatriate them. This political attack comes as rebels advance closer to the capital of Kinshasa - the last major Zairian city not controlled by the AFDL. Thousands of imperialist troops are also stationed in Brazzaville, Congo, just across the Congo river from Kinshasa.

Rebels say six people were killed over the weekend of April 19-20 by former Rwandan soldiers who are among the refugees in eastern Zaire. Some 100,000 refugees live in camps in eastern Zaire. Most of the refugees are civilians who fled the Rwandan war in 1992, but some took part in organizing mass killings in Rwanda, and now fear returning to that country.

According to the Associated Press, some Zairians living near the camps responded to the deaths by looting and stoning foreign journalists and aid workers. Rebel forces have said they are now fighting former Rwandan soldiers and militiamen near the camps southeast of Kisangani, AP reports.

The governor of Eastern Province, Jean-Yagi Sitolo, went on the radio to urge calm. "The population is very upset because the refugees killed six Zairians. We sent a group of soldiers to investigate," he stated. Since April 21, rebel forces have closed off the camps south of Kisangani to restore order.

AFDL leaders, who have captured half of the country including the most mineral-rich areas, said weeks ago they were willing to open a corridor for the refugees to go back to Rwanda. More recently, the AFDL put a UN airlift of refugees on hold, due to a cholera outbreak in the camps, which they said would have endangered the surrounding population. Since mid-March, there have been 408 cholera cases reported. According to the UN figures, 42 people have died from the disease. The UN airlift was suppose to begin April 18.

For the past week, big-business dailies from New York to Washington, London, and Paris have spouted the need for "humanitarian aid" for refugees in eastern Zaire. The spokespieces for the ruling classes have barely mentioned the bloody attacks by the former Rwandan soldiers, but hyped the response by Zairians. Ogata postulated several reasons for intervention, including alleged attacks and looting of food aid by Zairians, supposed commandeering by rebel forces of jet fuel marked for the airlift, and the "response to the alleged killing of Zairian nationals by refugees," which the UN official says followed an "aggressive radio campaign against the refugees in the region."

Howard French, the New York Times's top reporter in Zaire, has been writing articles based largely on accounts by unnamed diplomats and relief officials. In his April 23 piece, French quoted an unnamed "senior official of one nongovernmental international relief agency" as saying, "Sometimes the rebels go in and shoot a lot of people.... Sometimes they shoot up a lot of people with no pretext whatsoever." French goes on, "According to the relief official, local people in several areas of eastern Zaire say that armed units of [rebel leader Laurent] Kabila's alliance have followed a strategy of lurking near relief operations in isolated areas, picking off and killing straggling groups of Hutu refugees." French doesn't attempt to substantiate these claims from any other sources.

Striking a similar chord, the Washington Post headlined an April 22 article, "Rebels Prevent Relief Workers From Aiding Rwandan Refugees." The big-business newspapers have also continued their display of horrific pictures depicting the conditions of the refugees.

In another maneuver to slander the Alliance, a UN spokeswoman announced April 22 that so-called human rights investigators and forensic experts will travel to eastern Zaire in May to probe alleged killings of Rwandan refugees and civilians by the rebels, according to Reuters news agency. These charges were first touted by another UN official, Roberto Garretón, in early April. Garretón was forced to admit in his reports, however, that the information about the alleged deaths is "frequently inadequate and even contradictory."

On April 19, the State Department urged U.S. citizens in Zaire to leave the country quickly. It said April 18 that it would fly dependents of U.S. embassy personnel out of Kinshasa on April 21.

In the rebel-held city of Lubumbashi, rebels warned Washington and other powers against sending in troops to evacuate their citizens. "Any foreign soldier on our soil will be a target," said rebel finance minister Mwama Nanga Mawanpanga. "Be it American, Chinese, French, whoever -they will be a target."

Foreshadow of downfall for regime
As the rebellion advances, the dictatorial regime of Zairian president Mobutu Sese Seko is in growing disarray. Mobutu came to power as a paid CIA employee in a military coup d'état in 1965 with the backing of Washington. Between 1965 and 1991, Mobutu received more than $1.5 billion in U.S. economic and military assistance, making Zaire one of the largest recipients of U.S. economic backing in sub- Saharan Africa.

The Zairian government no longer controls the economy, as the rebels have captured all of the mineral and economic- rich areas. State-run airlines can not fly to major cities outside the capital, and according to several reports, the majority of people in Kinshasa support the rebel cause. "We don't fear Kabila. We are afraid of our own soldiers," a nurse named Marie-Claire told the Christian Science Monitor. "They [the troops] took our air-conditioning units, passports, fans, and light bulbs, and beat us," she added.

"We want Mobutu to leave. He has been here long enough and he has done nothing for us," Jean-Pierre Booto, a small business owner, was quoted as saying by AP. "We Zairians want a change. We have had enough of Mobutu."

Preparing for the inevitable, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution April 17 calling on Mobutu to relinquish power. Even Mobutu's own political party has taken its distance. "We believe it is time for the president to retire gracefully," said an official in the Popular Movement for the Revolution.

On April 22, the AFDL took control of the city of Ilebo, about 360 miles east of the capital, a Western diplomat told the Washington Post. Zairian government troops in Kikwit, who have not been paid since February, have reportedly fled in advance of expected rebel forces.  
 
 
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