BY MEGAN ARNEY

Under the guise of securing "humanitarian aid" for refugees fleeing the fighting in eastern Zaire, Washington is taking new steps toward military intervention in central Africa as it attempts to replace Paris as the dominant imperialist force in the region.

"American officials are considering whether to send troops to Central Africa for logistical support in an international force to protect and feed up to 1.4 million refugees caught in the fighting between Zaire and Rwanda," said an article in the November 6 New York Times.

On November 4, Paris pushed for a United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing the creation of an international military force of 4,000 troops to intervene in Zaire, allegedly to guarantee safe delivery of aid to refugees. Paris and Madrid also pushed for imperialist intervention in a European Union meeting in Brussels.

So far, Washington has declined to endorse the French proposals. "Some administration officials said they were miffed that France, after responding negatively to a U.S. plan to create a standing all-African force to intervene in just such situations, has now put forth an intervention proposal as a French initiative," said a story in the November 5 Washington Post.

In 1994, Washington set up a large military base in Rwanda's capital Kigali to support the new government of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) that had just come to power. The U.S. government replaced Paris, Rwanda's former colonial master that had backed the country's former regime, as the main imperialist force in that country. Washington had initially planned to set up its main base in Goma, Zaire, not Kigali, but relented after the French government complained that Goma was its turf.

Tensions have heightened between Washington and Paris lately over former colonies in Africa. In early October, U.S. secretary of state Warren Christopher visited several African countries touting a plan for a regional "peace force." The U.S. scheme would provide financing, training, supplies, military support, and transport to a force of as many as 10,000 soldiers drawn from African armies. This "Africa Crisis Response Force" would be used to intervene in conflicts throughout the continent. Washington's proposal initially drew resentment and criticism from government officials in several African countries, especially South African president Nelson Mandela.

On November 1, U.S. national security adviser Anthony Lake and Under Secretary of State Peter Tarnoff met their French counterparts and French president Jacques Chirac in Paris to try to smooth frictions over intervention in Africa. How fighting erupted in Zaire
The recent conflict in eastern Zaire erupted in late October when local politicians in southern Kivu province announced a plan to push Tutsi who had lived in Zaire for more than two centuries, known as Banyamulenge, into Rwanda. But residents in the area fought back. The rebels pushed the Zairian army out of the city of Bukavu, in the south of Lake Kivu, first, and then took over Goma.

During the battle over Goma, the army of Rwanda shelled Zairian troops defending the city across the border. Reporters of London's Financial Times and other big-business papers who were in Goma after the takeover by the rebels claimed to have seen soldiers speaking Kinyarwanda, Rwanda's national tongue, in the city. The government of Rwanda denies accusations that its forces crossed the border to help the rebels.

During the fighting, hundreds of thousands of refugees, mostly of Hutu origin, who had fled Rwanda since 1994 and lived in refugee camps around Goma near Zaire's borders with Uganda and Rwanda, began fleeing further into Zaire. On November 5, the rebels who took over Goma announced a cease- fire and invited officials of the United Nations and other international agencies to resume deliveries of aid to refugees.

The camps were set up in 1994, when more than 1.2 million refugees of Hutu origin crossed the border into Zaire from Rwanda.

Members of the Rwandan capitalist class who are Hutu had ruled Rwanda since colonial rule ended in 1962. Paris had backed the 20-year brutal reign of former Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and had 2,500 troops in that country for some time. After Habyarimana and the president of neighboring Burundi died in a plane crash in April 1994, Rwandan government troops and vigilante squads carried out massacres of 500,000 people. In addition to political opponents of the government, many of those massacred were of Tutsi origin. About 85 percent of the population of Rwanda is considered Hutu, and 15 percent are Tutsi.

Before the government was defeated by the forces organized by the Tutsi-dominated RPF in July 1994, Kigali officials ordered a mass exodus of the country, spreading rumors that the RPF would kill anyone suspected of being of Hutu origin. As a result, more than a million fled Rwanda, joining hundreds of thousands of other refugees who had escaped the government- sponsored killing earlier. Since then, more than 1.2 million have been living - and dying - in disease ridden camps in Zaire and neighboring countries.

The rebels who now control parts of Kiva province in eastern Zaire are led by André Ngandu Kassasse, a leader of a bourgeois opposition group who seeks to oust Zairian president Mobutu Sese Seko. On November 5 Kassasse called the conflict "a popular uprising against President Mobutu Sese Seko."

He added that the forces he commands cut across ethnic lines. Kassasse comes from the west central region of Kasai and is not a Tutsi. The rebellion is not a tribal fight, he told the New York Times, but a struggle for control of Zaire.

Tensions between the capitalist regimes of Zaire and Rwanda have risen after the takeover of Goma by the rebels. Reports from Kinshasa, Zaire's capital, allege that weapons are pouring in the country from France and Egypt in preparation for a large-scale air and ground attack on Rwanda within the next two or three weeks.

On November 5, thousands of students reportedly demonstrated in the streets of Kinshasa in favor of the war effort. They marched despite a government ban on public protests. Zairian army troops eventually dispersed protesters, but no one was wounded. Student leaders called for Prime Minister Leon Kengo wa Dondo to step down, claiming he was not a true Zairian as the son of a Rwandan mother and a Polish father. Some students say Kengo should have declared war against Rwanda and Burundi. "You tell the world we want Kengo out," a student whom the New York Times identified as Mayambe reportedly said. "He's a Rwandan, not a Zairian. All the military is corrupt. All our politicians are corrupt. We want the liberation of our land. We war war!" Zaire's opposition parties are largely united in their support for war. History of imperialist intervention
The crisis is exacerbated by the uncertain health of Zaire's president Mobutu, who has prostate cancer and is recovering from recent surgery in Switzerland. Mobutu has ruled Zaire as a dictator for the last 30 years.

The Congo (now Zaire), with 38 million people, became a Belgian colony in the late 1870s. It was prized for its natural resources, above all rubber.

Today, the country's mineral-rich Shaba region in the south produces about two-thirds of the world's cobalt. Zaire leads the world in industrial diamond production and ranks sixth in copper production. Zinc, tin, manganese, gold, silver, iron ore, and uranium are also found. Energy resources also include 13 percent of the world's total hydroelectric potential, oil reserves along the Atlantic coast, and some coal deposits. Agriculture employs about two-thirds of the population; most are subsistence farmers producing small crops like corn, bananas, and rice.

Belgian rule was characterized by extreme brutality, particularly in the colonizers' efforts to collect rubber.

The Congo gained its independence in June 1960. A general election gave a majority of seats in the new parliament to the movement headed by Patrice Lumumba, the leader of the independence struggle. Lumumba became the country's first prime minister.

Determined to maintain its hold over the country's resources, Belgium's rulers backed an antigovernment rebellion in Katanga province, the site of major deposits of uranium, cobalt, copper, and other resources owned by U.S., British, and Belgian capitalists. The head of Katanga's secessionist forces was Moise Tshombe, a wealthy plantation owner and businessman. Behind Tshombe stood 10,000 Belgian troops.

To counter the Belgian-backed uprising, Lumumba appealed to the United Nations. The first "peacekeepers" arrived in July 1960. Instead of combating the rebellion, however, UN troops disarmed Lumumba's forces, effectively aiding the Belgian troops and Tshombe's rebels.

In September 1960, at the instigation of the U.S. embassy, a section of the Congolese army led by Col. Mobutu Sese Seko seized power in a coup against Lumumba. UN forces stood aside as the elected government was ousted. A few months later Lumumba was arrested and handed over to Tshombe who had him murdered in 1961. With Lumumba out of the way, Washington moved to end the Katanga uprising, pushing Tshombe into exile. UN troops withdrew in 1964, leaving Mobutu as the Congo's strongman.

As anti-imperialist forces continued the struggle to liberate their country, Mobutu brought back Tshombe, named him prime minister, and organized an army of mercenaries who, backed by U.S. air power and intervention by other imperialist forces, crushed the rebels.

Washington, Paris, and other imperialist powers have relied on Mobutu's dictatorial rule ever since to maintain Zaire's superexploitation as a semicolonial country. They are now contemplating intervention as Mobutu's rule has weakened in the face of a deep social and economic crisis and Mobutu's declining ability to divide opposition by inciting ethnic violence.

Real wages in the early 1990s were less than 10 percent of those in 1960. The rate of inflation in 1992 was 2,735 percent. As economic decline continued, the social crisis was heightened with Mobutu's illness, which has created a power vacuum in which the imperialist powers now are trying to fill with their own ruler.

Editorials in the New York Times have called for U.S. "humanitarian" intervention. Columnist Edward Mortimer wrote in the November 6 Financial Times, "Will the West end up fighting in central Africa? If things get bad enough, I suspect we will."  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home