ZAIRE-U.S.: U.S. Opposes U.N. Force, Starts Pulling Plug

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Mar 12 1997 (IPS) - The administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton appears to have started pulling the plug on Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko, Washington’s staunchest Cold War African ally.

Observers say that while the administration remains split on the desirability of the Mobutu regime’s final demise, the speed with which rebels in the eastern part of the country have advanced westwards has placed Washington in a reactive stance.

“Just six weeks ago, they didn’t take (rebel leader Laurent) Kabila seriously,” according to William Minter of the Africa Policy Information Centre (APIC) here. “Now he’s on the verge of taking Kisangani,” the east’s largest city and the government’s main staging base for defending against the insurgency.

U.S. officials say privately they expect Kisangani to fall within the next few weeks at the latest. Confirming the rebels’ own reports, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said Tuesday the insurgents were “just outside the city limits.”

The State Department Tuesday issued a formal travel advisory warning U.S. citizens “to defer all travel to Zaire due to the uncertain political and security situation there and the potential for military and civil unrest throughout the country.” It also authorised the departure of dependents of U.S. staff at the embassy in Kinshasa in what officials here called a precautionary step.

But most government and independent analysts say they can only guess what will happen in Kinshasa and elsewhere in Zaire when, rather than if, Kisangani falls to Kabila’s forces.

“It will be like opening a whole new chapter in Zairean history,” says Jeff Drumtra, a central African specialist at the U.S. Committee on Refugees (USCR). “But not even the so-called Zairean experts can pretend to know where it will lead,” he added.

Meanwhile, in its clearest statement to date on the subject, the State Department said Tuesday it had no intention of backing a multinational military force to help deliver humanitarian assistance and protect as many as 200,000 Rwandan refugees caught up in the fighting in eastern Zaire.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had called for the United Nations to authorise the creation and deployment of the force late last month as fighting, which had begun along the Zaire’s border with Rwanda and Burundi last October, heated up again.

His appeal was joined Tuesday by that of Pope John Paul II who, in a letter to Annan released by the United Nations in New York, noted the “deplorable deterioration” of the situation in Zaire. “I am still confident in the possibility of the international community making a concerted effort designed to avoid yet more tragic developments,” he wrote.

But Burns said Tuesday that, while Washington will continue to discuss the idea at the United Nations, “we are not prepared right now to sign on to a multinational force.” He added that there is “no active planning at all” in Washington to contribute even logistical assistance to such an effort.

For now, he went on, the best course was the one that is already being pursued: gaining a cease-fire, as called for in South African-led mediation efforts begun earlier this month; and enabling U.N. relief agencies to get aid to those who need it most. Senior U.S. officials are consulting intensively with their French and Belgian counterparts on these issues in Brussels, he added.

While it was initially Mobutu who last month balked at negotiations and a cease-fire, now it appears that Kabila is stalling for time, at least until his forces can capture Kisangani.

Burns appealed Tuesday for Kabila to accept the cease-fire and begin negotiations. But his appeal was milder than those used by Washington against Mobutu last month when he refused to negotiate.

“All the talk about a cease-fire and negotiations has an imaginary quality to it right now,” according to Minter. “They won’t happen until things are clearer on the ground,” he says, adding that the rebels are unlikely to make any concrete commitments until after they capature Kisangani.

What happens after that is anybody’s guess. Some analysts warn that Zaire, by far the largest country in size and population in central Africa, may fragment along ethnic lines. Others say the country could hold together in a loose, federal structure as local organisations take power from an imploding central government. Still others predict that negotiations may begin resulting in a protracted stalemate.

“I don’t quite see the logic of everything falling apart if Kisangani falls,” says Minter. Even if the central government and army disintegrate in the face of Kabila’s advances, “Zairean civil society is strong enough to prevent him from doing whatever he wants,” according to Minter.

He notes that, with the exception of reports of killings of Rwandans in eastern Zaire by Tutsi forces under Kabila, the insurgents “don’t seem to be engaged in any ethnic targetting or systematic abuse of civilians.”

Minter also discounts concerns that neighbouring states, which have backed the insurgency, hope to partition Zaire if Mobutu falls, as key officials in the U.S. embassy in Kinshasa have charged.

Rwanda and Uganda have provided military and logistical aid and even military personnel to the rebels, while Angola, has ferried hundreds of Katangese fighters — descendants of the Katangan gendarmes — into southeastern Zaire to join up with Kabila’s forces near mineral-rich and secession-minded Shaba province, according to published reports.

“I don’t think any of these governments have an interest in partitioning Zaire,” according to Minter. “They have an interest in having friends in Zaire, and with ample reason, given Mobutu’s role in the region.”

Mobutu, often with U.S. connivance, has long provided arms and safe haven to insurgents from neighbouring countries, including Angola’s UNITA rebels, several thousand of whom have reportedly been sent to help defend his regime.

“The State Department has to understand that this rebel uprising is very much domestically driven,” according to Drumtra. “To see this as an external invasion is to miss the point altogether.”