Richard Cornwell
FIGHTING resumed in Congo-Brazzaville this week, shattering a seven-day truce and fuelling international fears about the ripples of instability and violence spreading across Central Africa.
Troops loyal to President Pascal Lissouba opened fire on French ambassador Raymond Cesaire as he left Lissouba’s palace, while Lissouba’s opponent, former president Denis Sassou-Nguesso, launched an assault on Brazzavilles’s airport. “There is no ceasefire any more,” Reuters quoted one diplomat as saying.
The 12 days of fighting from June 5 are thought to have claimed at least 1 000 lives. There had been hope that the latest ceasefire would hold – with talk of introducing an international buffer force between the two factions. The fragile truce has, however, been punctuated by sporadic clashes.
Central African pundits have summed up the struggle as a battle between “ambitious elites”, characterised by power and patronage.
Raising the stakes in Congo is a competition for scarce resources, made scarcer by the International Monetary Fund’s insistence on budgetary austerity and cuts in the number and pay of civil servants.
The crisis has excercised diplomatic imaginations. France, the ex-colonial power which backed Sassou-Nguesso in 1992, only to side with Lissouba later, is again considering its options.
Lissouba is in bad odour with the new authorities in Kinshasa because of his protracted support for the former Zaire’s ousted dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, and with Luanda over his friendliness towards Unita leader Jonas Savimbi. France is anxious to back the eventual winner in Brazzaville and repair the regional damage caused by its former dalliance with Savimbi and Mobutu, especially as West African oil contracts look ever more lucrative.
The Organisation of African Unity lauded Gabon’s President Omar Bongo for his attempts at ending the violence. Bongo is in a unique position to play the honest broker as he is Sassou-Nguesso’s son-in-law and a close friend to Lissouba.
Richard Cornwell is head of current affairs at the Africa Institute of South Africa