With the relentless advance of the Zairean rebels, to negotiate or flee seem to be the only options open to the government. Chris McGreal reports
AN air of doom has settled on Zaire’s beleaguered regime after the lightning rebel seizure of Kisangani and the insurgents’ threat to go all the way to the capital unless the government negotiates itself into oblivion.
As if to reinforce the sense of the old system’s inevitable collapse, President Mobutu Sese Seko called off plans to fly home this week from France where he has spent most of the five-month civil war recuperating from cancer. Even some of his former allies say Mobutu’s greatest significance now lies in the timing of his death.
The government appears paralysed by the stunning loss of Zaire’s third-largest city, which had been the base for the army’s operations against the rebels. A cabinet meeting held as Kisangani fell decided nothing more significant than to dismiss the public works minister for daring to publicly criticise the misappropriation of government funds.
News of the rebel victory was generally greeted with quiet satisfaction on the capital’s streets. Few believe they will have to wait for the rebels to march into Kinshasa to see the regime tumble. Even senior politicians say something must give before long. Some privately speculate that unless the government takes a bold step, such as direct negotiations with the rebels, a military coup may be in the making.
The rebel Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire now controls as much as one-quarter of Zaire. Its leader, Laurent Kabila, said that in the absence of talks he will send his forces on toward Kinshasa. “We are still advancing, we must liberate the whole country … we are going everywhere,” he said.
The almost immediate collapse of resistance in Kisangani demonstrated more clearly than any other rebel victory that the alliance is unlikely to face any serious obstacles as it sweeps further west.
The government had thrown the best of its resources into defending the city. But the deployment of top generals – including the army chief of staff, tons of new weapons, Russian-made bombers and helicopter gunships, and hundreds of foreign mercenaries in Kisangani – barely hindered the rebels once they decided to move on the city. Resistance collapsed almost immediately and the rebels seized control in less than a day.
Particularly worrying for the government are reports that some of its troops switched sides as the rebels approached the city. It may not have been a spontaneous decision. Rebel infiltrators are believed to have moved relatively freely among soldiers, persuading them it was not worth putting up a fight to defend a discredited regime.
Hostility between the army and government is increasingly open. Generals have complained publicly about the administration’s failure to give them the means to fight. The prime minister, Kengo wa Dondo, asked before the fall of Kisangani about the failure of government troops to resist the rebels responded with the old axiom about there being no bad soldiers, only bad generals.
The near complete collapse of the government’s military strategy leaves it with few battlefield options while Kabila has a variety of alternatives. The rebels could press on directly to Kinshasa, as Kabila threatened. But it is a 1 200km trek, much of it along dilapidated roads through thick rain forest. And there are juicier targets to hand.
Rebel forces are pushing ever closer to Mbuji-Mayi, the city at the heart of Zaire’s diamond industry. It would be a major prize, cutting off an important source of government revenue and, more importantly, the fountain of a lot of the cash in senior politicians’ and army officers’ pockets.
The alliance is also penetrating deeper into mineral-rich Shaba, Kabila’s home province. Although the rebel leader is not believed to be particularly popular in Shaba, anti-Mobutu sentiment runs deep and his men are sure of another welcome.
Kabila has also said he intends to target Mobutu’s hometown, Gbadolite, in the far northwestern corner of Zaire. It would be a largely symbolic victory as the town lies on a road to nowhere in particular. But it would deliver Mobutu’s extravagant gold and marble palace into rebel hands providing another important psychological blow against the doomed regime.
Whatever the rebels plans are, they have again rejected an early ceasefire and there appears little the Zairean government can do to pressure him into one. “Negotiations have to precede a cessation of hostilities,” Kabila said. “If they don’t negotiate they will be forced with military action to negotiate or to flee.”