Ivor Powell
While talks in Lusaka aimed at securing a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo continue to stutter, the war is intensifying in the diamond-rich area around Mbuji Mayi.
Congolese forces are reportedly under heavy attack in the town of Kabinda, 100km to the east of the diamond capital, Mbuji Mayi. They are also stranded and cut off from supplies and reinforcements with Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) rebel forces having secured the road between Kabinda and Mbuji Mayi, the only viable supply route into the town. The rebels are predicting that Kabinda will fall within the week.
According to monitoring agency Central Africa Watch, rebel troops coming in from the north have simultaneously fought their way to within 60km of Mbuji Mayi.
This follows the fall two weeks ago of Lusombo to Rwandan-backed RCD rebels. Since that time, security analyst Jakkie Potgieter of the Institute for Security Studies told the Mail & Guardian, the rebels have moved southwards on two roads, taking the town of Dimbilenge and threatening Motumbi.
Rebel advances could leave the Zimbabwean and Angolan defenders of Mbuji Mayi facing a pincered attack from two fronts. But as reported in the M&G last week, the defence of Mbuji Mayi has been significantly bolstered since the dispatching last week of around 1 000 Angolan troops – including elite units – to the town and to Kabila- held Kananga.
Sources on the ground claim that 3 000 new Zimbabwean troops have also been moved in ahead of the showdown at Mbuji Mayi. Official Zimbabwean sources have, however, confirmed only 1 600.
The impending Mbuji Mayi showdown could prove the last battle of real significance in the 11-month Congo war. With the other Congolese diamond centre of Kisangani already in rebel hands – and serving as the Ugandan headquarters inside Congo – self-proclaimed Congolese president Laurent Kabila has been heavily dependent on the diamond fields around Mbuji Mayi to finance his war effort.
The part Belgian-owned Socit Minire de Bakwanga generated $100-million last year in income for Kabila’s government, out of a total of $616,5-million in diamond exports.
Meanwhile, Central Africa Watch reports that 90% of revenues budgeted in the Congo economy failed to be realised in the first quarter of 1999. Without the diamond revenues secured largely by Angolan troops on his behalf, Potgieter opines, it is unlikely that Kabila could carry on.
“Mbuji Mayi may well prove the end of the war,” Potgieter says. “If the rebels take it, they take away Kabila’s means for making war.
“I would also be surprised if once the battle for Mbuji Mayi was won, they would have any interest in ceasefire talks. They’d be looking for an outright victory.”
Meanwhile, ceasefire talks in Lusaka snagged on a range of issues, with each of the belligerents laying down its bottom line and negotiators scrambling to accommodate them.
A senior government source told the M&G that, despite putting a brave face on it, not even South African negotiators believed that any real peace would result from the talks.
“It’s tacitly understood that this is just one step in a much longer process,” he said. “Even if something is signed, nobody really believes, with war being waged in parallel, that it will be honoured.”
For rebel sponsors Uganda and Rwanda, any ceasefire would have to guarantee security throughout the Great Lakes region, more specifically, the neutralising of interahamwe militias still inside Congo, and (for the Ugandans) the disarming of the Lord’s Resistance Army.
These may still prove less intractable problems. Less negotiable, however, is Kabila’s insistence that any Congolese army that is put together from rebel and Congo forces would have to fall under his control, and that as president, he should continue to control the institutions of government in the transitional period.
As Potgieter remarked: “His control of those insitutions is what started the rebellion in the first place.”
Peace monitors not enforcers, PAGE18