Bulletins and News Discussion from May 27th to June 2nd, 2024 - The Virgin France vs the Chad Sahel - COTW: Chad

Yeah I'm going to be Congo posting for the foreseeable future as I work my way through Gérard Prunier's primer on the 21st century's deadliest conflict. To the surprise of nobody, in reading Africa's World War I've regrettably discovered that the first and second Congo Wars were indeed in part proxy wars between the French and the Americans for control over the DRC's vast mineral wealth. Obviously a lot more complicated than just a proxy war, and it involved dozens of state and non-state actors, but the French tried desperately to uphold the Mobutu regime in Zaire whilst the Americans poured money and even American troops into Kagame's RPF to overthrow Mobutu. If you'll remember, Mobutu (leader of Zaire after the CIA/Belgian assassination of mildly leftist Lumumba in the 60's) was allowing the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide to re-arm in refugee camps on the Zaire/Rwanda border. The following excerpts are from pages 118-120

The U.S. government did not sound very keen to get involved, declaring, “We want to co-operate with our partners in solving the crisis in Eastern Zaire. But we must make sure that these plans are sound, logical and that they would work.” This was partly a result of the Somalia syndrome and also partly due to the fact that other segments of the U.S. government were physically supporting the operation without making that fact public. As the crisis unfolded it became obvious that decision making in Washington was taking place at several levels simultaneously and that they were not always in agreement with each other. But the general tone of the U.S. approach to the crisis was of support for the Kigali regime and its actions; U.S. Gen. George Joulwan, head of NATO, even described General Kagame as "a visionary."

After the taking of Bukavu, whose last defenders had been FDD Bu¬rundian guerrillas, the mixture of RPA and Congolese rebel troops pushed southward. They were soon joined by a group of about sixty African American mercenaries. According to English-speaking Zairians who had occasion to talk with them, they had been privately recruited in the United States and flown to Uganda, from where they had been taken by road to Kigali and later to Bukavu. The way their passage from the United States had been facilitated by Customs and police suggested undeniably that they were on some kind of unofficial government mission. They were soon battling the FDD at Mwenga and Kiliba.

It was increasingly obvious that the refugees had become political pawns. France and the pro-Mobutu West African francophone states pretended to back a multinational intervention force (MNF) to save the refugees; what they really wanted was to save Mobutu. On the opposite side the United States was dragging its feet on the MNF question (and Rwanda was openly opposing it) because it was increasingly collaborating in trying to bring Mobutu down, while not caring too much about what would happen to the refugees, or even, in the case of Rwanda, wanting them back under control, dead or alive. Similarly among foreign NGOs and political parties, pro-Hutu groups saw the refugees as innocent lambs about to be slaughtered, while the pro-Tutsi groups saw them as largely killers who were getting their comeuppance.

On November 8 fighting started around Mugunga, and UN Secretary General Boutros Ghali called for the rapid creation of a multinational intervention force, fearing the possibility of “genocide by starvation.” In spite of frantic diplomatic activity from Paris, negotiations were still bogged down. The British press made “the West” in general responsible for the delay, while the French press clearly accused the United States.