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What're Uganda, Rwanda beefing over in DRC?

Thu, 19 Aug 1999 18:17:07 +0200

"serv. informazioni Congosol" <congosol@neomedia.it>

"serv. informazioni Congosol" <congosol@neomedia.it>

HEADLINE: Congo Kinshasa;
What're Uganda, Rwanda beefing over in DRC?

BYLINE: The Monitor - Kampala

BODY:
Kampala - So we are back to the jungles of the DR Congo. On July 14, this column (See "Inside Congo Lion's Mouth; K'la Strikes", The Monitor, July 14) promised to report later on what the governments of Uganda and Rwanda, once great allies now turning adversaries in the Congo, are not telling their people about the war.

So let the story be told: The weekend clashes between the Ugandan and Rwanda- backed factions of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), in which at least one fighter was killed and five wounded; were not a surprise.

Since the rebel ranks broke on May 19 after Ernest Wamba dia Wamba was "ousted" as chairman of the RCD, Uganda has backed his faction. His successor, Emile Ilunga, is backed by Rwanda.

But the roots of the present tensions between Uganda and Rwanda go back to the time when they backed Kabila in his campaign to kick out long-time DR Congo (then Zaire) dictator Mobutu Sese Seko (RIP). Contrary to the view from Uganda, Kampala didn't play the decisive role in that war.

It sent in a token force, most of its support being either diplomatic or in the form of weapons and ammunition. The bulk of the decisive fighting on the ground was done by Rwanda RPA's force and the Angolan army.

President Yoweri Museveni had many doubts about having the allies of Kabila fight all the way to Kinshasa. He preferred that Mobutu be weakened, then be forced to make a peace deal and forge a broad-based government with a prominent role for the internal anti-Mobutu opposition groups and leaders like Etienne Tsikedi.

Rwanda preferred to deal a military blow to the Mobutu regime which was backing former Rwanda Armed Forces (FAR) and extremist militia (Interehamwe) which were responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which up up to 500, 000 people (mostly ethnic Tutsi) died.

The FAR and Interehamwe had set up camp in Zaire (DR Congo) and were crossing
the border and continuing to kill Rwandese.

Kabila, with victory close, took a hardline. It is reported at a meeting in Gulu with president Museveni and Rwandese officials, the volatile Kabila blew his top as the Ugandan leader pressed him to cut a peace deal with Mobutu. He
PAGE 8

Africa News, August 11, 1999

In the end with Kabila in power, Rwanda became the power broker in Kinshasa. Uganda had some influence, but its voice was not final in Congo the way Rwanda's was.

The international press, though, continued to credit Museveni with being the mastermind behind the anti-Mobutu war. Museveni willingly bathed in the adulation. Some in Rwanda dubbed him an "opportunist", for accepting the glory, when he opposed a military solution, which had succeeded - for a while.

Rwanda strongman Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame's interviews in which he claimed that Rwanda had initiated the war against Mobutu, and the RPA had been the decisive military factor rankled Kampala, which often sees Rwanda as no more than a small
Ugandan outpost.

Ugandan businesses moved into Kabila's Congo; and fortune seekers, some officers in the UPDF, also moved in.

However, though the Ugandans made money, they got crumbs as Rwanda took the lucrative deals.

When last year Kabila fell out with Uganda and Rwanda, and ordered the RPA out, Museveni seemed to have been vindicated. A few hundred mutinous Congolese soldiers who were to form themselves into the RCD, backed by a large RPA force, launched an attack in the south-west and marched very quickly on Matadi.

The sheer stupidity of such a frontal attack on the Kinshasa government; the miscalculation by Rwanda about how Angola, Zimbabwe, and Namibia would respond; and Kabila lethal ability to work up a wave of anti-Tutsi feeling combined to deal the anti-Kabila forces their most humiliating defeat in Congo.

Uganda got involved in the war against Kabila at this point. Privately top military and political leaders in Kampala say they rushed into Congo to prevent the annihilation of the RPA, which could have led to a regime collapse in Kigali. According to their version of events, the UPDF and RPA regrouped, beat off the Angolan forces and, ironically, entered Angola from where they were airlifted from swathes of territory controlled by Jonas Savimbi's UNITA rebels.

Publicly, the Uganda government said it had gone into Congo to pursue and dismantle the infrastructure of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), who had been
staging deadly attacks on civilians in the western districts of Bundibugyo and Kasese from their bases in eastern Congo.

Military sources in Kigali however deny this picture of its army cornered in Congo, and the gallant UPDF riding to the rescue.

Kigali says that the campaign against Kabila had been jointly agreed with Kampala, although initially Museveni was only willing to offer arms and logistics, not soldiers.

But there were pressures on Museveni, with Maj. Gen. Salim Saleh, allegedly arguing that Uganda had been sidelined in Congo after Kabila took power in 1997 because it hadn't played a muscular enough role in kicking out Mobutu. PAGE 9

Africa News, August 11, 1999

In Rwanda's view, the fiasco in the south-west happened not because the RPA was foolhardy, but because Uganda did not offer the support that it had agreed in time. The UPDF entrance, therefore, was not a "rescue", but a cynical late arrival. Whatever the case, the RPA began to view Uganda as treacherous.

After the early set-backs, the anti-Kabila forces regrouped quickly and started their push from Goma to the north. Within weeks they had a big prize - the capture of Kisangani, which is still the headquarters of the UPDF in Congo.

Information now suggests that Kisangani was captured by the RPA. Uganda called and offered to "relieve" the Rwandese. This columnist was told that Kampala offered three battalions of the UPDF which, it said, "were in the Sudan doing nothing".

Not surprisingly, Rwanda balked at first, saying that there was no urgency since the RPA soldiers who had captured Kisangani had infact already been relieved.

To this day Rwanda privately remains condescending about the UPDF's claim on Kisangani. The Rwanda newspaper, The Times, that often-pungent pro-RPF/RPA weekly, to this day still writes about how Brig. James Kazini, Ag. Army Chief of
Staff and commander of the UPDF contingent in Congo and his troops "flew" into Kisangani.

The idea being to remind Ugandans, in case they forget it, that they didn't take Kisangani in a battle, but jetted in to set up camp when the town had been conquered.

But Museveni and his officers had decided that this time, they wouldn't play second fiddle to Rwanda. Kigali, as was soon to turn out, had grossly underestimated Uganda's determination to call the shots.

*Continues tomorrow.

Copyright 1999 Africa News Service, Inc. Africa News

August 11, 1999

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