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Greed on Congo mines

Thu, 19 Aug 1999 18:17:21 +0200

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

The Monitor (Kampala)
August 12, 1999

Kampala - This is the second part of the story behind the tensions between Rwanda-Uganda in the DR Congo. The first part was published yesterday ("What's The Beef With Uganda, Rwanda In DRC?).

In this part Charles Onyango-Obbo examines how the spoils were divided in Kisangani; how minerals became a very strategic item for the anti-Kabila alliance; and how the first serious attempt last October to mend fences between Kampala and Kigali fell flat on its face:-

The inside story of Rwanda and Uganda in Congo will take a long time to emerge, but in recent months bits of information have been emerging; enough to construct a general picture of the Congo project.

Rwanda was always going to be vulnerable in DR Congo the second time round. Apart from being a small country, its brash conduct after Kabila became president, and alleged widespread atrocities against Hutus in eastern Congo - in its almost paranoid campaign against suspected "Interehamwe" and ex-FAR (Rwanda Armed Forces) - had kicked up a nationalist wave and strong anti-Tutsi sentiments.

Rwanda desperately needed someone to - forgive the expression - cover its ass in Congo. This gave Uganda tremendous leverage, and thus the RPA effectively ceded the control of Kisangani to UPDF.

Brig. James Kazini moved in and set up his tactical headquarters there. The one place RPA insisted it would not budge from, was the airport in Kisangani, where it maintained a strong presence alongside UPDF.

Kisangani would not have had the importance it holds in the Congo conflict today if it didn't have minerals, or wasn't a springboard for mining in the surrounding regions.

Many people think the war in Congo is about the minerals. The rival RCD rebel factions are accusing Rwanda and Uganda in turn of being in the Congo to loot the country.

UPDF sources say the number of its officers pocketing money from the minerals is small; "about 10". A handful of Ugandan fortune seekers have also jumped into the Congo, top of the list being
businessman-cum-soldier Maj. Gen. Salim Saleh who is considered one of several Ugandan individuals who are making a killing in the Congo.

However, to see the Uganda, Rwanda; and on the Kabila side, the Zimbabwean and Namibian (less so Angolan) intervention as being motivated by private greed for Congo's mineral wealth is to miss the big picture.

Rwanda cannot pursue its political and security interests in the Congo without subsidising the campaign with money made from trading in minerals. More importantly, however, because of the nature of the present phase of the anti- Kabila war, patronage and cash are important since the rebels are actually functioning like formal standing armies.

Therefore in addition to everything else, Uganda and Rwanda have to buy the support of various factions and small political interests in the Congo. For this they need minerals to sell to get money to finance their rebel alliances, control mining, and to extract loyalty from local Congolese business and political groups. In short if you don't control a mine, then you can't carry any political weight in Congo. You don't do things on the cheap in Congo.

Two examples. As the tensions in the RCD which eventually led to a split into the Goma-based faction led by Dr Emile Ilunga and backed by Rwanda, and the Kisangani-based RCD led by Prof. Wamba dia Wamba began, a squeeze was put on Wamba.

Wamba's supporters allege that Rwanda ensured that he did not get any money or logistics. Wamba didn't have a car though he was chairman of RCD, and minor functionaries in the rebel group who were close to Rwanda had transport.

Wamba only got his car, a Nissan Patrol, which was flown in from Kampala once his faction had been adopted by Uganda. Though president Yoweri Museveni never had an official car while he fought the bush war in Luwero, and only made do with a battered Landrover, he is probably under no illusion that Congo is Congo, and rebel leaders have to be taken care of - with a car which Uganda could only afford to buy for its ministers recently, almost 12 years after the "revolution" !

When Uganda decided to improve the political equation on the ground in Congo by encouraging a second rebel front (this was before RCD split) it injected businessman Jean Pierre Bemba into the question.

Bemba eventually emerged as leader of the Congo Liberation Movement (MLC).

Bemba didn't arrive in Kisangani on the back of a pick-up. He arrived in a jet; according to sources in Kisangani, it was the Uganda presidential jet!

It would be foolhardy, if not impossible, for Uganda and Rwanda to finance the lifestyle of the Congolese rebels from their national budgets. They, therefore, take the Congolese wealth and use it to pay them; and the balance goes into the wallets of some Ugandan and Rwanda "project managers".

Sharing the gold and diamond spoils however, has proved harder than fighting the war. A few weeks into the war against Kabila the idea of a joint command UPDF -RPA command collapsed. There are incredible, and unconfirmed, stories told of a top UPDF officer who flew to Kigali from Kampala to discuss with Rwanda the mechanics of the joint command.

He didn't know that the game plan had changed until Brig. Kazini arrived from Kisangani and dumb-founded the meeting with the announcement that Uganda could no longer follow through with the idea of a joint command.

Instead "sectors" where UPDF and RPA held sway were established, although the two armies could freely operate in either sector.

Some weeks after the capture of Kisangani, the UPDF and RPA continued their push. In early October the Rwandese prong took Buta, and found a rich mine.

Soon word came that the RPA should hand over the mine to a Ugandan military contingent since this was in the "Ugandan sector". In one of a series of incidents that indicated early that Uganda and Rwanda were drifting apart, the RPA, wanting to keep the rich pickings for itself, resisted. But their position was untenable. After the collapse of the joint command plan, it would spell disaster if the idea of sectors of control was also rejected.

The RPA handed over the mine to the UPDF. The allies and RCD had also agreed early in the campaign that mines and other economic resources seized by Uganda and Rwanda would be handed over to the Congolese. That remains the policy today, but the practice is entirely different.

The one man who took it most seriously is gone; the late Brigadier Chefe Ali who returned sick from the Congo with respiratory problems and died in Kololo hospital on July 9.

Once the Ugandans had secured the mine, the shrewdly political Brig. Chefe who entered Congo as the first commander of the UPDF forces there wanted to demonstrate to the RCD that Uganda's mission in Congo was not a diamond hunt. He sent the RCD's economic commissioner and his men to Buta to receive the mine from the UPDF.

When the RCD team arrived in Buta, the Ugandans told them that on the issue of the mine handover, they could not act on the orders of Brig. Chefe. They could only take instructions from Kampala.

The RCD couldn't comprehend what was going on. They returned to Kisangani and asked Brig. Chefe why he had sent them on a wild goose chase. Chefe didn't know either. According to sources, he got to the phone to Kampala and called, among others, Col. Kale Kaihura. Kaihura was not in the know. Eventually, it turned out it was the result of a "mix up", details of which are best left alone.

At the wider level though, it foretold trouble to come; an incoherence in Ugandan policy in the Congo, and emerging centres of power, all of which would in the long term introduce strains in the Uganda-Rwanda alliance in the anti- Kabila war.

By October of 1998, both Uganda and Rwanda realised that they were headed for an unhappy ending in Congo.

This author recently learnt that a joint Uganda-Rwanda probe committee on "the on-going operations in the Democratic-Republic of Congo" was appointed following "allegations and counter allegations among some members of the RPA and UPDF about misconduct in operations" in the DR Congo.

The probe committee to find out what had gone wrong and how it could be fixed was set up at an October 14 meeting in State House, Nakasero, chaired by president Museveni.

The Rwanda delegation was headed by the country's hard man Maj Gen. Paul Kagame.

It was a solid team comprising Patrick Mazimphaka, minister in the President's Office in Rwanda, and Uganda's suave Amama Mbabazi, minister of State for Foreign Affairs who is Museveni's diplomatic foot soldier on the Congo.

There was Brig. Chefe Ali (RIP), my good friend Col. Frank Mugambagye of the RPA, Col. Henry Tumukunde, or chief of the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, Col. Barthazar Ndengeyinka, the RPA's Lt. Col. Andrew Rwigamba, and another friend, UPDF's Lt. Col. Ben Biraaro, Division 2 Commander.

Neither Amama nor Mazimphaka, who were co-chairs showed up, with the result that Chefe and Mugambagye became the lead men for Uganda and Rwanda on the probe committee.

With the recent flare ups and the split of the RCD rebels into Rwanda and Uganda -backed factions, it is little wonder why the civilians never showed up and left the matter to the soldiers.

The findings of the committee present a far more complex analysis of the problems in the rebel-controlled areas than politicians and military leaders in Kigali and Kampala present, and what readers get from the media.

The events on the ground did not wait for the committee.

By the time it presented its report, the situation had changed, Rwanda's and Uganda's interests had become quite divergent. How? (Continues on Sunday).

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