The Shaba Tigers Return

ZAIRE

And the West once more helps Mobutu stop an invasion

Once again the copper-rich region of Shaba (formerly Katanga Province) in southeastern Zaire was engulfed in civil war. An estimated 5,000 Katangese. guerrillas of the Congolese National Liberation Front (F.L.N.C.), which has been seeking autonomy for Shaba since Zaire gained its independence from Belgium in 1960, launched a deadly strike on the region from their bases in Marxist-run Angola. In a seesaw battle with the forces of President Mobutu Sese Seko, the Katangese rebels--who variously refer to themselves as les tigres (French for tigers) or camaradas (Portuguese for comrades)--captured the provincial capital of Kolwezi (pop. 100,000). The rebels carried out coldblooded executions, slaughtering at least 100 whites and 300 blacks, before they were driven from the city.

There was an ominous sense of dej`a vu about the rebel incursion. In March 1977, another contingent of Katangese invaded Shaba, capturing the town of Mutshatsha and approaching to within 20 miles of Kolwezi before they were turned back by Mobutu's forces and 1,500 Moroccan soldiers who had been airlifted into the area by the French. Last week's invasion was not only bigger and better planned; it was also, according to Washington, actively supported by Cuban troops who have been training the F.L.N.C. guerrillas in Angola. Responding to an urgent telephone plea from Mobutu, French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing dispatched 1,200 Foreign Legion paratroopers to Shaba. Belgian Premier Leo Tindemans sent another contingent of paras to help airlift 3,000 Europeans from Kolwezi. Units of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., were placed on alert, and the White House announced that 18 Air Force C-141 transports, based in West Germany and along the U.S. East Coast, were assisting the French and Belgian operations.

Hearing radioed reports that Europeans in Kolwezi were being brutalized by the Katangese, French and Belgian units parachuted into the city. In bitter street-by-street fighting, they pushed the guerrillas back into isolated pockets and opened a corridor to Kolwezi airport, five miles outside of town, which had been recaptured by Zaire troops. At week's end the rebel hold on the city was broken and a mass airlift of refugees began. For some the aid came too late. Paratroopers found clusters of bodies, and survivors told of mock trials on street corners followed by swift executions. Some Zaire soldiers who had fallen into rebel hands had been killed the same way.

One of the first reporters to visit Kolwezi after its liberation was TIME Correspondent William McWhirter. His report:

"Kolwezi was a devastated ghost town, eerily vacant and lifeless; its wide boulevards and veranda lanes were silent. Comfortable African bungalow homes were deserted or shattered. Mainstreet shops, along with the bank and the small, pleasant hotel, had been rampaged through, looted, burned, their windows broken. A thick, sickening smell hovered over the town. The scene was hauntingly like a horror film where all signs of life had suddenly been seized and stopped. There were bodies on every street, some beside the cars where they had been ambushed and shot. African women had been gunned down as they crossed the tree-shaded intersections. Bodies of dead Zairian soldiers whose trucks had careened and smashed off the road were left in positions of disarray.

"We heard horrifying stories of torture as well as death. Men were rounded up and taken to rebel centers in the bank or nearby schools for long periods of interrogation by the Katangese. Without explanation, some were released. Others were taken away and never seen again. One man denied to rebels who appeared at his house that he had any money. His jaw was smashed with a rifle butt and all his teeth were knocked out. Not until Kolwezi was liberated did he receive any treatment. Another man had tried vainly to close his front door on the rebels. When his hand was caught in the jamb, the rebels simply cut off his fingers. He also remained for days without treatment.

"The most horrifying scene took place in one small room of a residence where 34 men, women and children (all Europeans) had been executed by machine-gun fire. Almost every white-owned house in the town was subjected to looting of jewelry, money, clothing and almost anything else that could be dropped into huge 'collection' baskets the rebels carried. In the home where the mass atrocity was committed, six-and seven-year-old children were sent by the rebels to remove watches and rings from the victims. One housewife, still in a state of shock, reported seeing the body of a woman neighbor eaten by packs of roaming dogs."

The fighting in Shaba demonstrated the vulnerability of Zaire, a huge, mineral-rich land of more than 200 tribes and four major language groups that the dictatorial Mobutu--he grandly refers to himself as le Guide--has kept yoked together largely by force. Shaba is essential to Zaire's survival: its copper mines provide the bulk of the country's annual revenues of $1.3 billion. However, the Lunda tribesmen of Shaba have long resented the indifference shown them by the central government in Kinshasa. In 1960, United Nations forces were dispatched to the area to put down an abortive independence movement led by the late Katangese leader Moise Tshombe, whose memory is still revered by many of the Angola-based rebels. Before they were repulsed by Zairian and Moroccan troops last year, the Katangese guerrillas, whose slogan is "Vanquish or die," warned the 3,000 or so Westerners working in the province that they would return. Last week the tigers lived up to that vow.

The invasion apparently caught Mobutu's troops in Shaba by surprise. The rebels came from two directions. Some moved along the Benguela railroad, which runs from Shaba through Angola to the Atlantic Ocean. Others passed through the northern tip of Zambia, whose Lunda tribesmen are friendly kin of the Katangese exiles. They traveled in small groups and wore native dress, but carried AK-47s and other Soviet-made equipment over their shoulders. They insisted that no "Cubbanos" had come with them. Nonetheless, guerrillas declared that their goal was not simply the liberation of Shaba from Kinshasa's rule but the ouster of Mobutu and the creation of a more radical government in Zaire.

Both Westerners in Shaba and the province's citizens have vivid, unpleasant memories of the last incursion. Says one European professional who befriended the tigers while living under their 1977 occupation: "They said this would be another Viet Nam. They told us frankly they were not secessionists but an army of liberation whose aim was to take over the whole of Zaire. All of us were told that if we were still here when they returned, it would be the end of us. We would then be considered pro-Mobutu. Last year when the guerrillas came in, they were welcomed by the people with joy and jubilation. But after a short time, they realized that things were going to be even worse than they were under Mobutu." The guerrillas, apparently, were abusive and rough with the local population; many of them were seen drunk or high on marijuana. When they left, they took hundreds of youths, many no older than twelve, as conscripted recruits to their cause. Says one disillusioned supporter: "They behaved just like soldiers."

In repelling last year's incursion, Mobutu's troops also behaved like soldiers --or worse. People suspected of helping the rebels were herded into huts, which were then doused with gasoline and set afire. Only the presence of the Moroccans, tribesmen say, prevented the death toll from rising into the thousands. As it is, the Lunda people are terrified of reprisals if the new rebel attack on Shaba is turned back. "We want to be left in peace," says Chief Lukama, leader of a Lunda contingent that sought refuge in Zambia. "We are eager to go back home to Zaire when it is peaceful. We don't mind Mobutu if he would just leave us alone. But he has never left our people alone."

Despite his skill at keeping Zaire united, Mobutu is one of Africa's less savory leaders, and his country is virtually bankrupt. Corruption at all levels of government is endemic; only $120 million of an anticipated $450 million from coffee sales last year ended up in treasury coffers. Inflation gallops at the rate of over 75% a year, unemployment is on the rise, and there are periodic shortages of food and other essential commodities. Largely because of a worldwide decline in copper prices, the country's G.N.P. has declined about 5% annually since 1976, and every year Zaire defaults on about $100 million worth of its international debts. Foreign experts were banished in Mobutu's sweeping "Zairianization" program of 1973-74. Since then a country with some of the world's richest agricultural farming areas has had to import about $300 million worth of food --much of it from Rhodesia and South Africa. Yet even Mobutu has admitted that despite efforts to reform agricultural distribution, "90% of all imports remain in Kinshasa and do not reach the interior."

Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that opposition groups are active in Zaire. Even before last week's invasion, Mobutu had to send troops to Shaba to pacify the region. Last March, after a mass trial in Kinshasa, 13 army officers were executed and 70 imprisoned for "high treason and conspiracy." The grim verdict of one Kinshasa resident: "We are plunged in despair."

There are no lingering illusions in Washington, Paris or Brussels about the quality of Mobutu's regime. But the Zairian leader is a staunch anti-Communist and a proven friend of the West, while the Cuban-backed insurgents apparently have Marxist goals. Beyond that, the three Western governments faced the humanitarian obligation to evacuate the estimated 3,000 foreigners who were threatened by the fighting in the Shaba region. There was little hesitation in the three capitals in responding to Mobutu's call for help.

Since about two-thirds of the Europeans were Belgian, Brussels was first to announce that it was mounting a military rescue operation. Hercules C-130 transports and Boeing 707s, with about 1,500 paratroopers aboard, took off Thursday from Melsbroek airbase in Belgium for Zaire. That morning, after French President Giscard held an emergency meeting with his military and political advisers, France announced it too would help Europeans trapped in Kolwezi. (Some Foreign Legionnaires had already been flown to Zaire from Calvi airbase in Corsica.)

On Friday, Giscard announced in a television interview that French paratroopers had attacked Kolwezi in two waves. "It was necessary," he said, "to carry out the operation as quickly and quietly as possible." Giscard's statement caused something of a stir both at home and abroad. Socialist Party Leader Franc,ois Mitterrand, speaking before the National Assembly in Paris, said that "it's absolutely impossible to have this kind of operation going on without the Assembly knowing about it." He also charged that the legionnaires' intervention was not justified by France's cooperation agreements with Zaire. Meanwhile in Brussels, government officials--who had felt all along that the French were intruding in a Belgian preserve--complained that they had not been given adequate notice of the paratroop drop on Kolwezi. "I was informed," said Premier Tindemans testily, "but my advice was not sought."

Tindemans' complaint reflected a feeling of uneasiness about the growing French military role in Africa. France now has the second largest external force on the continent--after the Cubans. In addition to the legionnaires in Shaba, Paris has 7,000 troops garrisoned in such former possessions as the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Gabon and Djibouti. French forces also serve with the United Nations in Lebanon and twice recently--in Mauritania and Chad--have come to the assistance of governments facing intense guerrilla pressure. The increasingly visible presence of Giscard's troops has earned them the unflattering sobriquet "the French Cubans" and raised accusations that they represent a new form of colonialism.

The trouble in Zaire broke out at a time when the White House was preparing to ask Congress to ease restrictions on U.S. support for friendly governments endangered by insurgencies. The invasion of Shaba turned out to be a good example of why President Carter wants some changes made. But even with present restrictions the Administration found a way to help Mobutu under terms of the International Security Assistance Act of 1977, which allows the President to provide certain aid to a foreign country--without congressional approval--if it is deemed "in the national security interests of the United States." Carter authorized $2.5 million worth of training for Zairian military officers and $17.5 million in credits for the purchase of "nonlethal" equipment, including medical supplies and spare parts. With that as a prologue, the Administration announced that military transports would fly support missions for the French and the Belgians.

In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Joseph Luns said that by sending C-141s to Zaire, Washington "was not carrying the baby but was pushing the pram." Somewhat more prosaically, White House officials conceded that the limited U.S. assistance to Zaire was a signal that the U.S. was indeed prepared 1) to help threatened friends, and 2) to make life a little more difficult for Cuba's soldiers of fortune in Africa. In Havana, President Fidel Castro summoned Chief of the U.S. Mission Lyle F. Lane to his office to insist that Cubans were not involved in the Shaba incursion. Washington was skeptical. Said one high official, referring to Cuban involvement not only in Zaire but in Angola, Ethiopia and other African nations: "There is evidence that the Cubans are getting somewhat more brazen about their participation in these things."

Shaba was not the only part of Africa where the Cubans had an impact last week. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopian Strongman Mengistu Haile Mariam announced that his forces had launched their long-awaited offensive against two liberation groups that control most of Eritrea Province, with attacks around Asmara and along the Red Sea coast. The Cuban role in this conflict was unclear. Both Eritrean spokesmen and Colonel Mengistu indicated that Cuban soldiers were taking part in the offensive, although Mengistu did not specifically state that they were involved in the fighting--as they had been in Ethiopia's recent battles against Somali rebels in the Ogaden region. In Tanzania, Cuban diplomats insisted that their country's forces were not involved militarily in Eritrea. Havana's representatives said they were trying to convince Mengistu that the Eritrean problem could not be solved militarily and that he ought to work out some degree of autonomy for the province, since he and the secessionists share a common Marxist ideology.

Conceivably, the Cubans were trying to make the best of an embarrassing situation. Before the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, Havana had supported and trained the Eritreans. But after the Marxists took power in Ethiopia, both the Cubans and the Soviet Union abruptly abandoned the Eritreans in order to back a stronger revolutionary group.

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