Demystifying the Congo Army : CIVILIAN MILITIA ATROCITES OR MEDIA FABRICATION?

[Arecidea Kwilemie]

INTRODUCTION

Researchers (even ASF members) into what had been dubbed the Congo War looked with disbelief at how the smaller nations Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda could cause such devastating problems to a large country; others wondered could the Congo pull a pear-harbour retaliation, whilst others questioned the Congos Amy disorganisation, incompetence and lawlessness inflicted on its own innocent civilians, others simply speculated whether these stories were media fabrications to discredit the country’s ability to stabilize the conflict?

The Congolese National Army has had one of the most complex, albeit short, histories of any of the world’s armed forces. The army was shaped by the Congo’s own changing status and often without a sufficiently broad or long-term view of its role. This is why—from the pre-colonial days of Belgian King Léopold II’s governorship until today—it has been difficult to establish what the army’s role actually was, and is. This chapter attempts to trace the long and winding history of the Congolese National Army and its perpetration of atrocities on innocent civilians.This is because an understanding of its history may help the army to formulate a new role for itself that accords with the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC’s) intrinsic importance in the Central and Southern African regions and, indeed, in the world.


THE FORCE PUBLIQUE: HISTORY OF A PRIVATE MILITIA

Created on 4 August 1888 by Belgium’s King Léopold II, Governor of the Independent State of the Congo, the Force Publique was first and foremost a political and economic instrument of suppression against the Congolese people.

As the Congolese people needed to be coerced to work for the directors and governor (the Belgian King)—the effective owners of the Congo of the time—it was necessary to create a militia for the purpose. This private militia was composed of foreign mercenaries and Congolese, and was trained by Belgian officers. It therefore bore a similarity to a modern example, the South African company Executive Outcomes, which hired itself out for peacekeeping and other quasimilitary involvements in various, mainly African, countries.When, in 1908, the Belgian government transformed the Independent State into the colony of the Belgian Congo, the Force Publique continued to suppress the native Congolese, whom members of the force called, with contempt, Basenzi, which could be translated as ‘wild monkeys’. In the name of Western capitalist civilisation and philanthropy, the Force’s role was to break all resistance to the economic exploitation of the Belgian state. As an instrument for sustaining the Belgian economy during this period, the Force spread terror by amputating hands and lashing corpses.


THE POST-INDEPENDENCE CONGOLESE ARMY

At independence in 1960, the Belgian commander of the Force Publique, Gen Émile Janssens, declared: “After independence equals before independence.” This statement caused a mutiny and a rapid Africanisation of the Force’s officer corps. The ‘Congolisation of the Army’ faced a lack of skills at officer and command levels. Officer ranks were distributed to all non-commissioned officers (NCOs) above the rank of sergeant. These men were instructed to “take their units in hand”. An officer training school was subsequently established at Luluabourg (now Kananga) early in 1961.


PRESIDENT MOBUTU’S DESIGN FOR THE ARMY

Encouraged by the strong support he enjoyed from Western countries in the context of the Cold War, President Mobutu was able to place the ANC, which in October 1971 became the Zairian Armed Forces—Forces ArméesZairoise (FAZ), under his sole authority. He personally promoted anddismissed officers, ordered equipment and directed military operations. His posts included Supreme Commander, Commander-in-Chief, President of the Superior Council of Defence and Minister of Defence. This ‘personalisation’ of the army led to a façade of legal decisions that regularly attempted to remodel the face of the army at any sign of an internal, political or external crisis that threatened the President’s regime. Unfortunately, and in contrast to the objectives he sought to bring about by these numerous perilous legal exercises, President Mobutu was progressively destroying the army that he had so strenuously built up.The following headings deal with such objectionable practices as the politicisation and tribalisation of the army, the creation of privileged units within the army and the de-professionalisation of the biggest part of the army. This last was in order to benefit some units of the army such as the elite Presidential Special Division (DSP) or Praetorian Guard, the Reinforced Division and the 31st Paratroop Brigade.


POLITICISATION

President Mobutu politicised the army formally through the Defence and Zairian Armed Forces Act of 1977, which placed the army under the command of “the President of the Popular Revolution Movement [MPR, the country’s political party] and the President of the Republic”.The party soon transformed the army into a ‘specialised organ’ of the MPR, and the members of the army had to pay homage to the Founding President of the MPR. They were also psychologically conditioned to pledge their allegiance at all times and in all places to their ‘Guide’, the Founding President of the MPR. This period witnessed numerous decrees and other written or oral decisions concerning the army that would end by harming its organisation and professionalism. Some of the decrees relating to the structure of the army under Colonel, later General and then President, Mobutu were:

• The creation of the ANC on 8 July 1960 with the requirement that Congolese be promoted from the ranks to assume the direction of the army even though they lacked the required skills and experience.

• The incorporation of the National Gendarmerie into the ANC and the subsequent integration on 1 July 1963 of the forces of the former secessionist armies of Katanga and Kasai into the ANC.

• The re-establishment of the National Gendarmerie as a separate body on 31 July 1972 to replace the dissolved National Police, and the subsequent reintegration of the National Gendarmerie into the FAZ. These manoeuvres included the re-appointment of only some members of the National Police, a sweeping adjustment of ranks and the demobilisation of unwanted policemen.

• In 1975 President Mobutu began reorienting the FAZ from an external defence role to domestic law enforcement. The gradual transformation of the FAZ from objective control to subjectivecontrol weakened the armed forces both operationally and organisationally.

• The National Defence and Armed Forces were again reorganised on 1 July 1977. This move was triggered by the ‘moral defeat’ of the forces in the face of aggression by South Shaba (Katanga). But it also signalled the centralisation of all civil and military defence powers into the hands of President Mobutu and the legal integration of the army into the structures of the MPR.


TRIBALISATION

To guarantee the loyalty of the army, President Mobutu began progressively appointing members of his own tribal group—and, rarely, some loyal officers from other ethnic groups—to key army posts. His DSP was led and manned by his ethnic Ngwandi brothers and other tribes from the northern area of Equateur province. At the same time, the entire army was subjected to a series of ethnic or tribal purifications on grounds such as fictitious coups. These ‘purifications’ were followed by the summary execution of suspected officers from other ethnic groups. In her book The Dinosaur, Colette Braeckman recalls numerous schemes that were part of President Mobutu’s strategy to prevent the regular army from destabilising his regime. Within this climate of permanent suspicion, Maj Mpika and his fellow officers, just graduated from their American military academies, were in 1977 accused of having fomented a coup with the complicity of the United States (US) Embassy in Congo. And the next year it was the turn of Maj Kalume and his fellow officers, graduating this time from the Royal Military School in Brussels. All were executed in spite of protests from Belgian officers. Later still, the efficient Gen Mukobo, a victim of the jealousy of his colleagues, was relegated for some years to a Kisangani outpost. Then again, Col Mbo—a brilliant Mirage pilot trained in France and now flying transport aircraft—was killed when his Hercules C130 exploded in mid-air not far from Kinshasa under suspicious circumstances.


PRIVILEGED UNITS

As is often the case in an army in the service of a dictator, President Mobutu’s army included at least three distinct armies. His Praetorian Guard, the DSP, was under his direct command and benefited from modern equipment and privileged funding and conditions of service. Officially, this division numbered close to 15,000 men, organised into two commando brigades loyal to the president. The second and third armies-within-an-army were the Paratroop Corps, based in Kinshasa and Kamina, and the Military Operations and Intelligence Service (SARM), to both of which President Mobutu gave particular attention. The Paratroop Corps benefited from special logistical and command support provided through French and Israeli military co-operation. The rest of the 50,000 men of the FAZ were more of a phantom army, with their officers and generals making their living from corruption and illegal practices. These ‘soldiers in corners’ were mainly left to their own devices. To survive, these vagrant soldiers behaved so extortionately towards the civilians around them that they irreversibly destroyed the healthy relations that should have existed between the military and civil society. Indeed, they created the general discontent that led to the fall of the entire regime, as well as the army.


DE-PROFESSIONALISATION

De-professionalisation manifested itself through a lack of communication between the various structures and branches of the military organisation Democratic Republic of the Congo 69 and through the overlapping of commands, military forces and specialised services. These manifestations often led to conflicts of influence and power between generals, between military authorities and between members of the MPR. In this climate of permanent suspicion and conflict, a pattern of patrons and clients soon revealed itself in the army. According to this pattern, each promoted general had an entourage of members of his own ethnic group or tribe, to whom he assigned ranks and other privileges without regard to their qualifications in relation to the other members of the division, battalion or other unit.


DEFENCE EXPENDITURE: A TABOO

In the interests of ‘defence secrecy’, the Congolese defence budget was previously not made public. Defence expenditures were also funded from different sources, including the President’s secret allocations and funds provided by public companies. (In addition, some non-defence private and state expenditures were charged to the defence transport, health facilities and housing budget.) Contributions by foreign countries in supplies and training for the Zairian—and later the Congolese—armies were also significant, with the result that the 1.1 % to 5.7 % of Congolese gross national product (GNP) allocated annually for the country’s defence was by no means a reliable figure for the resources actually earmarked for defence. During the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDL) invasion in January 1997, President Mobutu allocated US$150 million “for the Army’s requirements and its modernisation”. Much of this money was used to pay Serbian, French, Italian and Chileanmercenaries.Later, during the 1998–2000 war, the governor of the National Bank complained publicly that expenditure on defence had reached 80% of all state expenditure.


CIVIL–MILITARY RELATIONS: FROM ‘FORCES OF ORDER’ TO
‘FORCES OF DISORDER’

From colonial times, the Congolese defence forces have always been involved in domestic policing activities, even when they had no training for this type of work. The country’s separate police force was abolished in 1972 and replaced by a gendarmerie and, in 1982, by a civil guard, both of which were integrated into the defence forces. Although the police force was re-established in 1997, it was still regarded, even for its domestic role, as inferior to the defence forces, whose officers and men near retirement age often end their careers in the police force. The belief that the army was empowered to use force against any civilian was born during the colonial period and stayed with the Congolese people long after independence. Even today, the military forces are viewed with suspicion because they continue to be used to enforce politically motivated policies that are generally unpopular. Many people denigrate some soldiers as ‘owls’; a cultural reference associated with witchcraft.

In the days of the Force Publique, military personnel lived in barracks and operational areas that were generally out of bounds to civilians. As descendants of the Force Publique, the Forces Armées Congolaise (FAC), later the FAZ, as well as today’s armed forces of the DRC have retained this aura of not being part of the rest of the population. In the same way as the colonial forces, the FAC was regarded as a selfcentred and heartless body of men trained to fight and kill. It was an instrument of repression and, because of this, most Congolese were convinced that there was nothing to be gained from associating with its members. If anything, the army forces were to be avoided at all costs. The military was seen as the enemy of the ordinary people; and this hostility was worsened by the actions of the national intelligence network, which stamped out any dissent.


THE IMPACT OF CONDITIONS OF SERVICE

Low and irregular pay was the primary cause for the army’s criminal behaviour. Only the highest-ranking officers and the presidential units received sufficient pay to allow them to maintain a basic level of subsistence. Most officers and other ranks received wages that were insufficient to feed and clothe their families, and they often went for months without being paid. As a result, members of the defence forces often exploited or even stole from the local community in order first of all to make ends meet, and then to enrich themselves—which was a sure formula for the breakdown of trust between the military and the civilian population. As one example, paratroopers who had not been paid went on the rampage in Kinshasa in September 1991, and their action was followed by widespread looting throughout the country. With some units led by Congolese Army Gen Mahele, France and Belgium sent in troops to restore order and to protect foreign citizens. Another wave of military-led pillaging and looting occurred in early 1993 following the introduction of a new Z5 million banknote that many merchants had refused to accept from the military personnel who had been paid with it.


ARMED CONFLICTS DURING PRESIDENT MOBUTU’S REGIME, AND ANGOLA’S REVENGE

The rundown and disorganised state of the army gave the Congolese no confidence in either of its twin roles, which were to defend the Congolese territory and to secure a military victory over a potential enemy. The army’s structural and operational insufficiencies became apparent on 8 March 1977, when armed elements of the National Front for the Liberation of Congo (FNLC) launched an attack from Angola on the mineral-rich Zairian province of Shaba (Katanga). It was only through the intervention of the Western community that the army and the regime it was supposed to protect were saved. In this case, the rationale for the Western mobilisation was the Cold War that had divided the world into two opposing blocs. A year later, in 1978, there was a similar scenario when the ‘Second Shaba War’ was fought successfully, only because of military assistance provided by the West, Morocco and Israel.


KABILA’S AFDL FORCES

At the end of 1996, Laurent Kabila launched a flash liberation war from the Kivu region that ended with the capture of Kinshasa on 17 May 1997. The attacking force totalled some 40,000 AFDL troops including contingents of Congolese, Rwandans, Erytreans, Somalis, Ugandans, Tanzanians, Kenyans and Ethiopians. The aim of this force was to liberate both the Congo and all African countries under dictatorships. In the south, the AFDL received strong military support from Angola. No holds were barred to serve Kabila’s objective of overturning the Mobutu regime, and child soldiers were not only recruited into the AFDL forces but also led many of their most dangerous operations. Gen James Kabarehe—a Rwandan officer, now his country’s chief of staff— was appointed the first commander of the FAC. Kabila’s AFDL forces rounded up some 40,000 members of the previous regime’s FAZ force and confined them to a concentration camp at the Kitona training base 500 km south-west of Kinshasa. No fewer than one in ten of these FAZ members died of starvation and lack of medical care. In their frustration, generals of the former FAZ said of the AFDL army:

Today, even more than yesterday, our country looks like a giant castle located in a forest. In the castle enormous wealth is stored, but the castle has no security system, no fence, no rampart and no guards, and the naive owner relies on the goodwill of thieves.


INTER-CONGOLESE DIALOGUE: THE HARDEST MILITARY NEGOTIATION

The various armed factions in Congo negotiated the Lusaka Accord in July 1999. This Accord ended the war and mapped out a new institutional framework for the country and for new DRC defence forces. From then until 2002, Congolese leaders met on several occasions in different cities in Africa to debate the implementation of the Lusaka Accord. While political issues were ultimately agreed at Sun City in South Africa, culminating in the Pretoria Inter-Congolese Dialogue, military issues required longer negotiation. The main military obstacles were the different viewpoints put forward by government and rebel representatives relating to the formation of a single defence force. The conflicting concepts presented were whether there should be ‘integration’ or ‘restructuring’. The first would entail the ‘fusion’ or ‘absorption’ of rebel forces into the government army, while the second would require the government army and other forces to negotiate the shape of a single force made up of all their various components.

Congolese civil society participated in these negotiations and played a key role both in drafting the basis of a common understanding for the shape of an entirely new defence force, and in backing the combined South African–African Union–UN mediation team.The Inter-Congolese Dialogue led to the creation of a new command structure of the army. According to Lt Gen Motau, the South African defence mediator at the dialogue: “All the armed factions are represented in such a way that no single faction can control a part of the command chain and so use its position to harm other factions.”The sharing of positions in this command structure was another tough issue, with the government wanting to retain the key posts of chief of staff and chief of the ground forces, as well as the command of the crucial military regions of North Kivu and South Kivu. The rebels objected, reminding the government representatives that: “No party won the war.” Ultimately, the posts of chief of staff and chief of the air force were allocated to the government, while RCD (Goma) was allocated chief of the ground forces, and the MLC chief of the navy. The regional military commands were shared fairly between all the forces (government, the three RCD factions, the MLC and Maï-Maï).



CONCLUSION

The first step in the development of the country’s defence and national security system is the formation of what is called the ‘New Congolese Restructured and Integrated Army’. The process should then continue until this body develops into a national institution that is both republican and apolitical. Wrong directions would include:

• papering over the present cracks, either by a simple unification of the military commands, or by the redeployment of present units so that they are blended in ways that would represent only adjustments; and

• fusing the various armies and militias. This would merely disguise the certainty of an eruption sooner or later that would bring about a new and possibly even more disastrous war, and whose outcome would be a victory for one faction or another that would probably lead to a new military dictatorship. Instead, what we have to achieve is the creation of an entirely new army with an ideology, structure and organisation unlike anything that has previously existed in the DRC.


Further Reading : Evolutions and Revolutions: A Contemporary History of Militaries in Southern Africa