32. Agence France Presse dispatch, New York, October 31, 1996.
33. The lake attack had an interesting dimension: the rubber dinghies used by the Rwandese army belonged to the American NGO International Rescue Committee and were apparently loaned and not commandeered. Interviews with eyewitnesses, Paris, March 1997, and Kampala, December 2000. This was the first visible sign of any U.S. involvement in the Rwandese invasion plan.
34. Radio Rwanda, in BBC/SWB, November 3, 1996.
35. IRIN Bulletin, November 5, 1996.
36. It was usually possible to know who had done the killing because the FAZ seemed mostly to kill with bayonets, machetes, or clubs, whereas the attackers shot their victims. The difference was due to the greater availability of ammunition on the assailants’ side. Interview with an eyewitness, Paris, December 1996.
37. Both headlines appeared side by side in the November 6, 1996, issue. Mobutu had undergone surgery for prostate cancer in Switzerland in August, leaving the Kinshasa political elite to its own devices and petty conspiracies throughout the whole crisis.
38. Some of the South Kivu refugees arrived after walking up the western shore of the lake.
39. Nicholas Burns, U.S. State Department spokesman, Reuters dispatch, Washington, DC, November 6, 1996.
40. In early November 1996 I received a telephone call from the U.S. State Department asking “Who is this Kabila anyway?” I suggested that since there were strong probabilities that the ongoing invasion had received a fair amount of U.S. blessing I was sure that the State Department had full access to Kabila’s CIA file, where his kidnapping of three U.S. citizens in 1975 must have been duly recorded at the time. There was a gasp of horror, followed by a pained silence, and then a request to please elaborate since “the Agency is not always very generous with its documentation.” Similarly, Ambassador Simpson in Kinshasa kept bombarding the State Department with telegrams about a “Rwandese invasion,” which Ambassador Gribben in Kigali flatly denied had ever happened.
41. John Pomfret, “Rwandans Led Revolt in Congo,” Washington Post, July 9, 1997.
42. There were men of Kisase Ngandu’s and of Masasu Nindaga’s groups. Kisase’s fighters were multiethnic; Masasu’s were mostly Banyamulenge with some Bashi.
43. It is extremely likely that they had been recruited through what a former U.S. intelligence officer called “the second-echelon little black book,” managed by a Los Angeles–based mercenary company run by retired U.S. top brass who have kept good Pentagon contacts. Interview, Washington, DC, October 1999. On government-sanctioned operations such as the Croatian offensive in the Krajina, they use what is known as “first-echelon” people (i.e., former U.S. army personnel with honorable discharges). For the “black operations” (i.e., covert operations about which Congress is kept in the dark) they use second-echelon men who are also former GIs but with shady records of drug offenses, theft, or sexual offenses. These men are contacted indirectly, through “friendly” private companies, and can include foreigners. Colette Braeckman, in L’enjeu congolais (Paris: Fayard, 1999), 43, mentions that this company recruited a number of Liberian Krahns for the Congo mission. As late as October 2007 U.S. government officials were still trying to convince me that the whole operation had never existed.
44. Their last operation during the Kivu campaign was the taking of Kamituga on December 16. There was no fighting, since the FDD, which had taken four Belgian SOMINKI employees as hostages, withdrew after a gentleman flew in from Brussels and paid them a $20,000 ransom. The American mercenaries, who were under the orders of a Ugandan officer, withdrew on the 18th and were taken back to Goma. They later moved west and fought at Kindu and Shabunda. Interview with one of their former Congolese guides, Paris, November 1999.
45. Time, November 8, 1996.
46. For a detailed treatment of the vagaries of the international community over the MNF question, see P. Dupont, “La communauté internationale face à l’intervention humanitaire lors de la rébellion (octobre–novembre 1996),” in S. Marysse and F. Reyntjens, eds., L’Afrique des Grands Lacs: Annuaire 1996–1997 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997), 205–220.
47. See “Struggling for the Moral High Ground” in chapter 10.
48. His worry was that the humanitarians had been forced to leave Goma on November 2 and that the camp supply system had seized up. But his remark was also politically motivated; the UN secretary-general knew that he could not count on American support for his reelection and he was therefore putting his hopes on a voting bloc made up of France, the African Francophone countries, and the Arab states.
49. Tony Barber, “The West Delays Sending Peace Force to Zaire,” Independent, November 8, 1996.
50. Afsane Bassir Pour, “Washington freine toujours l’envoi d’une force multinationale au Zaïre,” Le Monde, November 10–11, 1996.
51. Le Monde, November 13, 1996.
52. Colette Braeckman, “Le Kivu s’interroge sur ses nouveaux maîtres,” Le Soir, November 6, 1996.
53. International Herald Tribune, November 14, 1996. Clinton mentioned one thousand men.
54. Le Monde, November 15, 1996.
55. They were stopped by the Ugandan army under Cdr. Peter Kerim at the Karambi trading center, forty kilometers west of Kasese. See New Vision, daily from November 14 to 20, 1996; G. Prunier, “Rebel Movements and Proxy Warfare: Uganda, Sudan and the Congo (1986–1999),” African Affairs 103, no. 412 (2004): 359–383.
56. Interview with a high-ranking Uganda government member, Kampala, November 1997.
57. Crusader, November 21, 1996.
58. New Vision, November 22, 1996. For an analysis of the complexities of ADF, see Prunier, “Rebel Movements and Proxy Warfare.”
59. These figures have been suspected of being too high. But according to an internal memo of the Special Rwanda-Burundi Unit in Geneva dated February 14, 1996, the overcounting due to the refugees trying to get more supplies by overestimating their numbers (and to the NGOS doing the same) could not possibly be put at more than 10 percent and was probably less. This estimate is corroborated by two experienced Médecins Sans Frontières doctors who were on the spot, J. H. Bradol and A. Guibert, “Le temps des assassins et l’espace humanitaire: Rwanda/Kivu 1994–1997,” Hérodote, no. 86/87, 4th trimester (1997): 137. So we could rely on a bracket of 990,000 to 1,100,000 for the Rwandese and of 135,000 to 150,000 for the Burundians, for a grand total of 1,125,000 to 1,250,000 people.
60. UNHCR, The State of the World’s Refugees (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 23.
61. IRIN Bulletin, no. 106 (February 21, 1997). For a skeptical evaluation of the “self-repatriation” concept, see Johan Pottier, “The ‘Self’ in Self-Repatriation: Closing Down Mugunga Camp, Eastern Zaire,” in R. Black and K. Khoser, eds., The End of the Refugee Cycle? Refugee Repatriation and Reconstruction (Oxford: Berghahn, 1999): 142–170.
62. UNHCR, The State of the World’s Refugees, 23.
63. IRIN Bulletin, no. 25 (November 15, 1996).
64. Libération, November 16–17, 1996.
65. Reuters dispatch, Kinshasa, November 18, 1996.
66. For the figures between Wednesday, November 20, and Sunday, November 24, I have systematically taken the high estimate to make things clearer because during these days the flow fluctuated between 2,000 and 5,000 daily. IRIN Bulletin, no. 29 (November 18, 1996, for figures up to that date, then eyewitness reports after the 18th.
67. Nevertheless by November 20 UNHCR Rwanda already had 575,813 registered returnees in the country. What happened was that many people inside Rwanda managed to get on the list, which was useful both for them because of the proffered aid and for the government because it did not want large numbers of refugees left in Zaire to be used as a pretext for MNF creation. As UN Rwanda ambassador Gidéon Kayinamura asked innocently, “Now that the refugees are flowing by the thousands into Rwanda, would a multinational force still be necessary?” A few days later the Rwandese government was asking for $739 million in emergen
cy aid for the returnees. Reuters dispatch, Kigali, November 23, 1996.
68. On November 21, the day Mazimpaka made his statement, UNHCR counted 241 returnees, most of them Rwandese Tutsi, and 1,959 refugees from South Kivu with their families, Interview with UNHCR officer, Geneva, March 2000. The final Cyangugu returnee count at the end of November stood at 5,229.
69. Financial Times, November 16–17, 1996.
70. Le Monde, November 19, 1996.
71. Charles Correy, USIA dispatch, New York, November 22, 1996.
72. FRD communiqué 22/96, November 20, 1996. The FRD (Forces de Résistance Démocratiques) was the moderate Rwandese opposition group created in exile by former interior minister Seth Sendashonga. It was based in Nairobi.
73. IRIN Bulletin, no. 33 (November 20, 1996).
74. On November 13 the U.S. Air Force brought two Lockeed P-3C Orion patrol planes to Entebbe with a C-141 transport for the logistics. But they were doing their job only too well; after a week in operation the P-3C flights were suspended “due to a possible shooting from the ground.” Reuters dispatch, Washington, DC, November 20, 1996. For a detailed discussion of the media-humanitarian battle around the photographic operations, refer to Nick Gowing, Dispatches from Disaster Zones, ECHO paper, May 1998.
75. Interview with Kisase Ngandu’s former army cameraman, Kampala, January 2000.
76. Reuters dispatch, Goma, November 17, 1996.
77. IRIN Bulletin, no. 26 (November 26, 1996).
78. See “Massacres au Zaïre: Le témoignage qui réveille les Occidentaux,” Libération, March 10, 1997.
79. The Church later transferred him to another parish in Mali.
80. Letter from Father Balas to the author, dated October 28, 1998.
81. Lynne Duke, “Africans Use Training in Unexpected Ways,” Washington Post, July 14, 1998. The author added, “Rwanda . . . is not the prototypical weak client state seeking military help from a powerful patron. Its relationship with Washington is built on a complex mix of history, personal relationships, shared geopolitical objectives and, not least some would say, guilt.” At the top of the “personal relationship” column figured Ambassador Gribben himself. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya (1968–1970), he had been Rwanda desk officer at the State Department (1977–1979), U.S. Embassy number 2 in Kigali (1979–1981), and then number 2 at the Kampala Embassy (1989–1991) in the early days of the RPF attack. His second in command, Peter Whaley, evidently admired the RPF, as did his military attaché, Lt. Col. Richard Orth. Together they worked toward implementing strategic goals that seem to have emanated perhaps more clearly from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) of the Pentagon than from the State Department.
82. There was also a specific army dimension to it, based on admiration and almost envy. Still shaken by their Vietnam defeat and their poor showing in Somalia, U.S. army officers loved Kagame and the RPA who, as one American colonel told me, “really knew how to kick ass.” In the frustrated macho environment of the 1990s U.S. army this was an important factor in bending the rules to help the RPA.
83. All these facilities were closed after Kabila’s victory. In March 1997 when New Vision’s chief editor William Pike tried to publish a story about the Fort Portal facility, the U.S. Embassy intervened with Museveni to stop him, something the Ugandan president almost never did, as Pike had always been left quite free to operate. Personal communication.
84. Author’s direct personal observations and several interviews with journalists, both foreign and local, Kigali and Kampala, 1995 and 1996.
85. Interviews with Directorate-General for External Security officers, Paris, May 1997, and with UPDF officers, Kampala, November 1997.
86. Peter Whaley was the real field operator of the U.S.-AFDL cooperation, to the point that foreign Kigali residents at the time nicknamed the conflict “Whaley’s war.” He had thirty to forty meetings with Kabila between November 1996 and April 1997. When he was awarded the State Department’s Outstanding Reporter of the Year Medal in September 1997, an official from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office wryly remarked to me off the record, “I know diplomats are supposed to lie, but it is usually for the benefit of their country, not of the country they have been posted to.”
87. RTBF, in BBC/SWB, November 27, 1996.
88. Reuters dispatch, Kampala, December 4, 1996.
89. Crawford Young and Thomas Turner, The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 266.
90. In fact it had only 6,000 men, out of which a mere 3,000 were operational. Erik Kennes, “La guerre au Congo,” in F. Reyntjens and S. Marysse, eds., L’Afrique des Grands Lacs: Annuaire 1997–1998 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998), 247.
91. All the more so since the previous two chiefs of staff, Generals Eluki Monga Aundu and Marc Mahele Lieko Bokungu, were cousins belonging to the Budja tribe. Although also from Equateur they were rivals of the Ngbandi.
92. It was the heir of the old FAS and FIS, the “special units” under the command of Mobutu’s security adviser Honoré N’Gbanda Nzambo Ko Atumba, whose sweet disposition had earned him the nickname “Terminator.” FIS was responsible for the Lubumbashi campus massacre in 1990, and they both were disbanded in 1991 at the express request of the CNS. Mobutu immediately recreated them as SNIP.
93. They were shamelessly budgeted by their superiors as 140,000 men. Kennes, 247.
94. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 1996/1997 (London: IISS, 1996), 268.
95. Honoré N’Gbanda Nzambo Ko Atumba, Ainsi sonne le glas: Les derniers jours du maréchal Mobutu (Paris: Editions Gideppe, 1998), 49.
96. See Kisukula Abeli Meitho, La désintégration de l’armée congolaise de Mobutu à Kabila (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), chapter 2.
97. Honoré N’Gbanda Nzambo Ko Atumba, Ainsi sonne le glas, 54.
98. The result was constant harassment of Tutsi or Tutsi-looking people in the large cities. Dozens had been killed since the beginning of the war. Those who lived in Kinshasa had taken refuge across the river in Brazzaville, and those of Lubumbashi had fled to Zambia.
99. Paradoxically, not for his corruption or ineptitude but because he complained of not receiving enough help to “fight off the invaders.”
100. This polemical concept was developed during the 1990s by the French NGO Survie through the work of its director, François-Xavier Verschave, who wrote a book under that title (Paris: stock, 1998). It refers to the incestuous political, military, and economic confusion of interests between Paris and its various client states in sub-Saharan Africa (see chapter 10).
101. See chapter 4, note 31.
102. It did business selling satellite telephones to the FAZ through a Mobutu crony. It also sold Thomson radar equipment to Serbia. Connecting its two fields of operation, it offered Wibaux “one hundred Serb commandos who will invade Kigali in support of the FAZ and ex-FAR.” La Lettre du Continent, May 8, 1997. The Serbs were, in the words of an experienced French mercenary, “not fighters, just killers of little old grandmothers.” Wibaux, who was in his seventies, acted as a proxy for Jacques Foccart, then in his eighties and ailing. They bought that ridiculous scheme and put Colonel Tavernier, a mercenary veteran of the 1960s Congo civil war, in command of the whole show.
103. Agir Ici-Survie, France Zaïre Congo (1960–1997): Échec aux mercenaires (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997), 124–145.
104. In March 1997 an MB-326 pilot in a show-off display of aerobatics even managed to crash directly onto a Mi-24 Serb pilot who was on the ground having a beer. Both men were killed. Le Monde, May 10, 1997.
105. In Kisangani they tortured to death a number of people, including two Protestant clerics they falsely accused of being AFDL agents. Interview with Alphonse Maindo, Paris, April 2000.
106. Interview with a Belgian former resident of Kisangani, Brussels, February 1999.
107. La Lettre du Continent, January 23, 1997.
108. Almost two thousand UNITA fight
ers were lost that way during November 1996. La Lettre du Continent, March 20, 1997.
109. Kennes, “La guerre au Congo,” 240.
110. This is what Mobutu himself seems to have thought. In early 1997 the director of a large mining and mercenaries company offered Mobutu an army to fight the AFDL, with some gold mining concessions in payment. Mobutu refused, saying, “The head of this Kabila is not even worth one gold mine. He is perfectly harmless.” The story is told by eyewitness Pierre Janssen (Mobutu’s Belgian son-in-law) in his book A la cour de Mobutu (Paris: Michel Lafont, 1997), 227–229.
111. They were called kadogo (“the little ones” in Swahili) because they were usually between eight and fifteen years old. They were volunteers, and they came from all the Kivu ethnic groups, with a slight majority of Bukavu area tribes (Bashi, Babembe, Barega, Bafulero). Since the feud had been passed on to the younger generation there was quite a bit of tension between them and their old 1965 enemies, the Banyamulenge. This tension was to be at the heart of all the further problems in the eastern Congo (see chapters 6 and 7).
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