Emergence of African professional armies

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): It's three months since rebels seeking to overthrow the 31-year rule of President Mobutu Sese Seko seized the whole eastern border of Zaire. Everybody wants to see Mobutu gone except those who live on his bribes and favors, but everybody fears what might happen in Africa's biggest French- speaking country after he goes.

It's one month since Mobutu came home from a lengthy absence in southern France recovering from prostate surgery. He promptly appointed Zaire's closest approach to a professional military commander, Gen. Mahale Leiko Bokungo, to reconquer the east.

Given the venal incompetence of Mobutu's regime and the total uselessness of its army (whose rarely paid, ill-trained troops paused only to loot during their panicky retreat from the east), everybody knew the next item on the agenda: white mercenaries.

Sure enough, just as Mobutu was heading back to one of his European palaces for a well-earned rest in early January, the first reports surfaced of a "white legion" taking shape in the north-east Zairean city of Kisangani. And this is not pot-bellied has-beens like old Bob Denard, trying to take over the Comoro Islands for the umpteenth time with a script written by the ghost of Graham Greene.

What has been assembling in Kisangani is four or five hundred genuine hard men -- ex-French Foreign Legion, ex-British SAS, Belgians and South Africans who have had steady work in Africa for years -- plus some armor and artillery, transport helicopters, and even three ex-Soviet Mi-24 helicopter gunships.

Even Mobutu's stolen billions cannot buy this caliber of help unless some friendly government gives him the nod. The French deny it, but in fact they have always backed Mobutu, despite the fact that he has comprehensively ruined his country. Why? Because he always does what they want -- and, above all, he speaks French.

Last weekend, the 'white legion' started moving east to chase the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo- Zaire (AFDL) from their forward positions at Bunia and Walikale. The force's final objective is to take back the big eastern cities of Goma, Bukavu and Uvira on the Great Lakes frontier with Rwanda and Burundi, and most observers thought it would take about two weeks.

It is deeply embarrassing. A full generation after most African countries got their independence, it is still quite normal for a bunch of white hired guns working for some African thug to fly in, kill his opponents, and impose his will on a whole country.

So here we go again -- except that the first reports out of eastern Zaire suggest that this time the "white legion" is not doing so well. Despite all the high-tech mayhem the mercenaries can dispense, the AFDL troops are holding around Bunia and Walikale.

Nobody who knows the record of African troops in the two world wars -- or, for that matter, of warrior tribes like the Zulus -- can doubt the courage or military prowess of well-led, professional African soldiers. The problem is that for the past few decades, there have been very few of that kind of African soldiers around.

What we are now beginning to see, in the very region that the worst of Africa's recent tragedies, is the emergence of disciplined, professional African armies. They are semi-guerrilla forces with few heavy weapons, and their uniforms leave much to be desired, but they are commanded by people who combine military skills with political integrity, and they are getting the job done.

The first of these armies to win was the one trained and led by Uganda's current president, Yoweri Museveni (who owes his surname to the fact that his father served in the Seventh Battalion of the King's African Rifles). Museveni is much more than a professional soldier, but without those military skills he could not have put an end to Uganda's two decades of agony.

After 30 years of war, both Eritrea and Ethiopia are at peace today because other disciplined guerrilla armies, led by people who understood both military tactics and political principle, finally drove the thugs and bandits from power. And they never, ever asked for help from foreigners, whether mercenaries or regular troops.

The most recent of these new, clean, competent African armies to begin righting wrongs was the Rwanda Patriotic Front, the mostly Tutsi force that marched in and stopped the anti-Tutsi genocide in Rwanda two years ago. The great shock for outsiders was that it did not carry out a counter-genocide in retaliation. But then it was trained in Uganda, and its commander, Paul Kagame, is a close colleague of Yoweri Museveni.

Now we have two more instances. Both Eritrea and Ethiopia are tacitly backing the Sudanese People's Liberation Army offensive that seeks to free Sudan from the rule of a brutally oppressive and sectarian government. (Khartoum is ruled by Moslem fundamentalists, although at least a third of Sudan's people are non-Moslems.) And both Uganda and Rwanda are tacitly backing the AFDL's attempt to drive Mobutu from power in Zaire.

The Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo- Zaire falls into the same category. It is not a tribal uprising. The bulk of its early recruits in eastern Zaire last year were Tutsis, but its leader, Laurent Kabila, is from the southern province of Shaba (formerly Katanga), and he has been struggling against Mobutu's rule since 1965.

Kabila's military commander, Andre Kissasse Ngandu, killed last week in an ambush, was not Tutsi either. Indeed, he came from Kasai province, which now shelters about a million refugees who went to Shaba long ago seeking work, only to be driven out by ethnic cleansing three years ago.

The AFDL is not Kasaian, or Shaban, or Tutsi, and it is not about breaking up Zaire. It is about saving it -- and it may have the military ability to do it. The "white legion" is stalled, and there is little else except distance between the AFDL and Kinshasa.

And beyond Zaire, what? Is Africa finally "bottoming out"? Four solid examples and two pending do not yet add up to an irrefutable trend. But yes, I think it is.