War lets Zimbabwe enjoy Congo's riches

By Isabelle Ligner

HARARE (AFP): Zimbabwe says its 11,000 troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are there to protect the nation's sovereignty, but Harare's presence has also helped it exploit DRC's vast natural resources, experts said Saturday.

John Makumbe, head of a Zimbabwean corruption watchdog group, said Harare is involved in "plundering" DRC's natural riches. Other countries involved in DRC's tangled war are also tapping into Congo's wealth, but Zimbabwe's soldiers are "the most greedy," Makumbe said.

Rwanda and Uganda, who support rebel movements out to topple DRC President Laurent Kabile, are extracting the nation's natural wealth around Kisangani and Kasai, Makumbe said.

But Zimbabwe is piping the goods directly back from DRC. Since the war began two years ago, Zimbabwe has established air and rail links to the country, with the national carrier Air Zimbabwe now flying from Harare to Kinshasa and Lubumbashi.

Trains from the national railway bring copper ore once a week from DRC to Zimbabwe for refining.

"This looting has helped make corruption widespread within the ruling elite and the military," Makumbe said.

One diplomat here said that "some in Zimbabwe's military believe they've found Ali Baba's cave."

The former Congo has rich mineral deposits, with vast reserves of gold, diamonds and uranium.

But Zimbabwe's military involvement there is an expensive operation that many experts here blame for the country's foreign currency shortage.

With little public accounting of how much Zimbabwe is benefiting from Congolese resources, experts and lawmakers have begun to question whether it's worth propping up a government of dubious democratic credentials.

Zimbabwe has deployed 11,000 to 12,000 troops since August 1998 in DRC to support Kabila, who also has backing from Angolan and Namibian troops.

But many here argue that the military campaign -- involving one-third of the nation's armed forces -- is just an expensive adventure in a war that doesn't directly affect Zimbabwe.

The two countries do not share a common border.

"The government of Kabila is worth no single Zimbabwean fly or mosquito to die for," Job Sikhala, one of the newly elected opposition lawmakers, told parliament.

But even in the ranks of President Robert Mugabe's own ZANU-PF party, the troop deployment has come under fire.

"If at all we are getting free electricity ... or getting a share of the money from diamond sales or getting compensation for any single death in the war, then we need to be told in order for us to appreciate the worthiness of our military presence in that country," ZANU-PF deputy Victor Chitongo said last week.

Mugabe has never hidden his financial motives for the Congolese campaign.

In 1999, both nations' armies created joint enterprises to mine gold and diamonds in DRC, linking Zimbabwe's Osleg firm to DRC's Comiex.

In January, the two nations launched another joint operation dubbed Sengamines, to mine diamonds from the Senga Senga and Mbuji Mayi rivers, in the eastern Kasai region.

Zimbabwe is also involved in copper mining in the southeastern Katanga region.

And Zimbabwe has doubled its imports of electricity from DRC's Inga hydroelectric dam -- and convinced DRC to accept Zimbabwean dollars instead of foreign currency in payment.

That suits Harare well, because its foreign currency shortage has made it hard to pay electric bills to the other nations on which Zimbabwe relies for energy.