War lets Zimbabwe enjoy Congo's riches

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.