Ragtag Zaire Rebels’ Unlikely Goal: the Capital

To hear rebel chieftain Andre Ngandu Kissasse tell it, the civil war boiling in eastern Zaire is not about ethnic Hutus or Tutsis or about regional secession or even about more than 1 million fleeing refugees.

“Our objective is to liberate our country,” Kissasse, a rebel military commander, explained here Tuesday in a dingy villa turned rebel headquarters. “We want to liberate Kinshasa.”

Kinshasa, Zaire’s capital, is about 1,200 miles to the west through dense rain forests with few roads. And the guerrilla force holding this jittery border city appeared to consist mostly of roving bands of armed men, some clearly drunk, and child-soldiers, some barely taller than their assault rifles.

The rebels have set up a base in a beer warehouse, and their control of Goma appeared tenuous at best. Gunshots occasionally echoed in the steamy afternoon heat as four guerrillas looted cases of whiskey and beer from the already-pillaged Nyeri Hotel.

But the ragtag rebel force, now claiming to be part of a four-party alliance under the newly named National Council of Democratic Resistance, has routed the Zairian army from all major towns along Zaire’s border with Rwanda and Burundi.

More than 1 million Rwandan refugees fled during the rebel offensive. Most of them are believed to have moved deeper into Zaire, along with the Zairian army and the extremist Hutu leaders who directed the ethnic genocide against Rwanda’s Tutsis in 1994. Defeat in that conflict sent hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees into Zaire, where they lived until current fighting emptied about 40 refugee camps.

Kissasse said he would welcome the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies, which have withdrawn from the war zone, to enter Goma and reach the refugees. “We will allow refugees to return to their original camps,” he said.

But Ray Wilkinson, spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said entering Goma now would imply de facto recognition of the rebels, a potential problem for international agencies. In addition, aid groups now are anxious to keep the camps closed and entice the refugees to return home to Rwanda.

“The last thing we want to do is reestablish camps,” Wilkinson said. “There’s a consensus that repatriation is the answer.”

The issue is moot for now because roads leading from Goma to the former camps are still insecure. Despite a rebel-declared cease-fire, unidentified gunmen--said by local residents to be Hutu militiamen--manned roadblocks north of the city Tuesday and fired a machine gun at cars. Three bodies lay nearby.

Kissasse, 51, answered in French to questions in English, except when he spoke in German. He wore aviator glasses and had a bulletproof vest under camouflage fatigues. He said he spent several years in exile in Europe after joining an unsuccessful rebellion during the 1960s against Zaire’s longtime strongman, President Mobutu Sese Seko.

Mobutu’s aides in Kinshasa said Tuesday that the ailing ruler was expected to return to Zaire this week from Switzerland, where he has been undergoing treatment for cancer since August. Reuters news service reported that Mobutu left Switzerland on Tuesday and was driven to France.

Many of Goma’s shops have been looted, and the main street, Mobutu Avenue, was littered with Julio Iglesias records, computer discs and endless reams of paper. A guerrilla guard slept outside the abandoned headquarters of the U.N. refugee agency. Inside, doors were broken or shot open, and desks and drawers ransacked.

Several local residents openly supported the rebellion against what they described as a despotic national government, venal local officials and an army that preys on, rather than protects, citizens.

“People will be happy if there is new currency, new authorities, a new country,” said Balthazar Shamba, a 33-year-old technician. And Jacques Mapendano, 25, denied that the rebellion might mean the end of Zaire. “The end?” he asked. “We think it’s the rebirth.”