Congo Region on Edge of Chaos as Revolt Against Kabila Grows

Facing possibly the most serious threat to Congolese President Laurent Kabila’s 15-month regime, loyalist troops fought Tuesday to crush a rebellion of renegade soldiers in key cities in their country’s east, while in the west the capital braced for gun battles and a nighttime curfew.

Military officers primarily belonging to eastern Congo’s Banyamulenge Tutsi ethnic group have vowed to oust Kabila in an uprising similar to the one that brought the onetime rebel leader to power in May 1997. Meanwhile, Rwandan mercenaries, who helped propel Kabila to the presidency, have fled their army base in Kinshasa and were reportedly hiding Tuesday in a forest on the outskirts of the capital.

Analysts warned that Congo’s latest upheaval, primarily concentrated in the country’s eastern Kivu region--a 435-mile stretch bordering Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda--not only threatens the nation’s geographical integrity but could escalate into an even more serious cross-border conflict between former allies.

“The significance is that this is a coming to head of the discontent with Kabila among his regional supporters,” said Constance Freeman, director of African studies at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This has been under the surface for a long time. . . . The conflict is [also] a question of the sanctity of borders.”

The strife in Congo is, in addition, the latest manifestation of ongoing regional unrest that has affected much of eastern Africa and the area of the continent’s Great Lakes. Burundi and Rwanda continue to combat simmering bush wars; Eritrea and Ethiopia are still in the midst of a protracted border skirmish; and gun-toting warlords have yet to agree on a workable peace plan in Somalia.

The upheaval has underscored the gaping hole in domestic as well as regional support for the Congolese regime, which has seemed increasingly isolated.

Kabila’s government has blamed the current revolt on Banyamulenge soldiers backed by Rwandan troops, whom Kabila ordered to leave the country last week.

In 1996, these same forces helped Kabila launch his own bush war, which led to the May 1997 ouster of veteran dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, ruler of what was then known as Zaire.

Though Rwanda has denied any involvement in Congo’s current crisis, some local observers believe that the Tutsis expected to get a better reward for their support of Kabila and that, because of their disillusionment, they have fueled the upheaval.

Tutsis have never been popular among Congo’s scores of other ethnic groups. It was Mobutu’s attempt in late 1996 to deny them Congolese citizenship--despite the fact that their families had lived in eastern Congo for centuries--that sparked the revolt against the dictator’s regime.

“Kabila had been under pressure to get the Tutsis and the Rwandans out,” Freeman said.

Reports from Kinshasa on Tuesday said that the Banyamulenge Tutsis had withdrawn their support for Kabila in the eastern towns of Goma and Bukavu and in Kindu to the west. Rwanda, meanwhile, had closed its border with Congo to normal traffic.

With Kabila’s onetime allies no longer willing to back him, the former rebel’s lack of any real support base has been laid bare.

“Kabila was always going to be a front man for the [eastern Congo] Kivu Tutsi people and, therefore, had no real support across the rest of [Congo],” said Richard Cornwell of the Institute for Security Studies in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Michael Schatzberg, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin and the author of three books on the former Zaire, said: “He really has not won very many points with the Congolese people. . . . The revival of instability was going to happen sooner rather than later.”

After Kabila’s assumption of power, ordinary citizens quickly became disheartened with his rejection of democratic policies and blatant disregard for human and civil rights. He has also been widely accused of political nepotism and corruption. Though the fledgling regime has taken some faltering steps to revive the country’s tattered economy, little prosperity has been felt at the grass-roots level, observers say.

Kabila has also drawn the wrath of the international community with his reluctance to help a U.N. investigation into the alleged massacre of Rwandan Hutu refugees by members of his rebel force during his drive to power.

Meanwhile, officials in Kinshasa have downplayed the seriousness of the current crisis while promising to take military action against the rebels. But on Tuesday, some foreign observers were less optimistic that the situation would be dampened any time soon.

Fighting was reported Tuesday in the eastern town of Kisangani, and foreign aid workers confirmed that the situation in Goma was particularly volatile. Meanwhile, in Kinshasa--where a nighttime curfew had been imposed--troops loyal to Kabila were said to be hunting Rwandan mercenaries, whom they had been ordered to kill.

In addition, government and airline officials told Reuters news agency that rebels had seized a Congo Airlines cargo plane in Goma and flown it to the garrison town of Kitona in the west. Information Minister Didier Mumenge said 400 Rwandan soldiers were on board.

The United States on Tuesday ordered all nonessential U.S. Embassy workers to leave Congo, Reuters reported.

One Kinshasa-based foreign aid worker said fear was widespread among Banyamulenge civilians, many of whom were being harassed and intimidated by other Congolese making use of the opportunity to vent age-old animosities.

“This is much more than a local upset,” said Freeman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “ . . . I think we’re in for a period of real disruption.”