A Duty for Fellow Africans

Congo, the vast country of great natural wealth that covers the heart of Africa, is under siege, and President Laurent Kabila, who drove the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko from power last year, is getting a taste of the medicine his troops once dished out.

The reason is clear. Kabila is nearly as rapacious a leader as Mobutu had been, and now old enemies and discarded comrades have turned on him. Moving out of Rwanda and possibly Uganda, armed units are following the westward trail that Kabila himself blazed to Kinshasa, the capital.

Presidential spokesmen threatened retaliation against Rwanda, but the momentum of battle in the east seemed to be running against Kabila. In Kinshasa, Americans and other foreigners were leaving by boat and plane.

For the rest of Africa, the issue is not so much who rules in Kinshasa. It is that instability in Congo, if not checked, seems certain to set off political brush fires and fighting all along its borders, which touch 10 other African nations.

Western capitals showed no interest in getting into an African fight in 1994 when Rwanda was engulfed in ethnic terror or when Kabila’s forces ran the now dead Mobutu out of the country. The West is no more likely to enter this fray, although some brave humanitarian agencies will probably deploy. It’s the Organization of African Unity, representing the nations facing the most military and economic risk, that should waste not an hour in seeking political solutions.