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Reports today say that the Angolan army has captured the rebel supply base, Kitonga in northwestern congo. The Zimbabwean foreign minister has stated that Zimbabwean troops have fended off rebel forces on the southern outskirts of Kinshasa, and the rebels claim to have captured Kisangani, a river port, and the third largest city in Zaire/Congo. CNN states that the rebels in western congo are trapped between the Zimbabweans in the east and the Angolans in the west.

Interpretation: In my view: the main desire of the Rwandan Tutsi dictatorship is to secure control of eastern congo to prevent it being used as a base by elements hostile to the Tutsis regime. All the Angolans are looking for is to secure western congo to ensure that it is not used as a rear staging area for UNITA. The latest events will bring Uganda and Rwanda even more firmly into the war.

Zaire/Congo is vast. Its landmass is two-thirds the size of the entire European Union (EU), and we are dealing with armies whose equipment and logistics are lousy. Neither side can win. If the Angolans march east, their supply-lines will be stretched over an enormous area in a country with virtually no transport infrastructure beyond the Congo river. And they are still fighting a full-scale civil war in Angola ! They would be stretched thin and be fighting the rebels, Ugandans and Rwandans close to their supply lines in Uganda and Rwanda. Likewise, the rebels, Ugandans and Rwandans. If they march west, the will suffer the same disadvantages.

The Zimbabwean army and economy is hardly equipped for a protracted campaign. At most, they can secure Kinshasa and its immediate hinterland.

All of this will not prevent the rebels from conducting a perpetual guerrilla war throughout the congo using light infantry.

What this means is that these events may presage the end of Zaire/Congo as a unified entity. Even if the lines are settled as I have outlined above, without further war; the Rwandans and Ugandans will control eastern congo with Kisangani as their "capital" through their congolese tutsi clients. The Angolans and Unita will be in western congo contesting control of that region, and Kabila's regime will be reduced to control of the immediate region surrounding Kinshasa, propped up by Zimbabwe. Secession will become a de facto reality, and Rwanda/Uganda and Kabila may contest control of the mineral rich "Katanga" region.

I suspect that a protracted involvement by Zimbabwe in propping up Kabila's regime, unless it secures immediate economic dividends for the ailing Zimbabwean economy, will prove such an economic drain that it unseats Mugabe.

Joel 25th August 1998

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