Great Lakes crisis
Aid, armaments, and interference that he is receiving his various pawns.
At the same time, Chirac, the French premier, has been expelling planeloads of Zairian workers to a dictatorship propped up by his government. Chirac is claiming that "Mobutu is the best man to represent his country and to find a political solution.
For a "political solution, " Mobutu is reorganizing his army with the objective of reconquering Kivu. Swiss TV has revealed that Charles Pasqua [the reactionary antiimmigrant French minister of the interior] met Mobutu in Geneva to reorganize the recruitment of mercenaries.
The French army is waiting for the opportunity to send its paratroopers to the Bukavu airport, the strategic heart of the Zairian rebel forces. In the Belgian press, you can read that French officers, French and other European mercenaries, whites from the apartheid-era South African army, and from UNITA in Angola are helping Mobutu rebuild a military force around his elite presidential guard, trying to rally the remains of his defeated army in Kisangani, Zaire.
The coming weeks may sound the death knell of the 30 years of military dictatorships in central Africa that have robbed the peoples there of the fruits of independence. If the UN scales down its intervention, it cannot be excluded that, even if it is diplomatically isolated, France will intervene in Zaire to preserve its threatened bailiwick.
We have to be ready to mobilize against intervention in Zaire, to support the Kivu rebellion, to demand the immediate withdrawal of French troops, to call for sending doctors, food, and medicine to Rwanda and not to the paratroopers, to demand immediate and unconditional aid to Rwanda so that it can handle the return of the refugees. * The author is a leading member of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire, French section of the Fourth International. Source: Socialist Action (USA)
Eric Toussaint
Over the last two years, much Western "humanitarian aid" supposedly destined for Rwandan refugees in Eastern Zaire has been used to buy arms for their butchers. The racist interhamwe militia and the remnants of the armed forces of the deposed Habyarimana regime used "aid" funds to prevent hundreds or thousands of retugees trom returning to Rwanda. The refugee camps in Easter Zaire became a virtual dictatorship. The imperialist governments were well aware of all this. But Northern arms-dealers couldn't resist the opportunity to cut deals with local warlords, before, attre, even during the genocide..
In 1990, Habyarimana accepted an International Monetary Fund "structural adjustment" plan. This, and related World Bank measures, hit Rwanda's small (mainly Hutu) coffee producers particularly hard. Younger men flocked into the armed forces (which grew 400% between 1990 and 1994) and the inerhamwe militias. Wages and weapons were paid for by money borrowed under the international financing agreement which had destroyed the coffee-growers' livelihood. The result was a meticulously-planned genocide, obliterating almost one million lives in three short months between April and July 1994. Today
The World Bank and IMF expect the new regime in Rwanda to honour the debt run up to finance the genocide. The governments and financial institutions which closed their eyes to the preparation and realisation of genocide now demand repayment of money borrowed to buy French, British and Belgian weapons used to slaughter the lutsis
The massive spontaneous return of Rwandan refugees from Zaire has upset European and North American military strategy for the region. But there is no question of extending humanitarian aid to Rwanda unless the country accepts the stationing of foreign troops as well.
France and other Northern governments are extremely concerned about the effect of this crisis on the Mobutu regime in Zaire. France has troops in the region, ready to help the old dictator re-impose his corrupt regime on this vast, mineral-rich country. Time to act
There are no simple solutions to Rwanda's problems. But here are a few suggestions... • Open the books! We have the right to know the detailed truth about past and present "aid" which has benefited the region's butchers • The interhamwes and the remains of the Rwandan army should be disarmed. • Those suspected of genocide should be tried, in Rwanda. • No to any foreign military intervention! • Send the necessary humanitarian aid to the refugees, without the imposition of an expeditionary force. • International support for Rwandan efforts to re-insert the refugees. • Cancel the foreign debt of Rwanda and Zaire, and the restrictive elements of their structural adjustment programmes. • Establish an international programme for reparations to the families of the victims of genocide. The Northern governments and multi-lateral institutions which share responsibility for the slaughter should pay compensation to the people of Rwanda. • Support efforts in Zaire to topple the Mobutu regime. Expropriate the Mobutu clans property abroad, and return these riches to the people of Zaire, from which they were plundered. *
January 1997 #284 5