Rebel Army Captured Zaire In T-Shirts and Tennis Shoes



World History Name:

Rebel Army Captured Zaire in T-Shirts and Tennis Shoes

By RAYMOND BONNER and HOWARD W. FRENCH

Published: Time Magazine, Monday, May 19, 1997; updated Oct. 7, 2009.

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[pic]When the Zairian rebel leader Laurent Kabila announced last October that he would topple President Mobutu Sese Seko, almost no one took him seriously. But in a scant seven months, his rebel army conquered a country as large as the United States east of the Mississippi, including thousands of miles of some of the thickest jungle in the world.

The accomplishment is even more staggering considering that the rebels had no motorized vehicles to move troops, no heavy artillery of their own, no air force and, until late in the war, no engineering units to bridge raging rivers they had to cross. No one is even sure of the exact size and composition of their army, which grew and was trained as it went along, with recruits from eastern Zaire, Rwanda, Tanzania and Angola. Western military observers believe that the main fighting force numbered no more than 6,000 battle-tested soldiers, with perhaps 20,000 more recruits, most of them volunteers who joined the rebellion as it grew, including thousands of deserters from the Zairian Army.

Based on interviews with Western and Zairian military officers and observation of the rebellion as it progressed, a picture emerges of a war that was conducted on a shoestring, with an emphasis throughout on minimizing the cost in lives, ammunition and damage to Zairian towns and cities. A decade ago, the outcome would have almost certainly been different. In a history of frequent rebellions, Zaire's military has never had a proud record. But thanks to huge amounts of foreign military aid, Mobutu's army was respectable, if not formidable.

However, while Mr. Mobutu and the politicians were plundering the country's mineral riches for their personal gain, they ignored the army. In the capital, Kinshasa, senior commanders were padding the payroll by grossly exaggerating the number of soldiers and pocketing the salaries for themselves. In outlying posts, officers put soldiers to work as farmers to feed the troops and generate income to buy uniforms and shoes.

Soldiers were forced to take extra jobs. Men from the motor pool became taxi drivers, using Government gasoline. Mechanics went to work in auto factories. Members of the Presidential Division hired themselves out to the wealthy as security guards. Thus, the soldiers were too busy and too tired to train or to take care of their equipment. When the rebels attacked Lubumbashi, the country's second-largest city, the defending forces had 15 multiple rocket-launchers, with 40 rockets each. But they couldn't fire them. The electrical firing mechanisms had rusted from years of being left in the rain.

In the beginning, Kabila’s forces crossed the border from Rwanda to Zaire simply to impose order in a Rwandan refugee camp that was rebelling against a Mobutu order to leave Zaire and return to Rwanda (Rwandans escaped their own bloody civil war in 1995 by crossing the border and hiding in this Zairian camp). However, when Zairian military posts began falling like rotten branches off a diseased tree, the rebellion picked up momentum. The rebel army grew, with new recruits, many of them teen-agers, trained on the march. They wore combat fatigues and T-shirts, rubber thongs and tennis shoes. They had one important thing the Zairian Army lacked -- motivation.

In late December the rebels took Bunia in northeastern Zaire. It was a turning point in the war, said a Western military analyst. Zairian troops ran away, slowing down only long enough to loot every single village as they headed west. ''After that, the army was despised by the population,'' said a US diplomat. ''It was an army that ran and pillaged.'' Kabila’s rebellion became a popular uprising. When the rebels reached the Congo River, local residents ferried them across so they could attack the town of Kindu.

There were hardly any pitched battles in this war, with Kabila’s troops routing Mobutu’s forces every time they met. Finally, Kabila’s “tennis shoe army” reached Kisangani, and they asked Mobutu to negotiate a peace agreement, no doubt one in which Mobutu would be removed. The fierce Mr. Mobutu replied disdainfully, saying, ''I don't talk with gang leaders.'' Kabila shrugged and then rolled through Kisangani and continued marching west. As they neared Kinshasa, it became clear to Mobutu that there would be no stopping Kabila’s forces. On May 12th, 1997 Mobutu sent aides to negotiate peace with Kabila while he rounded up his family and fled to Togo. Kabila’s men took Kinshasa without any resistance. Kabila appointed himself President and renamed the country from Zaire to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mobutu, after putting up such a struggle, would ironically die very quietly 4 months later in a Moroccan hospital after a prolonged battle with prostate cancer. One of the worst regimes in world history was finally gone.

Answer the QAR questions listed below:

Right there:

1. From what other African countries did Laurent Kabila hire soldiers for his rebel army?

2. Why were the Rwandans rebelling in the Refugee Camp?

Think and Search:

3. Explain why Kabila’s rebels had “motivation”, and Mobutu’s Zairian Army did not.

4. In your own words compose 3 sentences that detail the main idea of this whole article.

Author and you:

5. Why do you think the author stresses the fact that Kabila’s army was dressed in

Tennis shoes and t-shirts?

5. What is the author of this article suggesting when he writes, “when Zairian military

posts began falling like rotten branches off a diseased tree, the rebellion picked up

momentum.”?

On my own:

6. In your opinion was Mobutu right to flee the country to Togo, or should he have

stayed in his position and tried to fight back against Kabila? Explain in 1 paragraph.

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