Countering the Communists

No doubt about it: Jimmy Carter was mad as hell. At a press conference in Chicago last week, the President castigated the Soviet Union for its continued "interference in the internal affairs of African nations." He accused Cuba of being a "surrogate for the Soviet Union," adding: "It is a joke to call Cuba nonaligned." And he warned the Russians that "unless they show some constraints on their own involvement in Africa and on sending Cuban troops to be involved in Africa, [they] will make it much more difficult to conclude a SALT agreement."

Scarcely a year ago, Carter was rejecting his critics' "inordinate fear of Communism" and ridiculing those who thought it imperative to react "every time [Leonid] Brezhnev sneezes." What eventually brought the President to the point of taking a different line was the latest crisis in Africa, this one in the huge copper-rich nation of Zaire, once known as the Belgian Congo. There, a force of 1,900 French and Belgian paratroops, assisted by 18 U.S. jet transports, had just routed another invasion of Zaire's Shaba region (formerly Katanga province) by secessionists based in Angola.

Cuban Premier Fidel Castro insisted to the ranking American diplomat in Havana, Lyle Lane, that no Cubans had participated in the Shaba raid. In fact, said Castro, Cuban advisers had learned of the raid beforehand and tried to talk the Katangese out of going through with it. Washington officials could not prove Castro wrong and were not quite sure how to interpret his words. In any case, there was no doubt that over the years, the Cubans and the Angolans had armed and trained the Katangese and were therefore implicated in the mischiefmaking.

Of itself, the attack on Zaire was deadly serious. The downfall of President Mobutu Sese Seko--the avowed goal of the secessionists--could have led to another full-scale civil war in that perennially troubled country. But it also raised questions as to how the U.S. and its allies should cope with what appears increasingly to be a strong Soviet-Cuban political campaign in black Africa. Three years ago, the Cubans helped the Marxist faction of President Agostinho Neto win a civil war in Angola against two other nationalist groups. The Cubans stayed on to shore up Neto's Popular Movement government and to carry on the fighting against the pesky UNITA guerrillas of Jonas Savimbi in the southern part of the country. Last year the Cubans moved into Ethiopia in a big way. Reinforced by huge supplies of Soviet equipment, they helped the unstable Marxist junta in Addis Ababa drive Somali insurgents out of Ethiopia's Ogaden desert region. Now the Ethiopians, with the reluctant help of their 17,000 Cuban guests, are attacking secessionists in the northern province of Eritrea, where a brushfire war has been smoldering for some 15 years. All told, Cuba now has 43,000 troops on duty in at least 14 African nations.

Until now, the Carter Administration has reacted to the Soviet-Cuban challenge in Africa with considerable restraint. But the latest invasion of Zaire and the resulting massacre at Kolwezi appear to have changed that. Late last week U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance met Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in New York City and delivered what was said to be his toughest private lecture to date on the Soviet role in Africa. During his three-day visit to Peking, Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, urged the Chinese to step up their economic assistance to Africa to provide a counterweight to that of the Russians. Vice President Walter Mondale sharply criticized the Soviet Union in a U.N. speech for its obdurate stand on disarmament. In the meantime, the President ordered the preparation of a Presidential Review Memorandum (or PRM, pronounced prim) to examine Soviet and Cuban motives in Africa and determine what the U.S. response should be.

Within the Administration, there is general agreement on what the Cubans are up to: Castro, always the ideologue, is exporting revolution to win friends and thumb his nose at the U.S. But there are two importantly different schools of thought as to what the Russians are up to. One view is that the Soviets are, as usual, merely reacting to targets of opportunity; helping the Katangese rebels, for instance, gives them a chance for some low-cost, low-risk adventurism, with possibly big rewards. This is basically Vance's view, although he admits to some uncertainty about Moscow's ultimate intentions. Brzezinski leans to the second view, which is that the Soviets have a grand design for Africa and the Middle East. In addition to seizing a commanding position on the rim of the crucial oil routes, their goal would be to gain direct access to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, a dream that goes back to czarist times.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Andrew Young is worried about the Soviet role in Africa from a somewhat different viewpoint. He regards the Communist threat to the continent as less serious than does either Vance or Brzezinski, partly because he believes African nations are more interested in economic development than in ideology and thus more inclined to look to the West for help. But he is fearful that Russian adventurism could produce an emotional reaction in the U.S., which could wreck the Administration's carefully nurtured policy of seeking closer ties with black Africa.

The President evidently feels the moment has arrived for blunt talk.

At a town meeting in Spokane, Wash., he recently denounced the Soviets as "innate racists" who are doomed to fail in the Third World. He is dismayed that the Soviets seem to be widening their influence in Africa, and surprised that he has had so little luck in persuading even moderate African leaders to take a strong stand against the Soviets and Cubans in their midst.

When the emergency arose in Zaire two weeks ago, two countries responded almost immediately to Mobutu's call for aid: Belgium, which has a $1 billion investment in Zaire and 100,000 of its citizens in residence there; and France, which thinks of itself as a mentor to French-speaking Africa. Carter immediately asked Paris and Brussels how the U.S. could help; at their suggestion, he quickly supplied 18 Air Force C-141 transports to assist in the emergency airlift. Considering the magnitude of French and Belgian assistance, it is doubtful that Carter would have wanted to take a more active role in the operation. But he has been increasingly concerned about the limitations Congress has placed on the President's freedom to conduct foreign policy as he chooses.

Among these laws is the Clark amendment, a post-Viet Nam measure that prevents the President from sending military aid to Angola. On May 1, CIA Director Admiral Stansfield Turner and David Aaron, Brzezinski's deputy at the National Security Agency, visited Senator

Dick Clark, the Iowa Democrat who had introduced the measure in 1976. They asked his advice on a plan by which the U.S. could channel aid to one of the anti-Neto guerrilla factions in Angola--presumably to pressure the Luanda government to put a tighter rein on both its Cuban and Katangese guests. After some thought, Clark concluded that the scheme would violate the law and that he would oppose it.

Carter emphasized last week that he has "no intention" of getting involved militarily in Africa and that he will not ask Congress to repeal the Clark amendment. But because of the "very tight constraints" on his conduct of foreign policy, he has ordered the State Department to make a study of the statutes that restrict his power. He has not decided on a plan of action, but he obviously wants greater flexibility to provide economic and military aid when he thinks the need is there.

One Administration official is convinced that the Clark amendment, which prohibited the Ford Administration from aiding antigovernment forces in Angola, was a factor in emboldening the Soviets to step up their activity in Africa. Another, this official believes, was the U.S.Soviet joint statement on the Middle East last October, which was followed shortly by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's historic trip to Jerusalem. After heated objections from Israel, the Administration backed away from the joint statement. The Soviets felt betrayed and outflanked by the U.S. in the Middle East, according to this view, and turned their attentions toward black Africa.

In dealing with African nations, the Communist powers have certain advantages over the European countries and even the U.S. For one thing, they are untarnished by the history of African colonialism. The irony is that in the postwar era, while Western Europe, with U.S. prodding, was carrying out one of the greatest dismantlings of colonial power in history, the Russians were busy creating an empire of their own in Eastern Europe. Nonetheless, the Russians are free to identify themselves unambiguously with the African liberation movements, something the U.S. has rarely been able to do because of its close relations with the former colonial rulers.

Yet the record of Soviet efforts to influence Africa includes a number of expulsions and humiliations--in Ghana, Sudan and most recently Somalia, for example. In the Horn of Africa they acquired considerable political capital by helping the Ethiopians drive the Somali insurgents out of the Ogaden. But the war in Eritrea is a different matter. The province's secessionist movement, in the eyes of many nonaligned and radical Arab states, is absolutely legitimate, since Eritrea was unilaterally incorporated into Ethiopia by the late Emperor Haile Selassie in 1967. Both the Soviets and, particularly, the Cubans are doing their best to keep from getting dragged into the righting there. They apparently realize that Eritrea could trap them in a Viet Nam- like debacle, at the same time laying to rest once and for all what Henry Kissinger calls "the myth of the invincible Cubans."

During the recent crisis in Zaire, Western leadership was assumed by France. Indeed, with an estimated 10,000 troops and advisers now deployed in Africa, France has the second largest foreign contingent there, earning for the French the unflattering sobriquet, "the West's Cubans."

In fact, the French have long maintained an intensive web of cultural, economic and occasionally military relationships with their former colonies as well as several other African states. In recent months their troops have been reinforcing governments in Chad and Mauritania against guerrillas. Last year they provided air support to halt the first Shaba invasion. This time, with Belgian help, they quickly organized the airlift to rescue the 3,000 Europeans trapped in Kolwezi.

The reason for this involvement is the long-held French view that the economic destinies of Europe and Africa are inextricably linked; Europe lacks adequate natural resources to survive, and Africa is the obvious source. For this reason French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing is prepared to take occasional military action to maintain African stability. "We cannot oppose cannons with cannons or bazookas with bazookas," says a ranking French official, "but it is amazing how much you can do with a little push in the right place at the right time."

These binding ties were underscored last week as heads of state and other delegates from some 20 African nations converged in Paris for the fifth annual Franco-African summit. To make sure nobody missed the point, Zaire's President Mobutu flew into Paris dressed in camouflage combat fatigues and boots, explaining to reporters that he had just "come back from the front." By that time the front had slipped back across the Angolan border, but no matter. The hero of the hour was President Giscard, who was broadly cheered when he declared, "Africa for the Africans. Everything must be done to withdraw the continent from the rivalries of political blocs." Gabon's President Albert-Bernard (Omar) Bongo, currently head of the Organization of African Unity, declared that Giscard deserved the Nobel Prize for his Africa policy. Bongo also proposed the creation of an all-Africa security organization to preserve the continent from the evils of "assassination, genocide and massacre." The delegates liked the idea and, despite the enormous logistical problems, there were indications at week's end that such a force might be in the making.

Throughout Africa, reaction to the rescue operation was relatively restrained. The French-speaking countries were, as a whole, delighted. White South Africans argued that apart from demonstrating the "savagery" of Africa, the Shaba invasion and the Kolwezi massacre had awakened the West to the threat of Marxist involvement in Africa. Many black leaders seemed far less outraged than they had been in late 1964, when the West mounted a similar rescue mission to save 1,300 whites stranded in Stanleyville (now Kisangani) during the Congo's Simba rebellion. But they were still acutely aware that the enduring problem was that of a continent unable to govern its own affairs. As the Zambia Daily Mail observed, "The almost casual ease with which European powers can fly into an African country and airlift its nationals or occupy whole towns is making the very concept of African independence meaningless."

The African reality was, as always, blurred by alien notions. The real alignments are tribal or regional, not ideological; Africa remains a continent of warring nationalisms, some of them struggling on behalf of nations that have never existed as separate entities and may never do so.

Zaire is a classic example. Almost from the day of its birth in 1960, the country was plunged into a nightmare of mutiny, rebellion and bloodshed. The most dangerous incident was the attempted secession of Katanga, homeland of more than 1.5 million Lunda tribesmen, who also live in northwestern Zambia and eastern Angola. The rebellion was led by Mo'ise Tshombe, whose followers were seeking to preserve their mineral wealth from their enemies, the government in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) and the Bak-ongo tribes of the lower Congo. In those days the secessionists were thought to be rightists in the hire of the Belgian and French mineowners. Although their successors in the Congolese National Liberation Front (F.N.L.C.), who just attacked Kolwezi, talk vaguely of installing a radical regime in Kinshasa, they are probably more accurately described as misguided nationalists than leftists.

The Katangese are led by Nathaniel Mbumba, 49, a onetime police commissioner in Katanga. In 1968 he founded the F.N.L.C. with a nucleus of Tshombe's gendarmes who had fled to Angola after Mobutu came to power in Leopoldville in 1965. At first the group cooperated with the Portuguese, but later switched allegiance to the guerrillas of the Popular Movement faction, who took over the Angolan government in 1975. The government has given them considerable autonomy in their region of northeastern Angola. The Katangese own several large farms and even diamond mines; they have about 5,000 men under arms. In return, the Katangese have helped the government stave off its two principal enemies, the Zaire-supported guerrillas of the faltering National Front and those of Savimbi's more formidable UNITA.

The Katangese invaders came close to winning big this time. But thanks to Western assistance, Mobutu and his government scraped through again. The real question, as in 1960, is whether Zaire, that helpless mass of central Africa, can survive in one piece. A corollary issue is whether the flamboyant President Mobutu is the man to head Zaire. U.S. policy in the early 1960s was to support the central government against dissolution, on the notion that unity is better than chaos. That is still U.S. policy, and it is still probably the correct one. "We support the territorial integrity of Zaire," a State Department spokesman said last week, "and obviously we recognize Mobutu." He is a grandiose spender who has led Zaire to bankruptcy, and his regime is quite blatantly corrupt; but he has somehow managed to hold the country together. "People say Mobutu is not an efficient manager," argues a French official on his behalf, "but he's ruling a huge country that doesn't even have a national highway. If Mobutu falls and there is chaos, who wins? I'll tell you: those who specialize in fishing for trouble."

African political problems have a curious way of disappearing noiselessly into the bush, like the Katangese guerrillas who last week were slipping back across the border to Angola. Zaire was saved, for the moment at least, except that its mines would be out of commission for months. Although the rebels are unlikely to abandon their goals, the Western powers may yet find a way to bolster Mobutu's armed forces to help make Shaba secure. Ethiopia has suddenly not only expelled Cuba's ambassador, but advised Washington that it would welcome the return of an American ambassador--an apparent sign that Addis Ababa is not inextricably linked to Moscow. Last week the Somalis informed Secretary of State Vance that they would no longer seek to change their borders by the use of force, as they did in the Ogaden, thereby opening the way for U.S. military aid and, more important, for a reduction of tensions in the Horn.

But the steady rise of Soviet and Cuban military power in Africa is surely a problem that will continue to confront the West in varying ways. In the long run, the French are almost surely correct in believing that economic development will solve Africa's problem of external influences. Says a French official: "There will never be stability in a world that includes both Stone Age people and nuclear powers. Our African strategy is one of wellbeing. We're convinced Africans would rather eat than die." There is a degree of self-interest included in this view, for the French are vitally dependent on Africa's raw materials.

One ranking State Department official argues that the goal of U.S. policy should be to reduce opportunities for the Soviets and Cubans. The main ingredients: economic aid for shaky but potentially friendly regimes, plus diplomatic support and military assistance. "But not intervention," he adds. "No one wants intervention." Defense Secretary Harold Brown is known to favor the creation of a Persian Gulf strike force that would establish a symbolic U.S. presence in the area and would be available for occasional first-aid duty.

Administration officials believe they have forged a policy on Africa that will eventually reap rewards. They have placed the U.S. squarely on the side of majority rule in southern Africa. They have insisted on a settlement in Rhodesia that will provide not only the semblance of majority rule, but will include the nationalist organizations that are doing the present fighting. Through Andrew Young, they have established close new ties with a number of African leaders, and they have tried to bring an end to the all too common practice of supporting any regime, white or black, that professes to be antiCommunist. They have not, however, managed to deter the Russians and the Cubans from their various interventions. Says one U.S. official: "We simply haven't dealt with the strategic implications of the performance the Soviets have been putting on for the world."

Cyrus Vance favors a five-point approach to the problem of Communist influence. He believes it vital to provide continuing economic assistance, concentrating on moderate, nonaligned governments like those of Zambia and Tanzania. He would press the campaign for majority rule, especially in Rhodesia and Namibia. He would give limited military assistance to countries that feel threatened by Communist adventurism. He would encourage the French, the moderate Arabs and others to use their influence in Africa. And if all of this fails to deter the Soviets and the Cubans, he would make them pay a high price for their troublemaking by withholding vital forms of American cooperation. One U.S. diplomat notes, however, that "we have very little leverage against the Cubans."

The British government believes that a Rhodesian accord, along the lines of the Anglo-American proposals, would be the best immediate step the West could take toward obtaining greater stability in Africa. Such a settlement, say the British, could lead eventually to the creation of a solid bloc of nonaligned states stretching northward from Zimbabwe and Zambia through Tanzania and Kenya.

The British are fairly hopeful that the Russians will realize that if they push too hard in Africa, they will imperil U.S. Senate endorsement of any SALT II treaty--and London is convinced that Leonid Brezhnev wants to reach such an agreement, and his time is running short. They also think the Russians are as uneasy as either the Americans or the British themselves would be at the thought of being drawn into an African military quagmire, be it in Shaba, Eritrea or Timbuktu.

Unless their African hosts insist that the Russians and Cubans go home--an unlikely prospect--or unless Moscow and Havana see it in their self-interest to reduce tensions on the continent, the West will continue to face an ideological war for influence in Africa. In what amounts to a new scramble for the continent, the Russians and the Cubans have been devising their own rules for the game of African political influence. To offset such influence in so fragile a setting, the U.S. and its allies must do some contingency planning of their own.

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