Saving a Country from Itself

ZAIRE

Once again the West tries to shore up Mobutu's regime

It is a debatable proposition that Zaire, the former Belgian Congo, is the most ungovernable of African states. Having staved off the latest threat to its existence --an invasion of Shaba region by Angola-based Katangese secessionists--the U.S. and its Western allies turned to a larger problem: how to save the huge, resource-rich land from its awesome problems, and from itself.

A gigantic rescue operation was already under way. Early last week, U.S. Air Force C-141 StarLifters began to arrive in Lubumbashi, the capital of Shaba. The planes brought in 100 tons of supplies ranging from ammunition to ambulances. They also carried 1,500 Moroccan troops, who are soon to be joined by another 500 soldiers from Senegal, Gabon and Togo. Replacing French Foreign Legionnaires, the African force will help the faltering government of President Mobutu Sese Seko maintain the peace.

Meanwhile, representatives of five Western nations (the U.S., France, Britain, Belgium and West Germany) were meeting in Paris; this week an expanded group of Western delegates--as well as some from Japan, Saudi Arabia and Iran --will move on to Brussels. The purpose of both meetings: to devise an economic rescue plan for Zaire. For a start, the group will raise $100 million to cover the next three months, with $40 million of this amount contributed by the U.S. That may be just the beginning. Bankrupt Zaire's debts already approach $3 billion, and its chief sources of foreign revenue, the copper and cobalt mines of Shaba, may be shut off for several months as a result of the recent fighting.

To make Shaba secure, Zaire will need outside military assistance for its poorly organized and undisciplined 40,000-man army. The diplomatic question was how to provide it. After getting assurances that other moderate African states would help, Morocco's King Hassan II agreed to come to the rescue, as he had done following a similar raid on Shaba by Katangese rebels a year earlier. The King, however, is opposed to a plan, favored by French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, to create a permanent pan-African military force under Western auspices that would be available for service in future emergencies in Zaire and elsewhere on the continent.

Other African countries, notably Nigeria and Tanzania, are also cool to the proposal. They object to the interventionism of former colonial powers, and they argue that any military force should be tied to the Organization of African Unity. Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, who has welcomed several of the Carter Administration's previous initiatives on Africa, accused Carter last week of listening to "hysterical voices" in his Government who were exaggerating the current Soviet-Cuban activity on the continent.

Skepticism about the Carter Administration's charge of deep Communist involvement in the invasion of Zaire last month was also voiced by members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Chairman John Sparkman said the evidence that Cuba had trained and equipped the Katangese rebels was "circumstantial" and "substantial but by no means conclusive." Senator Jacob Javits was the only committee member who seemed fully satisfied with the Administration's contention last week. Though the evidence produced by U.S. intelligence has not been made public, TIME Correspondent William McWhirter has learned that it includes transcripts of the radio traffic between Katangese rebel units during the invasion. Monitored by a U.S. intelligence station in Lubumbashi, the traffic points to a tangible Cuban presence in the area.

The Administration was fully aware of African criticism of the Western role in Zaire, and of the danger that the Soviet Union and Cuba might respond to the creation of a pro-Western African force by trying to assemble a radical African military power capable of causing serious mischief in Rhodesia and other trouble spots. The Administration also realized that in underscoring its opposition to Soviet-Cuban adventurism in Africa, the U.S. must not appear to be embracing the policies of South Africa and Rhodesia, whose governments have quietly hoped that the recent troubles in Zaire would have the effect of reducing Western pressure on Pretoria and Salisbury for racial reform.

Indeed, South African Foreign Minister Roelof Botha welcomed Carter's criticism of Soviet activities in Africa. It was now up to Pretoria to convince the U.S. Administration of "the realities facing Africa," he said. Significantly, Carter made little mention of Zaire in his Annapolis speech; he may well have been responding to U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young's argument that the U.S. must not lose sight of the far greater importance of the black-white struggle in southern Africa. At the Paris meeting, the U.S., as well as Britain and Belgium, argued for an African military force with a specific and limited mission: to support Zaire during the current emergency.

While the Western powers were debating his country's fate, the flamboyant Mobutu was busy with a rescue operation of his own. Clad in battle fatigues and accompanied by an honor guard and a brass band, he appeared again and again at Lubumbashi airport at the head of a cavalcade of Jeeps and Mercedes sedans. He greeted Zambia's visiting President Kenneth Kaunda, and China's Foreign Minister Huang Hua, who had flown to Shaba to emphasize Peking's opposition to Soviet-Cuban influence in Africa. On his visit to Peking, President Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, had reportedly urged the Chinese to take a stronger role in African affairs. Before leaving Kinshasa, Huang promised Mobutu unspecific support in his struggle against "Soviet imperialism."

European residents of Zaire had grown particularly nervous as most of the remaining French troops prepared to leave. In the town of Likasi, north of Lubumbashi, 49 out of 50 French engineers voted to evacuate their families. Nearly half the white population in the region had left by week's end. Some had gone for good. Others, unsure of whether to return after the long summer holiday, were shipping out their belongings to be on the safe side.

Many of Zaire's problems, such as the general incompetence of the government, stem from the fact that the country was so grossly unprepared for the independence it was suddenly granted by the Belgians in 1960. But other problems, as for example the rampant corruption at every level, have grown worse during the twelve-year rule of President Mobutu. Says a ranking Western diplomat in Kinshasa: "We really question whether we are negotiating with people who are serious. We wonder how many of those around Mobutu are concerned with anything other than filling their pockets and making travel plans out of the country."

Nobody is insisting on the immediate replacement of Mobutu, if only because it is unclear whether anybody else could hold the country together. But this time, in return for saving him once again, the Western powers are determined to insist on a strict price in terms of social and economic reform. Among the proposed demands: a completely rebuilt army, a remodeled central bank, better food distribution, and guarantees that there will be no government reprisals against the civilian population of Shaba, which has never liked Mobutu and made little secret of its sympathy for the invading rebels.

Whether the Zairian President would sit still for such conditions is another question. In an interview at week's end, Mobutu declared: "We can accept aid but we cannot accept the involvement of other countries in our internal affairs. I don't want to know how prisoners are treated in Sing Sing. Democracy in Zaire does not mean what it does hi France or the United States." Chances are, though, that the Western powers at this week's Brussels meeting would make him an offer he could not refuse.

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