No to Shaba III

Disarming the Katangese

For nearly two months now, bands of heavily armed but bedraggled guerrillas have been straggling back to their base camps inside Angola, mostly by way of Zambia. They are survivors of an invasion force of several thousand Katangese secessionists in exile who massacred 131 Europeans and at least four tunes that many blacks in an abortive effort to liberate their homeland, Zaire's mineral-rich Shaba region, formerly Katanga province. The invaders were driven into the jungle by French Foreign Legionnaires and Belgian paratroopers, called in by Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko, No. 1 enemy of the Katangese.

Mobutu promptly blamed the invasion--the second by the Katangese exiles in 14 months--on Angolan President Agostinho Neto, whose Marxist government is propped up by some 20,000 Cuban troops. Mobutu also charged that Cuban advisers had accompanied the raiders and Washington claimed to have proof that Cubans had helped train the Katangese and thus were "responsible" for Shaba II. Cuban President Fidel Castro denied the charge, insisting that he and Neto had both opposed the Katangese raid and had tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent it.

Neto and Castro are apparently determined to see that there will be no Shaba III in the near future. As veterans of the Shaba invasion cross the border back into Angola, they are being intercepted by Neto's troops and stripped of their weapons. In a message released through the Angolan press and radio, Neto had promised last month to disarm the returning Katangese and relocate their refugee camps further from the Zairian border.

Neto thereby raised an awkward question: If his army could disarm the Katangese on their way home, why could it not have blocked the invasion in the first place? The answer may be that Neto tried then to use persuasion rather than military force but found he had insufficient influence on the exiles, who have carved out a semiautonomous zone for themselves in northeastern Angola.

Diplomatic and intelligence experts now generally agree that neither Castro nor Neto wanted the Katangese to invade Zaire when they did. Both leaders knew that a second invasion of Zaire from Angolan bases would raise charges that Havana and Luanda were abetting the violation of international borders and might also provoke a Western intervention to prop up Mobutu. Both those fears came true. Neto may be bolting the border after the Katangese have already got out, but at least, he hopes, this time the exiles will stay at home for a while.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.