1. Desertion and defection of the DRC’s forces
The DRC’s army experienced desertion and defection. Please provide a detailed narrative of how DRC’s soldiers organized their desertion/defection, and provide details on the magnitude of the desertion/defection. Did the DRC use violence to deter soldiers from escaping during the battle?
Pre-Katanga Offensive:
The DRC’s army was troubled by desertion and defection for years prior to the Katanga Offensive. By some estimates, as many as 60% of the army’s soldiers may have deserted before even going to combat. By 2000, the magnitude of the desertion problem was so large that the army increasingly had to enlist child soldiers to replace trained combatants at the front. Defection beset the FAC as well. In August of 1998, 25,000 men in the elite unit of the FAC’s 10th brigade rebelled against President Kabila. The unit defected to the RCD, along with the 3rd, 11th, 12th, and 81st brigades. The mutiny incited troops from the Rwandan army to cross the border and come to their support, sparking the beginning of the Second Congo War. Throughout these years, the DRC used violence to deter soldiers from deserting or defecting and to punish those who did. The COM (Cour d’ordre militaire, or Military Order Court) sentenced many soldiers to death, and in some cases punishment for cowardice and desertion were meted out to soldiers who simply followed orders to retreat. In January of 1999, when an FAC battalion commander ordered the troops to withdraw following a loss to the RPA and RCD in the Lubao region, dozens were arrested and 27 sentenced to death. Those suspected of collaborating with the rebels faced similarly harsh fates. After FAC soldier Yves Bangamba was accused of complicity and arrested in October of 1998, both he and his wife, Fifi Mwanza Nkuta, reportedly “disappeared.” In November of 2000, Kabila had Anselme Masasu Nindaga executed along with soldiers loyal to him because he suspected they plotted against him; Masasu Nindaga was one of the founding members of the guerilla forces that had helped Kabila overthrow Mobutu and ascend to power.
Katanga Offensive (Battle of Pweto):
A large number of troops from the DRC’s forces deserted from the Battle of Pweto. Some FAC troops lit their armored vehicles on fire as they abandoned them while some attempted to flee through a river and ended up drowning. Others defected to join the rebels during the confusion. General Joseph Kabila, son of President Laurent Kabila, tried to flee by a helicopter but discovered someone had sold its fuel; he ended up escaping to Zambia by ferry. In total, more than 5,000 combatants fled across the border into Zambia’s northern Luapula province, blending into the crowd of almost 60,000 refugees escaping from Pweto. Upon hearing this, President Laurent Kabila ordered for the deserting soldiers and his son to be arrested and returned to the DRC. 3,000 FAC soldiers and 200 soldiers from the Zimbabwean contingent were disarmed and taken back to the DRC, while about 2,000 FDD soldiers were able to reenter the DRC without being disarmed by crossing barges over Lake Mweru.
2. Interethnic tensions
I’m particularly interested in the role of interethnic frictions/problems/tensions and how they might undermine battlefield performance, especially for the DRC. Can you find evidence of language problems, or interethnic tensions, that contributed to poor performance? Did the ethnic groups that made up the army mistrust each other?
General background:
The DRC has a long and complex history of interethnic tensions that backgrounded the Second Congo War. The Rwandan civil war and 1994 genocide resulted in masses of Hutu refugees (including members of the Interahamwe militia and individuals who had participated in the genocide) fleeing across the Rwandan border into the DRC. The First Congo War was launched after these refugees used camps in the DRC as bases from which to attack the Tutsi Rwandan government. But their presence has also caused problems for ethnic Tutsis within the DRC. In North and South Kivu, the tensions between various Rwandan immigrants was shaped not only by their Hutu/Tutsi background but also by the time period in which they had immigrated to the DRC; the Banyamulenge who had come to the country in the 1800s included both Hutus and Tutsis, as did the Banyarwanda who had come in the 1960s. However, with the influx of Hutus in the 1990s, Hutus gained in regional power and some began attacking local Tutsis, strengthening the rivalries that ran along ethnic lines. Prior to and during the Second Congo War, many Tutsis perceived Kabila as an ally of the Hutus, which inspired Tutsis of both Banyamulenge and Banyarwanda background to support the rebellion and/or defect from the side of the DRC. Kabila encouraged a statewide anti-Tutsi pogrom in August of 1998 after Tutsi soldiers in the FAC defected to the RCD and refused to disarm. The defectors also incited troops from the Rwandan army to cross the border and come to their support, sparking the beginning of the Second Congo War. At the same time, ethnic allegiances were not always entirely rigid. In one example, though the Mai Mai supported Kabila’s forces in the Second Congo War, they had been in opposition during the first.
In the army:
Interethnic tensions in the DRC’s army led to the creation of ethnically homogenous factions/battalions, such as those comprised of Interahamwe/ex-FAR Rwandan Hutus. Conflict and desertion/defection arose in multiple instances when Kabila attempted to integrate or disperse these homogenized units. For instance, in early 1998, hundreds of Banyamulenge troops deserted following a dispute over plans to disperse them across other units over the country. Though they were reincorporated back into the military soon after, to many from other ethnic groups, the incident demonstrated the lack of the Banyamulenge soldiers’ allegiances to the FAC. In another example, troops from the Burundian FDD (established by Hutu refugees from Burundi) deserted in 2000 following Kabila’s reorganization of the FDD’s units to integrate Burundian, Rwandan, and Congolese soldiers. Unity in the army was poor: disorganization in the commanding structure of the army and a lack of clear leadership intensified conflict between the FAC’s various factions (e.g. Tutsis, Katangans, former members of the FAZ, etc.).
3. Morale
What is the state of morale in the DRC army?
By the time of the Katanga Offensive, morale in the DRC army was low. General Joseph Kabila expressed that he did not believe that their side would succeed. The Burundian rebel leader also doubted their side’s potential for victory and preferred to maintain defensive positions, hesitant (likely just as the DRC’s other external allies) that Kabila and FAC would be able to offer him enough support in offensive operations. Morale was also notably low among Zimbabwean soldiers, who believed that their military efforts in Katanga and Kasai were motivated by President Mugabe’s personal financial interest in the areas’ resources. A UNGA human rights report on the FAC’s child soldiers highlighted the conditions: “young ‘volunteers’ in tattered clothes and in a precarious nutritional state,” vulnerable to potential epidemic disease. By December 3rd of 2000, when Rwandan forces reached Pweto, the morale of Kabila’s FAC forces disintegrated into apparent panic as civilians and soldiers alike started to flee. A DRC solider who deserted following the Battle of Pweto named Joe described what the soldiers had been facing: “We were waiting for food and supplies for we were running short of ammunition and we had no food at all… they sent us two truck full of beer and oranges…” In early January of 2001, following the FAC’s defeat at Pweto, FAC commander Bomba Zeko Ziki summarized the general sense of morale among his soldiers: “We’re tired of Kabila’s war and we don’t even know why we’re fighting.”