Then came the ominous reports [quickly stillborn] of the presence of US special forces personnel on the rebel front lines. The scheme was well thought-out and well-executed, but as usual in human plans there is the unexpected, the unpredictable. The media contempt for Kabila was so great that reports went around the world that he had "fled" or was "holed" up while the glorious "rebels" marched, issuing triumphant communiques eagerly quoted in a gleeful Western press. Like instant corn-flakes a "political arm" of the rebel movement surfaced. Professor Wamba dia Wamba, [who doesn't have a clue, but lends a reassuring aura of respectability to what is essentially a military invasion] is dusted off and pushed to the front as the political figurehead. The military mouthpiece Ondekane, and the garrulous Karaha Bizima, who is a traitor and too closely identified with Rwanda are quieted. The scholarly, but woefully-miscast Wamba becomes the gentle face of the rebellion. There were disparaging post-mortems of Kabila's government, burying him before he was dead. The Americans, aware of the sophistication and cynicism of the average person today couched their reaction to the events in very, very careful terms, yet there was no condemnation of the extra-legal methods of the "rebels" to attain power nor were there any calls for a cease-fire. There was the usual ambiguous diplomatic language which nevertheless confirmed on whose side the Americans really stood.

Everything changed when Kabila sought and received critical help and in mere days a month of rebel gains were turned around, with the enthusiastic participation of the Congolese people [which speaks volumes of the rebels' popular support]. Suddenly there are clamors for a cease fire, "inclusive governance" and "dialogue." In 1997 when Clinton, Albright and the planners and hustlers of the Africa desk visited the Central Africa regions, contingency plans were already being mounted to handle Kabila unless he behaved. It is possible that his cavalier treatment of Madeline Albright clinched his fate. Here was a man who showed too much independence, was abrasive, erratic and spoke frightfully, if clumsily in a nationalist key. If he did not behave he would be removed. The hatchet would be the Rwandans. They put him in, they could take him out. America has always had misgivings about Kabila.

Sure, the Cold War was over, but you could never really trust these guys.. Anyway, the plan had been to put Kabila in power, surround him with US agents like Karaha and trustworthy Rwandan military assets to ride shotgun and arrest or kill him if he stepped out of line. But Kabila, the wily old guerilla pre-empted the plan by joining SADC and tapping into Congolese nationalism [always close to the surface] , expelled the Rwandans before they could move. Thus to Plan B: within almost 24 hours the military arm of the plan is put in effect and voila! we have a revolt against Kabila. American special forces advisers point out the key targets: Kisangani, the Inga Dam, the Banana naval base, the airfield at Kitona and the crucial port of Matadi. All these objectives are achieved in days, with the commandeering of jet aircraft and of course, exclusives to the Western press to chronicle the rebels' "lightning advance." Three fatal flaws in this skillful plan: 1. Kabila 2. The Congolese people 3. Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe. The plan backfired horribly, and the "rebels" who miraculously fielded an army of 30,000 well-equipped men in the space of days face the sudden prospect of annihilation. Routed in the West they no longer demand President Kabila's head, but suddenly become amenable to negotiations. And they suddenly discover the bodies of victims of "massacres" by the Congo army People are whispering in their ears, advising and planning and these people are not Africans. The American connection [and we must assume an American connection, given the closeness of Rwanda and Uganda to the Americans, the pattern of the invasion, almost a carbon copy of the 1953 CIA invasion of Guatemala and overthrow of freely-elected Jacobo Arbenz] moved their pieces on the African chessboard and were checked. When Africans contemplate the conflict in Central Africa they will now look at Rwanda, Uganda and the United States as being bundled in the same bag. South Africa bought herself a reprieve by giving the allied forces her full backing. This further isolates Rwanda and Uganda and upset US game plans for the Region. Let us not be fooled that the US will abort her attempts to influence the politics of the region, but her strategic planning has been impaired. There will be further attempts to unseat Kabila and destabilize the Congo, but the people that matter are aware and will exercise the necessary vigilance. The rebels linked themselves with ex-Mobutu soldiers, UNITA, Rwandan militarists and other unsavory elements which has fatally affected their credibility. And the US, of course, has backed the wrong horse again. Gathering intelligence these days is not so much shady characters listening in or exchanging notes on the Orient Express but analyzing ongoing events and available connected data to divine the underlying dynamic. If one follows certain trends of the past 16 months of who and what appeared in US news magazines, American reactions at the time of Mobutu's fall, the increasing US presence in the Great Lakes Region, the media stroking of Museveni and Kagame, the pronouncements of Bill Richardson, the former UN ambassador and Madeline Albright, careful analysis would reveal US partiality to Museveni and Kagame and incremental hostility to Kabila.

Clearly, all three were being groomed for something. Given the intelligence and military collaboration between the United States and Rwanda and Uganda, there is no way the US could not have known of the invasion plans and the plot to unseat Kabila, and one must assume that Rwanda and Uganda pursued their aggression with the full knowledge and complicity of the United States. The clincher is the reports of US troops involved in the sabotage of the Inga dam and early reports of their presence at the front lines inside the Congo. Americans are so distinctive that it is impossible for their presence to be mere fabrications. And there are reports that American diplomats are pressuring Mugabe to let trapped Rwandan and Uganda troops have safe passage home. Why? Why should the United States so blatantly try to inject its wishes in what is essentially an internal African situation?

The wheel has come full circle. Thirty-eight years ago the United States intervened in the Congo to thwart Patrice Lumumba's nationalist aspirations. Declassified documents implicated the CIA in Lumumba's assassination. The ostensible reason for the assassination was to counter the rise of communism and Soviet influence in Africa, but the bottom line was the same then as it is now: access to Congo's raw materials and control of the biggest and potentially most-influential country in Africa. And Kabila[ who has no doubt been labeled by the CIA as "uncooperative"] like Lumumba stands in the way of that US objective.

The brutal interventionist methods of the 1960s would never pass muster in the 1990s, hence an elaborate scheme featuring "disaffected" and "democracy"-hungry "rebels" and "security interests" of Rwanda and Uganda. And: blaming Kabila for massacres, which if they did occur were most likely the work of Rwandan death squads. Plus: an international Crimes against Humanity "World Court" located in Arusha, Tanzania to keep the world's attention focused on the threat of genocide, a convenient red herring to muddle the issues. So here we are exactly thirty-eight years after the first Democratic Republic of Congo was born [the DRC is not Kabila's invention. The yellow-starred blue flag, anthem and name came out with Patrice Lumumba in 1960] the people of Congo are fighting essentially the same enemies and the same war. Then as now Rwanda [then Ruanda-urundi a UN Trust territory. Belgium was "trusted" with its administration] was used as an intelligence rear-base to disrupt Congolese patriots fighting white mercenaries fielded by the US, South Africa, France, West Germany and Belgium, and Israel and then as now Kabila was one of the targets of this destabilization. Have we learned anything? Yes, this time around the Congo people are stronger and wiser in the ways of their enemies. They did not believe the fiction of an instant liberation army coming out of Rwanda and unlike in 1960 they are better armed to deal with any aggressor. Attempts to demonize Kabila have backfired. In Africa he will be regarded as a hero whose people backed him in the streets-- a rarity for African presidents. The rebels speak now of winning hearts and minds. They will learn as the US did in Vietnam, that you cannot win hearts and minds if you had lost them in the first place. The US brokers will not spend the billions of dollars needed for the rebels to try buying off the Congo people. The fate of the so-called rebels is sealed. As long as Rwanda and Uganda deny responsibility for the invasion, the rebels like their spiritual counterparts in Central America-- the infamous Contras of Nicaragua- will find their credibility seriously impaired. They did not have the trust of the people in the beginning and it will well-nigh impossible for them to gain that trust now. Behind the scenes attempts to cobble together a "democratic coalition acceptable the Congolese people "[a classic American intelligence ploy to get the people they want] will not work. The rebels have already been tainted by association with Mobutu, UNITA, Rwanda and the Tutsi and American intervention. And if the "rebels" resort to guerilla warfare as they have threatened to, they will define themselves as an occupation army and will meet a response of such brutal dimensions to show them and the world the Congolese people will no longer be threatened and exploited by external forces and will defend themselves to the limits of their being..

George Dash