Dancing in the Glory of Monsters by Jason Stearns

Author:Jason Stearns
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781610391597
Publisher: PublicAffairs

Meanwhile, the Rwandans had taken control of much of the eastern Congo in a matter of hours. While Colonel Kabarebe had been commander of the Congolese army, he had prepositioned units loyal to him with stockpiles of weapons in the eastern Congo. When he was sacked, he gave orders to these units to rebel against Kabila. With support of Rwandan troops who crossed the border, they took control of Goma and Bukavu and began advancing on Kisangani.

Hubris can breed fantastic courage. After taking the border towns, Colonel Kabarebe decided to go straight for the jugular by leapfrogging Kabila’s ramshackle army and attacking the capital, 1,000 miles away. It was one of the most daring operations in the region’s military history.

The “Kitona airlift” is still talked about by foreign military attachés and Congolese army commanders alike. A U.S. officer based in the region later wrote in a military journal: “This was an operation that exemplified audacity and courage, and its aftermath became an odyssey fit for a Hollywood script.”10

Kabarebe commandeered a Boeing 707 at the Goma airport and loaded one hundred and eighty Rwandan, Ugandan, and Congolese soldiers on board with weapons and ammunition. “Everybody wanted to get a piece of the action,” remembered a senior Congolese military officer who participated. “Mobutu’s former soldiers were outraged at their humiliation by Kabila, and the Tutsi wanted to get back at the government for the treatment of their relatives in Kinshasa.”11 Soldiers deserted from their units around Goma and showed up at the airport once they got word of the operation. Kabarebe put a brash Rwandan commander called Butera in charge of the first plane to leave.

It could have indeed been a scene from a movie: With Butera brandishing his pistol behind him, the distraught pilot flew 1,000 miles across the country, over the capital to the Kitona military base, 250 miles west of Kinshasa on the mouth of the Congo River.12 Most of the soldiers on the flight had no idea that the commander of the Kitona base had secretly defected to the Rwandan side—they expected to land in a hail of bullets. A hundred and eighty soldiers nervously gripped their AK-47s and looked warily at the flight safety cards in their seat pockets. In the back of the aisle, stacked to the roof, were dozens of wooden crates of ammunition. The soldiers spoke Luganda, Swahili, Kinyarwanda, English, and French with each other. Outside the window, they broke through the thick cloud cover to see the rolling hills of Bas-Congo province and the Congo River snaking placidly toward the Atlantic ocean. After a three-hour flight, the long landing strip of Kitona airbase came into view.

Despite the pistol-waving Rwandan behind him, the pilot began to complain that they would be killed if they landed at the heavily fortified airbase. “Don’t worry,” Butera said. “We have our people at the airport.” Using the pilot’s high-frequency radio, he programmed a frequency he said belonged to their commander on the ground. A surprisingly clear voice responded to his call in calm English: “All clear, afande.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.