CNN Insight

The Coup Attempt On Kabila

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JONATHAN MANN, INSIGHT (voice-over): A battleground country and a president missing in action. A coup attempt is reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

(on camera): Hello, and welcome.

The reports are incomplete. But the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo are closed. Soldiers are patrolling the capital, and both civilian and military authorities are appealing for calm. It has all happened quickly.

The streets of Kinshasa rang with gunfire for a short time Tuesday. Diplomats and journalists described it as a coup attempt against President Laurent Kabila and, some say, an assassination attempt as well. Kabila has not been seen publicly in the hours since.

On our program today - the coup attempt against Kabila. Public statements from authorities have been very limited. The army chief of staff went on state television to speak, he said, to the military.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COL. EDY KAPENO, ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF (through translator): I called out for you - therefore, to your sense of discipline, to your loyalty to the institutions of the republic. These days, I exalt you to observe calm in your behavior in each individual and collective in the case of your unity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANN: And then a short time later, another official with words that seemed to confirm that the president is alive and still in power.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): For security reasons for the city of Kinshasa, the president of the republic - Laurent Desiree Kabila - supreme commander of the armed forces, has just decided on a general alert of all the combat units in the capital.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANN: Catherine Bond has been following developments from Nairobi. Catherine, what have you learned?

CATHERINE BOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the Associated Press is reporting from Kinshasa that a member of Kabila's security entourage, that a bodyguard had shot the president in the back and right leg. There have been conflicting reports, as you've said. But generally, there are some indications that he's alive.

One of his generals is quoted as saying President Kabila is alive. Everything is OK. And another, in fact, (inaudible) just seen, has said that President Kabila is alive and issuing orders. And the Belgian ambassador is also quoted as saying that Kabila was alive and in control.

Jonathan?

MANN: If he is alive, what should we read into the fact that we haven't seen him on television on this day?

BOND: Well, there have been reports that a helicopter left his official residence and flew to Kinshasa's main hospital. Those reports have been mixed in with the possibility that his son, Joseph Kabila, was injured in the fracas.

I've heard from a Congolese rebel leader that there was fighting between members of Kabila's armed escort. So there seems to have been a dispute that actually erupted amongst the bodyguard and perhaps from as close as within his immediate entourage this apparent coup attempt was launched.

Jonathan?

MANN: Has he been stable in his position? Does this attempt on his regime and perhaps his life come as a surprise?

BOND: Not really. I mean, the Congo is vitally unstable at the moment. President Kabila is popular amongst Congolese who dislike the presence of Ugandan and Rwandan troops and advisers in other parts of the country controlled by Congolese rebels. But he's not that well liked by people with any sort of sense of where the country might be heading, which at the moment is, you know, towards ruin unless the war comes to an end and a national conference, which was long, long ago held in 1992, is allowed to be held again so the Congolese can chart their own future.

Jonathan?

MANN: What kind of president has Laurent Kabila been?

BOND: Despotic, autocratic, probably (inaudible) as well. There is a legion (inaudible) at his rather kind of crude use of money and doling it out to a few people who are serving for him in.

(AUDIO DIFFICULTIES)

.suitcases full of dollars, cash. I don't think President Kabila is an intellectual. I think he is somebody who has risen above his capacity and is really out of his depth as the president of a country as a large and difficult as the Congo.

So I mean, he's ruled - he's ruled in a rather kind of basic way, one might say. But on the other hand, he has managed to sustain himself there, and he's probably done that by surrounding himself with people from his home province of Katanga and allies from Zimbabwe and Angola.

MANN: Let me ask you more about that. At a time like this, whose support do you think he can count on?

BOND: Zimbabwe, very much so, because it's said to have interests in the copper belt area of the south of the country. Angola - well, Angola will supply material in the sense of military hardware and troops, and on the other side, the side that the Ugandans and Rwandans support, they're more - they're certainly more worried about the presence of Angolan troops because Angolans have been fighting a war for a long time, so they pose a slightly more political threat than Zimbabweans do necessarily.

I think - yes, I think he can rely on the support of Zimbabweans probably for some time to come and at least as long as President Mugabe is in power in Zimbabwe.

MANN: Catherine Bond in Nairobi, thanks very much.

United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan is on his way to the region for a previously planned meeting. Laurent Kabila was also scheduled to attend that event.

Richard Roth joins us now from the United Nations on more - for more, rather, on what the UN is hearing. Richard?

RICHARD ROTH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jonathan, the UN secretary- general is in Paris on his way to Cameroon, where this African summit was going to be held, discussing the entire continent. We were told that earlier this evening in Yaounde, there was a meeting of African foreign ministers. Certainly, it is not clear whether President Kabila will have survived whatever happened and can even go to that meeting.

Here at UN headquarters in New York, perhaps some lights will be burning late here. Problem is that no one really has any information, and many analysts here in the UN and people we've talked to outside the building basically say until we know who did what to whom and for what reason, there's really nothing to do and no clear path on how to react or to implement anything.

The UN has, of course, dealt with hundreds of these in the 50 years of its existence, these types of crises which sometimes break out and then erupt into a regional catastrophe. Or it's a quiet coup. One doesn't know.

The UN spokesman, at the daily journalists briefing today, simply revealed that the UN officials in Kinshasa related that shots had been heard near the capital. And now since then, we've been told that UN officials there have gone home from their offices and are safe at home.

The United Nations does have a presence in Congo. More than 250 observers, civilian personnel, military observers who were there on the ground to begin implementing, should there ever be a peace pact, some type of demobilization, disengagement of all the different countries' troops that have been in the territory.

A short time ago, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard went over once again the UN role in Congo.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRED ECKHARD, UN SPOKESMAN: We have a number of observers there. The idea was to dispatch troops that would provide the protection for the observers who would be organized in four different camps around the country. The situation - the cooperation that would be necessary from the government to implement these plans has not been forthcoming.

The Security Council, though, has not wanted to shut down the mission, and so we maintain observers there. They are not deployed in all the areas we would like them to be. And those that are deployed often have difficulty with their freedom of movement. So it's not a particularly satisfactory situation, but it's not one that the Security Council wants to give up on yet.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: The Security Council didn't want to give up on the meeting and give up on sending troops there. It's a step-by-step process. Five hundred at best were going to be soon there, but the UN Security Council had voted to have 5,500 there. President Kabila would give various UN officials and other regional countries there, as you're see in signing ceremonies, a commitment.

And then, as British ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock said, he gave the Security Council the right answers when they visited him last May. But, quote, "His actions prove that he didn't live up to his word." The United Nations never got security guarantees that would allow the UN to safely send forces there.

Right now, dozens of countries are part of that 200-member force, Jonathan. But right now, they are still there, and so far there's been no impact on them. But the United Nations has not given up on Congo, as British ambassador Greenstock said, the peacekeeping mission there would be a big test. They've got to get it right.

We've heard that in Sierra Leone and other places. But due to the considerable size and the significance of how many countries are there, Congo is going to be the ultimate test. They were too scared to get in in a big way. Right now, they were still dipping their toe.

And Jonathan, next month it was expected that there would be a regional meeting here, perhaps with President Kabila, to discuss the Congo sometime in February. No way to know if that schedule will still be kept.

MANN: Richard Roth at the UN, thanks very much.

We have to take a break. But when we come back - the chaos of Laurent Kabila's Congo. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: Welcome back.

We have this just in to CNN International. Word from the French press agency AFP that the Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel says that Laurent Kabila has been shot and killed by one of his own bodyguards. That word once again from the foreign minister of Belgium, the former colonial power in the Democratic Republic of Congo, long ago known as the Belgian Congo.

Louis Michel, foreign minister of Belgium, saying that Laurent Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been shot and killed by one of his own bodyguards. The minister quoting what are referred to here as two reliable sources.

That news comes at a time when it's hard to know what else could go wrong for the people of the Congo. Laurent Kabila took over three and a half years ago, and they cheered as he drove Mobutu Sese Seko from power. The change in the country's name from Zaire to the Democratic Republic of Congo seemed to promise other changes. But the democracy in that title never materialized.

Inflation is measured in hundreds of percent, and outside armies are fighting for control and plunder of the country.

Joining us now to talk about Congo under Kabila is Vince Magombe, director of Africa Inform International. Thanks so much for being with us. Let me ask you, first of all, about this report we're just receiving that the president was killed by one of his own bodyguards. Is that hard to believe?

VINCENT MAGOMBE, AFRICA INFORM INTL., Well, it can't be hard to believe because definitely the mere fact that he hasn't appeared for quite a few hours now, at a very volatile moment, at least on television to reassure his own army means there was something very, very serious there.

MANN: Let me ask you about the beginning of the Kabila years. 1997, he took power after fighting for control of that country for years and years and years. It's been little more than three years since then. In fact, he fought for Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, for far longer than he held it. Were you surprised when he took office?

Catherine Bond, our correspondent, describes him as not a particularly clever figure.

MAGOMBE: I would disagree with Catherine Bond. Kabila is actually seen by other leaders like Mugabe as one of the few Marxist intellectuals in the region. He was very close to the Lumumba insurrection in the early `60s, and by then he was also seen as somebody who was someone of high intellect in a way.

The only thing is that you can be intellectual, but then that doesn't mean that you're the right person to be a leader of the country.

MANN: Let me ask you about that. What did he do with the country once he got it?

MAGOMBE: Well, I think he didn't know what to do in the context of what has been happening in the region. He never expected that two countries that had supported him in 1997 would suddenly turn against him - Rwanda and Uganda, that is. And so - and then also he thought that maybe there might be a war fighting them off.

And that has been not possible. It has been a total stalemate in the region. And so I think that he has been waiting for this kind of event any time. He has been very heavily defended. He knew that they could try to assassinate him any time.

MANN: What's Congo like these days?

MAGOMBE: Well, it's a very pitiful situation. It's probably one area getting worse than Sierra Leone, we might say. And the possibilities of even greater violence now are very real unless the international community tries to, you know, put a lot of pressure especially on the neighboring countries to try and, you know, make the rebels not go on the immediate offensive.

Because there might be a temptation for the rebels in the east and north to try and make an assault on Kinshasa, and that would just cause more bloodshed.

MANN: Whatever I read about the Democratic Republic of Congo or people talk about it, it's always in the context of the war, and the war is a terrible tragedy. But have the three years of Kabila's rule done anything for the people of Congo? Was there ever a government beyond simply a group of people who were waging war for the country?

MAGOMBE: Well, in the area that he governed, there was a kind of government, definitely. The only thing is that things like corruption have been very high. Within his own government, he's been having very close relatives on very few posts to other people who don't belong outside his own clan. So that has been a problem.

But - and also, in terms of economics, I think that the extent has been trying to just amass as much wealth for the state rather than for the country, to put all that money into the war machine rather than developing. So you know, health services, education services were broken down in Congo itself.

MANN: Has it gotten better since Mobutu's topple?

MAGOMBE: Not really. I don't think we can say it got better at all. Under Mobutu, what had happened was that there was a period of some kind of false stability. He managed to repress all the other groups or anybody who tried to overthrow him. And he was running the country with a very iron grip.

Now, the difficult or the difference between Mobutu and Kabila is that Kabila was not able at all to hold the country together, and I think that has been his uttermost downfall really.

MANN: Congo has been described to me as a place where the roads are gone, the power is gone, the infrastructure is gone. There is almost nothing left of what once was. This evening, how many people in that country even know about the kinds of events that we're talking about in Kinshasa today? How many people have that kind of information, that kind of access to the outside world?

MAGOMBE: No, I think they have the information because in towns (ph) of - for example, the rebel-held east of Congo, they would be very interested to pass over this news to everybody to make sure that they know that Kabila has had a problem.

And within Kabila's areas alone - in Congo even, Kabila's government has had quite a number of radio stations. But of course, there has been a lot of clampdown on the press. But I think people know. People know in Congo. The only thing is they don't have any way of effecting what goes on in the Congo.

MANN: Vincent Magombe of Africa Inform International, thanks so much for being with us.

MAGOMBE: Thank you.

MANN: Once again, this report coming to us from the AFP, French press agency - word from the Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel, who says that Laurent Kabila has been shot and killed by one of his bodyguards. The Belgian foreign minister quoting two reliable sources, saying once again that Laurent Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is now dead.

We'll take a break and then look at the Congo's influence on other countries in the region. Stay with us for that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: Welcome back.

The Democratic Republic of Congo could be a regional powerhouse with its natural resources and its favorable location. Instead or perhaps because of those very factors, many of its neighbors have been drawn into the country's conflicts.

Two of them, Rwanda and Uganda, initially supported Kabila, only to turn against him later. The international community also welcomed Kabila after he deposed Mobutu Sese Seko but later began to reconsider that support.

Marcus Mabry is senior editor at Newsweek International and Newsweek's former Johannesburg bureau chief. He joins us now. How many different countries are involved in what's going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo one way or another?

MARCUS MABRY, NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL: There are directly six nations involved as far as sending combatants to the Democratic Republic of Congo. And then we have, in fact, other proxy countries that are peripherally involved because rebel groups - and we're talking about another half dozen rebel groups, backed by various countries - actually use the neighboring countries as bases.

MANN: Why are so many countries drawn in there?

MABRY: I think the best answer to that is that, number one, we have to realize Congo's geographic position. Not just talking about - there is also a historical and a political position of great importance to Africa. It is a key country in Africa. But geographically, it borders 10 other nations. And in fact, we're talking about a country which is the size of the United States east of the Mississippi River. So it is an enormous country.

Secondly, as you said, Jonathan, it is potentially a treasure house of riches in Africa. And were it to actually be a stable democratic country, it would have the same kind of effect toward the good on Africa that we see from places like Nigeria and South Africa as they move toward democracy and open markets and freedom.

MANN: Instead, it is mired in war. How much appetite is there to continue this war? How much eagerness to end it?

MABRY: Well, you know, it's one of the great tragedies of Congo is the fact that if we're talking about the people of Congo - in the streets of Kinshasa, in the streets of Goma, in the streets of Kisangani and Lubumbashi - in these places all around the country, the people of Congo want nothing more than peace.

They've had war for far too long, and they've had poverty and deprivation for even longer. These are the people who were incredibly excited when Kabila came to power. These were the people who greeted him in the streets with food and flowers at the end of 27 despotic years of Mobutu.

But unfortunately, the place where there is not a real desire for peace, and certainly no willingness to follow through on the - with the courageous actions necessary to accomplish peace - is in the halls of power, in the halls of Kinshasa. Kabila, live or dead, he was certainly an impediment to peace.

Unfortunately, the greatest tragedy is that if he is, in fact, dead as the Belgians are saying - which is extraordinary in and of itself - then there may be, in fact, even greater ensuing chaos in which the cause of peace may be even more hopeless than when he was alive.

MANN: What kind of chaos? Is it going to be people within the Congo itself or outside forces, once again, intensifying their battle for what it offers them?

MABRY: Well, unfortunately, at this point, it is - as we've all seen - the UN has found it is very difficult to separate the combatants inside of Congo from the people outside of Congo and the outside nations with an interest in it, in fact. This has often been called Africa's first world war. So the prospects for chaos are across the spectrum.

We could be - in fact, see ethnic conflict. We could see the rebels who are largely ethnically Tutsi and supported by nations which the Congolese themselves view as largely Tutsi nations. We could see an ethnic conflict reminiscent of the Rwandan genocide, though hopefully never at that scale, because you don't have the same Hutu-Tutsi mix. But you could see ethnic warfare - Tutsi versus non-Tutsi, Tutsi versus Bantu, as they call them in Congo.

We could see everything from that all the way over to divisional factional faction erupting in the streets of Kinshasa, the streets of Lubumbashi. We could see this country break up into, you know, 10 or 12 dozen pieces.

MANN: There have been moments of optimism. There have been episodes where somehow it seemed things were going in the right direction. And one of them was around the time of the Lusaka accord. Tell us about that and what happened to it.

MABRY: The Lusaka accord - it's extraordinary. Because, you know, a year and a half ago, we really thought - we meaning we in the West - but also even the combatants. And the presidents of Rwanda and Uganda swore that they were in favor of it. We thought that there was a real chance for peace here. We thought there was a real chance for a cease- fire.

But in the same way that Kabila's rise turned out to be an illusory hope for democracy and change, that quickly it was quickly found out that on the ground, none of the sides agreed to implement the necessary changes required by the Lusaka accord. Namely, no one pulled back from their positions.

There was never a corridor, a buffer zone, a cordon (inaudible) set up between the two battling sides. No one followed through on their commitment. So that's why there was clearly never a real desire to implement peace, despite the havoc, the death, the disease, the famine that this war has inflicted on the people of Congo.

MANN: So what happens if Laurent Kabila survives this assassination attempt, survives this attempt on his government? Is it going to be months and years more of misery for that country, do you think?

MABRY: Well, it's interesting. I think when these things happen, invariably, two gross things happen. Number one, if he survives and he is able to miraculously say that this is proof of his power in a kind of very traditional folkloric sense in Africa, there will be people in the streets who will start to buzz about, oh, well, maybe he's not as weak or as pathetic as we thought.

Maybe, you know, like Mugabe and like Mobutu and people before him, maybe in fact this means that he is a big man who can survive even against opponents who are out to get him. If that happens, we could see a consolidation of his power. But I don't think that's what's going to happen.

I think if he, in fact, survives, we will see increasing attempts on his life. And if this, in fact, did come, as reported, from his inner security circle, then that means, you know, the knives are out, the daggers are drawn, and he had better watch his back everywhere.

MANN: Marcus Mabry of Newsweek International, thanks so much for this.

Before we go, just once again to repeat this report now from the French press agency and the Reuter news agency - word that Laurent Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been assassinated by one of his bodyguards. That report coming from the Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel.

That's INSIGHT for this day. I'm Jonathan Mann. The news continues.

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