Laeuchli, met last weekend DRC Defense and Veterans Minister, Charles
Mwando Nsimba.
DCM Laeuchli told the media AFRICOM is planning on training (at an
unspecified date) a special forces battalion in Kinshasa. Which is
odd, insofar as there's already an AFRICOM training center at
Kisangani.
A senior FARDC HQ staff officer to whom I spoke today about the
AFRICOM project was particularly incensed. He strongly believes
there's a conspiracy afoot to weaken DRC in the "looming water wars."
According to him, a conflict over Congo's water resources would soon
break out in which the DRC would find itself terribly unprepared.
Instead of building up a "republican army, politicians" are instead
going along with incoherent security sector reforms with no
sustainable follow-ups.
He said that, for instance, in lieu of building up on earlier brigade
creation projects, brigades have been instead torn to pieces,
regiments are now being built from scratch, and troops moved around
with not enough time to build the necessary "esprit de corps."
"Our borders are porous," he went on to say. "From Katanga to
Bas-Congo, nothing! No meaningful military dissuasive force! Instead
of building an army that would decisively respond to threats, they're
building these tiny commando units that would be meaningless if, say,
Rwanda were to strike one day. If hit by hostile forces today, the
only thing we'd do is to whimper and whine at the UN Security
Council!"
If training commando units is all "politicians" care about, he
wondered, then why not reopen the Kota-Koli commando training center
in Equateur Province? He said: "After all, Togolese, Chadians,
Rwandans and Burundians were once trained at Kota-Koli by us! There
are Congolese military instructors around doing nothing! To just show
you that politicians are joking with security issues, the entire
Congolese army is short on fuel right now. Not a drop of gasoline!"
He said that under Mobutu there was a coherent "division-of-labor" by
Western powers in the training of the then Zairian army. The US
provided logistical assistance; the Belgians infantry and commando
training; the Italians aviation assistance and pilots' training in the
air force; and so on...
"A tragic joke, the army today," he concluded.
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