http://www.guardian.co.uk/Observer/international/story/0,6903,436497,00.html
Revealed: how Africa's dictator died at the hands of his boy soldiers
President Laurent Kabila's blind faith in his teenage warriors was a fatal
error, reports Stuart Jeffries
Sunday February 11, 2001
The Observer
The teenage killer of Laurent Kabila is still on the run a month after the
Congolese president's murder, according to a dramatic account of his
assassination which has emerged in Paris. The report also casts new light on
why the 'child soldiers' of the ex-president's army turned against Kabila and
plotted his assassination. It suggests there was no international conspiracy,
nor were Congolese rebels who control much of the eastern part of the
Democratic Republic of Congo responsible. Rather, Kabila's kadogos (Swahili
for child soldiers) committed parricide against a man they believed to have
betrayed them. Kabila had believed that the kadogos who had served him
loyally since his rebellion in 1997 against ex-president Mobutu were utterly
loyal. He even told a visiting foreign businessman: 'They will never do
anything against me. They have been with me since the beginning. They are my
children.' Kabila's young killer entered the president's office at the Marble
Palace in Kinshasa on 16 January, as the increasingly paranoid and isolated
Kabila was discussing with an economics adviser a looming summit with France
he hoped would be his political salvation. The assassin bent over Kabila, and
the president, assuming the teenager wanted to talk to him, leaned towards
him. The kadogo then produced a revolver and shot the president four times,
and then escaped with other conspirators while the palace resounded with
gunfire. At least three of those involved in the plot, including the unnamed
killer himself, fled Kinshasa, crossed the river Congo and may have gone into
hiding in Brazzaville, capital of the neighbouring Congo. The investigation
casts doubt on the official version of Kabila's murder. According to Justice
Minister Mwenze Kongolo, Kabila was killed by another bodyguard called
Rashidi Kasereka, 18, who was then shot dead. But, according to yesterday's
report in Le Monde, Kasereka played a minor role in the assassination team. A
sub-lieutenant who took part in the assassinations, identified by Le Monde
only as 'A.L.', said that Kasereka was killed by Kabila's bodyguards while
the real killer escaped. 'A.L.' was in charge of 35 men who were posted
outside the presidential palace. Two men got inside the building, four others
hid in the palace to provide cover. 'Rashidi was one of four men giving
covering fire to our partner. But Rashidi never got out. The rest of us, we
ran about 300 metres to where we had left our six vehicles. Then we split up
and disappeared into the city.' The plot to kill Kabila started in early
January when a dissident group of kadogos went to Brazzaville and drew up a
document setting out Operation Mbongo Zero. 'Mbongo' is a Swahili word for
buffalo, a reference to the ex-president's corpulence. A copy of the
assassination plan has been kept by one of the plotters, identified by Le
Monde only as 'Abdoul'. Consisting of three unsigned hand-written pages, it
explains how the conspirators would infiltrate strategic positions in
Kinshasa, including the presidential palace, the national radio and
television station and the headquarters of the country's electricity company.
It involved some 75 members of Kabila's bodyguard at the presidential palace,
many of whom were arrested after the killing. The roots of the boy soldiers'
dissension go deeper. Kabila founded his Alliance of Forces for the
Liberation of Congo-Zaire in 1996, backed chiefly by Rwandan and Ugandan
forces (with whom he later fell out), but with support from the kadogos, from
the east of the country. Kabila consolidated his power base by organising the
assassination of one of the co-founders of the Alliance, Andre Kisase Ngandu,
who had been chief of the National Council of Resistance for Democracy, a
group opposed to Mobutu to whom many of the kadogos belonged. One of those
kadogos was 'Abdoul', who supported Kabila during the 1997 coup d'etat, but
never pardoned him for killing his former leader: 'I marched with Kabila, but
I knew he was a traitor.' Resentment against Kabila grew. Last June, in a
desperate roll of the dice, Kabila agreed to meet the Rwandan president
General Paul Kagame, to devise a plan to protect his teetering regime. Kagame
was a long-time enemy of the kadogos and thus the meeting alienated them
further. At the same time, Kabila was sowing internal dissension. According
to Abdoul, he treated his 'children' with contempt: 'We knew no one in
Kinshasa. All the time we were with Kabila. But he treated us badly. We
didn't have salaries, all the money came from him. We were like beggars.'
Increasingly paranoid, Kabila started to devour the children of the
revolution. Last November, he believed he had discovered a plot against him
and arrested, tortured and killed soldiers loyal to Commandant Anselme Masasu
Nindaga who had days earlier made a subversive speech at a reunion for 1,200
kadogos in Kinshasa. The day before his assassination, Kabila had witnessed
the execution of 47 kadogos, all believed to be plotting against him. His
terror had turned on those who had been his closest allies, the boy soldiers
who had marched with him from eastern Congo four years earlier.
