Africa Finds Old Borders Are Eroding
By HOWARD FRENCH
Published: October 18, 1997
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, Oct. 17— With the spread of war across a band of countries that spans the breadth of Central Africa, a tide of democratic change begun on the continent at the turn of the decade has been blunted by a new model: change by the gun.
Africa has slipped into one of the most violent phases of its post-independence history. And many experts now say that political struggles are spilling across borders as states intervene militarily in their neighbors' affairs in ways that were once uncommon.
First, in Rwanda in 1994, the Tutsi ethnic minority, with the backing of neighboring Uganda, seized power after a long-simmering conflict with the Hutu majority erupted into wide violence, culminating in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Tutsi and moderate Hutu.
Then last year, Rwanda and Uganda teamed up with Angola to help overthrow Africa's longest-ruling dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, in neighboring Zaire in a seven-month war. The country's new president, Laurent Kabila, renamed it Congo.
Now this week, in startling fashion, Angola has decided the outcome of the five-month civil war in the Republic of Congo, across the Congo River from the former Zaire, by sending tanks and jet fighters to intervene in a civil war on behalf of a former President, Denis Sassou-Nguesso.
In each case the rest of the world barely made a sound in protest at the outside intervention, and local African powers interpreted the silence as a green light to violently replace unfriendly governments on their borders with regimes more to their liking.
Since the end of the cold war, Western security interests in Africa have largely evaporated, even though strong commercial interests, particularly for oil and mining, remain. The change has freed African countries to pursue new alliances on the continent and to woo outside financial interests for support. At the same time, African states have begun to pursue their own interests more vigorously than ever before.
In the West, the determination of Rwanda and Uganda to take on a corrupt dictatorship in Zaire was widely hailed as a new chapter in modern African politics, where countries make cold assessments of their own regional security interests and acted together to resolve a problem, rather than calling in outside powers.
But already, many observers worry that by discarding the once-hallowed tenet of non-interference in a neighbor's affairs, African states have opened a Pandora's box of conflicting interests, defined most broadly as having sympathetic leaders running neighboring states.
''Nobody seems to have bothered to think this through very carefully,'' said a senior African diplomat. ''But what we are witnessing is a scrapping of all the old rules, with nothing coherent being put in their place. Where this all ends, no one knows.''
Outside Central Africa, a number of other cross-border flashpoints exist on the continent. Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda -- backed by the United States -- have given military aid to rebels in the Sudan who have been waging a long struggle against that country's strict Islamic Government.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous country and West Africa's military powerhouse, is locked in a military showdown with neighboring Cameroon over lands rich in oil in the border area between the two countries.
Several hundred miles to the west, Nigeria has also stepped up attacks against a severely isolated military junta in Sierra Leone, launching air raids on army positions from military bases it controls in that country.
Nigeria's own military Government is insisting that Sierra Leone reinstate Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, a democratically elected President who was overthrown by soldiers earlier this year.
South Africa, a continental powerhouse, has played a highly ambiguous role in African affairs since the end of apartheid, engaging in mediation while often selling arms or supplying mercenaries to belligerents. But it has lately begun to sound an alarm over the spread of cross-border intervention.
''The fact that conflict is escalating is of great concern because it causes the possibility of conflict spreading to other areas, creating greater instability,'' Aziz Pahad, South Africa's Deputy Foreign Minister, said today at a news briefing.
Mr. Pahad said his Government, which was one of the first to recognize the Kabila regime after it overthrew Mr. Mobutu in Zaire in May, would now bide its time in deciding whether to recognize the return of Mr. Sassou-Nguesso to power in the neighboring Republic of Congo.
For many African-affairs experts, Mr. Sassou-Nguesso's takeover raises disquieting possibilities of future regional conflict. Far from a simple case in which African countries backed a movement to overthrow a thoroughly discredited regime, as was the case in Zaire, the recent conflict in the Congo Republic saw African countries positioning themselves all over the board.
In his campaign for power, Mr. Sassou-Nguesso had the covert support of France, which had soured on President Pascal Lissouba since he tried to loosen the stranglehold of the French oil giant Elf Aquitaine on his country's petroleum market shortly after his election in 1992.
Angola, meanwhile, began openly arming Mr. Sassou-Nguesso, who was a close ally in the 1980's.
Mr. Lissouba busied himself courting Mr. Kabila's new Government in the former Zaire, as well as its backers in Uganda and Rwanda. Other African countries played similarly ambivalent roles. Whereas France's former colonies could once be counted on to line up reflexively behind Paris, several of them clearly felt uncomfortable with French support for Mr. Sassou-Nguesso. .
If the West, and France in particular, have shown growing indifference toward crises in Africa, others say the conflicts in the former Zaire and in the Congo Republic point to a new, more subtle, but no less self-interested Western involvement.
As Rwanda gave only barely-concealed support to Mr. Kabila's revolt in Zaire a year ago, Washington pointedly discouraged any United Nations Security Council protest over the violation of sovereignty.
Ever since, the United States has been closely identified with the Kabila Government in the eyes of many Africans. They have interpreted Washington's relative quietness on issues of human rights and democracy as a sign that the United States is mostly preoccupied with securing a new ally in a country immensely rich in natural resources. There is similarly widespread skepticism in Africa over the motives of France, which in recent months has closed military bases on the continent and has worked to give the impression of turning over a new leaf in Africa after decades of paternalism.
When Paris rushed to embrace the victorious Mr. Sassou-Nguesso, after months of behind-the-scenes support for him, many Africans immediately concluded that the new model for France's relationship with its former empire was not one of withdrawal at all, but merely of carefully picking one's shots.
''The discreet but effective intervention of Elf Aquitaine in the war in Congo announces a new type of interference from Paris in African affairs,'' said an editorial in the Ivory Coast daily Le Jour. ''The days of French paratroop operations are over because they are too visible and too delicate for international opinion. From now on, the key is to watch after the interests of big industrial or commercial corporations.''
Photo: Denis Sassou-Nguesso called for reconciliation yesterday after his forces seized power from President Pascal Lissouba in the Congo Republic. (Agence France-Presse)(pg. A7) Chart: ''CHRONOLOGY: How Ravages of War Swept Westward'' JULY 1994 -- The Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel army made up largely of Tutsi exiled in Uganda, takes power in Rwanda. It unseats Hutu authorities who had mounted a campaign of massacres that killed more than 500,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu. The new Rwandan leader, Paul Kagame, and many of his troops had fought alongside the Ugandan leader, Yoweri Musveni, during his own guerrilla campaign years earlier. OCTOBER 1996 -- Zairian Tutsi, supported with arms and men from Rwanda, stage an uprising in eastern Zaire. The revolt is eventually led by Laurent Kabila, a longtime opponent of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Seven months later, with support from Rwanda, Uganda, Angola and several other African countries, Mr. Kabila takes power and changes the name of Zaire to the Democratic Republic of Congo. OCTOBER 1997 -- In the neighboring Congo Republic, the former President, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, defeats the incumbent, Pascal Lissouba, after four months of intense combat that destroys the capital, Brazzaville. Angola deploys fighter jets and tanks, breaking a deadlock in the fighting and allowing Mr. Sassou-Nguesso to emerge victorious.