Congo to boost its army

KISANGANI, Congo – Questions about pay in the new army’s first and only brigade prompt chuckles among the men. In Congo, soldiering on a steady salary was never part of the deal.

Less humorous are the former child combatants and illiterate people who pepper the ranks, a motley crew of ill-trained guerrilla fighters and government soldiers who fought on opposite sides of a five-year civil war.

Then there are the troops’ rusty assault rifles, 80 percent of them knocked out of commission in the humid, tropical heat.

And ammunition? “We’re waiting. It will come,” the commander of the 2nd Battalion, Maj. Angole Mbula, said, his soldiers nodding in hopeful agreement.

These are the men of Congo’s new integrated army – for now, a single 3,400-man brigade that incorporates fighters from the war’s rival factions.

Plans call for the army to grow eventually to about 100,000 soldiers and help reinstate government control from the capital, Kinshasa, throughout a nation the size of western Europe.

But with 300,000 fighters loyal to rival factions still under arms in de facto fiefdoms across the country, it’s likely to be a long time before the new force will be able to shoulder the burden of national security.

“To make a new army … it’s going to be a lot of work, probably stretched over 10 years,” said Col. Philippe Martin, who heads a Belgian military contingent sent to help train the fledgling army in this former Belgian colony.

Congo is rich in resources, but long years of dictatorship, corruption and war have left its 52 million people abjectly poor.

Perpetually unpaid military wages over the last decade mutated the Congolese military into a force known more for its ability to loot than its ability to fight.

At the beginning of the 1998-2002 war, army units in Congo’s far eastern borderlands rebelled.

But as the war advanced, the rebels were often relegated to support roles behind the front lines. Key battles were fought by well-trained foreign troops — principally from Rwanda and Uganda, who backed the rebels, and from Angola and Zimbabwe, who backed the government.

No serious tensions have been reported among the former foes.

“We have no enemies here,” said Capt. Taty Nboyo, who came to Kisangani from the Rwandan-backed former rebel stronghold in Goma in the east. “We’re all brothers. Some of us were friends even before the war.”