Background to the War
The four-month long 1997 Civil War in the Republic of Congo is a case-study in urban combat, since more than 62.5 % of the Congo's three million plus population were urban-based. These citizens could be found in the capital Brazzaville (1,059,000), the economic capital and coastal port of Pointe Noire (647,000) and Doilise (with 80,000 residents or half of the Congo's remaining urbanites, the Congo's third largest city).
Roads are rare in the Congo and airfields rarer. In addition to the Congo River, the 520-km long Congo-Ocean rail line between Brazzaville and Pointe Noire was the other major national thoroughfare.
Congo-Brazzaville has had a violent history since receiving it's nationhood in 1960. There has been a dozen coups d'etat, aborted coups and one miniature civil war, as well as eight presidents. Four leaders were overthrown, one was assassinated and another executed since the Congo's ascent to nationhood 37 years ago.
Denis Sassou Nguessou ruled from 1979 until 1992, when democratic change swept parts of Africa after Soviet communism collapsed in Europe. Nguessou's African-style Marxism got along very nicely with Moscow, Elf, and, in his day, French President Chirac.
In 1992, Pascal Lissouba was elected president in the country's first democratic elections, ending Denis Nguessou's 13-year military rule. Lissouba inherited an economy in critical condition and a country with a badly damaged infrastructure.
In the years following the election, both men built personal militias and attempted to incorporate them into the Federal Army. These lightly armed, generally undisciplined units would become the kindling for open warfare five years after Lissouba took office.
The civil war could not be fought out in a vacuum, since other nations relied on the Congo's natural resources. One of the strategic power generation centers in the area is the Inga hydroelectric complex; two dams which generate up to 2,700 MW of electricity out of an installed capacity of 100,000 MW, is located on the Congo river at about 250 km downstream from Kinshasa and at about 50 Km upstream toward Matadi, the country's major sea port. Throughout the civil war, it was operating at 35 % of its capacity (slightly above 1,500 MW) due to Congo's economic hardships. But Inga still supplied power to Kinshasa and the mining companies of Katanga in southeastern Congo, as well as northern Zambia and several countries in southern Africa.
Congo-Brazzaville was also Africa's fourth-largest oil producer and had vast untapped reserves. French and US oil companies naturally took an interest in developments. However, the standard of living is low and, being a poor nation, some Congolese barracks didn't even have beds.
Lissouba began the war on an apparently firmer footing than his rivals; with the power of the Federal Army behind him, possession of the country's military bases, rail line and major urban areas, as well as the country's bank accounts. A northerner from a minority tribe, Nguessou needed the support of the center and south of the oil-producing former French colony if he was to consolidate his hold over a nation with a history of bitter political and ethnic rivalry.
The Civil War Starts
On the night of 4-5 June 1997, the Cobras resisted a Congolese Army attempt to arrest two members at Nguesso's residence in the northern Brazzaville suburb of Mpila. The men had been accused of fomenting unrest in the Cuvette region (northern Congo) in May. The Army unit sent was outgunned and within hours, the city echoed with gunfire as the Cobras and Zulus took up arms. By midday, fighting between Cobra militia loyal to Sassou and troops and Zulu militia loyal to Lissouba had spread from the northern districts of the capital to the city's center.
Within hours, Brazzaville had turned into a dangerous, chaotic field of gang warfare, fiefdoms and marauding freelance gunmen. Most of the fighting took place along the streets of Poto-Poto, Moungali, Plateau and Moukondo wards. Law and order broke down completely, the rump of what used to be the national army fractured into ethnic-based factions loyal to regional warlords.
Two days later, any part of town other than the still-neutral Bacongo, had become a hazard. Munitions were obviously not in short supply. The Cobras seized the naval base on the Congo River and an armored regiment camp at Mpila shortly after hostilities broke out, where Sassou Nguesso's residence was located. Nguesso's forces receive additional artillery pieces from Gabon.
Strange lulls would take place while the city was sacked. At one point Sassou's Cobras and their arch enemies the Zulus were looting Brazzaville's largest supermarket at the same time, so absorbed in plundering that they forgot to fight each other.
Sassou Nguesso's militias cut Brazzaville in two from the 7th to 9th, using mortars, machine guns, grenades, RPGs and tanks inside the city. Roadblocks sprung up across the city and the government declared a dusk-to-dawn curfew. Lissouba reinforcements moved into Brazzaville's center overnight on the 7/8th, with 'light tanks' firing salvoes of rockets on the working-class districts inhabited by Nguesso supporters.
Operation Pelican
With several thousand foreign nationals in the city, a French/American/Belgian team was formed to airlift them out of harm's way. French units quickly moved into Brazzaville's Maya-Maya International Airport and set up an operations center at the aero club. While ossentsively out-of-bounds for the warring sides, Congolese militia units frequently fired over or fought close to the site - some positions were placed only 100 meters away.
A scheduled Air France plane was forced to cancel its departure on the 6th was able to leave the next day with 90 passengers on board. One French soldier was killed and five wounded in clashes with militiamen on the night of the 7th.
While heavy weapons fire continued in central Brazzaville the morning of the 8th, evacuation of French nationals from danger areas under military escort was continuing. They were escorted to official French locations in the city, in particular the French Embassy and the cooperation mission. The American airlift of expatriates was suspended because of the fighting and an American diplomatic vehicle was shot at on the 8th.
Liaison officers of the regular Congolese Army helped French troops on the ground but no evacuation order had been given for the 2,000 or so French nationals who lived in Brazzaville. They were only been advised to stay at home and to keep in touch with the embassy on the telephone.
About 500 French troops from other bases in Africa were due to arrive in Brazzaville on the 9th, to back up the 450 already there. Six French light armored vehicles had to be flown in from Chad to ensure convoy protection to retrieve the remaining expatriates in Brazzaville.
By the evening of the 11th, the Brazzaville airport had become a strategic point for everyone in the Congo. The French Army had evacuated about 500 civilians aboard 12 planes and the United Nations chartered two planes to evacuate almost all the personnel of the World Health Organization (over 200).
The 15th was the last day of the Pelican evacuation operation. Five rotation flights to Pointe-Noire and Libreville were scheduled, four by the French Armed Forces and one by the United Nations, to evacuate the last foreigners from Brazzaville.
The War Continues
On the 5th of July, both sides agreed to a ceasefire. However, Nguesso's spokesman accused Lissouba's forces of continuing to reinforce their military positions by sending tanks and Liberian mercenaries as well as UNITA soldiers up from Pointe Noire. The rail line running East-West through the city became the dividing line between the militias. By the 9th of July the Cobras controlled two-thirds of the capital. While out-numbered, they proved to be better disciplined than their opponents.
Indecisive fighting in Brazzaville continued throughout July and August into the fall, despite several attempts at diplomatic solutions.
A UN Peacekeeping force recruited from neighboring countries was also discussed, though never materialized since the situation never stabilized enough for it to be deployed.
The Final Offensive
The situation around Pointe Noire over the 11-12 October weekend became unclear, when the governments of Congo and Angola accused one another of aggressive moves. The Congolese military command asserted that Angolan troops had crossed the border from Cabinda, but Lissouba's forces claimed that the invaders were subsequently repulsed. Luanda meanwhile accused Congo of attacking Angolan territory.
On the 12th, Kolelas said Congolese troops had intercepted a column of Angolan soldiers in the south-west en route to Dolisie, and he would lodge a complaint with the United Nations Security Council. Colonel Louembe, commander of Lissouba's Pointe-Noire Military Region, made the decision to surrender the economic capital and thus sparred it from a futile destruction. Pointe-Noire's mayor's "Requin" [Shark] militiamen also avoided a fight with the invading Angolans.
About 1,000 Angolan troops backed by armor attacked Dolisie (100km from Pointe Noire) which would cut Lissouba's soldiers off from Loudima, a strategic town in the economically important region 400km from Brazzaville.
Also on the weekend of 11-12 October, Koleas threw in his Ninja militia on Lissouba's side to recapture Brazzaville's airport, but this combined force wasn't able to stop the Angolan/Sassou Nguesso swept through Brazzaville's southern suburbs. When Brazzaville's Maya-Maya airport was taken by Sassou Nguesso's forces, Angolan troops were reported there. The Cobras also destroyed two Hinds during the battle for the capital's airport.
On the morning of the 13th, Lissouba loyalist units began a two-hour long helicopter rocket attack on Cobra units that had taken control of the international airport on the 10th. A Nguesso MiG-21 retaliated on government positions in southern Brazzaville's suburbs, which killed around 20 people (mostly soldiers).
Angola's ambassador originally told the UN that Angolan forces had mounted hot-pursuit raids into Congo-Brazzaville on 13 October against UNITA and then returned to their base in the oil enclave of Cabinda.
When the Cobras, with the help of some of Kolelas' men who had switched sides, took the presidential palace and the last pocket of residual resistance fell around midday on 14 October, the Battle of Brazzaville was over. Many of Sassou Nguesso's units ended the war grouped on a bridge marking the southern edge of the capital.
Nguesso loyalists claimed that they had been greeted as "liberators" in parts of the city formerly under the control of government forces. While dozens of Ninjas fell in the last battle, very few Nguesso militiamen were killed since they were preceded by several tanks (type and number unspecified).
On 15 October 1997, after five months of civil war, General Sassou-Nguesso returned to power.
President Lissouba fled Dolisie, where he had been holed up since fleeing the capital and after a brief stopover in Togo, arrived in Burkina Faso on the 19th where he was offered refuge on "humanitarian grounds". Lissouba was last in Burkina Faso on October 3, at the height of the war, to plead for Burkina Faso troops to take part in an African intervention force. This, of course, never materialized.
The Angolan troops suffered higher casualties than expected and it was unclear whether their equipment was flown home or redeployed in other parts of Congo-Brazzaville where pockets of fighting continued as the Cobra militia units tightened their grip on the country.
Arms Resupply and Professional Advisors
Arms deliveries via Angola, Gabon, and Senegal made it possible to equip Sassou Nguesso's militias, both prior to and during the height of the civil war. On the very day the war started, tons or so of very heavy cases (and T-shirts) that took off from Paris' Le Bourget airport and made a stopover in Franceville, Gabon, before Sassou's men took delivery of them.
In August, 1997, Lissouba got six Mi 8 and two Mi 24 helicopters (other reports limited to four Russian gunships, type unspecified). Lissouba's camp used the oil revenue regularly paid by Elf to the Congo presidency every month to buy the helicopters and pay Ukrainian pilots. Other equipment (like light tanks and smaller artillery pieces.) were expected from Russia and Belarus, but had not yet arrived when Brazzaville fell.
Around the same period, Sassou's militia got MiG-21s and SA-7 MANPADS. Angola had been funneling weapons and logistical support to the Cobras, apparently in retaliation for Lissouba's support to UNITA. The Angolans offered the port of Luanda to receive nearly 200 tons of Brazilian arms, which were forwarded via Gabon to Sassou's supporters.
Western aid agencies and news services alledged that both sides recruited professional soldiers, including Israelis, Rwandan FAR and Hutu Interahamwe, [ex-] FAZ (former Zairian President Mobutu's Army and Presidential Guard), Gabonese, Chadians, Moroccans, Central Africans and also Libyans, as well as Liberians and Angolan UNITA rebels. Whether employed as trainers, unit leaders or weapons systems specialists (save for Ukrainian helicopter pilots) was never specified.
The South African firm of Executive Outcomes was also accused of being involved, but publicly denied the allegations as such support would be contradictory to their existing contracts with Luanda.
At the end of the campaigns, some Russian, French and Belgians were held on suspicion of aiding Lissouba in Pointe Noire. Most claimed to be civilian cargo pilots and apparently were later released.
Lessons Learned From A "Spray And Pray" War
Tactical information from this war is sparse and, since this account was taken from open sources, back- filtered through a wide variety of journalists. From the very first firefight, Lissabou's Army and his 'cocoyes' militia were not prepared to fight a determined opposition in either a conventional or guerilla war.
Despite the large number of irregular militias, the nature of the war seemed to be somewhere between "traditional" guerilla and conventional war. In stereotypical guerilla war, fighter’s flow amongst the population undetected until they open fire on the unsuspecting conventional troops.
Since the Congo was bisected along tribal lines, troops frequently and accurately 'cleansed' refugee groups of ethnic groups not their own. Movement out of one's own tribal areas and into the enemy’s rear, in the traditional guerilla sense, was therefore extremely difficult since the army was not a foreign one. (To put this in perspective to readers, during our own Civil War it was easy for Northern and Southern guards to detect escaping prisoners and infiltrators).
Most of the fighting during the June - October period was limited to the capital and it's surrounding suburbs (this changed drastically with the renewal of fighting in December 1998, which is beyond the scope of this article). Predictably, the war caused an overnight refugee problem as the already broken city services vaporized. The economic capital of Pointe Noire managed to stay neutral, since it was far removed from the tribal dividing line and had vocal representatives of the civilian population.
Since regular army units were few, the Congo Civil War could more accurately be as "conventional mob warfare". Limited television footage showed unidentified fighters using the 'spray and pray' method of firing control and in particular Lissouba's forces, both militias and Army units, were continually referred to as 'undisciplined'. While both sides looted, Nguesso's fighters were apparently less distracted. Major weapons systems - tanks, helicopter gunships and fighters - were committed in small groups and most frequently as individuals. Tanks were used without finesse, as little more than mobile artillery, and coordinated attacks apparently beyond the capabilities of most commanders. The RPG, mortar and artillery piece dominated Brazzaville's battlefields.
Save for the Ukrainian 'Hind' pilots/crews, the effectiveness of non-native and 'professional' soldiers is impossible to determine as of this writing. However, had they been truly effective, one side or the other would have developed a clear advantage prior to the Angolan ground offensive.
The Angolan decision to commit a ground force - roughly one infantry regiment with one attached tank company - turned the tide in favor of Nguesso. Battered as it is from nearly 25 years of constant fighting with the rebel UNITA, the Angolan Army had accrued substantial combat experience. Attacks, in conjunction with Nguesso allied units, appeared coordinated with what little air support could be mustered from Nguesso (the Angolan Air Force's own combat and transport assets were bogged down dealing with UNITA and supporting their ally Kabilia in the Democratic Republic of Congo).
It didn't take much to roll up Lissouba's units, even when neutral militias threw in with the doomed President. However, like many wars, the real problems came after the shooting stopped on 15 October 1997.
Fighting flared again in December 1998, and gives no signs of abating.....
THE PREWAR CONGOLESE REPUBLIC ARMY
The following figures represent the open-source estimate of the Congolese Republic Army. Presumably, not all of the major weapons systems worked. Furthermore, tracking new shipments of small arms and light weapons during the course of the war was difficult for media sources.
While the Congolese Army was trained and modeled on a Soviet model for internal security rather than force projection, it was a shaky organization even before the 1993-94' mini-Civil War. The prewar muster strength was about 8,000, with most units seriously under strength and much of the equipment presumed to be unserviceable. Eastern Bloc and Cuban advisors were withdrawn in the early 90's. The army was traditionally recruited from the Mbouchi Kouyou area in the north. While a Presidential Guard battalion had been forming, the armored battalions were little more than strong companies.
Infantry Battalion Groups included the infantry battalion (apparently organized on the Eastern Bloc standard), a Signals Platoon, a Light Tank troop (3 x PT76 or Type 62), an Artillery battery (generally eight tubes), an Engineer troop and a Logistics group.
Infantry weapons included various 9mm smgs, 7.5mm MAS 49/56 and M24/29 LMGs, 7.62mm NATO FN-FAL and CETME 58 rifles, 7.62mm AK47/AKM, RPD and RPK LMGs, 7.62x54Rmm RP-46 and 12.7mm DShK. Support weapons included 57mm M18 recoilless rifles and RPG7s.
The civilian Gendarme mustered a pre-war strength of about 2,000, with twenty companies scattered across the company. During the course of the fighting and afterwards, they appeared to be a force quite independent of the army.
Units:
Two Armored Battalions
Two Infantry BN Groups
One ParaCommando Battalion
One Artillery Group
One Engineer Battalion
Independent Infantry Bn
Signals Bn (-)
Supply/Log. Bn
Major Equipment:
20 x T-34/85
11 x Type 62 Lt. Tanks
5 x PT76
15 x Type 59
25 x T-54/55
25 x BRDM-1/2
50 x BTR-50/60/152
10 x OT-62
82mm Mortars
10 x 120mm Mortars
6 x 75mm M116 Pack Howitzers
57mm ZIS2 ATGs
76mm ZIS3 ATGs
10 x 100mm M1944
85mm Type 56 Field Guns
8 x 122mm M30 (M1938)
122mm Type 54
122mm D-30
130mm M46
(About 50 working field guns total)
122mm BM21 MRL (about six)
14.5mm ZPU-2/4
8 x ZSU-23-4
28 x 37mm M1939
57mm S-60
100mm KS-19
2 x Alouette III
2 x SA 316
2 x AS 365C
Air Force
22 x Combat Aircraft
9 x helicopters
*
Captured at Pointe Noire's Agostino Neto airport military annex (12 October 97)
One operational Mi-24, one Hind being assembled
Three Mi-8 'Hips'
Two small Antonov transport planes (both operational)
One MiG-21 being fitted out and five MiG-21s needing serious repair
Two BRDM armored cars
Ten dilapidated MiG-17s
Adam Geibel is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Military Ordnance and a freelance writer.
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