Tom mentioned leadership in the PhD thread. In sum, in order for a good NCO to function, means that NCO had a good Officer.
Tom mentioned leadership in the PhD thread. In sum, in order for a good NCO to function, means that NCO had a good Officer.
This is a fantastic book. Well-written, informative, provocative and even (gasp!) entertaining.
LTC Tom Odom was the Defense Attache in Kinshasa during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. When Rwandan refugees began pouring over the border into Zaire, Odom was sent to Goma as leader of the American embassy team. He saw first-hand the appalling conditions of the humanitarian crisis, as well as the political challenges of any attempts to address it. Many of the refugees were Hutu genocidaires, some of them still armed. After for the most part ignoring the Rwandan genocide, international attention now focused on the camps, where the persecutors were seen as victims.
Odom’s primary mission was to “stop the killing.” But that was impossible. Odom predicted the violence would spill over into the Congo and possibly provoke a region-wide conflict. That prediction sadly proved to be true. Whether or not the USG could have stopped the Congo War, if Odom’s warnings had been heeded, the U.S. and international community might at least been able to mitigate the violence. Instead, some five million people died.
Odom offers a soldier/scholar’s perspective, one that sees a humanitarian crisis as a logistical and political challenge, without losing sight of the human tragedy. The book should be read by all interested in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Great Lakes conflict, and Sub-Saharan Africa. It is also of interest to the Small Wars community, as the Congo War is one of the more complex and challenging conflicts of our time. And Journey Into Darkness is simply a great read. Odom has a gift for telling stories. He has a sense of humor that is never glib or disrespectful. His style is honest and hard-earned, the voice of a man who knows who knows who he is, and isn't afraid of the truth.
Thread reopened to accommodate recent posts in a thread on the Zimbabwe National Army, which sit here far better. Moved to the Historian's arena.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 12-16-2017 at 05:36 PM. Reason: 24,593v
davidbfpo
Hattip to Crowbat: Battle of N'Djili
Behind the Scenes: Warlords’ Deadly Battle in Congo
By Keith Harmon Snow*
Toward Freedom
August 9, 2007
http://www.africafederation.net/Behind_Scenes.htm
The "four-day war" that rocked Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo from March 22-26, 2007 was called a "cleaning" by insiders. Everyone knew it was going to happen, the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC) did nothing to stop it and the death count was significantly under-reported. The realities behind the scenes remain cloaked by the international media and world institutions, and the big losers, yet again, are the Congolese people. This is the inside story.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is today both the richest and poorest country in the world. First robbed of its rubber and ivory (1890-1908) by Belgium’s King Leopold—whose enterprise of slavery claimed ten million Congolese lives but was masked by a humanitarian "anti-slavery" propaganda campaign—the plunder of the Congo was advanced by Belgian colonial interests from 1908 to "independence" on June 30, 1960.Early reports in the international media counted 150 people dead and described the warfare in general terms, absent all revealing details or background. A few days after heavy fighting the German Embassy broke ranks and declared, "up to 600 people killed." The German ambassador told reporters "The military forces that faced Mr. Bemba's militias were too heavy." The German Embassy remains silent about their direct involvement in illegal mining and bloodshed in the eastern Congo however.
War broke out on March 22 but the New York Times went completely silent about events in Congo. Then on March 28, they ran a sizeable front-page feature, "After Congo Vote, Neglect and Scandal Still Reign," focused on "a recent 1200-mile trip across the country" by NYT reporter Jeffrey Gettlemen. "The unruly capital" in Kinshasa, Gettlemen commented in passing, "looks as if a war has been fought in its streets. There has been some violence there, like the periodic clashes between the presidential guard and a militia loyal to Jean-Pierre Bemba, a tycoon, former warlord and unsuccessful candidate for president." The on-going Kinshasa war was relegated to "periodic clashes." As usual there was nothing about political alliances, dirty diamond deals, mercenary ties or the machinations behind the scenes.
Most remarkable were Gettlemen’s misrepresentations of violence in Kinshasa. "But it is not tanks and bombs that have turned the streets into bone-jarring rubble and many elegant buildings into teetering shells," he wrote. "It is neglect and corruption, which persist despite the election."
Reuters reported (March 23) that "heavy gun and mortar fire shook the Congolese capital at first light on Friday in a second day of fighting between government troops and forces of a former rebel leader."(12) This was not reflected in the Gettlemen piece. On March 24, 2007, the Associated Press published a photo of FARDC troops in a tank in front of Bemba’s residence in Kinshasa—refuting the Gentlemen dismissal of heavy weapons. Gettlemen’s long feature in the New York Times filled about 45 column inches, on several pages, with numerous photos of poor people in the bush, and it deflected attention from the conflict in Kinshasa.
Weapons deliveries rolled into Kinshasa from Matadi port between August and October 2006 and the four-day war involved mortars, bombs, tanks and RPG-7 rockets. Some twenty T-55 battle tanks, armored vehicles, and tons of ammunition arrived in Matadi in July 2006, shipped from Europe. There were twenty newly arrived T-72 tanks at Matadi. On August 24-25, FARDC moved seven truckloads of ammunition to Kinshasa. Nine T-55 battle tanks were delivered during the night of September 12. The FARDC logistics base in Kinshasa stored at least twelve T-55 tanks and 20 infantry combat vehicles.(13) The Kabila government and FARDC command did not cooperate with MONUC in verifications or inspections and weapons deliveries to FARDC violated U. N. Security Council resolutions.(14)
Bomb the Other Side of the Runway!
Zimbabwe's epic, 1998 defense of a Congolese airport
https://warisboring.com/bomb-the-oth...of-the-runway/
Anticipating the Rwandan plot, he signed a major deal with Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe. The Zimbabwean Defense Force would deploy a significant troop contingent in the DRC with the aim of monitoring the withdrawal of Rwandan military from the country.
In exchange, Mugabe received official permission to exploit several large mines in the country.
It so happened that in early August 1998, as the Rwandans were hauling their troops and arms from Goma to Kitona — i.e., from eastern to western Congo — the Zimbabweans were doing the same from their home bases, via Zambia, to Kinshasa. That is, from southern to western Congo.
To further increase the irony — many of Rwandan officers had trained in Zimbabwe, which meant that the future belligerents actually knew each other.
The ZDF of the 1990s was a highly professional force. Thus, while Kagame’s hodgepodge of Rwandan and Ugandan troops and Congolese mutineers needed two weeks to reach Kinshasa, by Aug. 22 the ZDF had one squadron of its own Special Air Service, 800 paratroopers, 15 Cascavel armored cars of Brazilian origin, 16 helicopters and eight combat aircraft staging from N’Djili.
Last edited by AdamG; 12-16-2017 at 06:18 PM.
A scrimmage in a Border Station
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail
http://i.imgur.com/IPT1uLH.jpg
Yup, up to 200 Rwandan officers and NCOs were trained in Zimbabwe of 1996-1997.
BTW: the story of post-N'Djili operations (which included several 'Fire-Force-style' drops by Zims, though with help of their G-/K-Cars and Angolan Mi-17s), and the 'exfiltration' of Rwandan survivors was something like 'another big adventure' in this campaign...
...and that's not to talk about all the various battles along the upper Congo River, a month or so later...
...or the siege of Ikela, lifted only in 2001...
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