ZIMBABWE- HARARE - Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) officers forcibly assigned to
the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to prop up the government of
Joseph Kabila against the re-insurgence of rebels under the tutelage of General Nkunda
are reportedly sneaking out of the war zone and finding their way to South Africa and Botswana.
ZimDaily that Robert Mugabe recently assigned two hundred soldiers to
the DRC to prop up support to the troubled president Joseph Kabila.
"The soldiers were dispatched to DRC under protest and most of them had
their travel papers fast-tracked against procedure to ensure that they are quickly
dispatched to the firing line," said the source on condition he is not named.
The source said that most of the army escapees are wriggling and buying their way back
through the Chirundu border post and have either gone into hiding in
Zimbabwe or fled to South Africa and Botswana.
The ZNA spokesman Tsatse could neither deny nor confirm that the army details are
fleeing the war zone in DRC saying that he still needs time to verify the allegations before commenting.
The recent riots aided by low ranking army officers resulted in the elimination of
eleven officers by the ruthless Zimbabwean government that no longer has
capacity to solve the country's economic problems believed to
have been the main reason behind the dissent.
Last month, ZNA scaled down its operations in Chiadzwa from six hundred to less than
one hundred officers in preparation for action in the DRC.
The scaling down in the Zimbabwe diamond rich Chiadzwa was also against the background
that they had the penchant for looting the precious stone and they themselves needed to be guarded.
The dispatch of Zimbabwe's legion of soldiers in the 1990s to prop up the illegal government
of the slain Laurent Kabila resulted in the massive loss of lives of many in the army
whose dead bodies were regularly off-loaded by army choppers at Manyame Airbase.
Manyame was later declared a cantonment area for those that do not stay there permanently
for the fear that they would externalise classified information of the uncalled-for death in the DRC.
Former Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasango, the UN mediator for the crisis in the Great Lakes
who was recently spotted on television gyrating to music with rebel leader General Laurent Nkunda
is pointing the guns of blame squarely at Joseph Kabila who is reportedly
negotiating in bad faith just like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
--
Jean-Louis Kayitenkore
Procurement Consultant
Gsm: (250) 08470205
Home: (250) 55104140
P.O. Box 3867
Kigali - RWANDA
East AFRICA
Blog: http://cepgl.blogspot.com
Skype ID: kayisa66
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