South African troops warned they’ll be massacred:

War over control of massive Central-African oil lake to erupt soon

South African troops warned of ‘massacre’ by Congo rebels – South African troops and rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are preparing for war in the northeast Congo –  where the largest oil-discovery of the century is located.

The growing battle for control of the massive new oil reserves in central Africa is threatening to plunge the entire southern-African region into vicious warfare.  The DRC-military are known for their brutality as this recent video shows.

However the M23 rebels fighting to wrestle away control of the oil-concessions from the Congolese military are equally brutal.  This video in French shows the horrific brutality by Congolese military forces:

video (source under fair use by M23 rebels): http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pDSsdsLbMD4

In the story below, a map of the  oil-concessions around Lake Albert can be seen:

 

( see our previous article:

/economics-and-politics/2013/04/massive-central-african-war-breaks-out-over-largest-oil-lake-ever-discovered-2451598.html

The DRC-president Kabila ‘s own troops are described as ‘feeble’ and “undiscliplined”: widely criticised for their brutality against civilians and corruptions. The DRC-military this week ‘suspended’ 12 senior officers over mass rapes in the strife-torn east of the country.

UN officials said  the DRC-army had simply ‘melted away’ during the advance of the M23-rebels into Goma in November last year…

Meanwhile influential Zuma family members have signed up for valuable oil-concessions from Prresident Kabila – and need to protect them while they sink the wells. SA president Jacob Zuma has sent a rumoured 1,000 troops from SA and withdrew others stationed in the region on peacekeeping missions to strategic Goma.

 

Zuma ‘s intervention into internal affairs of another African country approved by UN

Zuma can do this without ‘international condemnation’ of intervening in the internal affairs of another African country — because he is hiding behind a UN Security Council resolution ordering an “intervention brigade” into the area. 

This is however not a “peacekeeping” mission: it’s a high-risk, targetted offensive ‘peace-enforcement’ mission with a mandate to ‘ neutralize and disarm rebel groups in the DRC. The SA troops are being sent into unfamiliar territory to do combat with the M23 rebels – who are well trained and reportedly have external support, most probably from Rwanda (as noted in the UNSC resolution).

Thus the SANDF will, therefore, be taking part in a high-risk mission where there is, not only a serious risk of further casualties, but also a serious risk of being sucked into a regional war, fighting rebel groups supported by regional powers, such as Rwanda. It’s worthy of note at this point that many hundreds of thousands refugees from the Congolese regions and Rwanda live in South Africa. There have already been 31 troop casualties among UN troop contributing countries in the DRC.

Meanwhile inside South Africa, it’s being under-reported that Zuma is primarily sending his troops into harm’s way to protect his family’s oil-concessions in the region.  He has even reportedly ordered to build a “super-base” in anticipation of such an attack, which military intelligence expects to be launched soon by the powerful M23 (“March 23″) rebels soon. The SA opposition parties have called for a parliamentary debate to investigate the entire matter.

Meanwhile the M23 rebel group has already launched a wave of  propaganda attacks through  its a highly effectice Twitter actount  @m23drc and its website at http://www.www.m23drc.com. While the SA military intelligence experts claim that this is merely a ‘propaganda’ campaign by an ‘unknown site’, the M23 rebels have been in contact with the SA news media directly, and have even sent a direct warning to  South Africa’s Parliament in an open letter that it would not be responsible for a “mutual massacre” when attacked on its home turf.

The well-funded, experienced and well-armed rebel group threatens to use “continuous deadly combat”. It also mocked the South African forces as “corrupt” and “old”. SA’s military intelligence said they are ‘ignoring the threats’ and continuing with their plans to secure Goma.

Indeed their threat is well-founded:  the SANDF underwent a painful beating at the M23-linked rebel group in the Central African Republic last month, with the Zuma-regime admitting to 13 deaths and 87 injured.

Health problems amongst SANDF are severe:

Another major problem: the SANDF is not the fittest fighting force to be sent into prolonged battle, either And they will be fighting the M23 rebels on their own turf, while the South Africans will have long supply-lines to keep their troops fed and equipped.

Especially its health-problems are so severe that many of the SANDF troops reportedly are chronically ill:  for instance several years ago, the test-results of a small sampling-group of 1,089 soldiers showed many of these tested troops were infected with HIV-AIDS: this small sampling found a whopping 947 to be HIV-positive.

The SANDF’s own ‘official figure’ for HIV-AIDS infected soldiers stands at 23 percent – however experts say that at least 40 percent — about 28,000 soldiers – are infected. Meanwhile the SANDF has been downgrading its troop levels from 100,000 to 70,000 and  (then) rear-admiral JG Engelbrecht described the future of the SANDF as a fit fighting force as ‘bleak’. He warned that the government had to decide whether to remove the infected soldiers from combat roles or whether to remove them when they became too ill to function.

• (In South Africa, the only soldiers who are allowed to be tested for Aids without their permission are those who accept postings to UN missions.)
   

Inexperienced troops due to Africanisation laws under ANC-regime:

Twenty years of neglect under the fraudulent ANC-regime also created another problem: many of its most-experienced and healthiest troops have been fired only because of their skin-colour: under the ANC-regime’s socalled ‘black economic empowerment laws’ very few military officers and troops now remaining are whites.

The UN’s ‘Intervention brigade”

Reports in the Mail & Guardian daily in SA said that SANDF troops are  being withdrawn from other bases in the Congo “to concentrate forces and firepower at Munigi, which is strategically positioned to protect Goma from a rebel advance.” Last November this  base  was overrun by rebels who temporarily took Goma.  

The United Nations has issued an unique order to eradicate the M23 rebels with an ‘intervention brigade’ – a process they call a ‘peace-enforcement’ group which is supposed to ‘negotiate with the rebels’. It’s obvious that the SANDF’s  military intelligence could indeed be ‘negotiating’ without having to fire one shot by simply contacting the M23-rebels directly.

The Mail & Guardian reports from  South Africa that “military intelligence have apparently been warned that M23 plans to launch attacks on the UN Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the DRC (“Monusco”) before a new intervention brigade confronts M23 head on.  Monusco, which has been operational in the DRC in various guises since 1999 was previously only given permission by the UN “to shoot back only when attacked. ” The new UN intervention brigade is described as a ‘peace-enforcement’ group ” with an offensive mission.

Most of the South African news media do not mention the underlying reasons for the sudden rush by South Africa to secure the oil-reserves beneath four central-African countries: which was first discovered near Lake Albert, in the North-East part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo several years ago.

articles: links:

http://www.citizen.co.za/citizen/content/en/citizen/local-news?oid=414147&sn=Detail&pid=146828&SANDF-ignores-rebel-threat

 http://mg.co.za/article/2013-04-12-drc-rebels-warn-sa-of-massacre/

http://allafrica.com/stories/201304111155.html

http://www.hst.org.za/news/sandf-unveils-shock-aids-data

http://congodrcnews.com/2013/04/13/dr-congo-suspends-12-army-officers-over-notorious-rapes-un/