Life And Death In The Congo

As Mobutu voluntarily withdrew from everyday political life into what Wrong calls an insidious decade-long sulk, the Grosses Legumes grew in power. The dictator sank into the bosom of his grasping family, especially the identical twin sisters who were his wife and concubine, or "second office," and into the thrall of key aides. As Mobutu retreated throughout the 1990s, Zaire came increasingly to be run by the "Inseparable Four" -- rapacious senior military officers who "swiftly emerged as the real powerbrokers in Kinshasa." When the rebellion finally came, these four cynically exploited the tinderbox in the east to satisfy their own greed.

Wrong's version of Mobutu's decline, however -- the withdrawal scenario -- is ultimately unsatisfying. Its emphasis on passivity greatly underplays Mobutu's active role in the long-running democratization charade of the late 1980s and early 1990s. During this period, the hated dictator became fixated on eventually winning some form of election, which would allow him to return to Kinshasa in triumph. To this end, for example, he legalized political parties and then, in order to create chaos in the opposition, funded many of the more than 300 that emerged.

But the pretense of liberalization fooled no one, and throughout it, the pillage of Zaire's vast natural resources -- what Wrong labels its "asset curse" -- by Mobutu and his cronies continued. Meanwhile, the structures of government eroded around them. Instead of "Kin-la-belle" (Kinshasa the beautiful), the capital came to be known as "Kin-la-poubelle" (Kinshasa the garbage pail) for its ubiquitous rubbish heaps. Kinshasa's hospital lacked basic medicine, and relatives would simply abandon their dying family members there to be buried in mass graves.

When the end finally comes, Wrong paints Mobutu's fall with deft strokes. A first-rate novelist could not have dreamed such a complicated story, and Wrong tells it with verve. Mobutu's military collapsed "like a maggot-eaten fruit" as several of Zaire's neighbors moved in to defend him against other neighbors trying to overthrow him, and France organized the hiring of mercenaries -- including "Serb psychopaths fresh from Bosnia's killing fields" -- to help fight the rebels. Once Mobutu finally realized how desperate his straits were, he made frantic appeals to erstwhile backers in Washington, Brussels, and Paris. These calls were rebuffed, and the Americans urged Mobutu to exit gracefully. But Mobutu, convinced the Americans were plotting against him, angrily refused. Even as French commandos escorted his prime minister into a waiting helicopter bound for exile, Mobutu never grasped what was happening: the Cold War was over, and Mobutu, a relic of an earlier age, was being consigned to the dustbin of history.

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In depicting these events, Wrong argues that Mobutu was not the only one responsible for Zaire's tragedy. Rather, as she puts it, the disaster had its roots in a history of extraordinary outside interference. ... Zaire's free fall was generated not by one man but thousands of compliant collaborators, at home and abroad.

Wrong correctly posits that it was a combination of external factors -- an "insidious form of colonialism" -- that "locked the society into one slow-motion economic collapse" and allowed Mobutu to get away with "the most outrageous behavior." Foreign assistance only made matters worse; "whether for hard-headed or high-minded reasons, intervention did no more than fix the country in a kind of purulent agar."

Unfortunately, although her diagnosis is right, the author goes astray in analyzing the responsibility of the various external actors. In particular, Wrong places more blame than is warranted on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank -- more blame, indeed, than her own data support. Although Wrong fails to see it, far more of the responsibility for Zaire's collapse belongs to key Western states than to multilateral organizations.

According to Wrong, Zaire developed a "sick relationship" with the IMF and the World Bank, one characterized by the "breathtaking naivete" of Bretton Woods officials, by their "insidious" need to push loans on the country, and by their inability to insist on better governance in return. Officials turned a blind eye to corruption and kept aid money flowing into Zaire long after evidence of Mobutu's abuses had come to the fore. Even when, in 1982, a German IMF official named Erwin Blumenthal published a damning account of financial improprieties and widespread wrongdoing in Zaire, the international bodies still did not cut Mobutu off. Zaire's dictator was an expert at the ritual dances of reform, and, according to Wrong, Bretton Woods officials seemed happy to play along. By the time they finally stopped assistance, in 1990, the damage to Zaire had become enormous.

Although the IMF and the World Bank are the major targets of Wrong's anger, when her book is read carefully it becomes clear it is really a "troika" of three countries -- the United States, France, and Belgium -- that was most at fault. Each of these states had its own interests to pursue in the region, and Mobutu brilliantly exploited differences in their Cold War strategies and interests. It was these nations, and not the IMF or the World Bank, that were the true prime movers in Zaire's drama. Wrong herself suggests as much when she recounts an incident that undermines her thesis about the primary fault of the Bretton Woods twins. Pressure from the troika on the World Bank and the IMF to lend to Zaire was usually discreetly applied, but on occasion it could be made explicit. When the World Bank was about to cut off relations with Mobutu, the U.S. ambassador to Zaire stormed into