Best zimbabwe history books according to redditors

Part 1

Sorry to come back with some 'hairsplitting', but your questions are so 'broad', they would require a host of definitions and extremely 'broad' answers. It's like you've asked how many wheels are there on some train - without explaining what train, what locomotive and how many cars...

Up front one must understand that 'Africa' is one continent, but not a single nation. Sub-Saharan Africa even less so. Indeed, not a single nation there consists of just one ethnic group, which in turn means there is a host of different nationalities, ethnic and religious groups, etc., which in turn means there is an even wider range of political systems, and military traditions - and experiences.

Thus, when you ask,

> Have any new lessons come from this conflict?

One can only answer with such 'idiotic' replies like: Yes, a host of new lessons - but from what conflict, please? There are about a dozen raging alone in the CAR, DRC, Rwanda and Burundi - alone - since something like 70 years...

> How competent are the forces involved?

Some are 'hypercompetent', and others full of such suppositions and prejudice like 'bullets can't kill a white man', or the crack from firing a fire-arm can kill one too... It all depends on whom do you want to discuss, i.e. what is the conflict on your mind?

> Particularly in and around the Congo area, Subsaharan Africa has seen quite a bit of extensive, low-intensity guerrilla warfare conducted by a plethora of state and non-state actors. How have the strategies and tactics of the various actors involved changed over time, have observing nations learned anything new about this sort of fighting?

Essential problem with the DR Congo 'area' is Rwanda. In the case of Rwanda, one could monitor a period of 'no development at all' in regards of doctrines and strategies for decades (so also in regards of 'low-intensity' and 'high-intensity' guerrilla warfare), then a period of 'intensively evolving' doctrines and strategies in the 1990s, and then again 'no development at all' since around 2001-2003.

The essence of the 'problem' there is of ethnic nature: there are two major ethnic groups, each convinced it's superior to the other - and that primarily thanks to the ideologies developed by their former colonial masters. Moreover, and more recently, one of the groups was misused by the USA and Israel to take over the country and convert it into 'Israel of Africa' in order for private interests in the USA to get their slice of what certain Henry A Kissinger titled with something like 'Congo's 35 trillion fortune', 'but' was considered for something like Franco-Belgian turf until 1990s.

So, in 1990, a large chunk of the Ugandan military - about 5,000 of people predominantly Tutsis that grew up in refugee camps in that country - launched an 'insurgency' against the (not really) Franco-Belgian supported Rwandan government. That 'insurgency' was de-facto a Ugandan-supported invasion (subsequently supported by numerous US and British private interest groups), that was anything else than 'guerrilla war': actually, thanks to the rivalries between top leaders of the insurgency (which culminated in a quick assassination of one of them), but also much more powerful (and far more competent) resistance of the regular Rwandan armed forces, it quickly degenerated into little else but trench warfare. That's where it remained for most of the next four years. Then, the 'hawks' within the Hutu majority of Rwanda lost nerves and the situation degenerated into a genocide of not only the Tutsi, as usually reported in the West, but also plenty of the Hutu (in which the 'innocent insurgents' were greatly involved; for details, see Rwandan Patriotic Front).

Once the 'insurgents' have secured Rwanda, they realized that over 50% of the population fled, and the country couldn't survive on its own. It had no economy, nothing to live from - even more so without the population. Thus, they launched a 'spontaneous repatriation' of the refugees from the Eastern DRC, (called Zaire from 1972 until 1997) in 1996... only to find out that there's actually no Zairian military to stop them. They 'spontaneously repatriated' about half a million of people (massacring dozens of thousands in the process), while quickly sacking the few Zairian units that offered resistance. That resulted in the Rwandans finding out they're now in control of quite extensive mines of such stuff like gold, diamonds, koltan etc. ....and that there is even more of the same if they go further west.

Thus, with the excuse of 'pursuing the genocidaries' a country the size of New York City, launched an invasion of a country the size of the USA east of the Appalachian Mountains... and actually, and with some help from Uganda, Zimbabwe and then Angola (the leaders of all of which had similar $-signs in their eyes), managed to topple Mobutu, in May 1997 (this despite some French attempts to organise some kind of a mercenary army consiting of Serbs, few Belgians and a handful of South Africans). Although officially run in the name of the 'AFDL-guerrilla' led by small-time Marxist-cum-businessman named Laurent Kabila, this was actually also no 'guerrilla campaign'. Rather a quite conventional military advance through the jungle, with plentiful of commercial air power support.

By 1998, what a surprise, Kabila found out he can rule at least Kinshasa on his own, and turned anti-Rwandan. 'Deeply depressed' (quote from certain Major-General James Kabarebe of the 'Rwandan Defence Force'), the Rwandans then staged a counter-coup: they hijacked several airliners at the (Congolese) airport of Goma, and used these to airlift a force of several thousands of their and Ugandan troops all the way to Kitona Air Base, on the Atlantic coast (about 1,500km away from Rwanda as the crow flies). From there, Kabarebe launched a (quite conventional, actually) advance on Kinshasa, his troops looting, pillaging and killing as they went.

'However', in the meantime, Kabila reached an agreement with Zimbabwe to deploy its troops to 'monitor the Rwandan military withdrawal from the DRC'. So, the Zimbabweans landed at N'Djili International - only to find themselves under a combined Rwandan-Ugandan assault, a few days later (that was in August 1998).

Although hopelessly outnumbered, the Zimbabwean military of that time was still one of most professional and combat experienced military in all of Africa. Unsurprisingly, its paras, SAS, and air force smashed Kabarebe's force to bits and pieces - in something like two weeks of trench- and then house-to-house warfare down the runway of N'Djili (you can read about that episode here), and then down the slums of N'Djili... Kabarebe and his survivors then withdrew into northern Angola, from where they were extracted on board Victor Bout's 30+ years-old transports, on Christmas Day....

But, I digress: the rest of that war was also no 'guerrilla war', but a perfectly conventional war. For details, see Great Lakes Conflagration.

Now, around 2000 or so, Kabila's son Joseph took over and quickly came to a very good idea: WTF fight the Rwandans conventionally with his unreliable military, and drain the drained Zims even more? Why not mess around in the Rwandan backyard? Thus, he re-organized the militia of the Hutu refugees (i.e. what the Rwandan 'democratic' leadership calls 'genocidaries'), and deployed it into the Kivus (meanwhile some 600km behind the frontlines). That was a guerrilla war, and the Hutus lost heavily. But, the idea was sound. Thus, Kabila then started using diverse other of local minorities - like the Maji-Maji - which wasn't hard, because the Rwandans were meanwhile applying Soviet/Russian style COIN upon the local population (see: loot, rape, kill and torch everything in your way). Unsurprisingly, there are estimates about up to 5 million of the Congolese massacred by the Rwandans, Ugandans, and their local allies by the time...

But, the fact was: the diminutive Rwanda was simply overstretched in the DRC - even more so once its commanders began quarreling with the Ugandans over the profits from gold mines around Kisingani and the two allies started fighting each other. Thus, between 2001-2003, the Congolese insurgency really ruined the Rwandan plots in the eastern DRC, eventually forcing Kagame to accept at least one of some 15 cease-fire agreements negotiated by the time and, finally, withdraw from the DRC. At least officially.

(to be continued...)

> It's a poisonous mentality with zero long-term planning, equivalent to Rwandan tribalism

The RPF ruthless plan to get and hold power (and then pillage the Congo) was long-term, and it worked out and still works perfectly.

https://www.amazon.com/Praise-Blood-Crimes-Rwandan-Patriotic/dp/0345812093

https://www.amazon.com/Great-Lakes-Holocaust-1996-1997-Africa/dp/1909384658

https://www.amazon.com/Africas-World-War-Continental-Catastrophe/dp/0199754209

https://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Glory-Monsters-Collapse-Africa/dp/1610391071