Imperialist Troops Out of Zaire!

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* All the talk in the press and the mass media of a mission to "rescue" the handful of European technicians, managers and capitalists in Zaire is no more than a flimsy cynical pretext for a far more serious operation by imperialist troops.

The 2,000 French and Belgian • paratroopers, backed up by British and US aircraft, were sent to central Africa with one aim in view: to rescue the totterino Mohutu dictätorshin in Zaire from certain defeat.

But instead of calling at once for strike action to stop this intervention dead in its tracks, social democratic and Stalinist leaders in France did no more than moan that Giscard had declared war 'unconstitutionally' without consulting Parliament!

The repressive regime of General Mobutu has now reached a new crisis in its career of instability.

Catastrophic economic problems have combined with gathering popular opposition to the dictatorship.

As a small guerrilla force moved into the south of the country, it sounded a death-knell for Mobutu.

Inefficient and corrupt, demoralised and dissident, the army of Zaire was in no position to resist this advance. Mobutu once more appealed for help from his international sponsors-the USA, France, Belgium, Morocco and China.

NATO 'defence' ministers immediately gathered in conclave to plan joint action. Their dilemma was acute.

TA:" 343 The economic and strategic value of Zaire is enormous.

One of the world's major producers of copper, cobalt, diamonds and other minerals, this vast territory also shares a border with nine other states.

A revolutionary overthrow of Mobutu's CIA-backed regime would convulse the whole continent giving new impetus to the liberation struggles in southern Africa.

Yet NATO ministers were only too well aware that imperialism is in a very weak condition.

Mobutu The losses suffered in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, Angloa and Mozambique have not been restored, but compounded.

Powerless

The imperialist powers have been forced to stand aside, powerless, as contlicts rage in the Horn of Africa.

But their decision to intervene in Zaire does not reflect any new found confidence or strength.

The NATO governments were not prepared to act until they knew that the rebels would receive no direct support from the Soviet or Cuban bureaucracięs!

The fact that such small forces could create such panic among the bourgeoisie internationally highlights the crisis of imperialismnot only its general weakness, but specifically its dependence on precarious, repressive regimes in those semi-colonial states where imperialism has no social base for its rule.

But once assured that the forces confronting them were tiny in number, the imperialist governments moved ahead.

Amid persistent reports that it is Mobutu's army which has been responsible for the 'atrocities' and "massacres' in Kolwezi, come further reports that the French paratroopers have indulged in indiscriminate shootings of anybody in sight.

The refusal of the French Communist and Socialist Parties to fight these moves adds a new unsavoury episode to their long history of treachery to the international working class.

And their response to this imperialist aggression finds its echo from the Lib-Lab coalition in Britain.

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