The Kabarebe Blitz might be the coolest 'Paratrooper' operation in history

The Kabarebe Blitz might be the coolest 'Paratrooper' operation in history.

During the Second Congo War, Rwanda decides to invade the Democratic Republic of Congo. Which is a plan that makes Barbarossa look like a cakewalk. The Congo has like 6 times the population of Rwanda, and is seriously like a hundred times the size.

So what Kabarebe decided to do was, he takes his paratroopers, they cross into the Congo. They seize commercial airliners. They get on board them.

They fly them across the continent, near the Atlantic ocean, where they land in the Congo's primary air force base. Within days, a few hundred men had blocked of an entire nation's access to the sea, captured their airforce, cut of 40% of the electrical power generation by seizing a hydroelectric dam and were about to take the capital.

The only reason they didn't win the war right there themselves was the Angolans panicked and got involved. They suffered like 80% losses in the first day of fighting with Angola. The survivors retreated into UNITA held Angola however, and returned by airlift back to Rwanda in good order. It's crazy to think 600 paratroopers nearly controlled the fate of 60 million Congolese.

Once you get into it, the crazy number of factions is half the fun. There wars never stop twisting and turning.

At the start of the conflict, the raison d'etre for the Rwandans to be involved in the Congo was to crush the Hutu aligned ALiR, which used to be the Rwandan government. But by the end of the war, the Rwandans were arming the Hutus, who still wanted to genocide them, in a conflict against Uganda, and Africa nearly not only got it's WWI, but it's WWII. Uganda, BTW is like the last country on earth that get's it's way by being a military hegemon.

In the last twenty years they've: 1) Overthrown the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 2) Then occupied huge chunks of the Congo for nearly a decade. 3) Put a stop to Sudanese funded rebels in Uganda, and then chased them off so hard they broke off South Sudan into it's own country, with a government pliable to Ugandan interests. 4) Have basically militarily occupied chunks of Somalia, and periodically use that to blackmail Kenya.

And have made all that pay for itself.

African conflicts are freaking awesome. The problem is everything in the west has to be talked about through 'humanitarian' lenses. This makes the conflicts indecipherable, because the media refuses to talk about the actual politics (and African agency) in the wars, and also cuts out coverage of cool shit like a legion of Serbian Kebab removers fighting in the Congo, hired to Remove Cockroach.

Oh, and if you want to know what happened to Kabarebe, the crazy bastard who planned all this, he managed to survive the Angolan attack, retreat INTO hostile territory with his men, hook up with UNITA, fly back to Rwanda, where he was made Defense Minister.

And is still the Defense Minister to this day.

Rwanda is basically an African Prussia. Sure lots of African states have had military dictators, but Rwanda is really a case of an army acquiring a state by being hyper competent. Because it has this core around a functional, professional organization, Rwanda is one of the few countries in Africa that has it's shit together, and functions well enough there's talk of an "African Singapore."

Didn't they take a good chunk of the aid money from the genocide and spend it on military training?

Yes and no, for a few reasons.

1) They were very conscious, because they understood how to milk western donors, to make sure no aid money went to the military. At the same time, aid money meant they were able to spend like 15% of their GDP on the military, because everything else was covered.
2) Training wasn't really high on their needs. The RPA was one of the most professional forces on the continent. I've read one author who suggested that rather then sending American advisors to help the RPA turn into a modern fighting force, the RPA should have been sending advisors to teach the American army COIN operations.

A lot of it was focused on better equipping their army, training Congolese puppet armies, and getting their officers modern administrative skills.

OK, so first the Rwandans begin kicking in Zaire's door in the first Congo war.
The French are still Le butthurt over the Tutsis basically, well, existing. A lot of sources say they had financial investments in Zaire, but they really didn't.

The big thing was that they thought they were hegemons over Francophone Africa (even the Belgian part). They supported the Hutu dominated regime and got seriously embarrassed by the whole genocide thing, and then even more embarrassed when the RPA BTFO the old government of Rwanda and France couldn't do anything about it.

Mobuto has lost his American allies so he starts kissing up to the French, and the basic goal of French policy in Africa is to have someone, anyone kiss their ass.

Mobuto knows he doesn't have enough time to fix the MASSIVE problems in his army, and honestly thinks a competent army would be a threat to him. He wants mercenaries.

He wants mercenaries like they jack off to in Rhodesia threads. THOSE guys. So the French Foreign office tries.

First they actually call some of the Crippled Eagles asking them to fight, and they kindly inform the French that the Rhodesian Bushwar was nearly 20 years ago, and we are all super old now.

So the French negotiate a contract between Zaire and a super shady Serbian telecommunications company. A telecommunications company that doesn't seem to actually do anything telecommnications wise, and the contract with Zaire doesn't specify what the fuck they're supposed to be doing.

Conveniently, a group of Serbian veterans show up to fight for Zaire at the same time. These guys are exactly like our accordion wielding friend.

Sounds like a great plan. Battle hardened Serbs with a thousand yard stare who have extensive experience in nasty ethnic warfare. They're going to fuck the RPA up and show the Hutus how to do genocide properly.

Problem: The Serbs don't care about Zaire, they have no idea what a Rwandan is or looks like. None of them speak any of the local language, and when deployed they mostly just get drunk, blast turbofolk, and rape the local Congolese, and when given some of Zaire's finest aircraft, they manage to crash them into each other. It would be the finest military outfit Mobuto could field in the first congo war.

The RPA, which makes up the modern Rwandan Army, wasn't made up of people who were actually from Rwanda. Most of them were from exiles in Tanzania, and Rwandans from Uganda and the Congo.

They had been fighting a low level conflict with the government of Rwanda (their army was the RDF, Rwandan Defense Forces), for a few years, which served as a backdrop for the genocide.

There is some allegations that the RPA DID let the genocide happen to facilitate the take over. But on the other hand, the Rwandan genocide was devestatingly quick. It was only 100 days. At it ended when the RPA won the war and took over Rwanda.

Mobuto actively courted them, and supported them, because they were a new factor in Congolese politics that he could easily woo, and were probably well armed enough to take the eastern Congo from him if he tried anyway.

About 2 million people left the Congo this way. Between that and the Genocide, like 40% of Rwanda's population was gone, and the Genocidiares had basically created a Hutu-Power nation in the Eastern Congo.

The RPA and their supporters moved into Rwanda, and once they were settled in, they weren't happy with the RDF run military training/refugee camps on their borders, so they decided to invade Zaire to chase them out.

After Idi Amin seized power in Uganda, his predecessor, Milton Obote flees to Tanzania, where, with the support of Tanzania, he starts training Militias to take back Uganda from various dissatisfied ethnic groups. One of these would be taken from Ugandan Tutsi.

Idi Amin decides to go full retard to deal with these militias, and tries annexing a bunch of Tanzania while he's at it.

He fails, badly, and Milton Obote gets Uganda back. He doesn't like having a bunch of armed Tutsi sitting around getting bored, so he suggest they start fucking with Rwanda.

This is the beginning of the RPA, and makes up their core leadership. Paul Kagame started his military career fighting against Uganda from Tanzania.

A significant chunk of the RPA leadership never even SAW Rwanda before the 90s. If Rwanda's army was cool in the 80s, that Army got BTFO by the RPA, exiled to the Congo, and eventually turned to banditry.

A new Rwandan state was imported in it's entirety focused around the RPA in the 90s.

Alright, let me bring this full circle and explain why Africa has a giant black boner for paratroopers.

First, stuff that other countries normally get excited for as shows of power, Navies, Armored Divisions, Ballistic Missiles, Air Forces, etc. don't really work with the strength and industrial base of African states.

It's not that they cant afford them, or use them, it's maintanence that is always the fucking problem. African warfare is a lot like theoreticians predicted warfare would be like before WWI, and we saw Europe was capable of industrialized warfare.

Basically, you deploy your tanks and what not, they get shot to shit, and you have no hope of rebuilding your forces by the time the war is over.

This is what happens to Zimbabwe in the Second Congo War. Zimbabwe actually inherited a well equipped army and airforce from Rhodesia. They decided to deploy these in the Second Congo war against Rwanda, in the hopes of being able to get access to mining contracts after the war and cockblock the South Africans (told you the multiple faction thing is great)

There were actually tank battles in Katanga, which is not what most people picture when they invision African warfare, but there you go. The problem was that after about a year of this, Zimbabwe's bomber fleet needed maintanence, and all their tanks and armored cars had been shot to shit, and the Katanga front was now basically artillery duels.

Zimbabwe called it quits (especially since the DRoC was courting South African investment anyway) and left. They still haven't replaced their tanks and aircraft and have become militarily irrelevant.

So Paratroopers are great because they don't suffer from this. The drop ships are few, easily maintained, and don't suffer a lot of wear and tear in usages, and the paratroopers themselves basically just have small arms.

That last part, combined with the fact that they're well, paratroopers, makes it really great when dealing with Africa's geography. One base with a paratrooper brigade can assure military dominance over a larger area than an infantry division. Because the infantry division will take days or weeks to cross jungles, mountain ranges, etc.

This ability to quickly deploy is also a huge advantage with that attrition rate thing. Paratroopers have the capacity to end conflicts way quicker than conventional forces, and in doing so, preserve those conventional forces. The idea of quick, lightning strikes is especially tempting to African states.

Another factor is the espirit de corps. There's something about jumping out of planes that tends to mean paratroopers have huge brass balls, and don't care about anyone else.

Which is great, because that means they tend to be resistant to the factionalism that plagues other African military units. You tend to get the highest level of professionalism out of them.

And then lastly, there's the foreign connection. Two parts to this: Foreign militaries love training paratroopers for their African clients. They're cheap to train. You want to train an armored brigade, you're going to need loads of tanks, fuel specialized ammo, and yeah, most importantly tanks, just for TRAINING. Training them doesn't really solve the problems that the militaries already have.

If you train paratroopers though, most of the problem is in training. It's an intensive skillset, but again, light on equipment. So the training you can offer actually matters.

The other thing is, paratroopers are the only things African troops really need to fear from the west. They know no western state is going to deploy an amphibious assault on their countries. Hell, some of them are landlocked. But an airborne assault is quick and politically cheap for western powers.

Consider things like Operation Thunderbolt, where Israel popped in to the middle of Uganda to fuck shit up after Uganda let Palestinian highjackers land in Uganda.

30 Ugandan soldiers killed, and a bunch of MiGs lost in the middle of Entebbe.

So they're very conscious of the threat of them. They're massively adaptable to the environment, they're 'hard' units rather than vulnerable, and they achieve all of this by being professional, rather than being expensive.

Every African state wants paratroopers, and every African military unit wants to pretend it's paratroopers. I suspect as African states get their shit together, well see some cool fucking airborne operations from them in the future.

I wish that guy wrote more, he seems knowledgable. Africa becomes interesting once you scratch the surface.