|
Zaire Military Schools
Military schools traditionally played an important role
in
Zaire's military, both as a means to provide assistance to
other
African countries and to train its own officers. The FAZ
has the
usual complement of military schools, such as the Officers
Basic
Training Course at Kananga (formerly Luluabourg), the
Naval
Officers Basic Course at Banana, the Armor Training School
at
Mbanza-Ngungu, and a variety of other basic and specialty
schools.
Two schools in particular stand out. The Command and Staff
School
is a course taught at the Senior Military Schools Group in
Kinshasa. In the past, Belgian instructors, with limited
Zairian
assistance, conducted the course, which was designed to
prepare
senior company-grade officers to perform duties as
battalion
commanders and to function as staff officers at battalion
level and
higher. Although austere by Western standards, the
training
conducted in this course was professional, thorough, and
accomplished its stated objectives.
The Commando Training Center at Kotakoli, in northern
KasaiOccidental , also did an excellent job of training
personnel to
conduct basic commando operations. Again, Belgian
personnel
supervised the majority of the training, which was divided
into two
programs. The first prepared personnel to serve as
instructors at
the school. This course was intensive, thoroughly trained
personnel
in individual survival and special operations skills, and
at this
level was equal to most Western schools of this sort. A
second,
abbreviated program trained units in commando operations.
This
instruction was shorter and less intense than the longer
course. A
significant shortcoming of the short course was that
although it
more than adequately trained personnel in individual
skills, it
offered no instruction in small-unit tactics.
Data as of December 1993
|
