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Zaire The Intelligence Apparatus and Security Forces
In the tense and authoritarian climate prevailing in
modern
Zaire, intelligence and security agencies have provided
President
Mobutu with much of his support. All Zairian security
organizations
maintain their own prisons, networks of informers, and
resources,
much of the latter being the product of extortions and
theft.
The Sūreté Nationale, a small, special-purpose police
and
investigative unit originally established by the Belgian
colonial
administration, continued after independence and was
responsible
for several diverse functions in the national security
field. Prior
to independence, the Sūreté's mission was to protect state
security
by controlling immigration, supervising resident aliens,
and
protecting key government leaders. Shortly after
independence, the
Sūreté came under the Ministry of Interior, but by
mid-1961, the
first director, Victor Nendaka, had turned it into a
semiautonomous
organization under his personal control. President Mobutu
soon took
steps to eliminate Nendaka as a power broker, however.
In 1969 the Sūreté became the National Documentation
Center
(Centre Nationale de Documentation--CND). During the next
few
years, Mobutu played "musical chairs" with the
directorship of this
organization, as he attempted to maintain close personal
control.
During the early 1970s, the CND was reorganized into
internal and
external sections, and its agents reportedly had wide
latitude in
arresting, interrogating, and detaining people they
considered a
threat. Thereafter, Mobutu continually sought to improve
his
personal control over the intelligence apparatus and
instituted
several more reorganizations. In the early 1980s, the
service
gained the new title of National Documentation Agency
(Agence
Nationale de Documentation--AND). The national security
service was
renamed the National Service for Intelligence and
Protection
(Service National d'Intelligence et de Protection--SNIP)
in August
1990.
The SNIP has separate branches for internal and
external
intelligence functions, with the internal role receiving a
substantially higher priority. It is Zaire's primary
intelligence
service and, as such, provides liaison with foreign
services.
Although there is no information available to clarify
further the
organization or personnel strength of the SNIP, it almost
certainly
consists of a relatively small corps of agents who gain
their
information through a widespread network of informers and
from
other arms of the state apparatus. The SNIP communicates
directly
with the president. Its agents do not report to the local
or
regional administrators, nor are they subject to their
authority.
Indeed, other arms of state power such as the military and
police
forces are prime targets for surveillance.
In addition to gathering intelligence and conducting
surveillance, the SNIP exercises almost unchecked powers
of arrest,
imprisonment, and interrogation. It has used these powers
to
intimidate individuals or groups posing a real or imagined
challenge to the regime's authority. In the 1980s and
1990s, it
played an important role in repressing political
activists. In the
past, the SNIP also had foreign agents operating in Europe
to
infiltrate anti-Mobutu exile groups. As with the other
elements of
the internal security apparatus, abuses are widespread and
personal
aggrandizement a primary motivator. It has been reported
that the
security services have engaged in extensive looting and
plundering
in the early 1990s.
The intelligence service is heavily politicized. Its
assessments are not thought to be highly reliable, but it
has been
an effective if ruthless intimidator of potential
opposition
groups.
As well as the usual military intelligence roles, the
intelligence arm of the FAZ, the Military Intelligence and
Security
Service (Service d'Action et de Renseignements
Militaire--SARM), is
tasked with internal surveillance and intelligence
gathering on the
general population as well as members of the armed forces
themselves. It has not enjoyed nearly the prominence or
freedom of
action of its civilian counterpart, but it does possess a
fairly
sizeable and widespread network of informants among
Zaire's
soldiers, sailors, and airmen.
Other internal security agencies include the National
Immigration Agency, which is responsible for border
security, and
in 1990 it was reported that a secret special operations
force had
been established within the security services to carry out
abductions and other types of intimidation against
political
dissidents. The unit was popularly known as Les Hiboux
(The Owls),
which is also a name of a DSP subunit providing protection
to
Mobutu, but the existence of the force within the National
Immigration Agency was not officially acknowledged by the
government. There are additional intelligence units within
the
Civil Guard and the National Gendarmerie.
President Mobutu has also relied on various personally
established networks to provide him with alternative
intelligence
and assessments that he can then fuse with information he
receives
from the official services. These operatives can also be
used to
spy on the services themselves. Little is known of these
networks,
but in the past they were reported to be large and well
funded,
given the president's tremendous personal wealth and
unusual access
to the Zairian treasury
(see Patrimonial
Politics and Corruption
, ch. 3).
Data as of December 1993
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