TRANSPORT-CONGO
Railway's Recovery Derailed by Insecurity


By Lyne Mikangou



BRAZZAVILLE, Nov 26 (IPS) - The fate of a railway that links Congo's administrative and economic capitals could be described as symptomatic of the vulnerability of this Central African nation to the insecurity that has plagued it in the past few years.

Transport along the 'Chemin de fer Congo-Ocean' (CFCO, in English 'Congo-Ocean Railway') resumed this month after a three-month interruption that was part of the fallout of a civil war that wracked the Central African nation from June to October 1997. Just as that war came not long after an expansion of off-shore production of Congo's main export, petroleum, this year's interruption followed a June 1998 partnership agreement between the CFCO and a French company, Rail Afrique, to improve the antiquated equipment of the state-owned Congolese corporation.

For long, the CFCO had been plagued by a host of problems, including insufficient money and aging locomotives, which resulted in an extremely deficient service notorious for its irregularity. In June, Rail Afrique agreed to provide four billion CFA francs out of a total of 60 billion CFA francs needed to rehabilitate the 64-year-old, 790-km railway network which, according to a timetable set with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the divestment of state companies, was scheduled to be privatised by Dec. 31. (The CFA franc exchanges at about 570 to the U.S. dollar.)

The CFCO is one of Congo's communication lifelines, the other being the River Congo. The railway is normally the most reliable way to transport goods between the country's administrative capital, Brazzaville, and its economic hub, the port-city of Pointe Noire, 510 kms to the southwest. Imports destined for landlocked Central African Republic (CAR), one of Congo's northern neighbours, arrive at Pointe Noire, are sent on by rail to Brazzaville and are then loaded onto boats that take them up the River Congo to Bangui, the CAR capital.

However, railway traffic was suspended due to a rebellion by militiamen loyal to exiled opposition leader Bernard Kolelas, who was Brazzaville's mayor until October 1997, when current president Denis Sassou Nguesso seized power after winning the civil war and ousting elected head of state Pascal Lissouba.

For months, Kolelas and his 'Ninja' militiamen had remained neutral in the civil war but, towards the end, the Brazzaville mayor decided to support Lissouba.When the latter was overthrown, both men fled into exile while the Ninja militiamen withdrew to the Pool, their home region as well as Kolelas' and located just south of Brazzaville.

A weapons-collection drive launched by the Sassou Nguesso government failed to get the Ninjas to hand in their arms. Instead, they have carried out a guerrilla struggle from their forest bases in the Pool, killing more than 30 people, mostly state officials, politicians and clergymen, since August.

The Ninjas also attacked trains and sabotaged railway lines running through their area, thus disrupting the train service. Its interruption affected not only Congo but also the CAR, prompting CAR President Ange Patasse to travel to Yaounde last week to negotiate an agreement that would allow imports destined for his country to pass through Cameroon. Similarly, logging companies in northern Congo were unable to send their logs to Pointe Noire and were forced to transport them by road to the Cameroonian port of Douala.

The CFCO reported that it lost about 900 million CFA francs in the past three months as a result of the insecurity and the suspension of its services. This is no negligeable amount for a utility which spends about 10.56 billion of the 16 billion CFA francs it grosses each year on salaries and fringe benefits for its 3,540 employees.

The reopening of the line this month brought relief to the residents of Brazzaville, which had been hit by dire shortages of essential commodities. About 100 soldiers accompany each of the trains ferrying goods such as wheat flour, rice, cement, petroleum and logs between Brazzaville and Pointe Noire. For the moment, the CFCO has not resumed its passenger service which it said, it will do only when the line is fully safe.

That is also a condition for the implementation of the programme to set the railway company back on track. According to Alain Akouala, chief communications officer at Rail Afrique, the French concern has already transferred one million dollars to South Africa to buy four locomotives and 50 carriages which will sent to Congo when the situation along the railway line is fully normalised.

But it is hard to tell when and for how long security will really return to Congo: this year's rebellion in the south was preceded by last year's civil war in Brazzaville which came about five years after an armed conflict between political parties that had been sparked by a dispute over election results and degenerated into an ethnic war. (END/IPS/LM/NRN/KB/98)









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