About 4,000 Zimbabwean troops from three battalions had pulled out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo(DRC)since April, but the exercise had stalled to allow the deployment of United Nations (UN) monitors, the weekly “Financial Gazette” reported on Thursday. Colonel Mbonisi Gatsheni of the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) was quoted as saying the entire Masvingo-based 4 Brigade had pulled out of the DRC, while sections of other battalions had also returned from their areas of operation.
According to the report, the ZNA is believed to have had at least 12,000 troops in the DRC fighting since August 1998. The Zimbabweans, who had been expected to help the late president Laurent Kabila and then quickly return home, got bogged down in the war in the DRC.
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