When Che Guevara met Laurent Kabila 32 years ago, the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary saw the Congo rebel leader as a man who understood that their common enemy was ``North American imperialism.''

But during Che's disastrous six-month campaign in what is now Zaire, he soon began writing of Kabila as a vacillating leader who drove a Mercedes-Benz and seldom visited his ragtag troops on the front lines.

Kabila today stands at the door to Kinshasa, leading a surging column of well-armed rebels as ailing President Mobutu Sese Seko pays a ``brief'' visit to Gabon, widely seen as his final goodbye.

No longer considered a Marxist, Kabila now has the backing of a U.S. government that once sent CIA agents and anti-Castro Cuban exiles to help put Mobutu in power and fight his foes.

Che's Congo venture, detailed in the book Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson, was part of his vision to export Cuba's guerrilla experience throughout poor nations of the Third World.

Disastrous experience

But the experience was nearly as disastrous as his later campaign in Bolivia, when he was denied support by local peasants and was eventually captured and executed by CIA-backed government troops.

``This is the story of a failure,'' Che wrote in the opening pages of his account of the Congo campaign, during which 120 Cuban fighters tried to mold rebels equipped by the Soviet Union and China into an efficient guerrilla force.

After meeting him, Che wrote that Kabila ``understood perfectly that the principal enemy was North American imperialism.'' He added: ``In the name of the Cuban government I offered some 30 instructors and whatever arms we might have, and he accepted with pleasure.''

Leaders of other African rebel movements were more reticent. They wanted cadres trained outside Africa, Che wrote, and frowned when he proposed that Cuba instead establish a multinational training base in the Congo.

When a group of Congolese rebels returned from Soviet-bloc training bases, they complained they had no place to store their luggage and demanded a two-week vacation to visit their relatives, Che wrote.

Che arrives in Congo

Che decided to personally lead Kabila's Cuban trainers but did not notify the rebel leader until after arriving in the Congo, apparently making Kabila worry about being overshadowed by Che's international fame.

``There are serious indications that my presence doesn't give him the least pleasure,'' Che wrote.

Kabila was out of the country at the time of Che's infiltration in April 1965, lobbying for political support among African states, and returned for only a brief visit during the Cubans' six-month stay.

What Che found in Congo was a thoroughly undisciplined fighting force that was often drunk on yucca beer, regularly disobeyed officers' orders, ran away at the first sign of combat and could not even handle its weapons.

``Almost nobody had the least idea of what a firearm was,'' Che wrote. ``They shot themselves by playing with them, or carelessness.''

Rebels often mistreated local peasants -- ``a parasitic army'' he called Kabila's wing of the Popular Liberation Army -- and refused to carry anything but their personal weapons, saying ``I am not a truck.''

`I am not a Cuban'

After watching the Cuban trainers heft their own heavy backpacks, the rebels began saying, ``I am not a Cuban,'' Che recalled.

``To win a war with such troops is out of the question,'' Che wrote.

He was right. With CIA backing and white mercenaries, government troops eventually drove deep into the rebels' territory, forcing some guerrilla leaders to sue for peace and others to disband and flee.

Even the Cubans began grumbling about their grim situation. While he had earlier threatened to send disgruntled trainers home to Havana, Che wrote, ``If I had done that now I would have been lucky to keep half'' the men.

Che and his men escaped to Tanzania in a dead-of-night dash across Lake Tanganyika. Embarrassed by his defeat, he refused to return to Cuba and holed up for months in Cuban safe houses in the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam and in Czechoslovakia.

Mobutu, then an army general, seized power in a coup in late 1965 and two years later renamed the country Zaire. Che went on to Bolivia, where he was executed in 1967.

Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald