| PEACEKEEPING: The UN in the Congo | ||
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Keith Kyle On 12 July 1960, just twelve days after Congolese independence had been proclaimed, the Secretary-General of the UN, Dag Hammarskjold, received a telegram signed by both the President and the Prime Minister of the new state, appealing for military assistance. 'The essential purpose of the requested military aid,' the cable said, 'is to protect the national territory of the Congo against the present external aggression which is a threat to international peace.' It was quite apparent that the object of Joseph Kasavubu, the President, and Patrice Lumumba, the Prime Minister, was to indict Belgium, the former colonial power, formally as an aggressor. Hammarskjold realised at once that, being faced with a complete breakdown of civil order throughout Africa's second largest state, the UN could not handle it as a straight case of international aggression. For one thing Belgium's three principal allies, the United States, Britain and France all had permanent seats on the UN Security Council. For another the threat to Belgian lives and property was such an immediate one that it would scarcely be just to describe the limited despatch of Belgian troops to the scene as military aggression. O On the other hand the Secretary-General was acutely conscious that the plunging of a large part of Central Africa into anarchy threatened to open up yet another front in the cold war. He had shown himself willing to insert himself, by use of creative diplomacy, into the scene at Suez and in the Lebanon. He did not hesitate to take action over the Congo. But it is important to bear in mind that it was not exactly the action for which the Congolese had originally asked. First, I should explain briefly why the Congolese Republic, which is now called Zaire, started life in such a mess. The Belgians, who had done least of all colonial Powers in imparting to Africans any political training or experience of government, decidedly abruptly in January 1960 to give independence in six months, following a riot in Leopoldville, the capital (now called Kinshasa) the previous year. The Congo --Zaire--is a vast country centrally placed, bordering on east, west, central and southern African states and, for those who like to think and talk geopolitically (and there were many more of those around in 1960 than would be found today) it seemed strategically of great significance. It also had great economic potential and mineral wealth -- much of it, especially copper and diamonds, very close to the surface. It was held together almost exclusively by the great river after which it was named, plus, more recently, its internal airlines. The Congo was under-populated, with the bulk of the population living close to its periphery and many of the tribes and ethnic groups spilling over into neighbouring states rather than relating to each other. The three main population centres are Leopoldville or Kinshasa in the west; Stanleyville, now Kisangani, on the great bend of the river, capital of the huge area of the interior called Province Orientale; and Elisabethville, now Lubumbashi, in the extreme south-east. Under Belgian rule there was great rivalry between Leopoldville and Elisabethville (or Leo and E'ville as they were invariably called, even in official documents). Leo as the administrative centre of the colony was an immense distance from E'ville in the southern half of the Province of Katanga (now called Shaba), which was the centre of European colonisation. There also, in the same south-eastern appendage were the bog copper mines which contributed by far the largest share to the wealth of the colony as a whole. Viewed from Katanga, far too much of the large profits from that province's mineral wealth were siphoned off to maintain the vice-regal pomp of far-off Leo. Not only had the Congolese Africans no political or administrative experience but those who were to rise so rapidly to prominence scarcely knew one another, as they were scattered round the four corners of the new state. It was not that the Belgians had no plans for African advancement but that they were working to a thirty-year plan which had not been running for very long. A few bright Africans had been given local encouragement by administrators or by individual Europeans (Lumumba, for example), There had been some bursaries that had enabled young Africans (Mobutu was one of them) to go to Belgium. Three Congolese universities had been or were on the verge of being founded. But in 1960 there was not much to work on. The Belgians were perfectly aware of this and were counting on continuing to run the country in the name of the new African rulers. The Belgian commander of the Force Publique, an armed force with a high reputation which had always maintained law and order throughout the Congo and was confidently depended upon to do so again, actually lectured his men (there were no African officers), illustrating the point on the blackboard as he did so, 'After independence equals before independence.' That is not how everyone saw it. At the press hotel in Leo on the morning after independence one of my colleagues shouted out, as usual, 'Garçon !' The waiter drew himself up to his full height and said, 'Since yesterday we have lived in the independent Republic of the Congo. From now on, you will be pleased to call me "Monsieur le Garçon".' Independence Day was 30 June 1960. On 4 and 5 July the Force Publique, now renamed the Congolese Army mutinied. Europeans were attacked, some white women were raped, no one fortunately was killed. The Belgians -- officers, administrators, businessmen and their families -- fled, leaving most of their possessions behind. Belgian troops were landed at a number of airfields and at the port of Matadi. Their presence there was uninvited and in some cases resisted. But in Katanga, the copper province in the south-west, when the mutiny spread there on 8 and 9 July the provincial government headed by Moise Tshombe invited Belgian troops in to restore order and protect the white population. Thereafter one would frequently hear a European say in E'ville, 'I've always said in the past, "There's no good munt [Swahili for man, singular of bantu ] except a dead munt; but now I say this, "There's no good munt but Moise Tshombe and a dead munt.' There is no question that the whites were genuinely appreciative of the role that Tshombe had played. He was the son and heir of a remarkably successful pioneer African businessman and he was also the son-in-law of the traditional Emperor of the Lunda tribe. In Katanga there seemed a chance of things going in the way Belgium had intended them to go in the Congo as a whole. On 11 July Tshombe's provincial government proclaimed that Katanga was an independent state and refused permission to land at E'ville to a plane containing President Kasavubu and Prime Minister Lumumba who were rushing round trying to rally different parts of the fractured country. It was at this stage that the two of them sent that first telegram to Dag Hammarskjold. Hammarskjold for the first time in the history of the UN invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter, which enables the Secretary-General as distinct from member states to bring a matter before the Security Council. The article was a conscious attempt to remedy an omission which critics had identified in the covenant of the League of Nations; this precedent has not since, in the opinion of many commentators, been sufficiently followed. On 14 July the Security Council passed a resolution which called on Belgium to withdraw its troops from the territory of the Congo and then went on to give the Secretary-General a convoluted mandate, which I will first read out and then attempt to deconstruct. The Council authorised the Secretary-General 'to take the necessary steps, in consultation with the Government of the Republic of the Congo, to provide the Government with such military assistance as may be necessary until, through the efforts of the Congolese Government with the technical assistance of the United Nations, the national security forces may be able, in the opinion of the Government, to meet fully their tasks.' The first thing to notice is that Belgium is not condemned as an aggressor but nevertheless is ordered by the UN to get out: the same formula that the UN General Assembly used about Britain and France over Suez. Moreover, since Katanga's secession is not recognised, the order to go applies as much to that province as to any other in the territory of the Congo. Looking at the rest of the mandate, there are in its provisions two essential players: the Secretary-General and the Congolese Government. The Secretary-General is to take what are described as the 'necessary steps' to provide assistance to the Congolese. Who is to judge of the necessity? The mandate does not say, but presumably the Secretary-General since he is to act only 'in consultation' with the Congolese Government, whose agreement at this stage is not stipulated. But there is one other stated criterion of 'necessity' which relates to the ending of the operation. Here it is by contrast the Congolese Government which has the determining role, because the assistance is to go on 'until ... the national security forces may be able, in the opinion of the Government, to meet fully their tasks.' For the moment I shall confine myself to three comments. The first is that it, as is implied by the resolution, the Congolese Government is entitled to assert its authority over the whole territory including Katanga, then among the tasks to which the UN appears to be committed to assist Congolese forces is that of ending the illegal secession of that province. The second comment is that the resolution appears to assume that the dislocation of discipline in the Congolese army is a purely temporary matter that a little technical assistance can put right. And the third raises the most basic assumption of all: that there should continue to be a Congolese Government. All these assumptions were rapidly put to the test. Hammarskjold and his Afro-American deputy, Ralph Bunche, began deploying the UN specialist agencies to prop up the various branches of government that had suddenly been deprived of their qualified staff. One problem was that a few Belgians had stayed on while most fled and more began to drift back; in some cases the Congolese preferred working with particular Belgians than with UN experts. Friction often arose, especially when Belgians were thought to be working to a different agenda from the UN. The first task was, of course, to see to the Army which, although some units responded at least temporarily to personal appeals by individual African politicians, was essentially uncontrolled, armed, unpaid and without officers. The first UN intervention force to hit the scene was from Ghana, still bathing in its reputation as the first black African colony to win its freedom. The commander, General Alexander, was however still British. He quickly summed up the chaotic scene in Leo and the military camps outside it and concluded that the Congolese military must be instantly disarmed. It is possible, given the fact that the UN troops and most of their officers were Ghanaian, that this would have succeeded. It was, however, vetoed by Ralph Bunche, the senior UN civilian on the spot, on the grounds that the Prime Minister, whose Government the UN was there to assist, opposed it. The individual who had most success with the mutineers was a young African journalist just turned junior Minister, Joseph-Desiré Mobutu, who had previously done seven years' service in the Force Publique as the result of having been expelled from school. He was in consequence created a Colonel and made Chief of Staff. But now the other assumptions behind UN intervention were thrown into question. By the end of July the Belgians, having been under the heaviest diplomatic pressure, had pulled their troops out of everywhere except Katanga. Meanwhile at E'ville Tshombe, with the aid of his security chief Godefroid Munongo, a tribalist of rather sinister parentage1, was running an apparently orderly regime without diplomatic recognition (even Belgium's) but with the full co-operation of Belgian experts and of the principal wealth-creating corporations of the Congo, especially the Union Minière The latter was primarily Belgian-owned but there was a significant and politically well-connected minority shareholder, the British Tanganyika Concessions. E'ville itself is very close to the Northern Rhodesian border and the Tshombe regime was quick to develop close relations with the white-ruled Central African Federation. What part was the UN to take, bearing in mind the wording of the Security Council mandate, in assisting the unreliable, disorderly Congolese army to assert itself against what could be represented as the one existing island of stability ? It was quite a problem. But if the UN were to allow Katanga to go its own way, would not this outrage Pan-African opinion? Pan-African opinion as a factor in international relations was just beginning to assert itself for the first time, as the ex-colonial membership of the UN began to multiply. All-Africa conferences like that in Tunis in January 1960, which was electrified by the announcement of Congolese independence in six months, had identified 'balkanisation' and 'neo-colonialism' as the characteristic threats facing new African states. To African nationalists the secession of Katanga was the prime example of both these evils. Europeans had grabbed the source of the Congo's wealth and the location of its white colonisation and were prepared to let the rest go hang. 'Tshombe' was the black man's 'Quisling.' The importance of the relatively prompt UN presence lay in the fact that it locked the international community into the Pan-African principle that, regardless of ethnic anomalies, the existing frontier must be preserved lest territorial wars break out across the whole continent. By the end of July there was a UN presence in every province of the Congo except Katanga. The total military force numbered 8,396, of whom 2,340 were Ghanaians, 2,087 Tunisians, 1,220 Moroccans, 1,160 Ethiopians, 741 Guineans, 225 Liberians and 623 Swedes. A little later there was added an Irish battalion. Eventually twenty-eight states contributed contingents, making a total of 19,828 troops. The force was predominantly African and the white troops --- Swedes and Irish -- were from neutral countries. One of the advantages, as Hammarskjold saw it, of integrating the aid from African states into the UN operation was that the African Governments did not as a result have troops available to loan to Congolese factions on a bilateral basis. The Secretary-General was now faced with the task of deciding what to do about Katanga. He put on paper (and communicated to Lumumba and Tshombe) his interpretation of what the UN was and was not empowered to do in the Province. In the light of the mandate it strikes one as being rather restrictive: Hammarskjold gives the impression of simultaneously rushing forward and holding himself back. This comes presumably from his reading of the mandate in the light of the wording of the Charter itself, including Article 2(7), the prohibition of interference in a state's internal affairs. Hammarskjold declared that the entry into Katanga of UN troops was essential to carry out the resolution but that 'ONUC [French acronym for 'UN Congo'] would not be a party to or in any way intervene in or be used to influence the outcome of any internal conflict, constitutional or otherwise.' The relevant issue as far as the UN was concerned was its international aspect, to encompass the withdrawal of Belgian troops. 'The UN force cannot be used on behalf of the Central Government to subdue or force the provincial government to a specific line of action. 'Therefore, UN facilities were not to be used to transport civilian or military representatives of the Central Government to Katanga against the will of the provincial authorities, nor were UN troops to be expected to provide protection to Central Government representatives once they were there. However, the Secretary-General also went on to say, 'It finally follows that the United Nations..... has no right to forbid the Central Government to take any action which by its own means, in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter, it can through in relation to Katanga.' Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese Prime Minister, can be forgiven for being rather confused by this. He had after all been told by the wording of the Security Council resolution that his Government would get technical assistance from the UN so that his security forces would be able to meet fully their tasks. His Belgian military pilots had left him; under the constitution power at the provincial level was to be divided between provincial president and state representative; the latter had been unable to go to E'ville; it would have seemed to a man in Lumumba's predicament as if the UN, so far from assisting him, was cutting off his hands and feet. As against this, the UN was proposing itself to go to Katanga but in circumstances which appeared to cut out entirely the Congolese national interest. By substituting himself for Lumumba's representative and disciplined UN troops for the disorderly Congolese army, Hammarskjold was inevitably taking on an enormous moral responsibility for an outcome, which at the same time he was reassuring Tshombe that he would not dictate. By contrast Lumumba produced his own over-stated, interpretation of what the Security Council had meant, which was that 'in its intervention in the Congo, the UN is not to act as a neutral organization but rather that the Security Council is to place all its resources at the disposal of my Government.' Lest there be any doubt what this implied to him, Lumumba wrote to Hammarskjold, 'From these texts it is clear that, contrary to your personal interpretation, the UN force may be used to subdue the rebel government of Katanga.' The Secretary-General had confirmed that there was nothing in theory to prevent the Central Government using its own troops to subdue Katanga. Because the UN would not help, they would have to go overland (unless they could manage part of the way by river); their discipline was still very problematical under newly elected black officers; and it was questionable how effective they would be if and when they arrived. But there was nothing the UN could do to prevent their being sent. Lumumba, always impulsive, sent them. He even managed to short-circuit the UN to the extent of getting some limited help from Soviet transport planes. Hammarskjold was now concentrating on establishing the UN in Katanga, on the principle that, once it had got its foot in at the door, it would be possible to lever the Belgians out and, thereafter, to promote some political deal between Tshombe and the Central Government. To make the move less provocative he decided to send in the first instance only white troops, the Swedes and the Irish. This caused Lumumba further offence. When Hammarskjold's deputy, Ralph Bunche, went in advance of the troops to E'ville he got a very rough reception, being told by Munongo, as Minister of the Interior, that the defences were ready for use against the UN, who had better bring parachutes with them since their planes would not be allowed to land. Under these circumstances Hammarskjold asked for a further Security Council mandate. This called upon Belgium to withdraw her troops immediately from Katanga 'under speedy modalities determined by the Secretary-General,' declared the entry of ONUC into Katanga was necessary for the resolution's full implementation but then, to win British and French votes, confirmed that 'the UN force in the Congo will not be a party to or in any way intervene in or be used to influence the outcome of any internal conflict, constitutional or otherwise.' Thus, in return for Belgium's Nato allies not allowing it to endorse Katanga's independence, the UN was not to be used to bring Katanga back into the Congo by force. The Secretary-General then flew to E'ville himself with an advance guard of two companies of Swedish troops to establish the UN's presence in the Katangese capital and to explain the resolution to Tshombe. He broke the journey at Leo overnight but did not seek to see Lumumba. I have always thought that this omission was a serious mistake. After all, the original resolution did call at all points for consultation with the Congolese Government. It was also most unlike Hammarskjold who was generally very good with inexperienced Third World leaders. This was illustrated shortly afterwards when he received vital support from members of the AfroAsian group at a time when he really needed it, when he was to come under frenzied attack from the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev. But Lumumba seems to have provoked him beyond endurance and led him to behave somewhat out of character, In any event, he saw Tshombe without seeing Lumumba. This gave rise to bitter exchanges between the two men: long, increasingly wild letters from Lumumba, expressing his complete loss of confidence in the Secretary-General; cold, brief replies from Hammarskjold. Meanwhile UN forces were allowed into Katanga. Hammarskjold was right: in the long run this did mean the end of Tshombe's independence dreams. This is not how it appeared at the time to Lumumba, to much of black Africa, to the Soviet bloc. Let us go back to those Congolese troops who, acting on Lumumba's orders, were now advancing on Katanga. They had no money, no supplies and insufficient transport to take them there. They marched into the province of Kasai, which is on the way, and then became disastrously involved in a local civil war that was going on between the Lulua and Baluba tribes. They intervened on the side of the Luluas, many ill-armed Baluba were shot down and at a mission near Bakwanga two hundred civilians were massacred. Lumumba was blamed personally for this iii-starred attempt with consequences that were eventually to prove fatal to himself. We now come to the most basic assumption on which the UN operation was founded: that there should continue to be a legitimate Congolese Government for the UN to consult and to advise. On 5 September President Kasavubu dismissed Patrice Lumumba as Prime Minister on the grounds that his action had become arbitrary and that he was driving the country into civil war. Kasavubu rather in keeping with his stolid but casual style, did not actually tell Lumumba but simply turned up at the radio station, made the announcement and then went home, having taken no special precautions. Lumumba, having learnt what had been said, himself rushed to the radio station and declared the President deposed. The Congolese Government had imploded. Something must be said at this stage about the Congolese political system, its leading personalities and its ethnic base. Joseph Kasavubu had been the first modern leader to stand out against the Belgians. A former theology student, he had been elected Burgomaster of a commune within Leopoldville when the Belgians had, late in the day, introduced local government into urban areas; and, as such, he had resisted Belgian directions. He belonged to the Bakongo tribe which is dominant in Leo and he was easily the most prominent nationalist in the capital. But the capital, offset to the far west, is a long way from the centre of the country and for ethnic reasons the name of Kasavubu did not count for much up-river. Before the Europeans arrived the Bakongo had ruled quite a large and well organised African kingdom but it ran north-to-south along the line of the Atlantic coast, so that Kasavubu's natural constituency was partly in the French colony of Congo-Brazzaville and partly in Angola as well as in the narrow neck of land between Leo and the sea that ran between. The President was a man of quiet dignity and traditional wisdom laced with the occasional Latin tag acquired in the seminary; he was given to long silences and periods of immobility, punctuated by sudden moves which were not always well-prepared and were often not adequately followed up. Patrice Lumumba, who was a much younger man, was different in every way. He belonged to a small and rather unimportant tribe to be found in Province Orientale, as well as in North Kasai (where he was born) 1 and he made his early career and political base in Stanleyville. When Kasavubu had already begun being obstinate and difficult with the Belgians, Lumumba was emerging as a foremost example of the new African, the bright young evolué encouraged by Europeans (including King Baudouin himself) to accept the presidency or vice-presidency of the numerous biracial societies that were springing up in the late Fifties after the Belgians, or some of them, had made up their minds to break through the colour bar. Lumumba was capable in those days of saying, as Kasavubu was not, 'The Congolese elite ... only wish to be "Belgians".' 2 However, when politics began seriously in 1959, the hyperactive Lumumba set about frantically building up the M.N.C.--the Mouvement Nationale Congolaise -- which was almost the only example of a true nationalist party at the time of independence, but it only really had mass, non-tribal support in the Province Orientale. Lumumba's problem was how to recruit allies quickly in other parts of the Congo. Having worked for a while in Leo he had some support from members of his small tribe there and from among the many detribalised city dwellers but he was at a definite disadvantage in the capital. In provinces where he had no personal base like Katanga and Kasai he picked allies among tribally based parties, which automatically made him anathema to their ethnic opponents. Nevertheless in the election he showed he had picked shrewdly by emerging as the leader of the largest and most widely based party; the government that was formed was essentially an alliance between the M.N.C. and Kasavubu's Abako, the political expression of the Bakongo people. Lumumba was a charismatic speaker whose power over other people was so compelling that many of his enemies felt that there was witchcraft in it. It was probably one of the reasons he had to die that, like the Roman consul Marius, when under arrest he could bewitch his jailers. His attention span was not great; his administrative skills were negligible. One of the Kenyan leaders who attended Congo's independence celebrations, Dr Julius Kiano, was invited in by Lumumba to attend a Cabinet meeting. He has described to me what it was like. It was chaos. There appeared to be no agenda. Cabinet ministers shot off whatever was on their minds. The telephone would ring; Lumumba would pick it up and engage in animated conversation. There would be some desultory business; and then the Prime Minister, noticing the press through a window, would get up, dash out and hold a press conference about something that had just occurred to him. He had real flair for the nationalist sentiment that would ignite the multitude. In a few weeks he had turned himself into the most hero-worshipped figure in Africa. It was known to the C.I.A. and Belgian intelligence that Lumumba had been receiving funds from the Soviet Union because Victor Nendaka, a man who had been a close political associate, had been informing on him. Those who saw him frequently thought he was becoming increasingly unstable and he was almost certainly becoming dependent on drugs. This was the man whom Kasavubu had calmly sacked over the radio. This crisis thrust the UN into an extraordinarily difficult situation. For one thing it was forced to interpret the new, untried Congolese constitution, presumably with reference to Belgian practice since it was to a considerable extent based on the Belgian constitution. There seemed no doubt that the President had the right to dismiss as well as to appoint the Prime Minister and that there was no provision for deposing the President. Kasavubu had appointed a new Prime Minister but although this man, Joseph Ileo, formed a Government he never managed to present it to Parliament for a vote of confidence. Lumumba claimed to be still in office and was confirmed in this by parliamentary vote. The only authority the UN regarded as legitimate in these circumstances was the President. It was perhaps unfortunate that the senior UN representative who was in Leo at the time was an American citizen, Andrew Cordier, but, whatever his nationality, the decisions he would have had to make to maintain law and order in this extremely volatile city would have been controversial. The danger of full-scale civil war was very real. Cordier feared that the Russian transport planes that had once already been used to help Lumumba with his campaign against Katanga would fly his armed supporters from Province Orientale into Leo. The UN therefore closed airfields throughout the Congo (insofar as they controlled them) to all but UN traffic and also shut down Leo radio in order, it was said, to deny it to both sides. However Kasavubu, because he belonged to the Bakongo people and had political and ethnic support north of the river Congo in the territory of Congo- Brazzaville, was able to command the use of Radio Brazzaville. He thus could as Lumumba could not broadcast freely to the people of Leo. The presence of so many armed and unpaid Congolese soldiers in the streets and neighbourhood of the capital was felt as a constant menace, though their political allegiances were uncertain. Again Cordier took action, at risk of misrepresentation, and to cool them down provided UN money for them to be paid. The combinatiom of these factors provided material for bitter attacks from the Soviet bloc on the Secretary-General, who was accused of intervention in internal Congolese politics on the side of Kasavubu and against Lumumba. This view was shared by some African Governments and some Western commentators. On the early evening of 14 September senior UN officials including Brian Urquhart were working in the Hotel Regina, which was the headquarters of the UN operation when Colonel Mobutu, in those days thought of as a rather shy, diffident individual, wandered in. He said he was hungry and asked if there was anything to eat. The UN officials produced something out of a tin. Presently Mobutu asked rather nervously if it was time for the news. Urquhart switched on the radio. A voice came out of the set. 'That's me,' Mobutu said. The voice announced that Kasavubu, Lumumba and the Parliament were all suspended until the end of the year and that a 'College of Commissioners', consisting of 'technicians' would take over for the next three months. These were largely university students headed by one of the two Congolese graduates. Like many events in the Congo, this does not seem to have been the result of a deep-laid plot; rather, a happening in the theatre of the streets. At any rate the Army seemed willing to follow Mobutu and the inscrutable Kasavubu acquiesced in the situation. Also characteristically, Lumumba was set off into a lather of activity, appealing for direct military help from the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. He also attempted to rally the troops in the military camps and had some success until he was physically attacked by Baluba soldiers reacting to the massacre of their fellow tribesmen at Bakwanga. After some scary moments he was rescued by UN troops from Ghana. From then on he was under UN protection so long as he stayed in his house. The C.I.A., which was not then restrained by the statutory limitations that it is now, then decided that Lumumba was such a menace both to the Congo and to the West's cold war interests that he should be assassinated. Lawrence Devlin, the C. I.A. station chief in Leo, was told that special poison was being sent over from Washington. Devlin replied with some distaste that he was too busy and that in any case he had inadequate refrigeration 3. Before the C.I.A.'s intention could be translated into action by a special case officer Lumumba had escaped from Leo and was making his way across the intervening country in the hope of reaching his political friends in Stanleyville. It was supposed to be a secret journey but, Lumumba being Lumumba, he could not resist popping up in villages on the way and making speeches. Mobutu's men did not find it too difficult to track him down and arrest him. At UN headquarters in New York an Emergency Special Session of the General Assembly, attended by many heads of government, including Khrushchev from the Soviet Union, began on 17 September. The Russians launched a vicious personal attack on Hammarskjold and argued that he should be replaced not by a single Secretary-General but by a troika, representing the East, the West and the NonAligned. Khrushchev must have assumed that this demagoguery would appeal to the Afro-Asian mentality. He could not have been more wrong. It was a tribute to the standing of Dag Hammarskjold that the Communist line found no answering echo. At the end of December (1960) Lumumba was brought back, a prisoner, to Thysville, the military camp outside Leo, where he was soon winning over soldiers and causing them to mutiny against their officers. In January 1961 Mobutu arranged for his dangerous rival to be flown to Elisabethville, the traditional place under Belgian rule for imprisoning politicians. It was a long flight, his guards were Balubas (still thinking of the Bakwanga massacre) and they beat him all the way. The Katangese said that he was dying on arrival. Godefroid Munongo announced shortly afterwards that he was now dead, having been killed by villagers while trying to escape and that no one should ever be allowed to know where he was buried. He added that he would not pretend to feel sorry about the death of Lumumba, declaring, 'People will accuse us to assassination. To this I have only one response: Prove it !' This was not a one-off case. Lumumba's political ally, Jean-Pierre Finant, who had been the provincial president of Province Orientale, had also had the misfortune to fall into Mobutist hands; he was transferred with five others to Bakwanga, where they were all shot. Whereupon in Stanleyville, where a rump government had been set up under Lumumba's Deputy Prime Minister, Antoine Gizenga, fifteen political prisoners hostile to Lumumba suffered the same fate. Gizenga, who was almost certainly a communist, was fortunately a rather lethargic individual, surrounded by a female bodyguard, and, perhaps on that account, somewhat inattentive to his duties. But the country seemed to be failing to pieces, with three centres of authority, Mobutu in Leo, Gizenga in Stan, and Tshombe in E'ville, and the other provinces (like Kivu, Kasai and Kwiiu) failing into different shades of anarchy. Each of these situations had to be dealt with by UN officials and army officers living off their wits. Hammarskjold's position became even more tense. On 14 February 1961 the Soviet Government issued a statement in which it described the murder of Lumumba as 'the culmination of Hammarskjold's criminal activities,' saying that 'he deserves only the contempt of all honest people.' The Russians and their East European allies demanded sanctions against Belgium, the arrest of Mobutu and Tshombe and the dismissal of Hammarskjold, whose 'continuance in office is intolerable.' When these extraordinary attacks were at their height we in the press corps at the UN used anxiously to wait for the unmistakable timbre of the Secretary General's accented English to see if he would yet again be capable of toughing it out. In the evening we would consult U Thant, the Burmese representative who was Hammarskjold's confidant and was to become his successor, about the state of the Secretary-General's morale. Hammarskjold did not flinch despite having lost the confidence of a permanent member and he skilfully used Khrushchev's declared wish to change the character of his office as the reason why he could not resign it. Hammarskjold concentrated in 1961 on two objectives: to help create a legitimate Central Government for the Congo and to bring Katanga into the Congolese political system. After a series of conferences between the various politicians, some held within the Congo, some outside, a remarkable operation was conducted by the UN under a Swede called Sture Linner by which in July the site of the University at Lovanium, outside Leo, was sealed off and politicians were brought in from all parts of the country except Katanga, which was invited but did not attend. Security was exclusively in the hands of the UN, the telephone lines to the outside world were cut, and the politicians' needs were catered for by a UN staff which lived on the premises. Under these conditions of quarantine, the African politicians adopted the principles of a new, fully federal constitution, agreed to keep Kasavubu as President and installed a new Government under Cyrille Adoula, who had made his name before independence as a moderate trade union leader. Gizenga was made Deputy Prime Minister and, to the huge relief of both the UN and the West, wound up the Stanleyville Government which had been a living invitation to the entry of Soviet influence. The one consideration that moved Hammarskjold more than any other was to avoid bringing in the cold war. But to prevent the Americans being too active it was necessary to prevent the Russians from being active at all. Sufficient pressure had now been brought to bear so that the Belgians, who were very indignant at being treated always in UN circles as the accused, at last withdrew their troops from Katanga. But they left behind a rather effective gendarmerie with some white officers and stiffened by white mercenaries recruited from among ex Foreign Legionaries, ex-SAS officers from Algeria, and about two hundred English-speaking volunteers mainly from Rhodesia or South Africa. There were also Belgian advisers in ail the significant government departments. I should say a word about the ethnic composition of Katanga because this has an important bearing on what happened next. The picture given out by Tshombe's Government was that, in contrast to the rest of the Congo, Katanga Province was a haven of peace and goodwill. This was not entirely so. Tshombe's Government was dominated by the Lunda tribe and its allies, of which Munongo's small tribe was one. The Lunda, who had in pre colonial days been very proud of their political system and its widespread influence, had put up the longest resistance to the coming of the Belgians. Having finally surrendered on terms that secured the position of their Emperor, the Mwata Yamvo, they turned their backs on modernism and the monetary economy and continued to pursue their traditional way of life. Moise Tshombe and his father, with their pursuit of European culture and commerce, were something of an exception to this, but even so Moise married one of the Mwata Yamvo's daughters and was conscious of the tribe's claim to be the natural rulers of, at any rate, South Katanga, which contained all the mineral wealth. The main contrast with the Lunda was provided by the Baluba, who willingly embraced anything the Belgians had to offer. They worked on building the railway into Katanga, settled in the great family compounds of the Union Minière, sent their children to school and in the 1950s became interested in the idea of Congolese nationalism. Their own party, the Balubakat, was the natural ally of Lumumba's M.N.C. 4 It therefore formed the principal opposition to the Conakat, the party of Moise Tshombe and the Lunda group. In a row over allegations of election-rigging the Balubakat had rather unwisely boycotted the sessions of the Katangese Parliament and had so forfeited the opportunity of being included in the provincial government. This had greatly facilitated the unilateral declaration of independence, to which the Balubakat was opposed. But it did mean that, looked at more closely, there was anything but unanimity behind the decision to secede and that the writ of the Katangese authorities most certainly did not run throughout the whole province of Katanga. The UN force was now established in and around E'ville, the UN's chief civilian representative was the Irishman, Conor Cruise O'Brien, and the UN were now working to a mandate adopted in New York in February 1961 in the emotional aftertow of Lumumba's death. The Security Council urged the Secretary-General to take immediately all appropriate measures to prevent the occurrence of civil war, including as a last resort 'the use of force.' This mention of the word 'force', as I need hardly tell you, represents the crossing of a major threshold in UN terms. In a separate paragraph the same resolution also urges that 'measures be taken for the immediate withdrawal and evacuation from the Congo of all Belgian and other foreign military and paramilitary personnel and political advisers not under UN Command and mercenaries. 'This is at the same time an interventionist paragraph in that it lays claim to a UN monopoly in the provision of advice and a restrictive one in that the words y use of force,' although introduced elsewhere in the resolution, are absent from this context. The spring and summer were taken up with negotiations with Tshombe, a skilful prevaricator, in the hope of inveigling him into the Lovanium process and of removing by agreement the advisers, military personnel and mercenaries. His talents, it was even suggested, were being wasted at provincial level. There was a large vacancy in Leo. Relations between the ethnic groups in Katanga deteriorated, with Balubas calling for Congolese unity and broadcasts on Katanga radio denouncing them in racist terms. Many of the Balubas, feeling intimidated, moved out of their homes and dumped themselves down just outside the UN military barracks in E'ville, where they remained, a huge, sprawling and insanitary refugee camp, as a very visible challenge to Tshombe's claim to speak for all Katanga. Once the installation of the legitimate Adoula Government had taken place the feeling was that no more excuses for prevarication should be allowed. Adoula issued a formal ordinance declaring all non-Congolese officers and mercenaries serving in Katanga undesirable aliens; he then requested UN assistance in deporting them. The UN force in Katanga, now consisting of 1,600 Indians, 500 Irish and 400 Swedes under the overall command of the Indian Brigadier Raja, carried out a military coup in the early hours of 28 August. Complete surprise was achieved and a number of the European officers of the gendarmerie were rounded up. The radio station, post office and telephone exchange were seized and Munongo was put under house arrest. Tshombe agreed that he would 'bow to the decisions of the UN.' It seemed at this point as if decisive action by the UN would have the justification of total success; with the mandate carried out, the mercenaries and advisers gone and Tshombe being seen to acknowledge the Adoula Government, all without a single casualty, the actual means employed and the question of strict conformity with the wording of the resolution would in all probability have been overlooked. But at this point the consular corps intervened and Conor Cruise O'Brien, bearing in mind no doubt that some of the mercenaries were still at large, agreed that, to save face, 'voluntary repatriation' under the supervision of the consuls should take place. E'ville returned to normal and 81 of the 460 European officers and n.c.o's departed. Then the process began to slow down, the consuls refused to take responsibility for the two hundred mercenaries still in hiding and reportedly planning military action against the UN, inflammatory broadcasts were made over Katanga radio and a major press campaign began in Britain, Belgium and Rhodesia in favour of Tshombe's Katanga and against the UN. O'Brien in particular was targeted. The Federal Prime Minister of the Central African Federation, Sir Roy Welensky, left noone in any doubt where his sympathies lay and long convoys of supplies were reaching E'ville from across the Rhodesian border. The official British view was that 'there was no mandate for the removal of essential foreign civilians which might lead to the breakdown of the administration of Katanga.' O'Brien's press statements were felt to be more honest than was prudent, since they stressed the UN's success in ending secession, for which force had not been authorised by the Security Council instead of the avoidance of civil war, for which it had.
The UN staff in the Congo, principally Sture Linner and the Tunisian Mahmoud Khiari, now decided that what was needed to finish the job was a second military coup in E'ville. Brigadier Raja, a man with an attractive but rather misleading style of self-assurance, promised that there would be no difficulty in concluding the matter. Khiari briefed O'Brien, who was inclined to favour strong action and was therefore unlikely to raise objections that might thwart it, and the project went forward, apparently without seeking Hammarskjold's express permission.
This time, 13 September, there was no surprise; the gendarmerie, led by white mercenaries, were ready and waiting. Outside the radio station and the post office Indian troops were met by force. Sporadic fighting went on during the day and Raja, his confidence dented, called for reinforcements. One issue that has often been debated since is how close a control the political element of the UN should keep over events during the carrying out of a military operation. In 1961 the classic doctrine of aid to the civil power seemed to prevail that once the military were called in the civilian ceased, for that phase, to exercise authority. In a television documentary which I wrote and presented in July 1962 called A Question of Katanga I argued that political control should have been pretty continuous. Conor Cruise O'Brien who took part in the programme replied to my argument, 'You mean act as a political commissar ? I think not.' But when in a peace-keeping operation you encounter unexpected resistance the nature of the response does have highly political implications. There was an explosion of opposition in the West, especially in Britain, to UN action which was held to have exceeded the mandate. Hammarskjold decided to fly to Ndola, in Northern Rhodesia, where Tshombe had agreed to meet him. While approaching Ndola the Secretary-General's plane crashed and all in it were killed. There has been frequent speculation that he was shot down by mercenaries but absolutely no convincing evidence. A cease-fire was agreed after Hammarskjold's death but from the start it was obviously very fragile and did not long survive the passage of a further Security Council resolution on 24 November. This received the active support of the United States, but the abstention of both Britain and France. Only in the case of Suez would those countries actually cast a vote and hence a veto against American policy, so this abstention was a signal of serious dissent. The resolution deplored 'all armed action in opposition to the authority of the Government of the Republic of the Congo, specifically secessionist activities and armed action now being carried on by the provincial administration of Katanga with the aid of external resources and foreign mercenaries,' and it completely rejected 'the claim that Katanga is a "sovereign nation".' The whole tone of this resolution, which was drafted initially by Third World countries (Ceylon, Liberia, Egypt), was, compared with is predecessors, straightforwardly interventionist. It made some concessions to the UN's need to isolate and concentrate
attention on the international sources of the trouble. The
Secretary-General was authorised to take vigorous action, 'including the
use of the requisite measure of force, if necessary, for the immediate
apprehension .... and deportation of all foreign military and
paramilitary personnel and political advisers and mercenaries.' But
other paragraphs did not hesitate to pronounce on what would hitherto
have been defined as internal affairs. All secessionist activity was
declared contrary to Security Council decisions; 'full and firm support'
was promised to the Central Government. The view of the British
Government, in explaining its abstention, was that 'the wording ... goes
dangerously far in encouraging the local The Katangese, or some of them, evidently agreed with this
assessment, because persistent harassment of the UN forces and civilian
staff opened up, ending in the raiding of a social event in E'ville in
honour of a visiting American senator by Katangese gendarmes, who beat
up and kidnapped two senior UN officials, Brian Urquhart and George lvan
Smith, who were present. The gendarmerie then set up road blocks to
prevent the free movement of UN transport and, although Smith was almost
immediately released and then, after a long and worrying delay Urquhart
also, at one time fourteen members of the UN staff were in Katangese
hands. There was evidence that the white mercenaries were planning a
concerted attack on UN positions. After unavailing efforts to negotiate
the removal of the roadblocks, the UN removed them by force. War then
broke out throughout the city and continued for several days.
The press corps was based in the Hotel Leo II in the centre of
E'ville, which was Tshombe territory. As a consequence the reports of
the fighting that reached the Western, including the British, press were
almost all coloured by exposure to the Katangese propaganda machine. The
senior UN civilian and military commanders were cut off from the city.
It was actually possible to reach them and the BBC -- myself and another
reporter -- did do so, but no one else did, so that with that exception
the media were not reflecting at all the UN's tactics and point of
views. 5 The UN officials, Brian Urquhart still with a broken nose to
show for his treatment by the Katangese gendarmes, were living in a
villa near to the airport; it had been so affected by the near-misses of
the mercenaries' mortars that, when it rained, the roof leaked like a
sieve. When the UN replied in kind to this type of attack with mortars
aimed with no guidance more accurate than the decorated tourist maps of
the city, some of the shells fell on two hospitals. Belgians immediately
rushed round dead children to the front of the press hotel in order to
display them on the bonnets of their cars. By now there was an Ethiopian
contingent with the UN troops and the press were constantly being kept
informed of Ethiopian atrocities.
The extent of the casualties was much exaggerated but there were a
few atrocities and rather more errors of war. Some UN troops were far
too much inclined to aim bazookas at cars which did not stop. A Swiss
gentleman whom Tshombe had put in charge of his Finance Ministry was
killed in this fashion and his companion, one of the BBC correspondents,
was severely wounded. Public opinion in Britain and elsewhere in the
West was far more censorious of civilian casualties caused by the UN
than it would have been of any caused by other parties. The world
organization was expected to be an immaculate instrument.
The fighting ended when the Americans brokered a meeting between
Tshombe and Adoula, at which Tshombe agreed to the unity of the Congo,
accepted Kasavubu as Head of State and agreed to participate in further
constitutional talks. These talks in fact took place; indeed, they
occupied most of the year 1962. Tshombe took the line that, now that he
had agreed in principle to belong to a federal Congo, it was purely a
matter of internal politics -- and therefore none of the UN's business -
what kind of federal Congo he belonged to. He could take as long as he
liked making the case for a weak confederation with few central powers
and, in addition, Tshombe envisaged Katanga entering it as a sovereign
state. This is precisely the same kind of argument which, for example,
Rauf Denktash, on behalf of the Turkish Cypriots, has been advancing in
negotiations that have been going on over Cyprus since federation was
agreed in principle in 1977.
U Thant, who had succeeded Dag Hammarskjold as Secretary-General, was
less concerned than his predecessor with the juridical niceties of the
operation and more with crude substance. He was also very worried about
the damage being done to the finances of the UN by the prolonged
commitment. As it became clear that Katanga was not negotiating in good
faith and that the mercenaries were again building up a potential for
aggression he prepared a plan for a stringent economic boycott. At the
same time he asked for and obtained additional contingents and weapons
for the UN force. The boycott was not needed because on Christmas Eve
1962 the Katangese gendarmerie opened fire on UN positions. The UN
waited for four days, during which the firing continued, and then
crushed the opposition within 48 hours. The authority of the Central
Government was established in E'ville and in mid-1963 the UN operation
in the Congo was wound up.
It had been a massive undertaking, compared to previous UN
activities, and nothing like it was to be undertaken until the Cold War
was over. It achieved its main aims: it preserved the integrity of the
new state and it did so in a way which prevented the opening up of a new
front in the Cold War. The specialised agencies operated in the field in
a better-co-ordinated way than might have been expected, and substantial
forces, mainly from the Third World, discharged baffling tasks in
confused situations with varying degrees of success but on the whole
creditably. The Liberian troops in Kasai province who put Congolese
prisoners for the night inside meat freezers were not typical.
But the whole story illustrates the fact that once the UN gets
involved in a situation of civil war and internal chaos it becomes
rather artificial to continue speaking in terms of Article 2(7) of the
Charter. In the end the mercenary-led gendarmerie were foolish enough to
attack, so that the UN's final action in Katanga was covered by
self-defence. But they might well not have been so foolish. The truth
has to be faced that, when peace-keepers are in position within a
country in internal turmoil, their every act on balance helps one side
or another. The UN operation displayed the shortcomings of operating in
the field without any intelligence service of its own and without an
adequate information service to ensure its case was conveyed to the
media.
6And, finally, there is the supreme irony that during these years
everyone said that, if only a Congolese personality could be found who
could ensure the unity of the Congo and keep it united for a generation,
it would become the great centre of wealth and prosperity in black
Africa. Kasavubu, Lumumba and Tshombe were all tried and, in their
different ways, fell short of the requirements. Then in 1965, after the
UN had left, such a man stepped forward. We have met him already.
Colonel Joseph Desiré Mobutu, now Marshal Mobutu Sésé Séko, seized
power and has held onto it ever since. His country, now called Zaire, is
still one but it is the basket-case of Africa, long since abandoned by
international aid agencies and by the world's press. After all, since
there is now no Cold War, it is no longer a subject of contention.
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