Katanga v. the World

In the Congo the week began in deceptive calm. Cautiously, Belgian merchants crept back into the cities, taking down the shutters from their shop windows in hasty compliance with the Congo Cabinet's decree that stores and factories must reopen by August 8 or be confiscated. Reports of continuing tribal warfare among the Baluba and Lulua in the Kasai interior hardly ruffled Leopoldville's street crowds. Here and there local commanders of the Congo's restive Force Publique set up as semi-independent potentates. One Sabena pilot on a routine flight to Stanleyville suddenly heard on his radio the voice of the "commander of the Fifth Bicycle Battalion" warning sternly, "Do not violate my air space again or I'll shoot you down!" But in the 47 regional centers where they had been scattered by whirlwind airlifts (see map), the U.N.'s 11,000 troops had no trouble at all keeping the peace.

Louder & Louder. While his blue-helmeted men stood bored guard duty on sweltering street corners and dusty village lanes. Dag Hammarskjold dickered endlessly with the Congo's erratic politicians. Encouraged by the mercurial remarks of Premier Patrice Lumumba as he wended his way home from the U.S., the Congo government became more and more insistent on the departure of Belgian troops from their bastion in Katanga.

The mineral-rich southeastern province of Katanga in preindependence days supplied 60% of the revenue of the Congo government and most of the wealth the Belgians drew from the colony. In Katanga, Provincial Boss Moise Tshombe stoutly insisted that the Belgians must stay to protect Katanga's self-proclaimed status as a sovereign "republic" independent of Lumumba's government. Even a public promise from Hammarskjold that the troops the U.N. wanted to send in to replace the Belgians would not meddle in Katanga's quarrels with Lumumba failed to budge the stubborn Tshombe.

On the Air. As chief of a government dominated by Belgian "advisers" and propped up by a 7,000-man Belgian army, Moise Tshombe looked mighty like a puppet of Brussels. Operating on this theory, Hammarskjold early last week sent one of his aides flying off to Belgium with a blunt appeal: Remove your forces from Katanga so the U.N. can take over. Within hours, the envoy flashed back word of Belgian acceptance and Hammarskjold happily went on the air with an announcement that U.N. troops would move into Katanga at week's end. Dag then sent the U.S.'s Ralph Bunche flying off to the Katanga capital of Elisabethville as his advance emissary.

But while Congo government ministers jubilantly feted Dag, enraged Moise Tshombe called for "total mobilization," declared: "Katanga is independent, and will remain independent. The U.N. has no more right than any other country to enter our territory against its will." In Elisabethville and other Katanga towns, volunteers and recruits lined up by the hundreds to join Katanga's "army," and Tshombe's aides sent light planes to drop leaflets over the countryside, urging Katangans to prepare for war. There were no visible signs of Belgian pressure on Tshombe to give in.

Beer & Orange Pop. When Advance Man Bunche arrived at Elisabethville in his white U.N. Convair, only two Belgian officials and an honor guard were on hand to greet him. Tshombe pointedly waited at his official residence for Bunche's call. There, sipping beer while Tshombe drank orange pop, Bunche argued earnestly for 2 1/2 hours. Then Tshombe called in the press to declare airily: "I am confident no United Nations troops will enter Katanga." If they should, he went on, "the U.N. will bear a heavy responsibility and will provoke a conflict bringing discredit on it in the eyes of the world."

Next day a tight-lipped Bunche headed for the airport to await the plane that would fly him back to Leopoldville. When he got to the field, he found a platoon of gun-toting troops, apparently ready to riddle the plane if it proved to contain the vanguard of arriving U.N. troops. Nearby were trucks and oil drums to be used as runway obstacles if more planes arrived. Sensing a delicate moment, Bunche grabbed the airport radio microphone and asked the pilot of the plane heading for the field whether any soldiers were on board. Assured there were none, the Katangans allowed the plane to land. "This is a free country, and we do not want the United Nations here," shouted Katanga's Interior Minister at Bunche as he prepared to depart. "You can refuel your plane and leave!" As Bunche walked up the steps into the plane, the Katanga troops trained their guns on him until the door was closed.

Pursuing Voices. Tshombe might well be attempting a great bluff, very likely would be willing to settle in the end for a semi-autonomous status in a Congo confederation. But he had one strong card. Hammarskjold's mandate from the U.N. members who had sent troops to the Congo did not permit him to commit the U.N. "army" to battle--or even to a jungle skirmish. For hours after hearing Bunche's report, Dag pondered the strength of Tshombe's hand. At last, barely six hours before the first contingent was due to take off, Hammarskjold canceled orders for U.N. troops to enter Katanga. Cabling ahead to call a special meeting of the Security Council, Hammarskjold boarded a plane for New York.

As he flew westward, angry voices pursued him. At least for the moment, his backdown over Katanga had dented U.N. prestige in Africa. Both Guinea's Premier Sekou Toure and Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah rushed out statements of support for Lumumba's Congo government, offered to mobilize their minuscule armed forces to help throw the Belgians out. "This," announced Toure, "is henceforth the responsibility of African soldiers." But the sharpest cut of all came from the weather-vane Congo government, whose Cabinet only a few hours earlier had voted full confidence in Dag. From Premier Lumumba, still off on his travels, came instructions to his Cabinet colleagues to demand the immediate departure of all U.N. troops from the Congo. After all, he said, "they are only parading in the Congo, instead of aiding us in the evacuation of Belgian troops."

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