The Edge of Anarchy

With a rare angry glint in his pale blue eyes, the U.N.'s Dag Hammarskjold last week went on the offensive against Congolese Premier Patrice Lumumba. And well he might. The Congo's army was acting on its irresponsible own, the Congo's economy was stagnating, and its capital city chaotic and littered with trash. In such an hour, when he needed all the help he could get and his country needed all the stability it could muster, Lumumba jumped up and down in an insensate feud with the U.N. Compared with Lumumba, Hammarskjold confided to associates, the most wild-eyed of fanatics he had run into in the Middle East during the Suez and Lebanon crises were "nice, quiet, conservative old gentlemen."

Chain of Letters. Lumumba seemed neither in effective control of his country nor of himself. He sent an irate note to Hammarskjold accusing him of ignoring the Congo's central government, of "acting in connivance" with the secessionist regime in the Congo's Katanga province, and of deliberately misinterpreting his instructions from the U.N. Security Council. Then, blithely ignoring the fact that the U.N. had already dispatched 2,000 African (Moroccan, Mali and Ethiopian) troops to Katanga. Lumumba accused Dag of sending in only units from Ireland (there were no Irish troops in Katanga) and from Sweden, "a country known to have special affinities with the Belgian royal family." Hammarskjold coldly replied that he had decided to return to New York to call another Security Council meeting. Lumumba there upon demanded that Hammarskjold postpone his departure for 24 hours so that the protesting Congolese delegation could hitch a ride on his plane. Dag Hammarskjold decided to leave the Congo immediately.

For an ex-post office clerk with a limited education. Lumumba was sending off some fairly polished and legalistic notes. Their phraseology led foreign diplomats to wonder who was writing his stuff. The answer seemed to be that Lu mumba is now surrounded by a growing coterie of Red-lining advisers. Besides the Congo's latter-day Madame de Stael. handsome Leftist Andree Blouin, who has volunteered her way into the most intimate Congo affairs (TIME, Aug. 15). Lumumba relies heavily on a Frenchman of Polish extraction named Serge Michel. Michel, until recently an aide to Algerian Rebel Leader Ferhat Abbas, is a radio and press "expert" who, in between polishing up Lumumba's speeches, last week was broadcasting appeals to the citizens of Leopoldville to spy on their neighbors and root out "saboteurs."

"I Give Up." It was not safe to be a peaceable U.N. employee in the Congo last week. Two U.N. officers were set upon and robbed by Lumumba's own office guards when they arrived to deliver a note from U.N. Special Representative Ralph Bunche. Combing the town for "Belgians in disguise," Congolese police invaded Leopoldville's hotels in the early hours of the morning, turned out white occupants for inspection.

Next, Lumumba tried to grab control of Leopoldville's U.N.-run Ndjili Airport. First he got permission to station a few unarmed Congolese at the field. To everyone's astonishment, he then arrived himself at the head of 114 soldiers, all armed to the teeth. Soon Congolese soldiers were arresting every "suspicious" U.N. man in sight. A group of Norwegian soldiers fresh in from Europe were held as "Belgian paratroopers," and a Pakistan colonel was threatened with bayonets. "I give up!" shouted a U.N. brigadier from Ghana, throwing his garrison cap into the air in disgust after an argument with the Congo's comic-opera army commander. "This has become a complete farce!"

"A Banal Incident." For the U.N. the last straw came next day when Congolese troops spotted 14 Canadian servicemen in a plane about to leave Ndjili, decided that they, too, were Belgians. They knocked the Canadians to the ground to search them, pounded a Canadian captain into unconsciousness with a rifle butt, stripped the others of their wallets and watches. As Ghanaian troops moved in to intervene, the U.N.'s Indian Brigadier Inder J. Rikhye swooped down by helicopter from his Leopoldville headquarters. Livid with rage, he roared at the Congolese: "I order you off this airfield immediately!" Meekly they drifted away. Reinforced U.N. troops began putting up barbed wire barricades around the field with orders to shoot if any further armed Congolese showed up.

Canada sternly protested the incident, and angry Ralph Bunche went on Radio Leopoldville to complain on behalf of the U.N. "We have been subjected to senseless provocation," said Bunche sternly. Blandly, Lumumba brushed the affair off as "a banal incident . . . deliberately magnified by the Secretary-General."

Africans Alarmed. But with the episode, Lumumba had finally overreached himself. When his U.N. delegation at last arrived in New York (in a Soviet IL-18 turbojet), virtually the only voices raised in their favor were Communist. Echoing Moscow's radio blasts against Hammarskjold, Soviet U.N. Delegate Vasily Kuznetsov protested that most of the U.N. technicians in the Congo had been recruited from Western countries, demanded that "armed groups from Canada" be withdrawn from the Congo, since Canada was a Belgian ally in NATO.

Despite Russian efforts to pose as the protectors of African freedom, many African nations themselves were increasingly weary of Lumumba's troublemaking. Liberia's President William Tubman con fessed he was "perplexed and frustrated" by Lumumba's attitude. Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba declared that "there is a limit to how far Tunisia will go along with the Congo," and gave his support to Hammarskjold.

Importing an Indian. In fact, the question now was not whether Hammarskjold and the U.N. had interfered in the Congo, but whether they had taken a tough enough line. In a report to Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah, British Major General Henry Alexander, head of Ghana's U.N. contingent, protested that he could not protect U.N. personnel if the "orders are to be passive resistance and noninterference" with the Congolese army, and by implication accused Ralph Bunche and Swedish General Carl von Horn, U.N. Military Commander in the Congo, of being too soft. Ghana's Nkrumah, who only three weeks ago threatened to march into Katanga at Lumumba's side, now found himself in the curious position of advising Hammarskjold that his Ghanaian forces could bring the rampaging Congolese soldiers in Leopoldville "under effective control within one week."

Relieving Ralph Bunche, Hammarskjold chose India's High Commissioner to Pakistan, respected Rajeshwar Dayal. 51, to serve as top U.N. representative in the Congo. Then he went before the Security Council to reject icily Lumumba's demand for control over U.N. operations in the Congo. Lumumba's behavior, said Hammarskjold with unwonted acerbity, "gave an impression of deep distrust and hostility fomented for political ends" and called into question "the very dignity of [this] organization and the governments which it represents." Then, in a threat never before heard in the U.N.'s halls. Dag Hammarskjold warned that unless Lumumba mended his ways the U.N. might reconsider--that is, withdraw--its entire aid program in the Congo.

At week's end restless Africans in Leopoldville, faced with rising unemployment, shouted, "The government is bad. We want work," and a top leader of the big Abako party threatened to remove Lumumba "by legal or illegal means."

Congo might yet prove able to govern itself.. But after two hectic months in office, Lumumba hardly seems the man for the job.

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