Dag's Problem Child

As politics in the Congo got more and more hectic, and the U.N. found itself forced to take an ever-bigger hand in the Congo's affairs, an uneasy question posed itself. Doesn't any nation have the right to go to hell in its own way?

The Congo was certainly a shambles. The week began with the President firing the Premier and the Premier firing the President. For days, sphinxlike President Joseph Kasavubu had watched the havoc wreaked by Patrice Lumumba's turbulent decrees, had talked privately of plans to end the chaos, and hesitated. Finally, taunted by scornful party youth leaders, who threatened to withdraw their support. Kasavubu roared: "By God, I will act."

On Tape. Hurriedly contacting U.N. officials in Leopoldville. he got tacit agreement to his plan, then rounded up two dissident members of Lumumba's Cabinet to join him in the plot. As night fell, he quietly went to the studios of Radio Leopoldville to deliver his message to the nation, carefully tape-recording his words 20 minutes in advance so he could get away before they were broadcast.

"The Prime Minister has betrayed the task entrusted to him," he sternly declared. "He has deprived many citizens of their fundamental liberties. And now he is involving the country in an awful civil war. Therefore, I have decided to dismiss the government." Naming moderate Senate President Joseph Ileo, 38, as new Premier, he added a hopeful plea that the army lay down its arms.

Turning the Tables. This was the time for action. But Kasavubu merely went back to his residence, now ringed with a special force of U.N. guards, to await signs that the nation had risen to his support. Instead, the man who acted was Patrice Lumumba. Less than an hour later, he appeared at the radio station, brushed aside U.N. troops and broadcast his own message to the nation: "Congolese, stand firm!" he cried in his high, thin voice. "The government cannot be dismissed until it loses the confidence of the people, and the people are fully behind it." Then, having been fired himself. Lumumba called his Cabinet into late night session and proceeded to fire Kasavubu.

Since the Congo was still operating under the unratified "loi fondamentale" be queathed by the Belgians, the constitutional legalities involved in all this were unclear, but Lumumba left no one in doubt as to who held the initiative. Next day, as Kasavubu and his new Premier-designate Ileo sat timidly in the President's home, Lumumba's police fell upon a crowd of Kasavubu followers and opened fire, killing two. wounding twelve, and hauling scores away to jail.

Cops in the Rear. But Kasavubu's scattered supporters hoped to make a comeback in the Assembly where, despite the clusters of rifle-toting cops in the rear, the opposition could speak up without being clubbed on the head. For three hours, as the angry debate roared over his head, Lumumba sat quietly scribbling notes. But the angry voices faded when Lumumba rose to take the floor.

Playing to the legislators' pride, he cried. "Don't you think Kasavubu has insulted you by trying to set up a new government without consulting you?" He opened the pork barrel, suggesting that there were 60 ambassadorial jobs to be filled in Congolese diplomatic posts abroad. "For these tasks of prestige and savoir faire, I must depend on you, my dear colleagues." smiled Lumumba.

Snow Job. It was a masterful performance of its kind, and when the Speaker proposed a motion that both Kasavubu's dismissal of Lumumba and Lumumba's dismissal of Kasavubu be wiped off the books and forgotten, the Assembly voted its approval by a whopping 60 to 19. Next day in the Senate, with neither Kasavubu nor even Senate President Ileo himself daring to show up for the debate. Lumumba repeated his snow job with some added embellishments. He waved sheaves of money and held up a transistor radio, claiming they had been taken from a "Belgian spy," presumably a local white who later was produced quivering at a press conference. The Senators had to hear the explanation of the term "vote of confidence" eleven times before they understood what the ballots were for. But then all but nine supported Lumumba.

Aglow with success, the erratic Premier saved his shocker until the end. "The United Nations has plotted with Kasavubu to overthrow my government and failed," he shouted. "We must demand the immediate withdrawal of all United Nations troops from the Congo."

Busy Helpers. What bothered Lumumba was the fact that the U.N. troops were hampering his efforts to invade secessionist Katanga province. For two weeks, Lumumba's fast-shooting soldiers had been prowling along the Katanga frontier from their Kasai stronghold, gathering strength for the assault. This threat of civil war was bad enough, but Hammarskjold was now more alarmed at the busy activities of Soviet Russia, which had first come in to help under the U.N.'s aegis, was now operating high, wide and handsome on its own. Fifteen Ilyushin transports, with "Republique du Congo" freshly painted on their sides, were flying in and out of Stanleyville, carrying troops and supplies to Lumumba's forward units. Also in the interior were 100 Russian trucks, and Soviet "technicians" were ar riving almost daily from the north.

Seizing on the pretext that the falling out between Kasavubu and Lumumba might lead to civil rioting that the U.N. would have to deal with, Hammarskjold's officers ordered the main airports closed to all but U.N. planes, and Hammarskjold reported to the Security Council that "certain assistance from outside" was keeping the threat of civil war alive and gravely handicapping the U.N.'s task. In Washington, President Eisenhower considered the Russian intervention so serious that he had a special statement ready at his press conference warning the Soviets "to desist from unilateral activities." Ike charitably admitted there was no direct evidence of Russian military pilots operating the 11-yushins. But the pilots were certainly not Congolese--the Congo has nobody capable of flying a two-engined plane. To all this the Russians retorted that they would continue aiding Lumumba as long as they wanted to.

Hammarskjold's task was made all the more difficult when the Belgians flew nine tons of ammunition into Katanga, the wealthy and dissident Congo province run by its self-styled Premier, Moise Tshombe. Abruptly closing all of Katanga's airports. Hammarskjold now incurred the wrath of Tshombe, who had reports that a Lumumba task force was crossing into Katanga from the north. Flouting the U.N.'s orders, Tshombe rushed truckloads of armed Katanga troops to Elisabethville's airport, forced the field's U.N. traffic controller at gunpoint to order the obstacles removed from the strip and let two of his small planes take off. Under U.N. orders not to fire, the officer had to comply.

Vanishing Guards. At week's end Dag Hammarskjold was clearly fed up with his Congo problem child. Before an emergency session of the Security Council, he demanded more power and a clear field to work unhampered. The facts were, said he, that the Congo is near bankruptcy and total administrative collapse. ''Some [army] units have not got any pay for two months, and they have no food, with the result that they disobey orders and loot from the civilian population." The Congolese army in Kasai province was running wild, "engaged in slaughter not only of combatants but also of defenseless civilians." Some victims "were deliberately killed simply on the ground that they were Balubas," Hammarskjold said. "Should it be supposed that the duty of the United Nations to observe strict neutrality . . . means that the United Nations cannot take action in such cases?"

To head off further intervention by Russia or Belgium, he asked the Council formally to call on all outside countries to cease unilateral aid. To head off Lumumba's wild adventures, he sought authority to disarm all military groups--both Congolese and Katangan--and negotiate a settlement of the Congo's internal differences.

But even before the Council could vote, Hammarskjold had decided to act in Leopoldville. Suddenly the Congo army guards whom Lumumba had ordered to guard key government offices disappeared from their posts. At sprawling Camp Leopold II, troops were stacking their arms, ignoring the screams of anger from Lumumba. Behind the Premier's back, Congolese army leaders and U.N. officers had worked out arrangements of their own: weapons were to be kept locked in central arsenals, and a cease-fire was arranged in the Katanga campaign. Lumumba insisted it was all a mistake, but the fact remained that the Premier, already effectively deprived of his airports and his radio stations, was now in danger of becoming a Premier without an army. Exultant, President Joseph Kasavubu fired off a cable to U.N. headquarters in Manhattan: "Have honor to inform you of composition of new government of Republic of Congo" and ca'mly began forming his Cabinet. But Patrice Lumumba was sitting tight in the Premiers office. For the United Nations, all this was a venture into uncharted political water, far beyond anything that its original architects had envisioned. In just one new nation, 16,000 troops and millions of dollars were committed to keeping order, handling all the household problems, and trying to undo the actions of the Premier who had invited the U.N. into the country in the first place. With more countries getting independence nearly every month, Dag Hammarskjold might well wonder where it all would end.

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