CONGO: Squeezing the Colonel

“The United Nations has added another ring to the Congo circus,” snapped a disgusted Western diplomat in Leopoldville last week. “And its show looks just as ridiculous as what is going on in the Congolese rings.” Many a baffled Congolese would agree.

Originally, the U.N.’s Congo officials had condoned the takeover of power by Colonel Joseph Mobutu, 30, relieved to have someone try to impose order on the squabbling politicians. Now they were undermining the hapless young soldier.

Originally, they had viewed erratic Premier Patrice Lumumba with alarm, closed the Congo’s airports to his men, and refused him access to the radio station to stifle his dangerous demagoguery; now they seemed resigned to accepting his return to power. Originally, the U.N. had urged Belgian civilian experts (but not troops) to stay and help rebuild the Congo; now they were issuing strident warnings that Belgians were unwelcome.

New Alignment. In Leopoldville, Western officials and diplomats were frankly bewildered at the strange turn of events. Best guess was that U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold was reacting to new and compelling pressures. In the face of Nikita Khrushchev’s attack in the General Assembly, the new African nations had rallied to the defense of the U.N. and Hammarskjold himself. But the 70-0 Assembly vote upholding Hammarskjold obscured the fact that many Africans still felt that Lumumba was the legitimate head of the Congolese government. Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Guinea’s Sekou Toure demanded Lumumba’s return for reasons of their own—he is an old pal. But many others argued simply that he was the only man who had won an election.

Hammarskjold is known to feel that the entire success of the U.N. in the Congo depends on maintaining solid Afro-Asian support. And by virtue of last month’s U.N. resolution, Africans will soon get an even larger voice in Congo affairs. A clause in the resolution set up a special “conciliation committee” made up largely of Africans, who soon will fly to the Congo. Was Hammarskjold anticipating that they would settle on Lumumba? Western diplomats could only guess. But the words and actions of Hammarskjold’s men in the Congo clearly indicated that new instructions had crossed the Atlantic.

All week long, the top aides of U.N.’s Congo Chief Rajeshwar Dayal of India made it obvious that the U.N. was ready to scrap Mobutu. The nervous colonel, they whispered, had asked Dayal for an apartment in Le Royal, the U.N.’s headquarters building. He no longer was in control of his army. He was about to flee the city. He was a poor officer. Ignoring the roughhouse tactics of Lumumba’s own gangs, an official report spoke of “the highhanded and illegal activities” of Mobutu’s army, accusing the army of “acts of lawlessness.”

Guarding the Arsenal. Leopoldville’s African quarter has been plagued for days by a wave of raping, looting and shooting. Many of the attacks were the work of gangs of roving civilian bullies. But some of Mobutu’s soldiers, sent into the African city to search for arms and political enemies, had roughed up their quarry, had in some instances proved trigger-happy. Already angered by Mobutu’s threat to bring an armored unit into Léopoldville to impose his will, Dayal called the bespectacled colonel on the carpet before an array of U.N. brass, issued a blunt warning that the army’s illegal and arbitrary acts would no longer be tolerated.

Mobutu protested he had not authorized violence, suggested that the political opposition was behind much of it. His intention, said Mobutu, was to cooperate fully with the U.N. “Then get the army off the streets,” snapped India’s General Inder Jit Rikhye, Dayal’s military adviser. Meekly, Mobutu agreed to withdraw most of his troops to army headquarters outside the city, where the U.N. planned an intensive training program to inject some discipline into its ranks. But the U.N. let him keep his soldiers around Patrice Lumumba’s house and at the radio station, and, for some reason, agreed to let Mobutu’s soldiers take over guard duty at the national arsenal.

Enter the Villain. Next, Dayal’s U.N. officers turned their fire on the Belgians. They charged that 500 Belgians were arriving weekly on Sabena’s nights from Europe, the aim being, as one U.N. report put it, “to re-establish the Belgian civil service and relegate United Nations technicians to lower echelons.” Twice in two weeks Dag Hammarskjold sent sharp notes of protest to Belgium. Foreign Minister Pierre Wigny bluntly rejected the notes, argued that there was nothing wrong with bilateral technical aid to the Congo (Hammarskjold might reply that that was just what the Russians had said).

At week’s end rumors swirled through Léopoldville that the U.N. would disarm Mobutu’s army, but Dayal’s men denied it. Timorous Joseph Kasavubu sat in his presidential palace, sending out vague messages of endorsement for Mobutu but too frightened to get involved openly. Patrice Lumumba, nipping heavily at an always present bottle, also remained at home, awaiting the day when the confused maneuvering would let him emerge as the real boss again. If he did, it would probably not be long before he invited back all the Russian “technicians” that Mobutu had kicked out. Reportedly, most of them are waiting in Ghana and Guinea, ready to fly back on a moment’s notice.

This prospect did not seem to bother the growing number of Lumumba supporters among the U.N.’s neutral-nation membership; a frequent Lumumba visitor last week was Metrol A. Rahman chargé d’affaires of India, reflecting the likelihood that Jawaharlal Nehru has bought the line of Ghana’s Nkrumah and Guinea’s Touré that the only man to run the Congo is Patrice Lumumba.