Congo, UN operations in (1960-4). The Congo (later Zaire (1971-97) and now renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo) was the scene of the most ambitious UN military intervention in history, a unique campaign which has many lessons for present-day peace-support operations. It was the only time the UN had its own air force, and was the origin of many UN procedures used in the numerous interventions since then.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is a vast country around the river of that name, which has the second largest drainage basin in the world after the Amazon. It is a former Belgian colony, and distinct from Congo-Brazzaville, the former French colony to the north-west. At 905, 568 square miles (2, 345, 410 sq km), it is a quarter of the size of the USA and larger than France, Germany, Britain, Spain, Italy, and the Benelux countries put together.
The Congo, scene of UN operations 1960-4.
(Click to enlarge)
The vast, watery maze of the Congo was the scene for Joseph Conrad's 1898 novella Heart of Darkness, in which the central character, Kurtz, sets off in search of ivory but also to ‘civilize’, and instead succumbs to the darkest aspects of the dark continent. It was adapted as the Vietnam war film Apocalypse Now and Michael Ignatieff has pointed out the similarity between the imperialist imperative and the propensity of developed countries to intervene in other people's wars a hundred years later to ‘put the world to rights’.
The Congo was the scene of the first such intervention in modern times. It was totally unprepared for independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960. Chaos ensued, and Belgium sent troops back in to protect Europeans. On 11 July the leader of the mineral-rich Katanga province (later Shaba province) in the south-east, bordering Northern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Angola, announced he was seceding. In order to maintain control of the mining industry, especially diamonds, Belgium supplied Katanga with arms and 500 mercenaries to lead its army. Then the Congo president, Joseph Kasavubu, dismissed the PM, Patrice Lumumba, who attempted to set up a rival regime in Stanleyville (now Kisangani) in the north-east. In August, the Baluba of South Kasai proclaimed independence, so the country was split into four.
On 12 July, the Congo government requested UN assistance to repel what was simplified as Belgian aggression (the return of her troops to protect Belgian citizens). This formed the basis of the biggest and most complex civil and military operation mounted by the UN until Cambodia in 1992-3. At its peak, the UN force in the Congo (known by its French acronym of ONUC) numbered 20, 000 of whom 234 died. Whereas the Korean war had been a much bigger so-called UN operation, it had been basically a US war with UN blessing. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld wanted to use the Congo as a test case of the UN as an independent international force, an ambition curtailed when he was killed in a plane crash on 17 September 1961. It has long been suspected that both he and Lumumba were assassinated at the instigation of the CIA.
Before his death, Hammarskjöld laid down a set of principles for UN forces in civil wars which are still followed. It was a temporary deployment, until local forces were ready to take over, and had to remain impartial. It was responsible for restoring law and order, preventing civil war, training Congolese security forces, and securing the withdrawal of foreign mercenaries. In its campaign against the Katangan rebels the UN carried out air attacks, the only time it was ever to do so with its own aircraft. This air force with its own Ethiopian and Swedish jet fighters and Indian Canberra bombers was set up in October 1961. Its main role was to incapacitate the Katangan air force and provide close air support and reconnaissance.
The Congo saw the first use of the term ‘military information’ (milinfo) as a euphemism for intelligence. In 1960 Hammarskjöld refused to set up a permanent ‘intelligence’ agency, because to obtain access to a country for good reasons and then start gathering ‘intelligence’ would put countries off inviting the UN in the first place. Since the need for what could not be called intelligence was still needed, it was called milinfo instead.
In February 1961 Lumumba was murdered by the Katangan rebels and the mandate was revised, to include ‘the use of force … as a last resort’. The peacekeeping mandate was changed to one of peace enforcement, and the restitution of a democratic form of government. By February 1963, U. Thant reported to the Security Council that civil war had been quelled and that the foreign mercenaries had been removed. ONUC was then scaled down, the last small detachment being withdrawn on 30 June 1964.
Insofar as it was the one and only time the UN sponsored a military intervention independent of the wishes and control of the USA, Hammarskjöld's adventure was an act of almost foolhardy idealism. It is open to debate whether the issues left unresolved by suppressing a civil war ever go away, and after the epically corrupt dictatorship of Mobutu which ended in 1997, Zaire once again collapsed into multi-factional strife. It is difficult to decide whether it was a late colonial operation or the first of the modern wars of intervention by the international community, or if indeed there ever has been any significant difference between the two.
Bibliography
- Ignatieff, Michael, The Warrior's Honor (London, 1998)
— Christopher Bellamy
