Authors: Ralph Riegel
Denard – whose real name was Gilbert Bourgeaud – served with the French navy, not the Foreign Legion as widely claimed. He became one of the world’s best-known mercenaries.
By the time of his death on 13 October 2007 at the ripe old age of seventy-eight, Denard had fought in Indo-China, Algeria, the Congo, Angola, Zimbabwe, Gabon and the Comoros Islands. Denard – who liked to be referred to as ‘Le Colonel’ – sired eight children through the course of seven marriages, several of which were polygamous. His story is widely credited as the inspiration for the Hollywood blockbuster,
The Wild Geese
and for Frederick Forsyth’s best-selling novel,
The Dogs of War
.
Several years before his death, Denard converted to Islam. The scale of his precise involvement in both Katanga and the Congo remains shrouded in mystery to this day.
DAG HAMMARSKJOLD
The Swedish diplomat remains the only United Nations Secretary-General to be killed in office.
Hammarskjöld was only fifty-six when he died in the plane crash at Ndola on 18 September 1961. The reason for the crash of the Douglas DC-6 aircraft in which he was travelling remains a mystery – many are convinced that the plane was shot down. Conspiracy theorists have been aided in their suspicions by the bizarre manner in which the authorities in northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) initially responded to the crash. Several studies have indicated that if a more prompt response been initiated some of the passengers might have survived.
Only one man survived the initial crash, Sgt Harold Julian, and he told those trying to help him that there had been several explosions before the plane plummeted to earth. It was also discovered that there were bullet wounds on two of the UN leader’s Swedish bodyguards. However, experts at the time discounted Julian’s account as confused – while the Swedes’ injuries were explained by ammunition ‘cooking off’ in the fire that followed the crash.
At the time of the tragic crash, Hammarskjöld was en route to Katanga to try and negotiate a ceasefire to end the bitter fighting which had erupted between UN forces and Katangan gendarmes. President John F. Kennedy – who also died violently within two years – described Dag Hammarskjöld as the greatest statesman of the twentieth century. He is now widely considered the finest UN Secretary-General in history.
PAT CAHALANE
A native of Dundrum in Dublin, Cmdt Cahalane eventually recovered from the injuries he sustained to his hearing in the Congo. He was attached to Defence Forces headquarters where he gradually became involved in the training regime at the Irish Military College. He was later assigned by the army to assist Zambia (formerly northern Rhodesia) with the training of its army officers, spending some time in Africa in the process. After he retired from the army, he secured a job as a security consultant for a leading Irish bank. He died more than twenty years ago.
KING BAUDOUIN I
The great irony of King Baudouin’s June 1960 speech, which triggered Patrice Lumumba’s scathing denouncement of Belgian colonialism, is that Baudouin was one of the most compassionate monarchs ever to have sat on a European throne.
Kind, generous, loyal and deeply religious, Baudouin was Belgian king for a period of forty-two years (1951–1993). Baudouin had not even wanted to accept the Belgian throne following the abdication of his father, King Leopold III, who abdicated under the twin clouds of his actions during the Nazi occupation of Belgium and a controversial romance with a commoner. However, Baudouin was warned that Belgium could not tolerate a second abdication in succession and that, if he refused to be king, the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha would likely fall and Belgium would become a Republic. He agreed to take the throne and proved one of the most diligent of Europe’s royals.
He was so loved by his subjects that Belgium went into deep mourning when he died unexpectedly while on holiday in Madrid at the age of sixty-three. Baudouin’s career was marked by a genuine concern for his subjects and the challenges posed by social disadvantage, which makes his actions in the Congo that summer in 1960 all the more difficult to understand given their obvious consequences.
The Belgian king was twenty-nine years old when he delivered that key address at the Congolese independence ceremony – and many now believe that his ill-judged speech was the combination of relative youth, the scheming of his political advisors and hard memories of his previous visit to Leopoldville when angry crowds threw stones at some of his supporters.
Baudouin had a happy thirty-three year marriage to the Spanish noblewoman, Do
ñ
a Fabiola Mora Aragón. The couple never had children so, on Baudouin’s death, the Belgian crown passed to the king’s youngest brother, Albert II.
• 1482 – First permanent European trading contacts established in the Congo with the formation of a Portuguese colony.
• 1680 – Slave trade begins in earnest, initially to feed booming British, Spanish and French plantations in the New World.
• May 1876 – Belgium’s King Leopold II convenes the International African Association (AIA) with the aim of promoting exploration and colonisation. Leopold secures widespread support thanks to his promise to abolish the slave trade.
• September 1878 – Explorer Henry Morgan Stanley agrees to work with King Leopold to promote European interests in vast African regions.
• November 1884 – German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck organises the Berlin Conference to avert clashes between world powers over remaining unclaimed regions of Africa.
• February 1885 – King Leopold’s organisation receives 2.34 million square kilometres of Congo territory, more than France and Portugal combined. But the region is allocated to the king’s philanthropic organisation (AIA) not the Belgian state.
• 1889–1902 – The development of the automobile and perfection of tyre technology leads to an explosion in global demand for rubber. King Leopold’s loss-making African possession rushes to sate the world’s demand for rubber.
• 1900 – Anglo-French journalist, Edmond Morel, reveals King Leopold’s trade monopoly in the Congo and the fact that trade figures are being doctored.
• May 1903 – American missionary, William Morrison, makes damning allegations about atrocities in the Congo. The British public is outraged.
• June 1903 – Britain’s consul in the Congo, Roger Casement, is asked to make a full report on alleged abuses of natives by Belgian overseers.
• December 1903 – Casement submits his report to Lord Lansdowne at the Foreign Office. The eighty-four-page document detailed appalling atrocities perpetrated against tribes who failed to adhere to Belgian rubber quotas. Most gruesome is the revelation that Belgian-employed African soldiers would sever and smoke the hands of Congolese workers – submitting basketfuls of smoked hands to the overseers to prove that they had not wasted rifle ammunition shooting them.
• 1904–1908 – The scandal over King Leopold’s Congo operations finally forces the Belgian government to assume full control of the African territory. Conditions improve but the Congo natives are still subjected to effective apartheid.
• 1914–18 and 1940–45 – Belgium’s occupation by German forces in both world wars effectively undermines their position in the Congo.
• 1913–1917 – Major mineral deposits discovered in Katanga with copper and diamond mining launched.
• 1941–1948 – Repeated disturbances in the Congo ranging from strikes to a mutiny by Force Publique, the Congolese national army.
• October 1952 – Governor-General
Léon Antoine Marie Pétillon
predicts that, without major civil rights reform, Belgium would lose the Congo.
• 1959 – Belgium’s King Baudouin I pays his second visit to the Congo, which turns into a disaster when locals pelt him with stones after his perceived support for delayed independence. There are riots in Leopoldville.
• June 1960 – Belgium formally ends colonial links with the Congo, terrified of a savage civil war such as France faced in Algeria.
• July 1960 – Moise Tshombe comes to power in Katanga, the southern and wealthiest of Congo’s provinces, and demands immediate secession. He is backed by European financial and mining interests but opposed by the Congolese government and northern tribal groups in Katanga including the Balubas.
• 2 July 1960 – Congo Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba appeals to the UN for support in the face of Katangan secession, which he describes as a military revolt.
• 11 July 1960 – Katanga declares unilateral independence.
• 13 July 1960 – The UN agrees to send troops to help keep the peace in the Congo and Ireland is one of a handful of countries asked to supply personnel. However, the UN insists troops are peacekeepers and not peace-enforcers – thereby refusing Lumumba’s demand that the UN militarily force Katanga to rejoin the Congo.
• 27 July 1960 – Irish troops of the 32nd Battalion fly out to the Congo on the UN mission – the first major overseas deployment by the Defence Forces.
• September 1960 – Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo, is deposed in a coup secretly supported by Belgian interests.
• 9 November 1960 – Nine Irish troops are killed in an ambush by Baluba tribesmen at Niemba in northern Katanga. Just two members of the patrol survive.
• 17 January 1961 – Lumumba is flown to Katanga where, after being tortured, he is executed. Belgian soldiers are reported to have been present at his execution.
• 21 February 1961 – The UN passes a resolution to use force, if required, to get foreign political and military personnel to withdraw from Katanga.
• 28 August 1961 – Operation Rampunch is launched by the UN to strip the Katangese gendarmes of their European officers. Initially successful, the benefits of the operation are squandered.
• 13 September 1961 – UN troops are ordered under Operation Morthor to seize key positions in the city of Elisabethville with operations beginning at 2 a.m. Katangese mercenaries fight back amid claims Indian troops massacred combatants in the Radio Katanga building. (Sometime after the start of this operation Moise Tshombe flees the country).
• 14 September 1961 – A unit of the 35th Irish Battalion’s Armoured Car Group is ambushed as they approach the communications centre in Elisabethville. Two men ultimately die. A third dies in a gun battle near a bridge junction.
• 15 September 1961 – Twenty-six Irish troops surrender at the Radio College in Elisabethville after the armoured car ambush. Katangan mercenaries threaten to execute the captured Irish commander, Cmdt Pat Cahalane.
• 17 September 1961 – UN Secretary-General Dag Hammar-skjöld is killed when his DC-6 aircraft crashes in northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) while he is en route to negotiate a ceasefire in the Congo. Speculation still persists that the plane was shot down to assassinate Hammarskjöld.
• 18 September 1961 – 155 Irish troops surrender at Jadotville after a courageous five-day battle. Outnumbered, with no heavy weaponry, dwindling ammunition and food, their commander orders them to surrender to Katangan gendarmes to avoid further loss of life. A UN relief column is unable to fight its way through to them.
• 20 September 1961 – Ceasefire agreed between the UN and Katangan gendarmes. All captured Irish personnel are later freed unharmed. Tshombe returns to the country.
• 2 December 1961 – Conor Cruise O’Brien, the Irish diplomat who was the UN special representative in Katanga, resigns from his post. In 1962, he writes a best-selling book on his experiences, To Katanga and Back.
• September-December 1962 – UN forces, now substantially reinforced, launch an all-out assault on Katanga called Operation GrandSlam. The Katangan air force is wiped out on the ground by Swedish jet fighters.
• 10 January 1963 – Final pockets of resistance are mopped up in Elisabethville and Tshombe flees the country a second time.
• September 1963 – The Congolese parliament is suspended amid growing political rivalry between President Joseph Kasavubu and the Force Publique commander, Joseph Mobutu.
• April 1964 – The Congolese central government controls the country and feels sufficiently secure to allow Tshombe to return from exile and take a post in the coalition administration.
• 30 June 1964 – The last Irish troops leave the Congo as the UN mission is wound-up.
• July 1964 – Tshombe elected to serve as a minister in the new coalition government. Somewhat ironically, he is tasked with putting down regional rebellions.
• May 1965 – Tshombe sacked from government.
• June 1965 – Joseph Mobutu stages a successful coup to take over the Congo government and one of his first acts is to charge Tshombe with high treason. In November, he outlaws all political parties.
• July 1965 – Tshombe flees the country to northern Rhodesia and later Spain. In 1967, the Congo government sentences him to death in absentia.
• 1969 – Tshombe dies while under house arrest in Algiers. The Algerian authorities had stalled for over a year on deporting him back to the Congo amid fears over the international outcry that would be triggered by his inevitable execution by Mobutu’s forces. Tshombe’s body is flown to Belgium for burial.
• April 1971 – Mobutu begins to shift his foreign relations policy to a strong alliance with France while remaining a staunch US ally and ‘anti-Communist strongman’.
• 27 October 1971 – Mobutu orders that the Democratic Republic of the Congo is formally renamed ‘Zaire’. It means ‘river that swallows all rivers’. Mobutu also takes to wearing a leopard-skin hat in public.
• 30 October 1974 – Legendary ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ heavyweight fight staged in Kinshasa between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. The fight is staged at the insistence of Mobutu who believes it will be a foreign public relations bonanza for his newly renamed Zaire. Apart from being one of the most iconic showdowns in world sporting history, the fight is remembered for Mobutu’s son speeding around Kinshasa city centre in front of foreign reporters in various expensive sports cars.
• 1974–1978 – Mobutu nationalises dozens of foreign-owned companies – then promptly reverses his decision amid mounting economic chaos.
• 1989 – Zaire defaults on some international loans with disastrous consequences for development projects and the overall economy.
• May 1990 – Under increasing pressure at home, and now shorn of much of his former western backing due to the end of the Cold War, Mobutu finally agrees to lift the ban on all Congolese political parties.
• 1994 – The world is appalled as savage ethnic conflict suddenly erupts in Rwanda. More than one million people are butchered when Hutu death gangs attack Tutsis nationwide. Some Hutu clergy even help in the massacres. Sickeningly, most of those killed are slaughtered with machetes and axes.
• 1996 – Re-organised Tutsi rebels fight back and Hutus flee Rwanda in the hundreds of thousands. Tutsi militias end up controlling vast swathes of eastern Zaire/Congo. Cancer-stricken Mobutu is powerless to end the spiralling anarchy. Uganda begins to asset-strip eastern Congo.
• 17 May 1997 – Mobutu flees the country in the face of a widespread uprising and the advance of Tutsi-backed militias. The country is immediately renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo by new President Laurent Kabila. Mobutu’s thirty-two year rule had transformed one of Africa’s wealthiest countries into a poverty-stricken state where central authority had collapsed. Despite this, Mobutu had formally renamed himself ‘Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga’, which means ‘the all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake’.
• 7 September 1997 – Mobutu dies in exile in Rabat, Morocco, from cancer. He is buried locally after the Congo rules out a Kinshasa funeral. Few mourn.
• 1999 – Belgian historian, Ludo de Witte, publishes his remark-able investigative work on the execution of Patrice Lumumba. The book reveals Belgian and US links to the killing. The Belgian parliament orders a full inquiry. No one is ever charged.
• 1997–2009 – The Congo suffers repeated wars, invasions and internal power struggles. Large parts of the country remain outside government control. The Second Congo War raged from 1998 to 2003, and eventually drags in seven African countries and twenty-four armed paramilitary groups. By July 2003, when an outline truce is agreed, the war has cost 5.4 million lives through fighting, disease and starvation. It remains the largest conflict of modern times on African soil and the world’s greatest conflict since the Second World War.
• 2004–2006 – An estimated 1,000 people die each day in the Congo from malnutrition and diseases, most of which are easily preventable. Charities estimate that more than 200,000 women have been raped in the Congo’s various conflicts. The UN was shocked in 2003 when claims emerged that the Mbuti pygmies – who live in northern Congo – were being hunted like ‘game animals’ and eaten amid the belief that their organs conferred magical powers.
• 2008 – An International Committee of the Red Cross study revealed that seventy-six per cent of Congolese have been directly impacted by warfare, either by having family members killed and injured or being displaced from their homes.
• 2010 – Boasting a land mass of 2,345,408 square kilometres, which is greater than that of Spain, France, Germany, the UK and Ireland combined, the Congo remains potentially one of the wealthiest countries on earth due to its diamond, mineral and timber resources.
Elisabethville – where the Katangan secession had first been masterminded – is now known by its new name, Lubumbashi. It remains a wealthy mining city by Congolese standards.