The Congo Crisis

The Congo Crisis. The Congo Crisis (1960-1965) was the chaotic struggle that followed the independence of the Belgian Congo, and it became one of the first great battlegrounds of the Cold War in Africa. Belgium had ruled the Congo for half a century without preparing it for self-government, and when independence came on 30 June 1960, under President Joseph Kasa-Vubu and Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, the new state had almost no trained administrators, officers, or engineers.

The country disintegrated within days. The army mutinied against its Belgian officers, Belgium sent in troops, and on 11 July the mineral-rich province of Katanga declared independence under Moise Tshombe, backed by Belgian mining interests. Lumumba appealed to the United Nations, which sent a peacekeeping force, but when it refused to crush the Katanga secession, he turned to the Soviet Union. In September the army chief Joseph Mobutu seized power, and Lumumba was arrested, flown to Katanga, and murdered there in January 1961, with the complicity of Belgian officials and the knowledge of Western intelligence services.

For four more years the Congo was torn by rival governments, secession, and rebellion. UN forces finally ended the Katanga secession in 1963, but in 1964 a great revolt, the Simba rebellion, swept the east and took Stanleyville before Belgian and American-backed mercenaries crushed it. In 1965 Mobutu seized power for the second time, beginning the thirty-two-year dictatorship that renamed the country Zaire.

The crisis scarred the Congo and the continent. It cost perhaps a hundred thousand lives, destroyed the country's most charismatic leader, entrenched foreign interference in Congolese politics, and turned the Cold War's deadliest African conflict into a warning of what could follow independence. The murder of Lumumba remains a symbol of the promise of decolonization betrayed.

To read more about this topic:

U.S. Office of the Historian: Decolonization of the Congo Royal Museum for Central Africa: The Congo Crisis Wikipedia: Congo Crisis BlackPast: Congo Civil War, 1960-1964