Missing in Action by Ralph Riegel Page A

mining multi-national companies.
    In July 1960, Belgian forces took up positions in Katanga where they had boosted their troop numbers from 3,800 before independence to 9,400. Tshombe, who was the provincial governor, declared the region’s independence from the rest of the Congo. With the loss of Katanga, the Congo lost more than half the sources of its foreign currency earnings, a potentially catastrophic blow to the fledging Congo state. Patrice Lumumba instantly appealed to the international community – and specifically the United Nations – for help to preserve the integrity of the state. His plea met with immediate UN support and it was agreed that UN forces would be installed in Katanga to help keep the peace.
    The move served to accelerate the pace of Congo’s internal confrontation. While the international community refused to recognise Katanga as an independent state, the chaos within the Congo itself steadily mounted. Tshombe exploited this fact by claiming Katanga had chosen to secede from chaos.
    Within six months of delivering his controversial speech in front of King Baudouin, Lumumba was dead. In the final months of his life, Lumumba was effectively under house arrest as Mobutu used the army to tighten his grip on power. Lumumba had become such a controversial figure that rumours swirled around the Congo that the Belgians, the CIA and even MI6 were all conspiring to secure his assassination.
    In late December 1960, Lumumba, realising the danger he was in, decided to try to escape. He evaded the guards surrounding the prime minister’s villa and attempted to make it to Stanleyville, his main support base, where he hoped to either set up a rival regime or allow his allies to arrange for safe asylum in a friendly African country or possibly Europe. Lumumba left his villa in a Chevrolet car on the pretext of dropping servants home. He then headed towards Stanleyville – but, disastrously, he decided to make several stops on the way to deliver political speeches to local village elders on how he had been treated.
    Mobutu had planned for just such a move and had a fast-response corps of troops ready. They hunted Lumumba to Kasai near the River Sankuru where he was trapped and captured. Despite a two-hour head start, the prime minister’s leisurely progression took him just over halfway to the safety of Stanleyville before he was captured. Lumumba’s end mirrors the tragedy of the Congo itself. He was savagely beaten by the Congolese troops who had received orders from Mobutu to show his political rival no mercy. One of the last photographs of Lumumba shows him being hauled out of the back of an army truck, hands bound painfully behind his back. He is being dragged by the hair and is surrounded by laughing and jeering soldiers. Lumumba may have had a premonition of what was to happen when several weeks beforehand he quipped to a friend that the Congo had need of martyrs. ‘If I die, tant pis [too bad],’ he is alleged to have said.
    UN troops – aware of what was happening – did not intervene. Some of the troops who spotted Lumumba were Swedish and they were appalled at what was going on. It later emerged they had received direct orders from UN headquarters in New York not to interfere in what was viewed as an internal Congolese matter – ironic given the speed with which the UN had intervened in the first place to prevent Katanga seceding. Brigadier Indarjit Rikhye, a UN officer, was deeply disturbed by what was happening. ‘He [Lumumba] was chained in the back of a truck. He was bleeding, his hair was dishevelled, he had lost his glasses. But we could not intervene,’ Rikhye later explained.
    Lumumba was flown to Leopoldville where he was beaten again, humiliated in front of reporters and photographers, and then transferred to Colonel Mobutu’s personal base. Congo’s new strongman was operating from Binza, a fortified para-commando facility outside the city. Mobutu ordered Lumumba brought before