New Orders

The news crashed into the Security Council chamber like a thunderclap. There had been more killings in the Congo. This time six Lumumbaists had been summarily executed by little Albert Kalonji, boss of the Mining State of South Kasai. In the corridors, Africans, already convinced that the murdered Premier Patrice Lumumba was a victim of white men's machinations, gathered in angry clusters, and in the chamber, African delegates took the floor to demand U.N. action.

Soviet Delegate Valerian Zorin seized the chance to press for his blunt resolution calling for Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold's ouster, and for the U.N.'s exit from the Congo within a month. He was defeated before he started, but plowed doggedly on. Brandishing a magazine showing Hammarskjold and Katanga's Belgium-backed Moise Tshombe together in the same photo (taken as Hammarskjold led the first U.N. troops into Katanga last August), Zorin suggested that it proved that Dag was "allied" with "a Belgian puppet"; this brought weary grins from everyone at the horseshoe table, including Hammarskjold. When it was time to vote, not a hand rose in Zorin's support.

The Loophole. But on the impetus of their outrage, the Africans were ready to rush through a new proposal produced by Liberia, Ceylon and the U.A.R. It called for the reconvening of the Congolese Parliament under U.N. protection, urged that Congolese army units (of all factions) be "reorganized" (i.e., disarmed), and pressed for the withdrawal from the Congo of Belgian and other foreign troops and political advisers. Most important, the U.N. was authorized to use force "if necessary" to block the Congo's threatened civil war.

U.S. Delegate Adlai Stevenson detected a dangerous loophole. The resolution said nothing about banning foreign arms shipments into the Congo, nor did it authorize Hammarskjold's forces to search arriving planes or trucks for such contraband. Since the U.A.R. itself had been busily sneaking arms and equipment to Congo Rebel (and Russia's chosen puppet) Antoine Gizenga in Stanleyville, Stevenson suspected the omission was deliberate, at least as far as the U.A.R. was concerned. Under pressure from the aroused Africans, who were in no mood to change their proposal, Stevenson finally had to vote for the measure, figuring that opposition would cost the U.S. heavily in disillusion among its African friends.

The Manpower Problem. The resolution did achieve the U.S.'s main goal--backing for Hammarskjold and strengthening of his mandate. He now had authority to get tough in pushing the squabbling, killing, Congolese factions apart.

Applying his new authority might be more difficult. From Katanga came ominous rumblings from Moise Tshombe who threatened a "bloodbath" if the 2,500 U.N. troops stationed in his area tried to disarm his 5,000-man army. Premier Joseph Ileo in Leopoldville and Rebel Chief Antoine Gizenga in Stanleyville roared their own defiance. To face these threats, the U.N. needed more manpower; the Congo combat force was already down to 17,500, would drop to 13,800 by mid-March if the Indonesian and Moroccan troop units pulled out and went home as planned. Needed was a minimum total of 20,000 men. On the day after the big debate, Dag Hammarskjold began recruiting among the Indians, Pakistanis, Iraqis and other Afro-Asian delegates.

Proof quickly came that Stevenson's fears were well grounded. In Cairo, Gamal Abdel Nasser defiantly announced that the U.A.R. would continue to give arms and aid to Gizenga as the "legitimate government."* And in a letter to India's Prime Minister Nehru. Nikita Khrushchev announced that the Soviet government was "prepared, together with other states friendly toward the Republic of the Congo," to supply Gizenga with aid, assistance and help to restore "order, unity, law and integrity" to the Congo. As a gimmick to appeal to African sentiment, Khrushchev proposed that the U.N. force should be replaced by an all-African commission, comprising nations with troops currently in the Congo, that would work with Gizenga to "terminate foreign interference" and "oust the aggressors."

At week's end, five Communist "journalists" (three Czechs, a Pole and a Russian) arrived in Stanleyville; other technicians and advisers have reportedly been trickling in. Once again the world faces a secessionist movement in the back country, declared legitimate by the Russians, and ready to make civil war.

* Gizenga was Lumumba's vice premier, but the legal governor of the nation, and its U.N.-recognized chief of state, is President Joseph Kasavubu.

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