On the Rampage

Each time the troubled Congo settles into something resembling normality, a new revolt shatters its fragile unity. Last week the government rushed off troop reinforcements to Kwilu province, a rich agricultural area 250 miles east of Leopoldville, where some 500 Communist-supplied tribal guerrillas were on the rampage. The leftist insurgents controlled about one-third of the territory, had burned and looted a palm-oil plantation, administration buildings and schools. A curfew was imposed on the panic-stricken provincial capital of Kikwit, and the families of four U.S. missionaries were hastily evacuated from their posts, 22 miles from the city.

Leader of the rebels is Pierre Mulele, 34, self-styled "ambassador" to Cairo under the ousted secessionist regime of Red-lining Antoine Gizenga, who has been in prison for the last two years. Mulele lived in Egypt as Nasser's guest for a while, then departed for Red China, where he received training in guerrilla tactics. Secretly returning to Kwilu province last summer, he organized military training camps in the dense forests, made frequent trips to Brazzaville, capital of the former French Congo and the hangout for exiled Congolese extremists plotting against the central government. There, Mulele presumably obtained funds and equipment from Red Chinese and Soviet agents, for when Congo police came upon Mulele's outposts, they found copies of Mao Tse-tung's handbook on guerrilla warfare, Soviet-made cameras, a combat radio, homemade gasoline bombs made from beer bottles--and two Russian fur hats. It was just such subversive activities as this that led Congo Premier Cyrille Adoula to expel Russia's entire 100-man mission from Leopoldville last November. Clearly, Moscow's men were still not ready to give up their primary effort: to topple Adoula's government.

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