Trying to Untarrnish Tshombe

The thump of signal drums preceded Major Mike Hoare and his mercenary column as they pushed toward the village of Bafwasende. The message: 'Flee, the white giants are coming." But Hoare and his men cut through the bush to hit Bafwasende from the rear, gunned down some of the rebels before they could escape " including a Simba cap tain carrying written orders to exterminate all white hostages held there.

The white soldiers found 14 hostages -eleven Italian nuns and three British missionary women -still alive. But eight Dutch priests and six Britons had been shot. Among the dead was an Eng lish schoolgirl, Heather Arton, 16. who had joined her missionary parents last August during her holiday. She caught the fancy of a Simba captain, who for weeks brutalized her before an audience of his feathered fellow tribesmen. In the end, when the Simbas marched off her parents with the others, the captain offered to spare her. But she tore loose and joined the death march.

After the execution, the Simbas came back to the hostages' hut and joined them in singing Christmas carols.

Political Solution. Hoare's handful of "giants" are the only hope for the other whites still held by the rebels, but last week it was a pallid hope at best. Mercenary-led Congolese troops remained pinned down at the Paulis airport by 4,000 Simbas armed with automatic weapons; a second rescue column was forced to retreat to its base at Bunia. As Russian and Red Chinese weapons continued to move in through Uganda and the Sudan, military experts in Leopoldville estimated that Simba firepower had already surpassed that of the Congolese and mercenary forces. Against that background, U.S., Belgian and Congolese diplomats last week began groping about for a "political solution" to the Congo's chaos.

Just before flying back home from a three-week European tour, Congolese Premier Moise Tshombe reluctantly held still for conferences in Brussels with Belgian Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak and U.S. Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II. Embarrassed by the concerted howling of Arab and African leftists against the U.S.-Belgian paradrop on Stanleyville, Spaak and MacArthur pressured Tshombe to improve his reputation in Africa. They proposed that Tshombe: 1) "broaden" his Cabinet to include ministers, such as former Premier Cyrille Adoula, who might prove more acceptable to the African nationalists; 2) grant an amnesty to all rebel prisoners unstained by the past month's bloodshed; 3) guarantee "opposition" parties, including the Lumumbists, a role in the promised February elections, which Spaak and MacArthur suggested be monitored by moderate African observers.

Half-Measures. The proposals disclosed little sense of realism. A broadened, "elephant" Cabinet would more than likely bog down in the same sort of bickering and flatulent debate that plagued Adoula's ill-fated government. There are few rebel prisoners untainted by the Simba massacres; in fact, there are few rebel prisoners of any kind, because the government soldiers kill their captives with as much dispatch as the Simbas. And the notion of winning over the Lumumbists by means of elections is a delusion. There may be some moderates among the rebels, but Lumum-bism and the whole rebel movement have never been stronger or more militant. Necessary though the Stanleyville intervention was, it did have the unfortunate effect of coalescing Arab and African radical support behind the rebellion. With the northern and eastern borders of the Congo wide open to infiltration, Tshombe, or any other non-Lumumbist leader who might follow him, faces a long, drawn-out guerrilla war.

The most that the U.S.-Belgian proposals might achieve would be to make it easier for such moderate African na tions as Nigeria, Tunisia and Sierra Leone to lend moral support to Tshombe. But what the Congo really needs is increased military and administrative assistance, aimed at building an army that will fight without white leadership and a civil service that won't steal the country blind. Rather than trying to polish Tshombe's ineradicably tarnished image through hopeful half-measures, Brussels and Washington would do better sending him increased logistic and material support. After all, Mike Hoare's small band of "white giants" cannot stand tall forever.

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