A Familiar Frontier: The Kennedy Administration in the Congo ...

The events of August 1960 impressed on many parties the unreliability ofLumumba’s rule. His bullheaded devotion to the Katanga issue not only catalyzedinternational opposition to him, it also did much to alienate the popular Prime Ministerfrom other Congolese leaders, like Tshombe, Kasavubu and Mobutu, all of whom wouldbe complicit in his murder only a few months later. The United States embarked on itsmission to assassinate Lumumba during this period, and Kasavubu would dismiss himfrom office soon thereafter. Ironically, the tumult caused by so many groups striving tounseat Lumumba led to a dramatic decline in the attention being paid to Katanga.Tshombe’s independent government in Elisabethville would continue more or lessunmolested for the next year, until the election of Cyrille Adoula allowed the U.S. andthe U.N. to return their focus to the province that caused so much trouble in the openingmonths of the Congo Crisis.Indeed, one of Adoula’s first acts as Prime Minister was to pass Ordinance No. 70on August 24, requiring that “all the non-Congolese officers and mercenaries serving inthe Katanga Forces…are expelled from the territory of the Republic of the Congo.” 32 AtHammarskjold’s request, Adoula also sent a letter asking for “the assistance of the UnitedNations in putting an end to the aggressive activities of the Katanga Gendarmerie and insecuring the evacuation of foreign officers and mercenaries serving in the armed forces ofKatanga.” 33 Adoula’s requests seemed reasonable in comparison to Lumumba’s wildeyeddemands, and the election of a new and more conciliatory Belgian governmentcommitted to repatriate the remaining Belgians. Accounts placed the number of foreignmilitary officers in Katanga at about five hundred in August 1960, including two hundred32 Qtd. in Hoskyns, The Congo: A Chronology of Events, 4633 Qtd. in Hoskyns, The Congo: A Chronology of Events, 4581