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Part I
Congo on the Cross-Hair of Communism
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1
Importance of Congo
This book is about a remote and little appreciated but highly significant episode of the Cold War. It involves the country we now know as the Democratic Republic of Congo. Although many sub-Saharan countries would play a role in the Cold War, Congo would be the one taking center stage during the first half of the decade of the 1960s.
In order to minimize confusion, the Democratic Republic of Congo will be simply referred to as Congo. The neighboring country across the river, the former French Congo, now known as Republic of the Congo will be referred to as Congo (Brazzaville), using the name of its capital city within parentheses for differentiation. The current name of the capital of Congo is Kinshasa, then known as Léopoldville, but for the sake of consistency the current geographic names will be used throughout this text. Appendix I contains the current names of Congolese cities mentioned in this book with the corresponding city names from the 1960-1967 timeframe. The geography of Congo is provided in Figure 1.
Which events catapulted Congo into its prominent role in the Cold War in 1960? Many simultaneous events played a role, including: Congo’s independence from Belgium on June 30, 1960; Congo’s immense mineral wealth, both in terms of economic and strategic value; and the absence of Congolese leadership after independence.
Congo was a Belgian colony for many years, during which time its mineral wealth was controlled by Belgian, British, and American consortia. Although these corporations wielded significant influence, they did not control the policy decisions of their respective governments. The most powerful multinational mining organization operating in Congo was the Belgian/British/U.S. conglomerate Union Minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK). UMHK would attempt to change the Congo political landscape to suit its profit motives.
By mid-1959 it became evident that Congo’s independence from Belgium was imminent, but the election of Patrice Lumumba as Congo’s Prime Minister and Congo’s independence on June 30, 1960 seemingly took the West by surprise. It is likely that there were other high priority issues capturing the attention of the governments of Britain, Belgium, and the U.S., which prevented them from developing a strategy to secure Congo’s critical mineral wealth. In any event, Congo’s independence created a major crisis in the West and an immense opportunity for the USSR and the PRC. How important to the West were Congo’s minerals?
During the late 1950s and 1960s U.S. military strategy relied heavily on nuclear defense. Additionally, the defense of NATO and the West depended on rocket technology to deliver its war heads. A number of the critical minerals required for both the construction of nuclear devices and the delivery thereof, at the time, were available to the West only in Katanga Province, Congo. Two of these critical minerals were uranium and coltan. Coltan is the colloquial name given to the ore columbo-tantalite, which contains niobium (also known as columbium) and tantalum, two minerals essential for nuclear weapons. Congo is estimated to hold 80 percent of the world’s coltan reserves, and at the time it held the largest known deposits of uranium. As a matter of interest, the uranium to build the first U.S. nuclear devices (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) was obtained from the Shinkolobwe mine near the town of Likasi, formerly known as Jadotville, in Katanga Province, Congo.
There were other mineral reserves of immense economic value in Congo, which made walking away from Congo even more difficult. These include, as a percentage of known world reserves, 65 percent of cobalt, 15 percent of copper, 40 percent of germanium, and 78 percent of diamond. Congo also holds large deposits of iron, tin, chromium, manganese, zinc, cadmium, and gold. Cobalt is a strategic mineral for the defense and aerospace industries, and no known substitute has been found. Cobalt also has many uses in civilian industries and medicine.
While many eyes must have been focused on the wealth of resources in Congo prior to its independence from Belgium, the USSR and the PRC had been careful not to antagonize Belgium before Congo’s independence. As early as the late 1950s, both the USSR and the PRC had commenced courting left-leaning regimes in the African continent, but kept a low profile when dealing with leftist Congolese politicians. During these years, the USSR and the PRC had limited their territorial expansion to the takeover of neighboring countries. On or about the time of the Korean Police Action, it became clear that the international community would not allow this territorial growth to proceed. Promptly after Belgium announced their intention to grant independence to Congo, Soviet and Chinese strategists saw an opportunity to not only increase their respective territories in a different manner, but more importantly to gain control of Congo’s mineral wealth.
With independence, the lack of strong local leadership to rule Congo became glaringly evident to strategists from both the East and the West. As soon as Belgian administrators were removed from the public sector, the country sank into chaos. As the situation worsened, private sector European managers, fearing for their safety and the safety of their families, started to depart Congo. This combination of events was of concern to the U.S. administration, as the general belief at that time was that chaos led to Communism. Confirming this concern, CIA Director Allen Dulles sent a cable to Congo CIA Station Chief Larry Devlin, stating that: “… if Lumumba continues to hold high office, the inevitable result will at best be chaos and at worst pave the way to Communist takeover of Congo with disastrous consequences for the prestige of the UN and for the interests of the free world generally.”1
The mineral riches of Congo, coupled with the unstable political situation, centered Congo on the cross-hair of international communism.
In his insightful study of American Foreign Policy in Congo, historian Stephen Weissman states: “Western Europe was almost totally dependent upon Katangan and Rhodesian [now Zimbabwe] mines for its copper imports. This gave America an indirect interest in the stability of [Congo] mining operations.”2
After a thorough analysis of American and Western European economic interests, Weissman concluded that: “…an access interest rather than an investment one was perhaps the most important material incentive for American involvement in Congo.”3
It follows that if Soviet and Chinese analysts did their job well, Communist interest would have been to curtail or better yet to cut off Western access to Congo’s mineral wealth.
Notes
1. Quoted in: Kalb, Madeleine G., The Congo Cables: The Cold War in Africa from Eisenhower to Kennedy, Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., New York, 1982, pp. 64-65.
2. Weissman, Stephen R., American Foreign Policy in the Congo 1960-1964, Cornell University Press, 1974, p. 30.
3. Ibid, p. 28.
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2
Castro’s Early Interest in Africa
At the time of Congo’s independence, President Eisenhower was on the last few months of his second term. The Eisenhower administration, having just lost Cuba to the USSR, would not allow Congo to go the way of Cuba.
The Cuban takeover by international communism was to have long-lasting effects in U.S. foreign policy, even to this day. Congo would be only one of many countries in which the U.S. intervened to save democracy in reaction to the loss of Cuba. A cable sent by Congo CIA station chief Lawrence Devlin to Washington on August 18, 1960 sets the stage for Congo’s immediate future: “Embassy and Station believe Congo experiencing classic Communist effort takeover government. Many forces at work here: Soviets, Communist party, etc. Although difficult [to] determine major influencing factors to predict outcome [of] struggle for power, decisive period not far off. Whether or not Lumumba actually commie or just playing commie game to assist his solidifying power, anti-West forces rapidly increasing power [in] Congo and there may be little time left in which to take action [to] avoid another Cuba.”1
The first true Cuban international military operation under Castro took place on June 14, 1959, when 56 soldiers flew from Manzanillo, Cuba to Constanza, Dominican Republic in an attempt to topple the right-wing Trujillo government. Dominican navy and air force sank two vessels, which were carrying weapons and provisions for the invaders. Most of the Cubans were killed by peasants armed with machetes, thus ending this ill-fated mission.2
This initial defeat did not deter Castro from adding his personal dimension to the Cold War. At first, Cuba limited itself to training left-leaning elements in the art of guerrilla warfare and urban terrorism. Cuba concentrated in training revolutionaries from Latin American countries such as Guatemala, Venezuela, Chile, and Colombia, to name a few, but Castro kept his options open to assist revolutions in other continents. He also continued to tell the world that Cuba was a non-aligned nation, even though his actions clearly demonstrated that at the time, he owed allegiance to the Kremlin.
“In June 1959, Che Guevara visited Egypt, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Japan, Yugoslavia, and his trip concluded with a secret visit to the USSR.”3 While in Cairo, Guevara established contacts with African liberation movements stationed in that city and supported by Egypt’s popular socialist president Gamal Abdel-Nasser. Even though Guevara established a warm relationship with the Egyptian leader, Nasser never attempted to hide his contempt for Fidel Castro, as Nasser did not believe Castro’s self-proclamation of being a non-aligned leader.
Then, Castro went African and following a subsequent visit by Raúl Castro and Che Guevara to Cairo and Gaza in late 1959, leftist African leaders from Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Tanganyika, and Zanzibar, among others, were welcomed in Cuba for indoctrination and military training. Castro’s first semblance of a developing African strategy surfaced during his address to the UN in September 19604 when he urged the UN to intervene in the Algerian independence war. Castro was not only ignored by France and Algeria, but by all African independent nations.
Comparing Castro’s actions in Latin America with those in Africa during his first two years in power, it appears that Castro was undecided as to whether it made more sense to join in liberation movements in Latin America, in Africa, or in both. It is difficult to ascertain if Castro was reluctant to display a higher profile in Latin America because of fear of U.S. retaliation, or if he confused the nationalistic proclamations of African leaders with their desire to join the communist brotherhood of nations. At a minimum, Castro must have recognized the mineral wealth of Central Africa. Juan Benemelis, one of the original architects of Castro’s African strategy and infrastructure during the 1960s, in his book published in 2002 states: “…. considering its magnitude, the investment in human and material resources, as well as the strength of determination, it is evident that the African scene was given at least as much attention as Latin America.”5
In late 1960, in spite of his prior rebuff by the UN, Castro became convinced that Algeria’s revolution against French colonialism was worthy of Cuban support. As Castro became bolder, in December 1961 he shipped weapons to Ben Bella’s Algerian National Liberation Front (FNL) through the Moroccan port of Casablanca.6 Nevertheless, the Cuban government was extremely careful to conceal its international revolutionary activities for fear of reprisal from the U.S.
As Cuban exiles landed in the inhospitable area known as Bay of Pigs in April 1961, another American sponsored intervention was underway the full width of the Atlantic Ocean away. The U.S. administration had decided that America’s access to the mineral riches of Congo had to be protected, and had instructed its intelligence services accordingly.
The U.S. and Western Europe allies had made all the necessary preparations to remove Prime Minister Lumumba, the only Congolese leader who had had any chance to unite his people after independence, literally before he took office. However, with Lumumba dead, the U.S.’s limited assets in Congo were insufficient to counter any move the Soviet Union and/or the People’s Republic of China (at that time, no one would have guessed that Cuba would eventually become a threat to Congo) might initiate. The American embassy in Kinshasa, as well as the small CIA office in that city, was staffed by only a handful of civil servants. They immediately asked for help to weather the upcoming storm.7
After denying any communist ties for almost three years, and proclaiming that his revolution was humanist and not communist, Castro publicly declared himself a Marxist-Leninist on December 2, 1961.8 Taking words into action, in June 1962, Che Guevara and Raúl Castro signed a secret treaty with the USSR to place mid-range rockets with nuclear heads in the island-nation. Castro had hoped that by declaring Cuba a communist country, the Soviet Union would include Cuba in the Warsaw Pact, thus obtaining for Cuba the protection of the entire Soviet Bloc in the event of an invasion. The USSR never did officially cover Cuba under the Warsaw Pact umbrell...
