Word: belgians
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...cultural, economic and occasionally military relationships with their former colonies as well as several other African states. In recent months their troops have been reinforcing governments in Chad and Mauritania against guerrillas. Last year they provided air support to halt the first Shaba invasion. This time, with Belgian help, they quickly organized the airlift to rescue the 3,000 Europeans trapped in Kolwezi...
...rebellion was led by Mo'ise Tshombe, whose followers were seeking to preserve their mineral wealth from their enemies, the government in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) and the Bak-ongo tribes of the lower Congo. In those days the secessionists were thought to be rightists in the hire of the Belgian and French mineowners. Although their successors in the Congolese National Liberation Front (F.N.L.C.), who just attacked Kolwezi, talk vaguely of installing a radical regime in Kinshasa, they are probably more accurately described as misguided nationalists than leftists...
...that the only loot brought back from the quick war: most of the rebels had transistor radios slung across their backs, and music blared. Others carried small tape recorders. A few had weapons - Belgian or Portuguese automatic rifles...
...Tigers first surrounded the city, then struck at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning, before much of Kolwezi was awake. Although there had been rumors in Shaba for weeks that trouble was imminent, the city was defended by no more than 300 Zairian troops. Recalled Belgian Civil Engineer Freddy Wauters, 39: "At first I thought it was soldiers letting off a bit of steam." But then the rebels appeared and demanded to know whether Wauters was French. They were looking, as it turned out, for Moroccan and French "mercenaries" who had thrown back the F.N.L.C. last year. Several Libyans working...
...level campaign of harassment that Zaïre's 40,000-man army will find hard to counter. Late last week F.N.L.C. troops made probing attacks on two towns near the Angolan border, about 300 miles from Kinshasa. Surveying the sad ruins of Kolwezi, a Belgian pilot may have put it best. "It is not finished," he said. "It will only start...