Word: congos
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...similar "disruption operation" under way in Kenya a year before the bombing. The agency's station in Nairobi is one of the busiest in Africa, responsible for keeping watch as well on the war-torn countries of Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Kenya, CIA and embassy security officers believed the biggest threat to Americans was common crime. But the risk of terror lurked below the surface. Nairobi had become a transit stop for Iranian and Sudanese intelligence agents. Along the country's Indian Ocean coast were Kenyan veterans of the Afghan war that bin Laden...
Take Laurent Kabila, dictator of the Congo. He is suspected of involvement in the disappearance of tens of thousands of innocents--far more than the worst of what Pinochet is charged with. His fate? While Pinochet was under house arrest in London, Kabila was in Paris, a guest at a Franco-African summit...
Morel is the true hero of this story, and he dedicated nearly a decade of his life exclusively to this cause. He estimated that he wrote over 20,000 letters concerning the Congo as of 1908, and it is precisely this sense of passion which Hochschild illustrates so beautifully in his portrayal of Morel. As the story progresses into the second section of the book, "A King at Bay," it becomes as much a story of hope, perseverance and triumph as a story of death and destruction...
...others eventually pressured Leopold into giving up what had previously been solely his colony, but not before the King had personally made what would amount to a profit of $1.1 billion in today's currency. Yet, Hochschild does not provide a fairy tale ending of prosperity in the Congo. Instead, he stays true to his historical roots by presenting an accurate, if not uplifting, portrait of life in the Congo post...
...fascinating aspect of Hochschild's story involves the sheer modernity of the crisis. Morel's constant coverage of the Congo in pamphlets, newspapers, mass meetings, novels and even church hymns amounted to a public relations campaign on an immense scale. And although Morel was successful, Leopold was his own best popularizer. He ordered that a copy of his propagandist pamphlet, The Truth about the Congo, be placed next to the Bible in the sleeping compartment of every luxury train in Europe...