Word: katanga
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...Jadotville. But there was no turning back on the basic decision that had been made. Katanga's Secessionist President Moise Tshombe had used every sly trick in the book to frustrate efforts to reunite his rebellious, copper-rich province with the rest of the Congo. Now, U.N. Secretary-General U Thant, with U.S. encouragement, was determined to end the Katanga problem once and for all. The occasion happened to be the collapse of discipline among Tshombe's boozy, ragtag 20,000-man gendarmerie. When they began shooting at U.N. soldiers in Katanga a fortnight ago, the U.N. replied...
Another pause has come to Katanga, one of those ephemeral moments in which the nations of the West may examine their souls and reflect on how Mr. Tshombe's fall affects their plans for the Congo. There is no longer any doubt that Mr. Tshombe has fallen: beyond the gift of a week in which he must decide to yield his Kolwezi headquarters to U.N. troops or, by his refusal, consent to his political burial, the Katangan leader who juggled the world's anxieties for a year and a half has been left with nothing...
...Thant, furthermore, a much shrewder fellow than anyone ever expected, has met other and less academic objections to his Congo mission by clothing it in highly ambiguous language. He has insisted throughout that U.N. troops are there only to guarantee Katanga's isolation, to freeze a murderously explosive military situation (in which Mr. Tshombe has spoken of poisoned arrows and "scorched earth") so that negotiations to subsume Katanga may continue. His casques bleus, he has innocently announced, are not at all intended to force any particular political objectives...
...bound to raise welts on British backs, and so the Foreign Secretary also clung nervously to possible alternatives. In the shadow of Lord Home's strikingly Gaullist pronouncements on the proper function of the U.N. lay two profound fears: that the new federation would injure British financial interests in Katanga, and that the casques bleus would march firmly into any settlement of the touchy Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland...
...claimed Tshombe had lost control of his men-which gave it an excuse to strike back. From Manhattan U.N. headquarters, orders were flashed to the 12,000-man U.N. force in Katanga: "Take all necessary action in self-defense and to restore order." Spearheaded by 5,700 tough, bitter Gurkhas, the U.N. force methodically swept disorganized Katangese troops from their guardposts on the road to Northern Rhodesia. Power lines fell in the fray, leaving shabby little Elisabethville (pop. 180,000) without light, water or phones...