Word: katanga
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...support to a corrupt regime that was installed in a U.S.-inspired military takeover and has little support in the countryside. American support for Mobutu can only be based on economic interests--Zaire is one of the richest countries in Africa, with gold, diamond and copper deposits--mainly in Katanga--and Mobutu has consistently shown his willingness to allow American multinationals to exploit those riches. Carter and Vance seem just as willing as their predecessors--who gave Zaire $30 million last year, more than any other African state--to ignore the consequences of Mobutu's dictatorial rule over the Zairois...
...result, three major projects have languished. A $500 million hydroelectric power transmission line that is supposed to snake over 1,200 miles of forest and bush from the Zaïre River (once the Congo) to the copper belt in Shaba (formerly Katanga) is far behind schedule. Construction of a huge addition to the state-owned Gécamines copper mine, financed by the World Bank, the European Investment Bank and the Libyan government, is 18 months late. Work has stopped on the giant new Tenke-Fungurume copper mine, and international backers are handing over $750,000 a month just...
African mercenaries: the very term is redolent of Bondish machismo memories. "Mad Mike" Hoare and his swaggering Fifth Commando punishing the ragtag Congolese army during the 1965 Katanga rebellion. Or perhaps Frederick Forsyth's dirty dozen in The Dogs of War, liberating the fictional kingdom of Zangaro from a maniacal, Soviet-backed African dictator-for a price...
Both sides seem desperately eager for outside help from their friends. The M.P.L.A. now admits that Cubans (an estimated 3,000, half of them combat soldiers) have joined its side. There are also some 4,000 refugees from the 1960-63 Katanga rebellion, most of them diehard opponents of Mobutu, who are fighting for the M.P.L.A. A hundred or more Algerians, Brazilians and North Vietnamese are also involved as advisers, technicians and tacticians. Moscow reportedly has dispatched 400 technicians to train Angolans to use Russian equipment, including light artillery and antiaircraft guns being disgorged daily at Luanda's Craveiro...
LUMUMBA. The Soviet Union supported him with money and arms in the contest to take the former Belgian Congo out of the West's orbit. While the CIA supported President Moïse Tshombe of Katanga against Lumumba, it had no part in Lumumba's arrest and murder by Katanganese soldiers. He was a casualty of African tribal politics...