Word: kolwezi
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...waging war with Tshombe's breakaway regime for the third time since September 1961. In two weeks, the tough U.N. troops had seized a steadily lengthening ribbon of rail lines and nearly every major population center in the province. Only the western copper town of Kolwezi remained in Katanga's grip; it was defended by 2,000 boozy gendarmes, 100 of Tshombe's white mercenaries, and a smashing blonde ambulance driver known as "Madame Yvette," who sauntered about in paratroop boots, camouflage uniform, bush hat and shoulder holster. Only 50 miles from Kolwezi, Indian infantrymen probed cautiously...
...question mark, as usual, was the slippery Tshombe. As the week began, he was holed up defiantly in Kolwezi with the mercenaries. There were rumors that he might flee to Europe rather than give in to the U.N. But he was not surrendering Katanga's top job. Lo and behold, he was back in Elisabethville. "in spite of all the trouble and bloodshed," he declared with MacArthurian grandeur, "I am back." What policy would he follow? No one could say, for before long he was bouncing wildly from one position to another. "Pure India rubber," marveled a foreign diplomat...
Lump of Sugar. In the space of three days, Tshombe 1) promised to "abstain from making any declarations against the U.N."; 2) immediately broke his promise by threatening "a scorched-earth policy" in Kolwezi (see WORLD BUSINESS) ; 3) was clapped under house arrest by infuriated U.N. officials "to restrain him from further irresponsible acts"; and 4) got his house arrest commuted to a nighttime curfew by leading the U.N. troops to the Rhodesian border. Then, having baffled everybody, he vanished once more from the capital...
Though its mines provided the uranium for the Nagasaki and Hiroshima A-bombs, the durable giant known as the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga had never been so preoccupied with explosives as it was last week. Outside the southern Katanga town of Kolwezi, unruly "gendarmes" in the service of Katanga's President Moise Tshombe had wired demolition charges to two huge Union Minière power dams and threatened to push the plunger...
Destruction of the Kolwezi dams would unleash huge floods, wipe out at least one-fifth of Union Minière's $600 million investment in Katanga and cut off 80% of the province's power supply. Some engineers doubted that the Katangese were expert enough to destroy the Kolwezi dams. And on the basis of the past track record of the Union Minière (which is controlled by Belgium's all-pervading Société Générale), many another observer was prepared to bet that the Kolwezi dams would survive...