Word: kolwezi
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Zaire Carter's Mayaguez, unintentional or otherwise? Over at the State Department, where the blood runs thinner and cooler, they watched with fascination, felt the changing moods hour by hour. After Carter dined with France's President Giscard d'Estaing, who sent paratroopers to Kolwezi, the internal White House talk toughened. There was almost exhilaration, not an uncommon emotion in the White House when a good clean crisis is in the offing, with bad guys to denounce and admired allies standing shoulder to shoulder. Then a series of political meetings between Carter's domestic tacticians Hamilton Jordan and Jody Powell...
Officials in Kolwezi, the copper center that had temporarily been held by the rebels, said it would take at least six months to reopen the mines?and longer, no doubt, to lure back the European specialists needed to help run them. Most of the city's 2,250 whites had been airlifted to safety in Belgium as legionnaires liberated the city. A dozen staff members of the huge Gécamines copper complex returned to hold their regular monthly payday for 13,000 African employees, though not much work was being done. At the main cobalt plant in Kolwezi, only...
...inept as he is ruthless, most Western governments feel there is no real alternative to him in sight as a ruler for a huge country (905,562 sq. mi.) with seemingly insoluble tribal conflicts. The French government is anxious to remove the 700 Foreign Legionnaires who freed Kolwezi and replace them with a peace-keeping force to be furnished by several African states. Last weekend U.S. transport planes began flying French troops out of Zaïre and replacing them with Moroccans as the first units of a peace-keeping command. But unless the legionnaires are replaced by a force more...
Many of Washington's European allies in NATO remained skeptical about the degree of Cuban involvement, and there was no hard proof linking the Cubans to the Kolwezi operation. But documents uncovered and radio traffic have led Western intelligence analysts to speculate that the Shaba rebels were trained by Cubans who had been assigned by Havana to reconstruct the Katangese liberation movement. The difference between the organization, equipment and indoctrination of those who invaded Shaba last year and that of this year's rebel troops was said to be noticeable...
Today, the Foreign Legion has a total strength of 8,000 men. It is an elite strike force whose members have been trained for counterterror and commando-type operations. The Second Parachute Regiment, for example, which recaptured Kolwezi, is expert in night combat, alpine warfare, urban cleanup operations, amphibious landings, demolition and sabotage. The average age of recruits: 22. Virtually all the legion's officers are French. Technically, French nationals are forbidden to enlist in the legion, but many do, pretending to be Belgians, Swiss or Canadians. Although the new legion tries hard to exclude professional thugs and officially...