Word: kolwezi
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...rian forces added to the death toll. In Kolwezi, suspected rebel sympathizers were taken in a long line to a quarry on the city's outskirts for interrogation; from time to time the sharp rattle of gunfire filled the air. Toward week's end, President Mobutu ordered his troops to clear civilians from a 65-mile stretch of Shaba province along the Angolan border. The area, he warned, would be a fire-free zone, in which Zaïrian troops would have permission to shoot at anything that moved...
...devastated European section of Kolwezi, where houses had been shattered and looted by both sides (Zaïrian troops walked off with whatever the rebels had left behind), houseboys by habit padlocked gates and tended gardens, waiting for their employers to return. In Brussels, however, the majority of white survivors insisted that they would never go back, out of fear that a reign of terror in which so many friends had lost their lives could be repeated...
...country's foreign exchange earnings. Belgium's mine holdings were nationalized eleven years ago, but Belgians continue to run them and to export much of their product to Europe. Even if all the whites who worked at the vast Gé;camines mines that dominate Kolwezi could be lured back, it could still, after the last weeks' destruction, require up to a year to get the copper mines working again. In addition, the mines of Kolwezi account for about 90% of Zaïre's cobalt output-roughly half of the world's annual supply...
...effort may be a low-level campaign of harassment that Zaïre's 40,000-man army will find hard to counter. Late last week F.N.L.C. troops made probing attacks on two towns near the Angolan border, about 300 miles from Kinshasa. Surveying the sad ruins of Kolwezi, a Belgian pilot may have put it best. "It is not finished," he said. "It will only start...
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...