Word: luluabourg
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...experts fussed noisily about Belgians, they turned a blind eye to a bigger threat to the peace: the gradual southward nibbling of the military patrols of Stanleyville's Antoine Gizenga. Repeatedly in recent weeks visitors warned U.N. headquarters that Gizenga troops had been seen moving toward Luluabourg, capital of Kasai, a strategic junction commanding the only direct route between Kasavubu's Leopoldville and Tshombe's Katanga. "We have no such reports," sniffed a U.N. official...
...Military Commander General Sean McKeown flew to Mobutu's bush headquarters, extracted a promise that there would be no invasion. This was highly convenient to the Gizenga regime, for, with Mobutu's immobilization now assured, they were ready for their dash deep into Kasai. The target was Luluabourg, just as the U.N.'s tipsters had been warning. No U.N. soldier raised a hand as Gizenga's 300 men rumbled into the town and took over without a shot from the local troops, who had been thought loyal to Mobutu but who had obviously made a deal...
...Mistake. News from the bush country was uniformly bad. Two U.N. detachments-Liberians and Tunisians-fought off ambushes by Congo tribesmen near Luluabourg. In the mineral-rich province of Katanga, where anti-Communist Moise Tshombe rules with the support of Belgian businessmen, there was serious trouble. Tshombe's trigger-happy security forces raided the rebellious village of Luena, which supplies coal to feed the furnaces of the potent Union Miniére de Haut-Katanga. The troops reportedly "got out of control of their Belgian officers," bound the hands of 68 Baluba tribesmen and murdered them all with Sten...
...hastily promoted Congolese army corporals and sergeants to officer rank, ordered hundreds of his troops into requisitioned Sabena planes to be flown to Luluabourg, deep in Kasai province. "National emergency," explained Army Chief of Staff Colonel Joseph Mobutu, suggesting that it was only an expedition to quell new fighting between Baluba and Lulua tribesmen. But the moment they landed, the troops struck out by rail and truck along the 166-mile road to Bakwanga, stronghold of onetime Lumumba pal, Albert Kalonji, who had declared the diamond-rich region an independent nation called Mining State. Swearing that his tribesmen, mainly armed...
Exodus. By week's end an estimated 60,000 of the 80,000 Belgians had fled before the rampaging soldiery. In Luluabourg only 54 of 3,600 Belgians were left, and mutineers still roamed the streets looting European shops and homes. From outlying districts there came more reports of rape and mayhem. In the Equator province a Roman Catholic priest was tied to a stake, forced to watch as ten nuns were repeatedly raped. Belgium's Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Wigny spoke for his nation last week when he cried in Parliament: "Do we really have to prove...