Word: mobutu
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Ever since Moroccan troops arrived last month and the U.S., France and Belgium offered a little help, the fortunes of Zaire's strange little war have turned sharply in favor of the central government. As the threat declined, President Mobutu Sese Seko flew to the supposedly embattled Shaba region?the former Katanga province?to inspect some recaptured villages. TIME Nairobi Bureau Chief Lee Griggs, who accompanied Mobutu on the trip, sent this report...
...Mobutu also unveiled a remarkable secret weapon in the war: pygmy power. Some 150 "expert pygmy bowmen" -as a Zaïrian official described them -were sent to Shaba to infiltrate enemy lines. The diminutive tribesmen (average height under 5 ft.) were praised by one government newspaper as "formidably efficient units who can move silently and well against the enemy." Although they were issued rifles, most pygmies prefer carrying home-made bows that shoot arrows whose tips are coated with a lethal drug (derived from local plants), which kills the monkeys that they hunt for food. Skeptical foreign correspondents could...
...prisoners put on display by Mobutu reported that they had entered Zaïre from Angola, accompanied by 45 Cubans, who quickly departed once the Moroccans arrived on the scene. The Zaïre government claimed to have discovered a cache of 6,000 boxes of arms and ammunition-most of it Soviet-made. In Marrakesh, Morocco's King Hassan II insisted that his troops had found evidence of Cuban and white Angolan presence in Shaba. Despite the Carter Administration's cautious approach to events in Zaïre, a U.S. official in Washington admitted last week that...
Amin's Assurance. Only a handful of Western newsmen have been allowed into Shaba. Thus, reports TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs from Kinshasa, foreign diplomats remain skeptical of the government's military claims. Nonetheless, Mobutu's forces may have stabilized the conflict-if only because the invaders showed last week that they can fight as poorly as the Zaïrians have. Moreover, the Angolans and Cubans may decide it is not worth risking greater involvement in Shaba now that Mobutu is receiving help from abroad...
...bases in Senegal and Chad; they can return to Zaïre on short notice. Then there is also the possibility of reinforcements from neighboring Uganda, whose mercurial dictator, Idi Amin Dada, suddenly turned up in Kinshasa last week to assure le Guide of military help if needed. Mobutu's government is gradually winning moral backing from other African states. If there is one issue on which African leaders seem ready to unite, it is in defense of national territorial integrity on the continent and the inviolability of all borders. Reason: very few African states are not vulnerable...