Word: mobutuism
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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Originally, the U.N.'s Congo officials had condoned the takeover of power by Colonel Joseph Mobutu, 30, relieved to have someone try to impose order on the squabbling politicians. Now they were undermining the hapless young soldier...
...week long, the top aides of U.N.'s Congo Chief Rajeshwar Dayal of India made it obvious that the U.N. was ready to scrap Mobutu. The nervous colonel, they whispered, had asked Dayal for an apartment in Le Royal, the U.N.'s headquarters building. He no longer was in control of his army. He was about to flee the city. He was a poor officer. Ignoring the roughhouse tactics of Lumumba's own gangs, an official report spoke of "the highhanded and illegal activities" of Mobutu's army, accusing the army of "acts of lawlessness...
...Mobutu was prepared to laugh Kamitatu's words away, but to his chagrin the head of the U.N.'s Congo force backed up the provincial president. "Colonel Mobutu's army is a disorderly rabble.'' snapped Rajeshwar Dayal, announcing that U.N. troops would henceforth patrol the Leopoldville streets side by side with Kami-tatu's police. Indignantly, Mobutu collected a hundred soldiers and some Jeeps, rushed over to U.N. headquarters to protest. When he emerged, there were tears in his eyes. "The United Nations wants me to get out." he announced stiffly. Mobutu complained bitterly...
What bothers the U.N.. its officials ex plain, is the danger that Mobutu's regime might become a military dictatorship; they insist that the world organization cannot even indirectly support an undemocratic movement. Time after time, U.N. officials had refused to let Mobutu arrest Lumumba; now they were frustrating his efforts to put a halt to the covert activities of Lumumba's friends as well. When Mobutu's troops arrested 15 Lumumba supporters in a series of predawn raids and tried to deport most of them to faraway Kasai province, the U.N. quickly intervened...
Anger in Katanga. Early in the week Mobutu flew desperately across the Congo to seek support from Secessionist Moise Tshombe, boss of Katanga province. But Tshombe rebuffed him; he had troubles of his own in what he now calls "Republic of Katanga.'' In the northern Katanga bush, hostile Baluba tribesmen were burning villages and killing dozens of Tshombe loyalists. Until the U.N. neutralized much of Tshombe's army by cutting off fuel supplies and refusing it transport, Katanga troops killed scores in punitive raids on Baluba villages. Last week the U.N. moved hundreds of troops into isolated...