Word: shaba
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...SMALL BAND of brave whites surrounded by maddened savages on the Dark Continent: it was the sort of story that once gave a romantic veil to the sordid history of Africa's colonization. American newspapers seized on the invasion of Shaba province by Katangan rebels and the subsequent rescue mission by French and Belgian paratroopers, as if they had found a modern version of Stanley and Livingston. The Boston Herald-American screamed out "Whites Massacred in Zaire," while Newsweek, slightly less hysterically racist, went with "Massacre in Zaire." White casualties were carefully tabulated and lamented, but the death toll...
Both Westerners in Shaba and the province's citizens have vivid, unpleasant memories of the last incursion. Says one European professional who befriended the tigers while living under their 1977 occupation: "They said this would be another Viet Nam. They told us frankly they were not secessionists but an army of liberation whose aim was to take over the whole of Zaïre. All of us were told that if we were still here when they returned, it would be the end of us. We would then be considered pro-Mobutu. Last year when the guerrillas came...
...helping the rebels were herded into huts, which were then doused with gasoline and set afire. Only the presence of the Moroccans, tribesmen say, prevented the death toll from rising into the thousands. As it is, the Lunda people are terrified of reprisals if the new rebel attack on Shaba is turned back. "We want to be left in peace," says Chief Lukama, leader of a Lunda contingent that sought refuge in Zambia. "We are eager to go back home to Zaïre when it is peaceful. We don't mind Mobutu if he would just leave...
Tindemans' complaint reflected a feeling of uneasiness about the growing French military role in Africa. France now has the second largest external force on the continent-after the Cubans. In addition to the legionnaires in Shaba, Paris has 7,000 troops garrisoned in such former possessions as the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Gabon and Djibouti. French forces also serve with the United Nations in Lebanon and twice recently-in Mauritania and Chad-have come to the assistance of governments facing intense guerrilla pressure. The increasingly visible presence of Giscard's troops has earned them the unflattering sobriquet "the French...
...trouble in Zaïre broke out at a time when the White House was preparing to ask Congress to ease restrictions on U.S. support for friendly governments endangered by insurgencies. The invasion of Shaba turned out to be a good example of why President Carter wants some changes made. But even with present restrictions the Administration found a way to help Mobutu under terms of the International Security Assistance Act of 1977, which allows the President to provide certain aid to a foreign country-without congressional approval-if it is deemed "in the national security interests of the United...