Word: za
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Torrential rains turned much of Zaïre's mineral-rich Shaba region (formerly Katanga province) into a knee-deep quagmire last week. The downpour further obscured the mysterious war being waged between about 2,000 invaders from neighboring Angola (TIME, March 28) and the forces of Zaïre's autocratic President Mobutu Sese Seko. After launching a few pinprick air raids, Mobutu's Army Chief of Staff Bumba Moaso Djogi claimed that the intruders were in retreat, "abandoning thousands of corpses" behind them...
Western sources, doubting that so many troops were involved, sketch a very different picture. According to them, the invaders-exiled followers of the late Katangese separatist Moïse Tshombe-have consolidated their hold on much of the border region of southwestern Zaïre. By week's end the insurgents were reported to be in control of the town of Mutshatsha, a staging area for Mobutu's forces some 70 miles from Zaïre's rich copper belt. Officials denied it, but speculation mounted that the town had indeed fallen, cabled TIME Correspondent Erik Amfitheatrof...
...case, Mobutu's army, sapped by desertions and flagging morale, has done little to dislodge the rebels. Facing shortages of aviation fuel, trained pilots and transports, Zaïre's forces are hard put to supply the 3,000 government troops now in Shaba, nearly 1,000 miles from the capital in Kinshasa...
Hated Dictator. After leading a long, bloody struggle to unify Zaïre in the 1960s, Mobutu is reluctant to make concessions to Shaba's invading exiles. One reason is that income from Shaba's copper mines is vital for his financially shaky country. Another is that any sign of yielding could invite similar demands from other regions of Zaïre, which has some 200 tribes. A corrupt dictator, Mobutu is unpopular-even hated-in much of the country. In the wild northeast, for example, he is accused of being responsible for ordering the murder...
Another destabilizing burst of violence came last week in Brazzaville, capital of Zaïre's stridently Marxist neighbor, the People's Republic of the Congo. There an unidentified group of men burst into National Popular Army staff headquarters and gunned down President Marien Ngouabi. A pudgy French-trained army major who survived several previous attempts on his life, Ngouabi, 38, was long a bitter enemy of Zaïre's Mobutu. His tiny (pop. 1.3 million), dirt-poor country has enjoyed Soviet patronage for years, and its airport served in 1975 as a convenient refueling point...