Word: zaireans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...story that the media was pounding into our consciousnesses was one of marauding blacks, drunk on white blood, systematically murdering every white they could find. But, as David Ottoway reported this week in The Washington Post, the massacre reports came from French and Zairean sources and "were deliberately exaggerated to gain quick Western public sympathy" for the French-Belgian intervention...
...been fed. The French claimed last week that 200 Europeans had been killed, but independent groups like the Red Cross have been able to verify fewer than 100 European deaths among the more than 2000 Europeans in Kolwezi. And at least 20 Europeans may have been executed by Zairean army troops, not by the rebels. Ottoway reports that the victims, both African and European, "died in a mostly haphazard manner," singly and in small groups, with "no overall design for the killing or even the saving of lives, either by rebels or Zairean soldiers." He writes that many...
...Zairean dissatisfaction with Mobutu has deep roots, going back to the early '60s, when Zaire--then the Republic of the Congo (Kinshasa)--won independence from the Belgians under the leadership of Patrice Lumumba. The Belgian record in Africa was particularly cruel, with a long history of massacres and torture in the Congo. By international agreement, the Congo was the personal fiefdom of Belgium's King Leopold, who grew notorious for the repression and exploitation he encouraged in the area...
...problems with his erratic and belligerent style. Mobutu's designs on Angola have never been secret: he wanted to acquire the oil-rich enclave of Cabinda--which is separated from Angola by the Congo River--along with whatever else he could grab. When the Portuguese agreed to leave Angola, Zairean and South African troops joined local groups to fight the Movimento Popular de Liberacion d'Angola (MPLA), which had established itself as the best-organized and most popular nationalist movement. In this "Second War of Independence," (the first was against Portugal), Zairean troops invaded Angola in support of the FNLA...
...they were stable, and there were no viable black nationalist movements in the offing. The Portuguese coup of 1974 took the CIA totally by surprise. The CIA severely underestimated MPLA support among Angolans, as well as the support the Soviet Union and Cuba would give MPLA once the CIA, Zairean, and South African participation against MPLA became obvious. With percentages like the CIA's, a college football coach would have been fired years...