Frustrated by the U.N.’s inability to deal with the Belgian-backed forces, Congo’s first prime minister, the charismatic socialist and African nationalist Patrice #Lumumba, appealed to Moscow for aid. He was soon ousted by forces loyal to Congolese army chief Joseph #Mobutu, whom, it later emerged, was the beneficiary of what was then one of the CIA’s most lavishly funded support operations. Lumumba was murdered in 1961 while in the custody of Katangese troops.
#Hammarskjold, who was no friend of Lumumba, still cared deeply about backing Africa’s newly decolonized states. This was a time when the West looked warily at the emerging “third world” of independent nations, many of which were once subservient colonies but now, at least in the Western imagination, risked becoming Soviet proxies. African countries still ruled by white-supremacist governments supported Katanga’s breakaway — seeing it as a bulwark against African nationalism — but Hammarskjold sought a unified #Congo.
The flight he took to Ndola to meet with Katangese representatives left under the cover of darkness to avoid being tracked or intercepted by Katanga’s air force. As the report of the Hammarskjold Commission details, there are still many questions over what happened aboard the flight and during its attempted descent. The crash site was sealed off and likely tampered with by North Rhodesian authorities before its discovery was even announced. Some investigators who have examined the case in recent decades are now convinced that the plane was shot down by a second aircraft, piloted possibly by a Belgian mercenary.
One of the most intriguing revelations discussed by the 2013 commission is the testimony of Charles Southall, an American official with the National Security Agency then stationed at a listening post in Cyprus. Southall, now retired, told the commission that a few hours before Hammarskjold’s death, he received a communique from a supervisor telling him “something interesting is going to happen.” Upon arriving at the U.S. facility, he heard over loudspeaker what seemed to be the voice of a mercenary announcing his attack on a transport plane.
Southall told the Wall Street Journal that the intercept was overheard through CIA, not NSA, circuit. “The #CIA refused to confirm or deny the existence of any intercept following a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request by The Journal. The agency upheld its decision after The Journal appealed it,” the Journal reports.
Following the General Assembly’s vote this week, though, the Obama administration may be obliged to declassify relevant documents.
For the Congolese people, Hammarskjold’s death was a footnote to decades of war and misery. While #Katanga ended its secession in 1963 (and its leader served briefly as Congolese prime minister), pro-Lumumba forces launched a rebellion. To quash it, white mercenaries and Western-backed forces rushed in. As an article in Foreign Affairs details, the United States, mostly through the CIA, spent tens of millions of dollars backing pro-Western figures in the Congo. It paid off massive bribes to other factions and even supplied “an instant airforce,” piloted by Cuban exiles:
Washington was joining a particularly bloody conflict. When they seized rebel-held areas, the white mercenaries and government forces indiscriminately slaughtered the rebels and civilians they found there. Although there was no systematic counting of the casualties, it is estimated that at least 100,000 Congolese perished during this phase of the war.
By 1965, Mobutu, with American support, was in full control. He would go on to become one of the continent’s most heinous tyrants, an “African #Caligula.” The legacy of his rule, and decades of fractious politics and weak governance, has left Congo a mess of warring militias and a society traumatized by mass violence.
Hammarskjold may not have prevented that, but a new investigation into his death will shine light on a very dark corner of the Cold War’s history.
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