U.S. Put Him In, Now Get Mobutu Out

When Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev banged his shoe at the United Nations in 1960, he was protesting American policy in the former Belgian Congo (today’s Zaire) that led to the murder of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, the elected leader of the Parliament, and the consolidation of Joseph Desire Mobutu’s military power. Washington, using the CIA, American-supported troops and millions of dollars, long has been intimately involved in the fate of Zaire.

About the current fighting and misery, which has created refugee crises in both Zaire and neighboring Rwanda, Americans are wont to shake their heads and ask, “Why do those people do that to each other?” We tend toward historical amnesia about what the United States has wrought. Zairians I met in Kinshasa insist, “You put him there; you kept him there; you get him out.”

Who, us?

A history lesson would be useful.

The CIA plotted with Mobutu to “eliminate” Lumumba, a nationalist whom Washington misread as pro-Soviet, giving Mobutu $1 million to buy the loyalty of his troops. Lumumba was deposed in August 1960 and killed by soldiers six months later.

After U.N. peacekeepers left in 1964, rebels set up an alternative government and soon controlled two-thirds of the country. CIA bombers piloted by Cuban veterans of the Bay of Pigs strafed opposition targets and U.S. transports carried Belgian paratroopers to end the threat to Mobutu.

Then the U.S. endorsed Mobutu’s 1965 coup. The man now calling himself Mobutu Sese Seko ended civilian rule and began the 30-year rape of the country. Schools, hospitals, infrastructure and industry disintegrated under his neglect or theft. He enforced his rule with imprisonment, torture and murder.

In 1974, after the Portuguese withdrew from neighboring Angola, the CIA used Kamina Air Base to ship arms to rebel forces seeking to overthrow the Angolan government. Mobutu took his cut.

When congressmen wondered why the United States was funding a corrupt dictator, the State Department offered its recurring line, “Mobutu or chaos. He is the one man who can hold the country together.” Officials periodically told Congress that Mobutu was making reforms.

In 1977, Zairians who had fled to Angola in the ‘60s sought to retake their homeland in the copper-rich Shaba region. They marched along the railway telling villagers they had come to liberate them. Local troops melted away. The Carter administration sent transports to ferry French and Moroccan forces to repulse the invaders. Zairian troops returned and murdered local people who had had contact with the rebels.

The next year, the exiles attacked again. Zairian troops ran away again. U.S. transports carried French and Belgian soldiers to save Mobutu’s rule again. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski argued both times that the Zairian rebels were supported by Cuba. A State Department employee said that she and her colleagues were ordered to “find the smoking Cubans,” but never did, because there weren’t any.

Pressure from the Carter administration helped persuade Mobutu to allow some critics to run for parliament, but after Ronald Reagan was elected president, Mobutu jailed them.

Reagan’s ambassadors didn’t speak to oppositionists. That changed only after the fall of communism, when the Americans pressed oppositionists not to demand very radical changes and recognized Mobutu’s handpicked prime minister because he appeared committed to paying back international loans. Besides, Mobutu promised elections. That was in 1990, and there haven’t been any.

Richard Moose, Carter’s assistant secretary of state for Africa, told me, “Mobutu would run circles around us. And at the end of the day, the CIA was always there whispering in his ear, because he was always useful to them.” After more than three decades of deception, anyone who claims to believe Mobutu’s promises is a fool or a liar.

Today, in a country of 44 million people--rich in diamonds, copper, forests and hydropower--a quarter of the children die by age 5, police and troops routinely rob and rape civilians, most people get no medical care, most children get no schooling and many survive on one meal a day.

We put him there; we kept him there. Washington should insist that Mobutu abdicate and leave Zaire forever. Then, as in Haiti, it should broker a peace that disarms the security forces and uses United Nations authority and troops to establish the rule of law.