Talk:Congo Crisis/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Early posts

This is a very good article. It just needs a bit of grammatical "clean-up" here and there. There are also a few instances where the meaning is unclear, or where it seems to be tilting from NPOV (always difficult to maintain when discussing issues of imperialism and civil strife).

I changed "colonial ethnologists" to "Western ethnographers." I linked "ethnographers" the the ethnography article. My reason for changing "colonial" to "Western" is that my suspicion is that not all the missionaries, anthropologists etc. who have made ethnographic surveys in the Congo were neccessarily Belgian, or even if they were Belgian, were wholehearted supporters of the colonial status quo. Whether their grouping of peoples under the "Bangala" label was valid on linguistic etc. grounds is a different question, which should be discussed in the Bangala article. If the label was used for political reasons by either colonial authorities or post-colonial parties, that should be discussed too.

--Jpbrenna 18:41, 26 February 2005 (UTC)

I stand corrected. There *is* such a thing as ethnology after all. Now the question is, did ethnographers working in the Congo or armchair ethnologists creat the Bangala concept? If this was a case of some old white guys in Belgium sitting around drinking port, creating tribal groupings, who were they? What were their reasons? What are the counterarguments? Somebody who has the requisite knowledge should start a Bangala article. --Jpbrenna 05:06, 1 March 2005 (UTC)

Wow

I can't believe how much this has improved since the last time I saw it. Good work! I still think it is missing something though: how can we talk about this time period without mentioning Mike Hoare and the mercenaries, as well as the details of the Belgian intervention? Mad Mike just gets a mention in the "See also" section, and it just says only that the Belgians "intervened." They dropped an airborne brigade on Stanleyville, if I recall correctly. It says they weren't invited, but didn't the Katangese seccesionists appeal to the Belgians to intervne (and weren't they the ones who hired Mike Hoare?) And didn't Mobutu tacitly approve of the intervention? It's still of dubious legality because the sovereign government didn't invite them, but it is clear that at least some Congolese actively desired some form of intervention. It is also possilbe that there were a small number of CIA & Special Forces in the area at least observing, if not actively taking part in the hostilities. And how can we not mention the Simbas, whose attacks on foreigners and natives alike provided the impetus for the intervention in the first place? --Jpbrenna 22:45, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, the lack of info on the Simba is puzzling, since they figured so largely in the original news reports. Is the tribe now known by another name? --Mmartins 10:14, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
For those who are puzzled by what seem to be holes in the article, a little explanation is probably in order: This article was started off by User:Xed in December 2004 using sources in the SOAS library, and occasionally tweaks by myself. Unfortunately, Xed stopped editing about halfway through so the entire latter half of the article was added by users without the resources of the quality of SOAS. If you know something is missing, please add it. - Banyan Tree 14:30, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
Most of the info I added used Ch. Didier Gondola's book as a source. Will add more detail when time permits - Xed
They weren't a tribe exactly, they were a motley collection of men from different tribes who had been convinced by magicians that they would magically become lions in battle. Simba is the Swahili word for "lion", and Swahili is the lingua franca of the area. The name has been recycled several times since and now seems to be used as a generic term for armed rebel groups, whether they believe they have magic powers or not, so we'll probably have to disambiguate. Oh, and then there's the Lion King character, who's a very cute little fella. We wouldn't want to have him confused with crazed revolutionaries who eat people ;)--Jpbrenna 21:16, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

some gaps

A few important things are still unclear in the article: how was Tshombe arrested (and by who) if he was at the time the leader of a de facto independent area? And how was the Gizenga government in Stanleyville dealt with? KarlM 00:31, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

--Lubumbashi 21:02, 29 August 2006 (UTC) OK these last two issues are addressed now but there are still is a lot untidiness, parts duplicated and a few missing pieces, particularly there is not much on the Cold War politics of the crisis.

Vandalism?

I believe this article has been attacked and is now in need of some clean-up. I don´t believe Jose Luis was "gay" and that any other reference to homosexuality in this article is valid. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Andershalden (talk • contribs) 03:13, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Too Many Flags & Commanders

This article has too many flags, commanders and countries in the infobox. It is simply misrepresenting the truth to describe Che Guevara, Kabila & Mike Hoare as anything but minor players in this history. Similarly, Cuba was not an important actor in the crisis. If anything the UN commanders, the CIA and the Soviet Union should be listed. It seems to me that this history is being influenced by those who want to see this huge civil crisis as a military thing. Thus we have lurid descriptions of operation Dragon Rouge and Noir, which should really only be footnotes to the larger history described in other pages. It was a catastrophic failure of politics which brought about the crisis and there needs to be more discussion of how it failed. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lubumbashi (talk • contribs) 23:34, 13 February 2007 (UTC).

Kabila

Why is Kabila listed as a combatant? He played a very minor role. I think replacing his name with Pierre Mulele would be appropriate. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MinnesotanConfederacy (talk • contribs) 03:37, 9 May 2007 (UTC).

Probably should delete reference to Thirty Year Plan

Belgium (basically) had no plan for Congolese indepenence. What one academic writes in *one* paper hardly amounts to an official Belgian position. The most recent book I'm reading which discusses this (this time only in passing) is African Guerillas, not the one by Clapham, but the one edited by Bøås and Dunn. It looks like, late in the game, about a *dozen* Congolese were allowed to go to Europe to get university degrees, and another, say, 120 had degrees from African universities. It makes me a bit suspicious of the motives of people who write about evolues, too. JoshNarins (talk) 16:06, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I both agree with you and disagree. It's true that there was no plan for independence. However, the Thirty Year Plan is mentioned because it was quite respected and influential and provides a contrast between what should have happened and what actually happened. It gave a good baseline from a thoughtful academic on how long it would take to transition the country to independence in a structured and sensible fashion. What actually happened was the country was propelled into independence in a matter of months. It is the contrast that is important here. Instead of thirty years, they got thirty days between May elections and June independence with chaos as a result. Certainly the fact about the low number of university graduates is often brought up, I though about adding it a while ago but it caused conflict in the French version. The "evolue" term is important to mention because it's use is so racist in a matter-of-fact way, that it illustrates the attitude of the colonial power that the native Congolese were simply not able to look after their own affairs. You could bring this point out more clearly in the article, but it is simpler just to mention the facts and let people draw the obvious conclusions. Lubumbashi (talk) 11:17, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Mike Hoare

Strange that he has an Irish flag in the box ;o)--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 09:57, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

The Fog of War in Congo

A vivid and detailed account of the Congo crisis by J.P. Sonck is available at http://www.albertville.stools.net/independance.htm . It's in French, focusing mainly on the military operations. Its chapter "Quand les maquis de Kabila menaçaient Albertville" covers the events described in Che Guevara's African Diary, needless to say, from a somewhat different perspective. L'omo del batocio (talk) 09:12, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Dag Hammaskjold

This is an article about the Congo Crisis, not for theories regrding Hammarskold's death. The article states simply that there have been claims of conspiracy but no actual evidence. This is a fact. The only qualification which might be valid would be saying there is no physical evidence because some would call hearsay and allegations "evidence" which it is not. The cited report links to undemocracy.org which is not a UN site and is therefore a fake reference likely to mislead reader that there was an actual UN article on the other end of the link. Lubumbashi (talk) 20:15, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

I have read the article cited, S/4940/Add.5. It is not really a report on the accident but a briefing on the facts then known. There no suggestion in this document that the crash "may not have be an accident".

It mentions that "a report had reached the police station at Ndola to the effect that a great flash in the sky had been noticed at approximately 01.00 hours that morning, not very far from a locality in Rhodesian territory by the name of Mufulira. " But this is not evidence of foul play. A plane crash without a bright flash of some kind would be anomalous, not the other way around.

It is true that there have been several claims conspiracy particularly from Desmond Tutu, but again this is hearsay. Furthermore just because Cyrille Adoula sends out a press release blaming the west is not evidence of foul play. Adoula was receiving support from the Soviet Bloc at the time, so this is par for the course. It would be different if he had produced evidence that the plane was shot down by someone. All this stuff might be interesting to someone but should be on the Dag Hammarskold page. It is plausible that Rhodesia or Katanga shot the aircraft down but simply not conclusive enough to merit mention here. Lubumbashi (talk) 22:24, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Lubambashi, you make many points. I'll address them one at a time:
1. Yes, this is an article about the Congo Crisis. I have no interest in making it about theories relating to Hammarskjolds death. But the article is factually wrong. There is a difference between "There is no evidence of any sort to support X" and "There was sufficient reason to suspect X that three investigations were made, and ultimately no evidence in support of any view was conclusive." The first presentation of facts is biased; the second is honest.
2. The United Nations does not allow direct links to articles hosted on their site. UNdocuments is an intermediate site. You can find the documents on UN.org. I did so. I invite you to do so.
3. Article S/4940/Add.5 Is labeled "Special Report." It labels itself a report. It was an initial report that reported two bits of evidence: that a flash in the sky was seen, and that there were reports of aircraft in the air that were not communicating. These facts were important in motivating the three subsequent investigations. These facts were also explicitly considered by the official UN investigation. They are not "hearsay" or "allegations," but sufficiently credible that the UN investigation thoroughly considered them.
If you do not want to present theories as to how the plane crashed. Thats fine. Don't do so. The explanation that Hammerskjolds plane crashed due to pilots error is pure speculation. Have you read the UN report? They say explicitly that the only reason the Rhodesian Board of Investigation came to this conclusion was by default; they had no other explanation, so they made one up. To be consistent, you would have to remove this sentence, too.
Lastly, the "investigators at the time" is ambiguous. There were 3 investigations. Only one of them concluded the crash was due to pilot error. The official UN investigation made no such conclusion. They stated that no conclusion could be made, and that the Rhodesian Board of Investigation conclusion of pilot error was speculation.

I did read the UN report, although the UN doesn't allow direct linking, it does have a pretty good document system - ODS. It may be an inconvenience that you can't link to it directly, but it has the advantage of being an official source. Anyway, I like the article better now. The plane crashed, cause unknown. Less is more. If someone wants to find out more about Hammarskjold's death they know where to look. Lubumbashi (talk) 17:32, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Irish UN troops capture.

There is very liitle mention of the 155 Irish troops that were captured in jadotville, does anyone have anymore info on it, like were they tortured or anything, only ask as my father was one of the 155 captured, but never spoke about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.100.184.254 (talk) 14:12, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jadotville — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.151.92.80 (talk) 14:19, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Nous ne sommes plus vos singes (We are no longer your monkeys)

This famous quote currently has no reliable source. This was pointed out by Michela Wrong in an article in the New Statesman ("The famous things they never said").

Lumumba's speech as reproduced on the web does not contain this line. I have seen excerpts of Lumumba's speech on TV, (I can't find the whole thing) and I have not heard this line. Martin Meredith reproduces in his book The State of Africa (2005) as does Roland Oliver & Anthony Atmore in Africa since 1800. Despite this neither of these two books from respected historians have a citation for the quote.

This is a pretty infamous quote and a pretty shocking thing for a anyone to say nevermind from a President to a King so if Lumumba never said actually it, it really should be corrected.

It may be best be to contact Roland Oliver and Martin Meredith to see if they have a source and if they don't, then it should be removed. 84.203.164.156 (talk) 15:50, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for this. Much as I would love it to be true, I don't think it is - the media reports I have read from the time don't mention it, and I can't believe they wouldn't if he had said it. Others who have looked for the source of the quote have not been able to find a reliable one. It's mentioned in a few books, but the authors of those books were not present during the speech and have relied on secondhand reports that could have been inaccurate. I've added a note of caution to this quote in the main text, but haven't removed it. Jamal (talk) 00:52, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Neutrality, NPOV

The article is in clear violation of NPOV rules. Sample sentence from the introduction: "In an attempt to regain their economical and political hegemony in the region, the United States and Belgium sponsored terrorist activities and secret assassinations". I happen to agree with that particular interpretation of events but that doesn't mean I approve of Wikipedia adopting a non-neutral point of view! There is no consensus (far from it) about the background to the events, so we should be restricting ourselve to simply citing the various sources. And there is certainly no consensus about the interpretation of events, so, again, we should be simply citing the various POVs. -The Gnome (talk) 09:07, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Totally agreed, the original introduction needed no changes. The revised one is inaccurate and highly biased. The crisis did not begin with secession of Katanga, it began with the mutiny, or arguably with the imflammatory speeches on independence day. Original intro restored. Can we remove NPOV tag now? Lubumbashi (talk) 13:53, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Let's wait awhile for additional input, if any. -The Gnome (talk) 15:48, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
Been waiting for more than a year, now... Jan olieslagers (talk) 18:24, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Recheck anything that's a lashing out against any site in that conflict. --41.151.92.80 (talk) 14:16, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Che Guevara has a Cuban Flag!?!?

Ok, I'd like to say, great article but.... Che Guevara was not a Cuban citizen when he went to the Congo. His honorary citizenship was revoked by then, and so technically an Argentine flag would be more appropriate. Great article, still X) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.87.255.129 (talk) 12:31, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

References to Che Guevara & other minor actors should be deleted

Che Guevara did not even arrive in the Congo until 1965 by which time the crisis was almost over. His participated in a few minor skirmishs and left after 7 months. This was a side show in comparison to the major battles which involved the UN, Katanga, ANC etc. Really he was no different to the mercenaries that fought on the other side. So if we are to include Che Guevara and Cuba as belligerants then you would have to include all the names of the UN commanders and foreign mercenaries whose impact was arguably much more important than Guevara's. There would be no point listing out the names of Belgian, British, South African and Rhodesian mercenaries precisely because their actions had no major consequences to the course of the crisis. This article is a broad brush and concise history of a complex period. It is not appropriate as a hagiography of people like Guevara or Mike Hoare. If these actors are not explicitly mentioned in the text, there they should not be in the infobox either. Certainly these stories are interesting for people interested in Che Guevara or Mike Hoare, but the place for these stories is on the wikipedia pages for those figures. Similarly, Laurent Kabila was very important in the later history of the Congo, but he was not important in this period, any more than Hitler was important in World War I, though he certainly fought in that conflict.

What the article needs is more citations for the unattested facts. Lubumbashi (talk) 19:03, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Category listing

Why is this listed under 'Wars involving India'? Is there something I'm missing? 66.180.182.9 (talk) 23:20, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

"Strength" in infobox

I have removed the perimeter "strength" from the infobox and tried to add a edit summary but it didn't work for some reason so I thought it would be best to put my reason here. In essence, I think putting the Cuban and UN force strength in the infobox gives a misleading picture of the conflict - since figures for the Congolese factions (the main participants) are not available. The figures could be folded into the main text but the sources cited do not look like they would meet WP:RS. —Brigade Piron (talk) 18:20, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree with your decision, but I differ from your reasoning. I have found sources that do list statistics for force strength that I would consider reliable (Kennes, Erik; Larmer, Miles (2016). The Katangese Gendarmes and War in Central Africa: Fighting Their Way Home. Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253021502.). However, these numbers fluctuated greatly throughout the conflict and I concur that it would be best just to include them in the text where they come up. Indy beetle (talk) 21:29, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Start date

I see that in the infobox that the start date is listed as 30 June 1960. I'm curious as to why this is, as the Congo wasn't at a point of crisis simply by becoming independent. Crawford Young in Politics in Congo: Decolonization and Independence (p. 316) asserts that the crisis officially began with the first mutinies of the Force Publique on 5 July. I think this should be adopted. -Indy beetle (talk) 00:31, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that seems a sensible alteration.—Brigade Piron (talk) 17:14, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

More Photos

There are plenty of photos that have been added to Commons that would help the reader get a better understanding of the Congo Crisis. Obviously, most of the space in-text is already used and to throw in any more would make it crammed. Would it be sensible to create a "Gallery" section, or to make a montage/collage that could be situated in the infobox to give a more broad illustration of the event? -Indy beetle (talk) 21:41, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

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