Flashmag February 2021 www.flashmag.net
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Guillaume Ajavon
they state: "Faced with the threat to the neutrality of the Republic of Congo coming from Belgium and certain Western countries which support Belgium's plot against our independence, we ask you to constantly follow the development of the situation in the Congo. It is possible that we will be forced to ask for the intervention of the Soviet Union if the Western camp does not put an end to the aggression against the sovereignty of the Republic of Congo”.
On the same July 14, d'Aspremont Lynden wrote a note for the Belgian Prime Minister, in which he reaffirmed the thesis of a pro-Soviet Lumumba: "Lumumba personally is only the agent of execution of a gigantic plot. engineered by the East; Western solidarity must play to the maximum in this area. The USA must be warned, but must not, it seems to me, intervene directly in the game”
Americans ? They are already following what is happening in Congo. According to Belgian and American historians Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick, three anti-Communist voices will influence the orientation of American policy vis-à-vis of the Congo: Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA; the American Ambassador to Belgium, William Burden, and the recently installed CIA post chief in Leopoldville, Larry Devlin. The two historians speak of three "scheming, but ill-informed" men.
"These officials were telling themselves and others that Lumumba was going to lead Africa to communism and that they had to derail it." On July 15, before the National Security Council (NSC), Dulles thus describes Lumumba as a “particularly anti-Western” character. Less than a week later, he argues before the same Council that the United States is facing in the Congo a situation "similar to Castro's or worse". On July 19, it was Ambassador Burden who advised the State Department to "destroy" the Lumumba government and encourage a confederal Congo.
For Gerard and Kuklick, these three men plaster over the Congo a scenario observed elsewhere, that of "from chaos to communism", a theory describing the way in which the USSR manipulates unstable personalities and situations to succeed in provoking the revolution.
The colonial mindset here is blatant, because all the westerners who played a role in this drama, believes Congolese politicians cannot have a policy defined for their country interest, but only to serve one master or another.
The political configuration deteriorates again in mid-August. Congolese Prime Minister Lumumba, who was in favor of a united Congo, was furious by the trip of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld to the Katangese secessionists in Elisabethville. The government and people of the Congo, he said on August 15, "have lost their confidence in the Secretary General of the United Nations". This questioning of the United Nations worries Washington, which supported the secession of the Congo. (Editor's note Americans had to make sure that part of the vast Congolese territory would be under their control just in case) In Washington it is believed that a UN withdrawal from the Congo would pave the way for a large Soviet deployment.
On the evening of August 16, US Ambassador to the United Nations Henry Cabot Lodge informed the State Department that, according to the UN Secretary General, “the United Nations effort cannot continue as long as Lumumba is in operation. One of the two [would have to go]. In fact, Lumumba with his ideas of the unity of the Congo hampered the idea of secession and confederation of the Congo supported by the Americans.
Taking out Lumumba? The idea is not new, but this time it will take shape within the American state apparatus. On the 17th, US Ambassador to the Congo Clare Timberlake recommended to the State Department that, opponents of Lumumba be encouraged to remove him from power as quickly as possible. Larry Devlin proposes an operation to replace Lumumba with a pro-Western group.
On August 18, the United States National Security Council meets again. Under Secretary of State Clarence Douglas Dillon, explains to officials gathered around President Eisenhower that it was essential to prevent Lumumba from driving the United Nations out of the Congo. Lumumba, he says, works to serve the objectives of the Soviets. Dulles goes further: "Lumumba is [in Soviet pay]" Eisenhower then intervenes: it is "simply inconceivable" that the UN should be driven out of the Congo.
And the United States must do everything to keep the United Nations, "even if such action were to be used by the Soviets [as the basis for starting a fight].
" Is Eisenhower calling at this meeting for the physical elimination of Lumumba? The question continues to be debated, with historians pondering the recollections of Robert Johnson, one of the NSC members, before the Church commission: "At one point during the discussions," explained the former official, President Eisenhower. said something - I can't remember the exact words he used - which struck me as an order for the assassination of Lumumba Lumumba at the heart of the political conflict and controversy in the Congo.