King Leopold And The Cia

King Leopold and the CIA

Genocide and plunder have been Western policy towards the mineral-rich Congo since the Berlin Conference of 1885 when European nations divided Africa between them, and King Leopold II of Belgium got the Congo as his personal property. Ten million Congolese were killed under Belgian rule which lasted until 1960. The Congo's population was cut in half. Belgian domination was marked by slavery, forced labour and torture aimed at extracting the maximum amount of ivory and rubber from the Central African country. The people of the Congo "probably suffered more than any other colonized group." Their hands were cut off for not working hard enough and on one day 1,000 severed hands were delivered in baskets to an official. Women were kidnapped to force their husbands to collect rubber sap and Congolese were shot for sport. Such atrocities were documented by George Washington Williams, an African-American visiting the Congo, who invented the term "crimes against humanity" to describe them.

The U.S. took over the Congo from Belgium in 1960-61 in a bloody
coup after the CIA arranged the murder of Patrice Lumumba, the country's first elected leader. In his place the Agency installed its paid agent Colonel Mobutu Sese Seko who continued the looting and killing started by Leopold, for another 37 years. The U.S. considered the socialist Lumumba to be pro-Soviet and President Eisenhower himself approved his assassination. The CIA sent Sidney Gottlieb, its top scientist (under the code name "Joe from Paris"), to the Congo with deadly biological toxins to use on Lumumba. This particular assassination plot was unsuccessful but Lumumba was killed by Mobutu's troops on January 17, 1961.

Until his ouster in 1997, Mobutu was Africa's most brutal and corrupt ruler who massacred and tortured thousands of people, and plundered his country with U.S. backing. From 1965 to 1991, Zaire (as Mobutu named the Congo) got more than $1.5 billion in U.S. economic and military aid. In return, U.S. multinational corporations increased their share of Zaire's abundant minerals. Washington justified its hold on the Congo with the pretext of anti-Communism but its real interests were strategic and economic. The Congo borders nine African states and in terms of mineral wealth it is the richest country in Africa holding the world's biggest copper, cobalt and cadmium deposits. The Congo contains 80% of the world's cobalt (essential for jet aviation, defense and other high-tech production), 10% of its copper, and one-third of its diamonds in addition to possessing considerable reserves of gold, uranium and manganese. Other resources include coltan (used in cell phones, jet engines and fibre optics), timber, oil, coffee, tin, zinc and palm oil. Former U.S. President George Bush who was Mobutu's friend for 20 years, has interests in mining companies in the Congo. In addition to getting a share of Congolese wealth, the U.S. used the country as a base to attack the left-wing MPLA government in Angola after it took power in 1975.

According to the World Bank, (a long-time supporter of Mobutu's),
64.7% of Zaire's budget was reserved for Mobutu's "discretionary spending" in 1992. Official Zairian figures put the number at 95%. Such astounding pillage made Mobutu (according to himself) one of the three richest men in the world while impoverishing Zairians and destroying the country's infrastructure. One-third of Zaire's citizens died from malnutrition under Mobutu with "countless others" suffering permanent brain damage in youth.