Stillness over Katanga

By common agreement, the Congo is the U.N.'s greatest opportunity to establish its competence in the creation of a new order in a confused world. But some times there is serious question as to what kind of order the U.N.'s Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold proposes to create. Last week, under the authority of a Security Council resolution calling for the removal of all Belgian officers from the Congo, U.N. troops staged an extraordinary operation.

At dawn, blue-helmeted U.N. troops swarmed into action at Elisabethville, capital of the Congo's breakaway Katanga province. Without any warning to the Katangans, platoons of Indians seized the studios of Radio Katanga; Swedish infantry occupied the transmitter site on the outskirts of the city. At Katanga army headquarters, Irish troops intercepted Belgian officers on their way to work. Most of Katanga's 634 white officers surrendered expeditiously and were promptly put under U.N. detention pending expulsion from Katanga. Others prudently went underground or sought asylum at Elisabethville's foreign consulates. The 11,600 black Katanga troops remained passive, possibly because U.N. soldiers staged ferocious public bayonet drills and small-arms exercises in a pointed show of power. Remarked one senior Indian U.N. officer:

"We have these soldiers scared witless."

A delegation of U.N. officers went to see President Moise Tshombe, who between dawn and breakfast suddenly found himself deprived of most of his army's officer corps. Only a fortnight ago, Tshombe vowed to fight "unto death" any U.N. interference in his province. After listening to the delegation's tough talk, Tshombe meekly went on the air to appeal for calm. "The government bows to the decisions of the U.N.,'' he said. Then he took to his bed with a "mild heart attack."

If the U.N. has succeeded in temporarily cowing Katanga's dissidents, it proved less effective in Eastern Province, stronghold of Communist-lining Antoine Gizen-ga. Three weeks ago. Gizenga accepted the post of Vice Premier in the central government of Cyrille Adoula. But he seemed to have changed his mind. He refused to go to Leopoldville to take up his job. Instead, he formed a new National Patrice Lumumba Party and began orating against the U.N. ("hostile to the Congo"). Last week his soldiers, apparently feeling that it is open season on all Western whites, roughed up U.S. Consul Thomas A. Cassilly. All the U.N. could think of was to airlift 350 Ethiopian troops to Stanleyville to reinforce the U.N. force of 450 already there.

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