Congo Unravelled

Post -independence events in the Republic of Congo are a veritable Gordian knot. The Ambitions of the political leaders. Cold War rivilary. Pan-Africanism, Belgiu's continued economic interests in the country's mineral wealth, and the strategic perceptions of other southern African states all conspired to wrack Africa's second largest country with the uprisings, rebellions and military interventions for almost a decade. Congo Unravelled solves the intractable complexity of this violent period by disspassionately outlining the sequence of political and military events that took placein the troubled country. The reader is systematically taken through the first military attempts to stabilize the country after independence and the two distinguishing military campaigns of the decade - the United Nations military operations ( Operation des nations Unies au Congo, or ONUC) to end the secesssion of the Katanga Province, and the Dragan Operations led by Belgian paratroopers, supported by the US Air Force, launched to end the insurgency in the east of the country- are chronicled in detail. Finally, the mercenary revolt - an event that tainted the reputation of the modern mercenary in Africa - is described. Lesser known military events- Irish UN forces cut off from the outisde world by the Katangese gendarmes and mercenaries, and a combined military operation in which Belgian paratroopers were dropped from US Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft and supported by the mercenary ground force to achieve humanitarian ends- go far toward resolving the enigma surrounding post-independence Congo.