Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror by Mahmood Mamdani

“because he believed that Premier Moise Tshombe was sincerely trying to establish a multiracial society in the Congo. I thought that if I could help in this creation, the Congo might offer some hope, some symbol in contrast to the segregation in my own country.” The New York Times ’s version of the sensitive mercenary was flatly contradicted by a two-part article in the South African Cape Times , in which a returning South African mercenary wrote of the “senseless, coldblooded killings,” of never taking a prisoner “except for the odd one for questioning, after which they were executed,” and of their thievery; he pleaded with his government “not to allow decent young South Africans” to become “senseless killers.”
    The crisis in Congo was America’s baptism in independent Africa. It was also, in retrospect, America’s tentative embrace of terror for reasons of power, and the government, particularly the CIA, seemed aware of this. The U.S. ambassador described the mercenaries as “an uncontrollable lot of toughs … who consider looting or safe-cracking within their prerogatives.” The CIA listed “robbery, rape, murder and beatings” among their “serious excesses.” The Simba rebellion ended with the U.S.-Belgian mercenary drop on Kisangani on November 24, 1965. That same day, Joseph Mobutu seized power in Kinshasa. No longer of use, mercenaries were gradually phased out. Down to 230 from more than 1,000, they rebelled on July 5, 1967, taking about one thousand Congolese troops with them. Mobutu appealed to Washington. “We must keep Mobutu in power because there is no acceptable alternative to him,” Undersecretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach told a July 13 National Security Council meeting. Since no one disagreed, Washington returned Cuban exiles to Congo, this time to strafe mercenaries, who withdrew into Rwanda. Mobutu wanted them to be returned to Congo to stand trial. The New York Times said the mercenaries had fought for the West against the Simba and, in the process, had saved “innocent lives—mostly white lives.” Le Monde was more honest: “Western public opinion is more sensitive, one must acknowledge, to the death of one European than to the deaths of twenty blacks.” However, as Piero Gleijeses notes, their trial would have offended more than just Western sensibilities; it “could have led to embarrassing revelations about their contacts with the CIA.” So Washington adopted a dual solution. Whereas their Congolese auxiliaries were handed back to an understanding ally, Mobutu—who proceeded to slaughter them in spite of a promise of amnesty—the mercenaries were flown to Europe in two planes chartered by the International Red Cross.
    The Angolan Disaster
    When the American government turned to Africa a decade later, the opposition to the war in Vietnam had radically changed the atmosphere in the States. President Nixon was disgraced in August 1974, and three months later, a Democratic Congress was re-elected. Deeply suspicious of the Cold War legacy of a cloak-and-dagger foreign policy conducted in secret by the executive branch, many antiwar congressmen and -women were eager to establish legislative control over foreign policy. In December 1974, Congress passed the Hughes-Ryan Amendment, requiring the CIA to report the “description and scope” of covert operations “in a timely fashion” to eight congressional committees.
    These developments shaped the setting in which the post-Nixon administration, led by Gerald Ford, who had never before been elected to any major public office, set about defining its African options in the face of a rapidly disintegrating Portuguese empire. Washington was determined to block any possibility of the MPLA coming to power, having identified it as a Soviet proxy. In pursuit of this goal, it explored different options, comprehensively documented by Piero Gleijeses.
    Washington’s preferred option was to give covert support to the two