On January 19, 1961, a day before the end of his presidency of the United States, Eisenhower said to the media in a relaxed mood: "During my term, Lumumba finally died. ”
Eisenhower always believed that to control Africa, the Congo must first be controlled; To control the Congo, Lumumba must be eliminated. He also claimed that getting rid of Lumumba was "an epic struggle between the East and the West." ”
Why did Eisenhower care so much about Congo and Lumumba?
Why is Congo important?
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, located in central Africa, straddles the equator and is vast and vast. With a land area of 2.345 million square kilometers, it is adjacent to nine countries and is known as the "heart of Africa".
In 1960, the population of the country was 15.6 million, and 50% of the population was Catholic.
Congo is surrounded by plateaus and mountains on three sides, with basins in the middle and west. Adjacent to the East African Graben in the east, Lake Tanganyika has a maximum water depth of 1435 meters, making it the second deepest lake in the world. To the west there is a narrow corridor leading to the Atlantic Ocean.
In 1960, the national forest coverage rate was 72%, the forest area was about 1.69 million square kilometers, almost all of which were original natural forests, and had the reputation of "the lungs of the earth".
The Congo River is 4,669 kilometers long and flows from east to west, flowing majestically into the Atlantic Ocean. With an average flow of 42,000 cubic meters per second, the river ranks second in the world in terms of its flow and the breadth of its basin, and is the deepest and most stable river in the world.
Congo is rich in natural resources and is known as the "World Mineral Warehouse", "African Museum" and "Geological Wonder".
Its copper, cobalt, tantalum niobium, tin, chromium, uranium, nickel, zinc, manganese, germanium, tungsten, cadmium, diamonds, gold and other strategic resources reserves are extremely considerable, super large deposits, high grade.
Among them, copper reserves account for 15% of the world's total; Cobalt reserves and production account for 51% and 68% of the world, tantalum niobium ore accounts for 80% of the world, and diamond reserves of about 206 million carats.
Congo's uranium enrichment is staggering. The two nuclear bombs dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were fed from the Hinkolobwe uranium mine in the Congo.
In mines in the United States and Canada, digging out ore containing 0.03% uranium is considered to have good mining value. In Hinkolobwe, the grade of uranium ore is as high as 65%.
American scientists have likened Hinkolobwe to "nature's freaks" and "in other mines you don't see purer uranium." Never found anything like this. ”
High-grade uranium ore can reduce the difficulty, time and cost of uranium enrichment, and also make Congo a coveted target for other countries. Britain and Israel have tried to steal uranium ore from the Congo.
In addition, in the Congo Basin, the eastern Tanganyika Lake and other vast areas, there are also a large number of coal, oil and gas resources.
However, the superior geographical and resource conditions have not benefited the Congo, but have always plunged it into endless competition, ill-fated and political turmoil.
In 1908, it became a Belgian colony called "Belgian Congo".
After World War II, the local people became increasingly dissatisfied with the cruel abuse and crazy plunder of the colonizers, the national consciousness was generally awakened, and the waves of resistance rose and fell.
On June 30, 1960, with the help of the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact member states, the Belgian Congo became officially independent and was renamed the "Republic of the Congo" (renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo on August 1, 1964). Since the earlier independent french Congo also used the "Republic of the Congo" as the national name, the international community, in order to distinguish between the two, according to the name of the capital, often referred to the former Belgian Congo as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Dr. Kinshasa) and the former French Congo as the Congo (Brazzaville).
After Congo's independence, the MLC party, led by Lumumba, won the general election, and Lumumba, 35, was appointed prime minister and minister of defence.
As soon as Lumumba came to power, he immediately caused panic in the Western camp.
Why did Lumumba cause panic in the West?
Patrice Lumumba was born on 2 July 1925 to a family of Battra tribesmen in the kasai province of southern Congo to devout Catholic parents.
He entered a church school as a teenager and worked at the local post office after graduation. Lumumba was intelligent and hardworking, rising to the middle of the company in just a few years and earning belgian citizenship.
But Lumumba found that although nominally middle-class, he was paid only one-tenth of the average white employee! Nor could they enjoy the benefits given to whites by the post office, with no allowances, no vacations, and no free medical care.
But when he complained about the unfair treatment to management, he told him that it was a provision of Belgian law and could never be changed.
Lumumba suddenly woke up, gave up his illusions, and actively threw himself into the anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggle.
He began to study Soviet works, ran newspapers and periodicals, and published a large number of articles on the theme of national liberation.
In 1956, he was imprisoned by Belgian colonists.
After his release from prison in 1958, Lumumba founded the MLC Party and became the father of the MLC.
In 1960, when the Congo became independent, he proposed to learn from the Soviet model and create a new Congo.
He pursued a series of radical policies, thoroughly purged the remnants of the West, announced the nationalization of all mines, and directly attacked the interests of European and American multinational companies.
This move immediately triggered panic in the international market, Europe and the United States were worried about the prospects of Congolese raw material supply, and London metal futures soared.
With the support of the United States and Belgium, Katanga, the most important mineral province in southern Congo, declared its independence.
The local warlord Moiz Chuber and tribal leaders recruited and invited 11,000 Belgian soldiers to Katanga to prepare for the rebellion.
Lumumba appealed: "All understand that if the Congo perishes, the whole of Africa will fall into the night of defeat and slavery".
In order to defend the nascent Republic of the Congo, Lumumba approached the Soviet Union and wanted its military support.
The Soviet Union reached out in time.
On July 12, Khrushchev publicly stated that he would fully support Lumumba and sent a group of officers and KGB agents to Kinshasa, the capital of the Congo, to carry out work in advance.
"Lumumba is asking the Soviet Union to send troops", the news shook the West.
Larry Devlin, the head of the CIA's intelligence station in Kinsasa, reported to Washington that Congo was in talks with the Soviet Union day and night. He was convinced that the "decisive date" of the alliance between the two sides was "not far off".
Devlin argues that Lumumba has a fatal weakness to exploit: despite his high prestige in the Congo, he has no potential successor whose position is deeply influenced by it. His main aide, Colonel Mobutu, Secretary of State for the Office and Chief of The Army, took a close stand to the West and opposed Soviet intervention.
This gave the West an opportunity to get rid of Lumumba and prop up Mobutu.
At an August 1960 meeting, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower told CIA Director Alan Dulles that Lumumba was a bad guy and should be removed. Such public expression of the idea of assassinating the democratically elected Prime Minister of a sovereign state left the audience stunned and silent for about 15 seconds before the meeting continued.
In Britain, MI6 declared in a report to the Cabinet: "Lumumba is a big problem. As long as he lives, he will continue to haunt us all."
On September 19, 1960, Eisenhower and John Dulles met with British Prime Minister Macmillan and Foreign Secretary Lord Holme. What brought them together this time was to agree on a plan to assassinate Lumumba.
There was no euphemism between the two sides, and Holm said bluntly: "Why don't we get rid of Lumumba now?" He believes that if it does not strike immediately, the Congo will follow in Cuba's footsteps and become the most critical springboard for the Soviet Union to control the African continent.
Eisenhower nodded, saying he hoped Lumumba would "fall into a river full of crocodiles and not find a single bone."
After this meeting, the cooperation mechanism for the assassination of Lumumba by the Five Eyes Alliance was officially launched, code-named "Operation Crocodile".
"Operation Crocodile"
In August 1960, CIA Director Dulles personally wrote to Larry Devlin, "We have decided that the removal of Lumumba is the most urgent and priority task at the moment." ”
The letter also reminds: "The crucial point of assassination is to make the target die, and the death must be 100% certain." Hitler's assassination did not succeed because the planned failure to pay proper attention to the matter. ”
He earmarked Devlin $600,000 and also transferred a shipment of mobile equipment from the CIA's Africa division to Kinshasa.
Dulles, a man obsessed with using dastardly means to eliminate his opponents at all costs, chose to assassinate Lumumba by poisoning.
He sent two killers: Moses Mashkofizer, code-named "QJ/WIN"; Sidney Gottlieb, codenamed "WI/ROGUE".
Born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1910, Maschkofizan has a large criminal record. By 1960, he had become a stateless person. The CIA recruited him with an annual salary of $7,200 and a $7,500 "operating expense."
Masch kofizan's internal assessment described him as "well-informed and not afraid of danger in carrying out his mission".
Maschkofizan took a special "immunity" course, a euphemism for injecting a "deadly poison." To disguise his identity, the CIA performed plastic surgery on him and sent him to congo.
For a moment, the CIA building at the Kinsasa Shah intelligence station was packed with telegraph machines, communications equipment, cryptographers, analysts, secretaries, and operatives, as if directing a small war. On the wall is a 40-foot chart detailing every step of the assassination operation.
However, Maschkofizan succeeded in injecting poison into the toothpaste in Lumumba's home, but with the desired effect.
It turned out that the use of poison was the CIA's usual method of assassinating Castro, and it was injected into Castro's cigarettes, toothpaste, coffee and soup several times, but without success.
For the KGB, who was accustomed to this trick, it had long since failed.
Soviet security guards found the suspicious toothpaste in Lumumba's home and began tracking down Mashkofizer.
Devlin revealed to the media in 2000 that he had immediately halted the plan, arguing that Lumumba was "all over the KGB" and that the poison would not work.
He felt that there was a better way to persuade Mobutu to stage a mutiny, get rid of Lumumba, and seize control of the Congo.
Dulles approved Devlin's new plan and involved British and Belgian agents.
Death of Lumumba
Devlin was given broader powers to prop up pro-Western regimes, as well as $2 million in funding for "improvisation."
In those days, $2 million was a huge sum.
Devrin made several secret appointments with Mobutu, persuading him to "abandon the dark and turn to the light" and promised to give the officers involved in the mutiny $5,000 each. Since then, the two have become friends of Mo Rebellion and have been committing crimes in the Congo for a long time.
On September 14, 1960, Mobutu mutinied, put Lumumba under house arrest for protection, and announced the dissolution of the cabinet and parliament.
Thus began Mobutu's 35-year violent rule in the Congo, which resulted in the deaths of 10 million Congolese people, ushering in an extremely dark page in African history.
On the evening of 27 November, with the help of KGB agents, Lumumba and his family fled Kinshasa.
Three days later, Mobutu's soldiers caught up with Lumumba and his party in Loday.
Under the cover of the KGB, Lumumba crossed the Sankuru River smoothly and escaped from his pursuers. But during the breakout, his wife and daughter ran away and did not cross the river.
Lumumba did not heed the dissuasion and insisted on returning to the other side of the river to be with his family. As a result, Lumumba threw himself into the net and was subsequently imprisoned in a military camp near the capital.
In this way, Lumumba, who has lost almost everything, is still considered an extremely dangerous element, and the Western forces will want to get rid of it quickly.
On January 13, 1961, in the barracks where Lumumba was being held, some soldiers claimed to release Lumumba.
The possibility of a comeback in Lumumba has once again worried the West. Devlin sent a telegram to Washington saying that if decisive action is not taken in time, the U.S. efforts in Congo will be "in vain."
On 14 January, Mobutu, persuaded by Devlin, agreed to "kill Lumumba by the hand of Chongbo" and transfer Lumumba to the Province of Katanga, which was controlled by Chongbo.
Chumber and the Belgians had long hated Lumumba to the bone, and immediately threw him into prison and tortured him severely.
On the evening of 16 January, Devrin sent someone to Katanga Province to secretly meet with Chong Bo.
At 21:15 on the evening of the 17th, Lumumba was secretly executed, witnessed by secret agents from Chong bo, Britain and Belgium.
On the 18th, Lumumba's body was dismembered and dissolved in an acid barrel, and a Belgian agent involved in the operation pulled out one of Lumumba's gold-encrusted teeth.
On February 11, after the United States was convinced of Lumumba's death, it allocated $500,000 to reward lumumba's meritorious personnel for murder.
On February 12, the People's Friendship University in Moscow, USSR, was officially renamed the People's Friendship University of Lumumba.
In March, the Third All-Africa Conference declared him an African hero.
In 1966, the Mobutu authorities, under pressure, declared Lumumba a national hero.
End
In June 2020, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the independence of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lumumba's daughter called on Belgium to return her father's remains.
On June 22, 2022, Belgian authorities officially returned his only remains, a gold-encrusted tooth, to his family and apologized again for Belgium's role in the murder of Congo's independent father.
With the return of his body, the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared three days of national mourning.
Lumumba's death, which is still regarded today as one of the major events that changed the course of African history, caused immeasurable damage to the African independence movement.
At the same time, it is also a stain that the Five Eyes Alliance can never wash away.