by Ralph Riegel
• 11 July 1960 – Katanga declares unilateral independence.
• 13 July 1960 – The UN agrees to send troops to help keep the peace in the Congo and Ireland is one of a handful of countries asked to supply personnel. However, the UN insists troops are peacekeepers and not peace-enforcers – thereby refusing Lumumba’s demand that the UN militarily force Katanga to rejoin the Congo.
• 27 July 1960 – Irish troops of the 32nd Battalion fly out to the Congo on the UN mission – the first major overseas deployment by the Defence Forces.
• September 1960 – Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo, is deposed in a coup secretly supported by Belgian interests.
• 9 November 1960 – Nine Irish troops are killed in an ambush by Baluba tribesmen at Niemba in northern Katanga. Just two members of the patrol survive.
• 17 January 1961 – Lumumba is flown to Katanga where, after being tortured, he is executed. Belgian soldiers are reported to have been present at his execution.
• 21 February 1961 – The UN passes a resolution to use force, if required, to get foreign political and military personnel to withdraw from Katanga.
• 28 August 1961 – Operation Rampunch is launched by the UN to strip the Katangese gendarmes of their European officers. Initially successful, the benefits of the operation are squandered.
• 13 September 1961 – UN troops are ordered under Operation Morthor to seize key positions in the city of Elisabethville with operations beginning at 2 a.m. Katangese mercenaries fight back amid claims Indian troops massacred combatants in the Radio Katanga building. (Sometime after the start of this operation Moise Tshombe flees the country).
• 14 September 1961 – A unit of the 35th Irish Battalion’s Armoured Car Group is ambushed as they approach the communications centre in Elisabethville. Two men ultimately die. A third dies in a gun battle near a bridge junction.
• 15 September 1961 – Twenty-six Irish troops surrender at the Radio College in Elisabethville after the armoured car ambush. Katangan mercenaries threaten to execute the captured Irish commander, Cmdt Pat Cahalane.
• 17 September 1961 – UN Secretary-General Dag Hammar-skjöld is killed when his DC-6 aircraft crashes in northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) while he is en route to negotiate a ceasefire in the Congo. Speculation still persists that the plane was shot down to assassinate Hammarskjöld.
• 18 September 1961 – 155 Irish troops surrender at Jadotville after a courageous five-day battle. Outnumbered, with no heavy weaponry, dwindling ammunition and food, their commander orders them to surrender to Katangan gendarmes to avoid further loss of life. A UN relief column is unable to fight its way through to them.
• 20 September 1961 – Ceasefire agreed between the UN and Katangan gendarmes. All captured Irish personnel are later freed unharmed. Tshombe returns to the country.
• 2 December 1961 – Conor Cruise O’Brien, the Irish diplomat who was the UN special representative in Katanga, resigns from his post. In 1962, he writes a best-selling book on his experiences, To Katanga and Back.
• September-December 1962 – UN forces, now substantially reinforced, launch an all-out assault on Katanga called Operation GrandSlam. The Katangan air force is wiped out on the ground by Swedish jet fighters.
• 10 January 1963 – Final pockets of resistance are mopped up in Elisabethville and Tshombe flees the country a second time.
• September 1963 – The Congolese parliament is suspended amid growing political rivalry between President Joseph Kasavubu and the Force Publique commander, Joseph Mobutu.
• April 1964 – The Congolese central government controls the country and feels sufficiently secure to allow Tshombe to return from exile and take a post in the coalition administration.
• 30 June 1964 – The last Irish troops leave the Congo as the UN mission is wound-up.
• July 1964 – Tshombe elected to serve as a minister in the new coalition government. Somewhat ironically, he is tasked with putting down regional rebellions.
• May 1965 – Tshombe sacked from government.
• June 1965 – Joseph Mobutu stages a successful coup to take over the Congo government and one of his first acts is to charge Tshombe with high treason. In November, he outlaws all political parties.
• July 1965 – Tshombe flees the country to northern Rhodesia and later Spain. In 1967, the Congo government sentences him to death in absentia.
• 1969 – Tshombe dies while under house arrest in Algiers. The Algerian authorities had stalled for over a year on deporting him back to the Congo amid fears over the international outcry that would be triggered by his inevitable execution by Mobutu’s forces. Tshombe’s body is flown to Belgium for burial.
• April 1971 – Mobutu begins to shift his foreign relations policy to a strong alliance with France while remaining a staunch US ally and ‘anti-Communist strongman’.
• 27 October 1971 – Mobutu orders that the Democratic Republic of the Congo is formally renamed ‘Zaire’. It means ‘river that swallows all rivers’. Mobutu also takes to wearing a leopard-skin hat in public.
• 30 October 1974 – Legendary ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ heavyweight fight staged in Kinshasa between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. The fight is staged at the insistence of Mobutu who believes it will be a foreign public relations bonanza for his newly renamed Zaire. Apart from being one of the most iconic showdowns in world sporting history, the fight is remembered for Mobutu’s son speeding around Kinshasa city centre in front of foreign reporters in various expensive sports cars.
• 1974–1978 – Mobutu nationalises dozens of foreign-owned companies – then promptly reverses his decision amid mounting economic chaos.
• 1989 – Zaire defaults on some international loans with disastrous consequences for development projects and the overall economy.
• May 1990 – Under increasing pressure at home, and now shorn of much of his former western backing due to the end of the Cold War, Mobutu finally agrees to lift the ban on all Congolese political parties.
• 1994 – The world is appalled as savage ethnic conflict suddenly erupts in Rwanda. More than one million people are butchered when Hutu death gangs attack Tutsis nationwide. Some Hutu clergy even help in the massacres. Sickeningly, most of those killed are slaughtered with machetes and axes.
• 1996 – Re-organised Tutsi rebels fight back and Hutus flee Rwanda in the hundreds of thousands. Tutsi militias end up controlling vast swathes of eastern Zaire/Congo. Cancer-stricken Mobutu is powerless to end the spiralling anarchy. Uganda begins to asset-strip eastern Congo.
• 17 May 1997 – Mobutu flees the country in the face of a widespread uprising and the advance of Tutsi-backed militias. The country is immediately renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo by new President Laurent Kabila. Mobutu’s thirty-two year rule had transformed one of Africa’s wealthiest countries into a poverty-stricken state where central authority had collapsed. Despite this, Mobutu had formally renamed himself ‘Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga’, which means ‘the all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake’.
• 7 September 1997 – Mobutu dies in exile in Rabat, Morocco, from cancer. He is buried locally after the Congo rules out a Kinshasa funeral. Few mourn.
• 1999 – Belgian historian, Ludo de Witte, publishes his remark-able investigative work on the execution of Patrice Lumumba. The book reveals Belgian and US links to the killing. The Belgian parliament orders a full inquiry. No one is ever charged.
• 1997–2009 – The Congo suffers repeated wars, invasions and internal power struggles. Large parts of the country remain outside government control. The Second Congo War raged from 1998 to 2003, and eventually drags in seven African countries and twenty-four armed paramilitary groups. By July 2003, when an outline truce is agreed, the war has cost 5.4 million lives through fighting, disease and starvation. It remains the largest conflict o
f modern times on African soil and the world’s greatest conflict since the Second World War.
• 2004–2006 – An estimated 1,000 people die each day in the Congo from malnutrition and diseases, most of which are easily preventable. Charities estimate that more than 200,000 women have been raped in the Congo’s various conflicts. The UN was shocked in 2003 when claims emerged that the Mbuti pygmies – who live in northern Congo – were being hunted like ‘game animals’ and eaten amid the belief that their organs conferred magical powers.
• 2008 – An International Committee of the Red Cross study revealed that seventy-six per cent of Congolese have been directly impacted by warfare, either by having family members killed and injured or being displaced from their homes.
• 2010 – Boasting a land mass of 2,345,408 square kilometres, which is greater than that of Spain, France, Germany, the UK and Ireland combined, the Congo remains potentially one of the wealthiest countries on earth due to its diamond, mineral and timber resources.
Elisabethville – where the Katangan secession had first been masterminded – is now known by its new name, Lubumbashi. It remains a wealthy mining city by Congolese standards.
APPENDIX C –
Second Armoured Car Group, Irish 35th UN Battalion, ONUC Congo 1961:
Commandant Pat Cahalane, Capt. Mark Carroll, Capt. Seán Hennessy, Capt. Frank Lawless, Capt. Art Magennis, Lt M.G. Considine, Lt Kevin Knightley, C/Sgt Dan Carroll, CQMS Johnny Hamill, Sgt Tim Carey, Sgt Jim Flynn, Sgt C. Geary, Sgt Bill Hartley, Sgt Ned Keogh, Sgt Dan Morris, A/Sgt Mickey Rowland, Cpl Stan Cahill, Cpl John Ginty, Cpl Pat Holbrook, Cpl Jim Lucey, Cpl Eddie Nolan, Cpl Michael Nolan, Cpl Tommy O’Connor, Cpl Tommy O’Brien, Cpl John Joe O’Connor, Cpl Chalkey White, Tpr J. Byrne, Tpr P. Bolger, Tpr Michael Boyce, Tpr Dan Clancy, Tpr Mick Collins, Tpr Frank Featherson, Tpr Jimmy Harris, Tpr Des Keegan, Tpr P. Lynch, Tpr Jerry Lewellyn, Tpr Bill Maher, Tpr Pat Mullins, Tpr P. Murphy, Tpr Jerry Mallon, Tpr P. McCarton, Tpr J. McAuliffe, Tpr Dan McManus, Tpr M. Nolan, Tpr Ned O’Regan, Tpr B. O’Callaghan, Tpr Tommy O’Keeffe, Tpr Con O’Leary, Tpr John O’Mahony, Tpr Paddy Quinn, Tpr Jack Shanahan, Tpr Fred Sheedy, Tpr E. Tucker and Tpr J. Walsh.
APPENDIX D – Official Defence Force classifications
Official Defence Force classifications of Ireland’s two missing soldiers, Tpr Patrick Mullins (1961) and Private Kevin Joyce (1981).
Dáil Parliamentary Debate, Tuesday 21 June 2005.
Tpr Mullins:
Minister for Defence, Willie O’Dea: ‘I am advised by the military authorities that on September 15, 1961, Trooper Patrick Mullins and Corporal Michael Nolan were killed in action in the Congo when their armoured vehicle was hit by anti-tank fire from armed elements. While the remains of Corporal Nolan were recovered, those of Trooper Mullins were not. An investigation into Trooper Mullins’ death by the military authorities at the time concluded on 29 January 1962 that he was killed in action at Avenue de Cuivre, Lubumbashi/Elisabethville, Katanga, in the Republic of Congo as a result of the hostile action outlined.’
Trooper Mullins is classified by the military authorities as: ‘Dead, presumed to have been killed.’
Pte Joyce:
On 27 April 1981, an observation post in south Lebanon manned by two members of the Irish battalion serving with the United Nations interim force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, Private Hugh Doherty and Private Kevin Joyce or Seoighe, came under attack.
Private Doherty was later found dead from gunshot wounds and Private Joyce was missing. Some equipment was also missing.
The attackers are unknown. Extensive diplomatic and military efforts to locate him have proved fruitless to date. Private Joyce is classified as: ‘Missing in action, presumed dead.’
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Broadcast: RTÉ, BBC, TV3, NewsTalk, C103FM, Channel 4 and ITV
About the Authors
Ralph Riegel:
Ralph Riegel is the southern correspondent for Independent Newspapers, Ireland’s biggest newspaper group, covering the region for the Irish Independent, Sunday Independent and Evening Herald. A graduate of DIT-Rathmines, his work has also featured in The (London) Independent, The Daily Telegraph and The Irish Examiner while he is a regular contributor to RTÉ, TV3, BBC, Channel 4, NewsTalk and C103FM. This is his sixth book. Three were best-sellers. The fourth, Three Kings, was long-listed for the William Hill 2008 Irish Sports Book of the Year and the fifth, Commando, is now the focus of a Sky TV documentary. He lives in Fermoy, County Cork with his wife, Mary, and three children.
John O’Mahony:
John O’Mahony is a veteran of Ireland’s 35th UN Battalion which served in the Congo in 1961. Having completed his army service, John became a successful cereal farmer and rose to become Chairman of the Irish Farmers Association’s (IFA) powerful National Grain Committee, taking part in EU farm talks in both Belgium and France. A keen amateur historian and meteorologist, John is now active in the Fermoy-based Post 25 of the Irish United Nations Veterans Association (IUNVA). John lives in Tallow, County Waterford with his wife, Sheila. His two sons now live in Tipperary and Oklahoma in the US.
