Talk:Congo Crisis

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This is a very good article. It just needs a bit of grammatical "clean-up" here and there. There are also a few instances where the meaning is unclear, or where it seems to be tilting from NPOV (always difficult to maintain when discussing issues of imperialism and civil strife).

I changed "colonial ethnologists" to "Western ethnographers." I linked "ethnographers" the the ethnography article. My reason for changing "colonial" to "Western" is that my suspicion is that not all the missionaries, anthropologists etc. who have made ethnographic surveys in the Congo were neccessarily Belgian, or even if they were Belgian, were wholehearted supporters of the colonial status quo. Whether their grouping of peoples under the "Bangala" label was valid on linguistic etc. grounds is a different question, which should be discussed in the Bangala article. If the label was used for political reasons by either colonial authorities or post-colonial parties, that should be discussed too.

--Jpbrenna 18:41, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I stand corrected. There *is* such a thing as ethnology after all. Now the question is, did ethnographers working in the Congo or armchair ethnologists creat the Bangala concept? If this was a case of some old white guys in Belgium sitting around drinking port, creating tribal groupings, who were they? What were their reasons? What are the counterarguments? Somebody who has the requisite knowledge should start a Bangala article. --Jpbrenna 05:06, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Wow

I can't believe how much this has improved since the last time I saw it. Good work! I still think it is missing something though: how can we talk about this time period without mentioning Mike Hoare and the mercenaries, as well as the details of the Belgian intervention? Mad Mike just gets a mention in the "See also" section, and it just says only that the Belgians "intervened." They dropped an airborne brigade on Stanleyville, if I recall correctly. It says they weren't invited, but didn't the Katangese seccesionists appeal to the Belgians to intervne (and weren't they the ones who hired Mike Hoare?) And didn't Mobutu tacitly approve of the intervention? It's still of dubious legality because the sovereign government didn't invite them, but it is clear that at least some Congolese actively desired some form of intervention. It is also possilbe that there were a small number of CIA & Special Forces in the area at least observing, if not actively taking part in the hostilities. And how can we not mention the Simbas, whose attacks on foreigners and natives alike provided the impetus for the intervention in the first place? --Jpbrenna 22:45, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, the lack of info on the Simba is puzzling, since they figured so largely in the original news reports. Is the tribe now known by another name? --Mmartins 10:14, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
For those who are puzzled by what seem to be holes in the article, a little explanation is probably in order: This article was started off by User:Xed in December 2004 using sources in the SOAS library, and occasionally tweaks by myself. Unfortunately, Xed stopped editing about halfway through so the entire latter half of the article was added by users without the resources of the quality of SOAS. If you know something is missing, please add it. - Banyan Tree 14:30, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
Most of the info I added used Ch. Didier Gondola's book as a source. Will add more detail when time permits - Xed
They weren't a tribe exactly, they were a motley collection of men from different tribes who had been convinced by magicians that they would magically become lions in battle. Simba is the Swahili word for "lion", and Swahili is the lingua franca of the area. The name has been recycled several times since and now seems to be used as a generic term for armed rebel groups, whether they believe they have magic powers or not, so we'll probably have to disambiguate. Oh, and then there's the Lion King character, who's a very cute little fella. We wouldn't want to have him confused with crazed revolutionaries who eat people ;)--Jpbrenna 21:16, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] some gaps

A few important things are still unclear in the article: how was Tshombe arrested (and by who) if he was at the time the leader of a de facto independent area? And how was the Gizenga government in Stanleyville dealt with? KarlM 00:31, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

--Lubumbashi 21:02, 29 August 2006 (UTC) OK these last two issues are addressed now but there are still is a lot untidiness, parts duplicated and a few missing pieces, particularly there is not much on the Cold War politics of the crisis.

[edit] Vandalism?

I believe this article has been attacked and is now in need of some clean-up. I don´t believe Jose Luis was "gay" and that any other reference to homosexuality in this article is valid.

[edit] Too Many Flags & Commanders

This article has too many flags, commanders and countries in the infobox. It is simply misrepresenting the truth to describe Che Guevara, Kabila & Mike Hoare as anything but minor players in this history. Similarly, Cuba was not an important actor in the crisis. If anything the UN commanders, the CIA and the Soviet Union should be listed. It seems to me that this history is being influenced by those who want to see this huge civil crisis as a military thing. Thus we have lurid descriptions of operation Dragon Rouge and Noir, which should really only be footnotes to the larger history described in other pages. It was a catastrophic failure of politics which brought about the crisis and there needs to be more discussion of how it failed. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lubumbashi (talk • contribs) 23:34, 13 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Kabila

Why is Kabila listed as a combatant? He played a very minor role. I think replacing his name with Pierre Mulele would be appropriate. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MinnesotanConfederacy (talk • contribs) 03:37, 9 May 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Mike Hoare

Strange that he has an Irish flag in the box ;o)--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 09:57, 3 April 2008 (UTC)