The CIA Hated Colonialism More than Communism
"Chief of Station, Congo" and Missed Opportunities
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What was the result of the Cold War in Africa?
The turning of once successful colonies into repeated versions of Rhodesia: hellish lands characterized by alternating bouts of anarchy and tyranny.
The reason for that tragic murder of a continent is shown by Larry Devlin in his Chief of Station, Congo (I am an Amazon affiliate, and will receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you use this Amazon link or others in the article), a tale of how he acted as the CIA’s chief of station in the Belgian Congo in the years after the Belgians left, starting with days of pure anarchy immediately following their withdrawal.
What Devlin shows in the book, which is relatively well-written but utterly infuriating to read, is that the CIA that smeared the Rhodesians a decade later1 was largely acting on the same principles in 1960. That is to say; it chose to destroy “old world” rule in Africa in the name of “democracy” and “liberalism,” which in reality meant far-left tyranny that was nominally anti-USSR and utterly anti-European.
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A Pinko in the Land of Pink Gin
That state of things is what is shown throughout Devlin’s book. He insists that he was an anti-communist, yet nearly the entirety of the book is the tale of how the Congo was destroyed because the liberal American government, first under Eisenhower and later under Kennedy, decided that rule by the Belgians was unacceptable and rule by the UN was somehow better. For reference, the UN of that era was controlled by Secretary-General Hammarskjöld, a far-left Swede, and Hammarskjöld put anti-Western Indian Rajeshwar Dayal in charge of enforcing its Congo policy. So, in empowering the UN while chasing out the Belgians, America was, through the CIA, essentially backing anti-Western rule in a country quickly descending into the worst forms of savagery.
What came with that decision was a parade of horrors that, whatever Devlin insists, only strengthened communism’s grip on the region. Whereas the Belgians had built roads, schools, and hospitals in the Congo, turning it from a land stuck in a savage Stone Age into the jewel of colonial Africa, the American-enabled Congolese brought with them only ruin and destruction.
First came the pillaging that followed Belgium’s withdrawal, and alongside that came the destruction of key infrastructure, wanton rape and murder, particularly of whites, and the installation of Patrice Lumumba, a communist, as the leader of the Congo. Then came the civil wars as Katanga tried seceding and Congolese generals deposed Lumumba to install themselves, the two main historical focuses of Devlin’s book. Last came the Simba Rebellion, in which drug-addicted rebels murdered villagers, raped nuns, and generally turned what remained of the Congo into a hellhole. They were only put down by South African, Belgian, French, and Rhodesian mercenaries led by Mike Hoare and Bob Denard, and those mercenaries were soon forced out of the country by the UN, which claimed they were “racist.”
With their departure, the country soon returned to anarchy, and the remainder of its history has been characterized by communist-style state confiscation of private assets (carried out by the “leader” the CIA installed),2 intermittent civil war that has killed millions,3 and a total destruction of everything the Belgians left behind. Now it is a disaster zone of epic proportions that the Chinese are struggling to rebuild.4
Much of that occurred because the CIA, and America generally, pressured the Belgians out and installed first Lumumba, and when he turned out to be a Soviet, Mobutu Sese Seko. Mobutu was a near-communist who, under the process of “Zairisation” that followed his rise to power and defeat of the Simbas and Katangese,5 did everything from ban Western clothing and outlaw Christian names to nationalize Belgian mining companies, all in an attempt to exorcise any remnants of colonial culture from the nation. Mobutu, installed by the CIA and a friend of Devlin’s, is a focus of the book and championed throughout as just the sort of man that Devlin and the CIA wanted to rule in Africa.
Therein lies the problem: as shown through the lens of Devlin’s actions, the CIA didn’t care about ensuring Africa was ruled by those who could rule for the benefit of the natives. That would have meant supporting colonial governments like the Portuguese in Mozambique and imperial remnant governments like Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front. In the case of the Congo, it would have meant aiding the Belgians in their attempt to hold onto the Congo (Devlin freely admits they wanted to hold it for at least a century more), or at least aiding them in maintaining rule over the valuable part of the country — Katanga — when it seceded from Lumumba’s communist hell with Belgian support.
But, of course, that’s not what was done. Instead, men like Mugabe and Mobutu were installed as rulers, and they turned their countries into living hells. Not only was that bad for those living there, but also it meant communism advanced by leaps and bounds in the region…thanks largely to the supposedly anti-communist CIA.
The reason for that was ideology. As shown through the lens of Devlin’s thoughts and actions in Chief of Station, Congo, the CIA simply hated imperialism and colonialism more than it hated communism.
This is shown throughout the book by what Devlin says about the region and how he acts. At one point, for example, he admits that “The result [of Belgian rule] was that the Congolese were well-educated and trained . . . At independence, the country had one of the most literate and healthy indigenous populations in Africa.”6 But no, the Belgians can’t stay. It is a bad thing because “Brussels Planned to allow the Congolese their political freedom while keeping the military, economic, and commercial levers of power in their own hands.”7
In other words, it wasn’t results that mattered, whether in terms of outcomes for the natives or keeping communism out of the country. Rather, it was Belgium’s lack of conformity with American notions of egalitarianism8 and FDR-style anti-imperialism.9 Because the Belgians didn’t want “democracy” in the Congo, they were evil and had to go, regardless of the fact that the dictators that followed weren’t democratic either…much as in Rhodesia.10
That same general attitude reasserts itself throughout the book. Whenever the Belgians come up, the leftist propaganda of the time about empire and its supposed cruelty to natives is what is championed by Devlin, regardless of the actual results.
Decribing Leuopoldville and the Belgian legacy, for example, Devlin says: “But the city itself was a modern metropolis. The Belgians had created a model state in the middle of Africa after the avaricious monarch willed it to Belgium in 1908. Leopold's legacy was appalling: a devastated landscape of burnt and deserted villages, a ruined agriculture, a declining birthrate, and an estimated ten million Congolese dead as the result of his misrule. In the half century since then the Belgians had built roads, railways, modern cities, hospitals, schools, even a university, and developed a sophisticated government infrastructure. They had also exploited the huge natural riches of the country. For Leopold, the lure had first been ivory then rubber; for his successors, it was copper, cobalt, and diamonds.”11
That is nearly entirely a lie. The claims made against King Leopold II were a mix of fabrications and ignoring that the company he created to deal with the territory, the EIC, was attempting to stop the Congolese from doing to themselves what he was accused of doing to them.12 The butchery, atrocities, and horrors he is accused of inflicting upon them were done nearly entirely by the Congolese to each other, and it was King Leopold II’s rule that started to end those practices.13 The Belgian government, when it took over from the king, ended them nearly entirely…until decolonization and the Simbas. Similarly, the claim of depopulation is an utter lie: the population, buoyed by the better conditions, rose during King Leopold II’s time as owner of the Congo.14
The CIA ought to have known as much, particularly given that it was meddling in the region. But Devlin repeats the lies regardless, using them to justify the brutal process of decolonization, and generally ignoring his own admission that the post-king Belgians built wonderful infrastructure in the country.
That gets to the larger problem with Devlin’s outlook and, thus, the outlook of the CIA. The Belgians succeeded in the Congo. They built incredible infrastructure, including trains and roads, through dense jungles in a land stuck in the Stone Age. They created beautiful cities in a land that had none. They brought economic opportunity — the key antidote to communism15 — to a country that before and after them has been generally stuck in the economic conditions of man before the Bronze Age. But to those waging the Cold War on the side of the “free world,” that didn’t matter, much as in Rhodesia,16 because it didn’t include lip service to egalitarian mass democracy. So, also like in Rhodesia, the CIA aided in the total destruction of Belgian rule in the Congo. They were thrown out, the UN was aided in its efforts to crush Belgian-supported Katangese independence,17 Devlin resisted assassinating Lumumba despite his communist connections,18 and the Congo reverted to a hell so worrisome it sparked Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence.
That was accomplished both by the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations, both of which were, like FDR, stridently anti-colonial.19
While the results of that are obviously awful when we look back on it, they were terrible in even mundane ways at the time. For example, before the CIA got involved in destroying Belgian rule, the Congolese were instructed in school by Belgians, namely nuns and priests. Then we came in, and brought the anti-Western UN with us. It destroyed that in the name of decolonization, and the result was pandemonium, as Devlin notes:20
The UN demanded that the Belgians withdraw all their teachers. Then the UN brought in a number of teachers, though not nearly enough, to replace all the Belgians. In short order, most of these teachers left the Congo. One, a Haitian, remained in the Kasai, and the UN representative of that area, in an effort to put a good face on the problem, gave a welcoming dinner for the man. All senior Kasai ministers were present. The Kasai minister of education gave a welcoming speech, saying that he appreciated the fact that the Haitian had accepted a position so far from home. The Haitian, in responding, said that he felt that he was at home because he had traced his ancestry and was a pure Luba. With that the Kasai minister, who was a Lulua, a tribe in deadly conflict with the Luba, yelled, "Salaud!" and tried to choke the Haitian. The UN was forced to hide the man for the night and to smuggle him out of Luluabourg the next morning.
While that was a small case, there were far more disastrous incidents, all rooted in the same thing — American enabling of anti-Western elements in the Congo and UN — that occurred around the same time. But never does Devlin question decolonization or note that these sorts of things could have been avoided under the Belgians, as indeed they had been for the past century.
Instead, he just went along with it, and seems to have bought in near-fully with the idea that decolonization was the moral thing, and thus had to be inflicted upon the country. Indeed, it had to be inflicted upon the whole region. Thus, because of its hatred of colonialism, the CIA brought about cultural upheaval and communism.
In the Congo, that meant Mobuto and his campaign of Zairization that, in true Maoist fashion, eradicated Western culture and nationalized all industry. In Rhodesia, it meant genocide,21 confiscation of white property, and hyperinflation.22 The rest of the region faced similar catastrophes.
All of that could have been avoided. While the British were in a rush to shed their colonies, the other powers weren’t. The Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Belgians, along with the local South Africans and Rhodesians, could have kept their possessions and countries intact and functional. They had done so for centuries and without our agitation on behalf of their enemies, they probably could have succeeded. Instead, those were stripped from them by the usual mix of “democracy” and communist rebels, and a continent was turned into a communist-dominated hellhole.
Devlin, unintentionally, shows how and why that happened quite well in Chief of Station, Congo.
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See, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War#Background
See Empire of Dust: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2148945/
Pg 7
Pg 7
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Pg 6
Widely discussed, but here is this idea articulated at the beginning of the Cold War: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40220855 (if interested, you can create a free JSTOR account to read up to 100 articles a month)
Pg 96
Devlin notes Eisenhower’s commitment to anti-colonialism on pg 33
On page 109
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BAP should have you on as a guest