130. Telegram From the Embassy in the Congo to the Department of State0
125. For the Secretary and Dillon. We face immediately ahead the need to make a major policy decision which is complex, full of imponderables and charged with fateful portent not only for the Congo but for Africa. It is intimately, if unhappily a part of the great-power struggle.
The Congo may be in its death throes as a modern nation. The Congo itself was never such a nation and no Congolese has any real comprehension of what makes such a nation live. They consequently do not understand that it may be dying. The 100,000 Europeans were the ones who did know but they never managed to communicate either their knowledge or their higher skills to enough Congolese to make any significant difference.
The flood of refugees now going and gone will reduce the European population to something nearer 10,000 if the worst fears of some non-Belgian observers are realized. The brutal fact is that this great and expensive infrastructure faces potential deterioration which cannot yet be predicted but might well become almost total. The next [Page 319] operation is strictly salvage. There must be an identification of what is vital, and it will be an Herculean task to save that. The less vital cannot be saved.
The present government and any that is foreseeable, has not the slightest idea of what is happening let alone what might be done about it. That has been clearly established by all who are on the scene. It does not, consequently, even know what it should ask for.
It is violently anti-Belgian. As an example of the latter and the former, members of the Congolese Cabinet are doing everything they can to convince the government that all Belgian money must be burned because it is Belgian. This is fact not fiction. Some Belgians on the other hand, particularly the military, have become completely irrational and in many instances have behaved worse than the worst Congolese.
No one Western country in its right mind would ever undertake the task of rehabilitation here nor could it possibly do it. The best we can most optimistically expect from the UN effort will be only the saving of the most essential—and the inevitable inability of any one to maintain present standards will soon make even that unpopular.
There is just an outside chance that after the present tide of panic has run out, there will be a backflow of enough Belgians to reduce the task to more manageable proportions. This will depend first upon the firm establishment of law and order not just temporarily but for the long pull. Second, it will be aided by the fact that jobs have been scarce in Belgium and will be even scarcer for those who have just gone and are now going. Third, it will require the re-establishment of some satisfactory rapport between the Congolese and the Belgians.
I do not believe the problems and the prospects are or could be at this time appreciated in Washington, London or Paris. They might be in part in Brussels. Now that this first phase of simple survival and security in Leopoldville is ending, I strongly urge that I be ordered home on two or three days consultation1 to discuss the problem as I see it before we are faced with a decision which seems to me will resolve into one of the following:
- 1.
- Go along with present UN plans and programs which will barely, if that, maintain order in the principal centers of population and will not touch the problem of preserving the infrastructure, particularly in the public and private sectors in the interior.
- 2.
- Urge and support an enormously greater economic plan which might preserve more of the infrastructure but cost many hundreds of millions of dollars and extend over years.
- 3.
- Permit the Katanga, which is viable and has emerged so far practically unscathed, to become independent and face the fragmentation of the country which might well continue.
I think I now know enough to be helpful in discussions in Washington. I think it is of the utmost importance to understand the flavor of what is happening not just the bald historic facts.
I can perhaps illustrate by saying this is comparable with the problem faced in Germany after the war and at the same time the opposite. In Germany, we had to replace the infrastructure which could and was operable by the people; here we have the infrastructure but the operators are evaporating.
The situation is ugly and imperative. The historians will assess the blame and the merit. We must now decide how to meet the present problem.
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 770G.00/7–1760. Secret; Priority; Limit Distribution.↩
- The Secretary informed Ambassador Timberlake that he agreed with him about the wisdom of early consultations, but thought Timberlake’s departure at that time might be misconstrued. (Telegram 154 to Léopoldville, July 18; ibid., Personnel Files)↩