"This operation bears no comparison to anything else in United Nations history," said the U.N.'s senior officer in Katanga. Conor Cruise O'Brien was vastly understating the case. In recalcitrant Katanga last week, scattered bands of blue-hel-meted troops—Indian, Swedish, Irish—were engaged in a battle to the death with a weird and formidable foe: the troops of Katanga President Moise Tshombe, some of them Baluba warriors smeared with warpaint, led by Europeans and backed by jet fighters.
It was a war that the U.N.'s O'Brien, presumably with the full approval of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold,...
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