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Besides familiarity with the region's terrain and people, the grizzled Katangese boast over a decade and a half of combat-tested savvy. They originally fought for the late Katangese separatist leader Moïshe Tshombe. After his defeat in 1963, they were forced into exile in Angola, then adopted by Portugal's secret police to fight Angolan liberation groups. Following Lisbon's 1974 revolution, which led to the dismantling of Portugal's African empire, the Katangese were virtually forced to side with Agos-tinho Neto's Marxist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola in the Angolan civil war. Admiral Rosa Coutinho, the left-leaning Portuguese high commissioner of the colony, offered them a subsidy if they would serve under Neto—and threatened to hand them over to Mobutu if they refused.
Last-week Zaïre officials claimed that the invaders were fighting under new bosses—leftist Portuguese mercenaries—and were armed with Soviet-made mortars and missiles. Meanwhile, the pro-Moscow National Liberation Front of the Congo, a Paris-based exile group, took responsibility for the invasion. Its aim, F.N.L.C. spokesmen said, was to overthrow Mobutu's "neocolonialist tyranny."
The Katangese have raised the sharpest challenge yet to Mobutu. A Belgian-trained soldier and former journalist, Mobutu has managed to unify a nation with a bloody history of chaos and tribal war. Parceling out privileged positions and sinecures to leaders of Zaïre's 200 ethnic groups, Mobutu in return demanded and got almost feudal loyalty. High-living and profligate, he tried to burnish his image as a 20th century chief by such flamboyant stunts as the "Rumble in the Jungle" between Heavy-weights Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in 1974, which lost the government $4.1 million.
Le Guide, as Mobutu is called by the
FRANCE government-run press, flopped badly in managing Zaïre's economy. Sinking millions into costly prestige projects when world copper prices peaked in early 1974, he led the nation to the edge of bankruptcy. Zaïre's copper travels 43 days from Shaba mines to Congo River ports on rickety Victorian-era railways and barges reminiscent of the African Queen. Swollen prices of bread, rice and other staples have led to widespread discontent.
Mobutu's own corruption-fueled life-style has angered many of his people. Still, le Guide gave the country a decade of stability. If his government is toppled by the Katangese, Zaïre could slide back into the butchery and division that scarred its birth.
* There are still 152 other Americans, most of them missionaries and Peace Corpsmen, in the threatened region.