Congo Crisis

The Congo Crisis was a period of political turmoil that began on 5 July 1960, days after the former Belgian Congo won independence, when a mutiny of the Force Publique touched off waves of violence and the mineral-rich province of Katanga seceded under Moise Tshombe. Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba's appeal to the Soviet Union for help against the secession, at the height of the Cold War, led to his dismissal, his capture, and his execution by Katangese and Belgian-linked forces in January 1961, while the United Nations deployed its largest peacekeeping operation to date, ONUC, whose own Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold died in a 1961 plane crash while trying to negotiate an end to the Katanga secession. The crisis ran through further rebellions, including the Simba uprising and a Belgian-American paratroop rescue of hostages at Stanleyville in 1964, before army chief Joseph-Desire Mobutu seized full power in a second coup in November 1965, unifying the country under an authoritarian rule that would last more than three decades.