Crushing the Kats

There always seems to be some excuse for violence in the Congo, and the violence nearly always involves either Kisangani, the city once known as Stanleyville, or Katanga, the stronghold of exiled ex-Premier Moise Tshombe. In the past few weeks, it has involved both.

The problem began in July, when Kisangani was seized by its garrison of Katangese gendarmes, a tough and trou blesome outfit that in theory was incorporated into the Congolese National Army, but whose first loyalty had al ways been to Tshombe. To put down the rebellion, President Joseph Mobutu promised to send the gendarmes back to Katanga -- even though he feared that once they were there, the Kats might be used by Tshombe to start another civil war. Mobutu lived up to his prom ise. He made available four transport planes to fly Kisangani's 2,500 gendarmes and their families back home.

14 Beer Trucks. That was not exactly what the Kats had in mind. They had been methodically looting Kisangani's shops. To haul away their booty, the gendarmes demanded not planes but trucks. They should have left well enough alone, for Mobutu fortnight ago turned the new dispute into an excuse to go back on his word. Instead of sending them trucks, he ordered his army to surround Kisangani and crush the Kats once and for all.

It was a remarkably successful maneuver. Storming into the city, government troops killed scores of gendarmes and drove hundreds of others into the bush. Part of the Katangese force managed to escape in a column that included 14 commandeered beer trucks and all the city's ambulances, but it did not get far. When reconnaissance planes spotted it on the highway south toward Katanga last week, Mobutu dispatched troops to a river crossing 450 miles from Kisangani, where the Kats were virtually wiped out. An ambush destroyed the first trucks to cross the river, and Congolese air force planes took care of the rest, leaving the survivors to sue for peace to make their way on foot the remaining 1,500 miles to Katanga.

Diplomatic Break. Mobutu seized the occasion to launch a general political attack on his enemies everywhere. Tshombe, he claimed, was using his exile in Madrid to mount a plot against the Congo's military government, hiring mercenaries in Europe, training them in southern France, and, with Portuguese collusion, massing troops across the Congolese border in Angola.

Tshombe and the Portuguese government denied everything, but none of the disclaimers had any effect. Still ranting about "the satanic plans of the enemies of our country," Mobutu last week broke relations with Portugal and ordered all foreign countries, friend and foe alike, to close their consulates in the Congo's interior.

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