humour. And it hasn't been difficult.
the Coke anyway.
Meanwhile the Moroccans have been pushed out of the limelight by 'elite' pygmy bowmen their poisoned arrows. The idea of pygmies marching nTOURt jungle swigging Coke was too good to miss. And what they dip their arrows in is anyone's guess.
But, make no mistake, things are serious. The Congo National Liberation Front (FNLC) forces nave DCCn driven back by ine Moroccans. Despite the allegations of captured Katangans it seems unlikely that the Cubans whom the Moroccans are supposedly a counterbalance --nave plaved any part in ine ngnung. Certainly the US State Department The British press has tried to milk the Zaire war for its Mobutu demands that cans of Coca-Cola be included in his military supplies. The US refuses [presumably on the Goes not nInk SO.
The Zaire army's record - its WILL desertions and technical blundering - shows that it could not have -LHC fought the FNLC on Its French President sought backing for French intervention from the EEC and the Senegal conference of Frenchspeaking African countries. one was very impressed with his chest-beating but he got the backing he wanted.
Victory, however, will not be so easy. Oppositon to Moouru 1s widespread and a prolonged guerllia war is predicted. rrencn im perialism doesn't have recore in suca situations, Is receni colonial wars - in Indo-China and Algeria - have ended in disaster. France and Belgium are the pygmies of the imperialist world. Apart from economic considerations, their present junketings are meant to show a reluctant electorate at home that they are giants. Even the real giant - the United States has careful. It has learnt lessons from Indochina that Giscard has forgotten. The Carter administration UWIE is happy to give the CIA a free Giscard has hand in recruiting mercenaries but it is committed to neo-colonialism in soulnern arica, ALte momenl it will back Mobutu to the hilt but NO it will let go of him like a shot if a more favourable sents himself.
But that will be no solution for the people of Zaire. History has shown the readiness of the imperiaist powers to shitt their allegiances from the secesionist Tshombe to the centralist Mobutu. a good Mobutu must go, certainly. But so must his imperialist paymasters. history we may be allowed a little scepticism S dS0 support the FNLC has in Shaba. But mass opposition to Mobutu runs high. More than a decade of
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grounds that they're only sending 'non-lethal" supplies]. So Mobutu goes ahead and fiddles the books and buys