A philosopher may point out that the troubles of the Congo began with the old Adam and consequently will never end.
But a historian might put his finger on a specific man and date, and hold out the hope that the troubles will sometime pass away.
The man was King Leopold 2, of the Belgians, who in 1885 concluded that he had better grab a colony while the grabbing was still good.
By force, he took under his protection, or stole, 900,000 square miles of wilderness in Central Africa.
This is an area nearly as large as Western Europe;
and it was filled then as now by quarreling tribes with no political or historical unity.
Its boundaries had nothing to do with geography or ethnic groupings;
they were determined by the points at which Leopold's explorers and gunmen got tired of walking.

The population of the Congo is 13.5 million, divided into at least seven major "culture clusters" and innumerable tribes speaking 400 separate dialects.
The religions of the people include Christianity, Mohammedanism, paganism, ancestor worship and animism.
The climate ranges from the steamily equatorial to the temperate.
The hospitals contain patients trampled by elephants or run over by sports cars.
To make one nation out of these disparities would be a problem large enough in any case;
it has been made far more difficult by what the Belgians have done, or failed to do, in the Congo since 1885.

At first the Belgian royal family administered the Congo as its own private property.
But by 1908 its record of brutality had touched the national conscience.
The Belgian government itself took over administration, commencing a program of paternalism unmatched in the history of colonialism.
One definition of paternalism is "The principle or practice, on the part of a government, of managing the affairs of a country in the manner of a father dealing with his children".
The honor of the Belgians in this matter is not to be questioned -- only their judgment.
Ordinarily a father permits his children to grow up in due time -- but when the colony received independence in 1960 the Congolese child, if one imagines him to have been born in 1908, was 52 and had until then been treated as an infant.

The Belgians were interested primarily in the economic development of the Congo, which is rich in copper, tin, cobalt, manganese, zinc, and uranium, and cotton and palm oil.
The colony was administered from Brussels, with neither the Congolese nor the resident Belgians having any vote.
The beneficiaries of this administration were a number of huge cartels in which both individuals and the Belgian government itself held stock.
In Inside Africa, John Gunther describes one of these, the Societe Generale, as "the kind of colossus that might be envisaged if, let us say, the House of Morgan, Anaconda Copper, the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and various companies producing agricultural products were lumped together, with the United States government as a heavy partner".

Had they been truly ruthless, the Belgians might have exploited the Congolese without compassion.
But they were not.
They provided a social security system which covered all their African employes;
their program of mass medical care was doubtless the best on the continent;
they put much effort into public housing.
They also instituted a ration system under which all employers in the Congo were required to furnish their employes with clothing and adequate food.
But instead of delivering the ration -- either in actual commodities or in cash -- at intervals of perhaps two weeks or a month, the Belgians felt obliged to dole it out more often.
Would not the children, if they received all their food on the first day of the month, eat it up immediately, and later go hungry?

The Belgians also placed great emphasis on education.
During the 1950s there were as many as 25,000 schools in the Congo.
But almost all the schools were primary.
The average Congolese can do little more than puzzle out the meaning of "la chatte" and "le chien" and write his name.
Some schools were technical -- the Belgians needed carpenters and mechanics to help exploit the land, and trained many.
But they did not believe in widespread secondary education, much less in college.
It was their conviction that the people should be "brought up together", a grade at a time, until in some indefinite future some might be ready to tackle history, economics and political science.
Indeed, the Belgians discouraged higher education, fearing the creation of a native intellectual elite which might cause unrest.
When the Congo received its independence in 1960 there were, among its 13.5 million people, exactly 14 university graduates.

Why did the Belgians grant independence to a colony so manifestly unprepared to accept it?
In one large oversimplification, it might be said that the Belgians felt, far too late, the gale of nationalism sweeping Africa.
They lacked time to prepare the Congo, as the British and French had prepared their colonies.
The Congolese were clamoring for their independence, even though most were unsure what it meant;
and in Brussels, street crowds shouted, "Pas une goutte de sang!"
(Not one drop of blood!).
The Belgians would not fight for the privilege of being the detested pedagogue;
rather than teach where teaching was not wanted, they would wash their hands of the mess.
It is hard to blame them for this.
Yet there were other motivations and actions which the Belgians took after independence for which history may not find them guiltless.

As the time for independence approached there were in the Congo no fewer than 120 political parties, or approximately eight for each university graduate.
There were four principal ones.
First, there were those Congolese (among them Joseph Kasavubu) who favored splitting the country into small independent states, Balkanizing it.
Second, there were those (Moise Tshombe) who favored near-Balkanization, a loose federalism having a central government of limited authority, with much power residing in the states.
Third, there were those (notably Patrice Lumumba) who favored a unified Congo with a very strong central government.
And fourth, there were moderates who were in no hurry for independence and wished to wait until the Congo grew up.
However, the positions of all parties and leaders were constantly shifting.

A final factor which contributed greatly to the fragmentation of the Congo, immediately after independence, was the provincial structure that had been established by the Belgians for convenience in administration.
They had divided the Congo into six provinces -- Leopoldville, Kasai, Kivu, Katanga, Equator and Eastern -- unfortunately with little regard for ethnic groupings.
Thus some provinces contained tribes which detested each other, and to them independence meant an opportunity for war.

The Belgian Congo was granted its independence with what seemed a workable Western-style form of government: there were to be a president and a premier, and a bicameral legislature elected by universal suffrage in the provinces.
Well-wishers around the world hoped that the Congo would quickly assume a respectable position in the society of nations.
If internal frictions arose, they could be handled by the 25,000-man Congolese army, the Force Publique, which had been trained and was still officered by white Belgians.
The president, Joseph Kasavubu, seemed an able administrator and the premier, Patrice Lumumba, a reasonable man.

Twenty-four hours after independence the wild tribesmen commenced fighting each other.
Presently the well-armed members of the Force Publique -- many of them drawn from savage and even cannibalistic tribes, erupted in mutiny, rioting, raping and looting.
Terror engulfed the thousands of Belgian civilians who had remained in the country.
The Belgian government decided to act, and on July 10 dispatched paratroops to the Congo.
On July 11 the head of the mineral-rich province of Katanga, Moise Tshombe, announced that his province had seceded from the country.
Confusion became chaos;
each succeeding day brought new acts of violence.
Lumumba and Kasavubu blamed it all on the military intervention by the Belgians, and appealed to the United Nations to send troops to oust them.

On July 14 the Security Council -- with France and Great Britain abstaining -- voted the resolution which drew the U.N. into the Congo.
Vague in wording, it called for withdrawal of Belgian troops and authorized the Secretary-General "to take the necessary steps to provide the (Congolese) Government with such military assistance as may be necessary, until, through the efforts of the Congolese Government with the technical assistance of the United Nations, the national security forces may be able, in the opinion of the Government, to meet fully their tasks."

Secretary-General Hammarskjold decided that it would be preferable if the U.N. troops sent into the Congo were to come from African, or at least nonwhite, nations -- certainly not from the U.S., Russia, Great Britain or France.
He quickly called on Ghana, Tunisia, Morocco, Guinea and Mali, which dispatched troops within hours.
Ultimately the U.N. army in the Congo reached a top strength of 19,000, including about 5,000 from India and a few soldiers from Eire and Sweden, who were the only whites.

It took the U.N. three months to bring a modest form of order to the Congo.
The Belgians were reluctant to withdraw their troops and often obstructed U.N. efforts.
The wildly erratic nature of Patrice Lumumba caused constant problems -- he frequently announced that he wanted the U.N. to get out of the Congo along with the Belgians, and appealed to Russia for help.
(However, there is little evidence that the late Lumumba was a Communist.
Before appealing to the U.N. or to Russia, he first appealed to the U.S. for military help, and was rejected.
) Lumumba further complicated the U.N.'s mission by initiating small "wars" with the secessionist province of Katanga and with South Kasai which, under Albert Kalonji, wanted to secede as well.
Meanwhile Russia took every opportunity to meddle in the Congo, sending Lumumba equipment for his "wars", dispatching "technicians" and even threatening, on occasion, to intervene openly.

But by the end of the three-month period, in October 1960, something approaching calm settled on the Congo.
President Kasavubu became exasperated with Lumumba and fired him.
Lumumba fired Kasavubu.
Control of the government -- such control as there was and such government as there was -- passed into the hands of Joseph Mobutu, chief of staff of the Congolese army.
Mobutu promptly flung out the Russians, who have not since played any significant part on the local scene, although they have redoubled their obstructionist efforts at U.N. headquarters in New York.
The Belgians -- at least officially -- departed from the Congo as well, withdrawing all of their uniformed troops.
But they left behind them large numbers of officers, variously called "volunteers" or "mercenaries", who now staff the army of Moise Tshombe in Katanga, the seceded province which, according to Tshombe, holds 65% of the mineral wealth of the entire country.

From October 1960 to February 1961, the U.N. forces in the Congo took little action.
There was no directive for it -- the Security Council's resolution had not mentioned political matters, and in any case the United Nations by the terms of its charter may not interfere in the political affairs of any nation, whether to unify it, federalize it or Balkanize it.

During the five-month lull, civil war smoldered and flickered throughout the Congo.
In February the murder of Patrice Lumumba, who had been kidnaped into Katanga and executed on order of Tshombe, again stirred the U.N. to action.
On Feb. 21 the council passed another resolution urging the taking of "all appropriate measures to prevent the occurrence of civil war in the Congo, including the use of force, if necessary, in the last resort".
Although the resolution might have been far more specific, it was considerably tougher than the earlier one.
It also urged that the U.N. eject, and prevent the return of, all Belgian and other foreign military and political advisers;
ordered an investigation of Lumumba's death;
urged the reconvention of the Congolese Parliament and the reorganization of the army.