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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 25, 1977—Page 6

By B. Zabirov

Te bourgeois press wasn’t in any hurry to
protest when independent Angola was at-
tacked, and imperialism hurled armored
South African troops and foreign mer-
cenaries against the young republic. But
when Angola’s legitimate-government asked
the socialist countries for help to beat back
the aggression and save thousands of lives,
the same bourgeois press began bleating in
chorus, as if there was a conductor hidden
somewhere, about ‘‘foreign intervention.”
Also, the West European mercenaries who
fought with the phalangist forces in Lebanon
are lauded to the skies, while the Arab volun-
teers who fought alongside the left-wing
forces are some kind of monsters. There. are
lots of similar examples. Why this duplicity?

A fierce struggle for freedom, against op-
pression and lack of rights, is being fought
around the world. Those who believe that the
monopoly-controlled press is going to cover
this.struggle objectively and honestly are
rather naive.

Last spring, thirteen mercenaries cap-
tured by the MPLA were put on trial in
Luanda. The hands of each one of this bak-
er’s dozen were stained with the blood of
women, children and old people. The trial
was open, and respected lawyers from sev-
eral countriés were called in as counsels for
the defense. The court’s stern but just ver-
dict brought hypocritical complaints from
the West. Angola was accused of “cruelty”,
‘“cinhuman treatment”. The press launched a
frantic campaign demanding that the mur-
derers be pardoned and, if not, that Angola
not be admitted to the United Nations.

This ‘‘intercession’”’ is not a chance
episode. Let us go back fifteen years. Bands
of white mercenaries drenched the soil of the
long-suffering Congo in blood: In Stanleyville
alone they killed over ten thousand people.
They turned the bustling Baudouinville into a
ghost town. ‘In Baudouinville,” an eyewit-
ness wrote, ‘‘there are only empty streets,
abandoned houses with charred walls and
the nauseous smell of putrefaction. It was the
scene of a massacre. People were killed
there, and lots of them.” “Even if women
and children run up to you, fall down on their
knees and beg for mercy,” mercenary chief
Michael! Hoar instructed his men then,
“shoot without hestitation. A political set-
tlement is reached only when everybody is
extermianted.”’

* eaudabs

But come to think of it, these hangmen,
rapists and thieves were hailed as the defen-

ders of Western civilization. And every pain

was taken to picture them as ‘‘individuals’’,
“adventure seekers’’. But the most impor-
tant fact — that mercenaries have been and
are used as the striking force of world im-
perialism — was shrouded in silence.

Back in the early sixties, the American
Committee to Aid Katanga’s Freedom spent
millions and millions of dollars to arm the
mercenaries. The U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency spent tens of millions of dollars in the
Congo. The notorious Tshombe showed
newspeople photographs of the American
pilots he had recruited; on their helmets
were ‘U.S. Air Force-Vietnam’’. NATO rep-
resentative Von Mellentin, formerly one of
Hitler’s generals, coordinated the merce-
nary units. His report to a special conference
of NATO staff officers-in Flensburg (FRG)
said: “The tactics elaborated by NATO for
army units operating in the tropics were

found to be fully justified in the legionnaires’

actions in the Congo.”
©

It is widely known that in the ‘‘Biafra”
debacle the special services of the USA and
certain West European countries armed and
equipped mercenary units. It was leaked out
of the report of the special commission of the
U.S.House of Representatives for investigat-
ing the activities of intelligence organs that
the CIA had slated more than 31 million dol-
lars to arm the mercenaries and splitters in

Angola. This figure comes from official _

Central Intelligence Agency documents. Ac-

cording to the commission, the real figure is 7

at least twice that.

Imperialism often uses mercenaries in
those instances and in those “‘hot spots’’
when and where it, for certain reasons, isn’t
prepared to intervene openly. By all indica-
tion, mercenaries are slated for a big part in
‘“‘suaranteeing Western interests’ in
Rhodesia and in suppressing the liberation
struggle of the peoples of South Africa. The
Associated Press reports from Salisbury
that the Smith regime has formed special
“commando” units made up of Americans
who had fought in Vietnam, of Britons who
had been mercenaries in the Congo and
“Biafra’’, and of Portuguese who had served
in punitive units in Angola and Mozambique
and had got a lot of “‘really good experience”
there. These mercenaries had a chance to
show their blood-chilling cruelty when
Rhodesian troops recently invaded Mozam-
bique. The newly free nations are probably
going to have to work out a system of effec-
tive measures which would force the West to
stop knocking together bands of mer-

cenaries.
: —Moscow News

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