ABSTRACT
United Nations involvement with central Africa began with the operation in the Congo in 1960, its first peacekeeping venture in Africa. In the intervening period the Congo had undergone two name changes, several more changes of regime and an unending ebb and flow of political and inter-ethnic violence. The United Nations operation in the Congo known as 'ONUC', an acronym of its French initials, Operation des Nations Unies au Congo began in 1960. The Congo's own colonial history had been a complicated one. It had also, in a number of respects, been a particularly disgraceful one. The area's first European contacts had been with the Portuguese, who, at the end of the fifteenth century, were ranging the coasts of Africa in pursuit of new sea-routes and way-stations for the trade with Asia. The 25,000-strong paramilitary Force Publique of the colonial period was in the process of being transformed into the army of the new state the Armee Nationale Congolaise (ANC).
