Simba rebellion

BelligerentsDemocratic Republic of the Congo
Belgium
United States
Anyanya
Banyamulenge militias (1965)

• People's Republic of the Congo
  • Simba rebels
    • Gbenye-Olenga faction
    • Soumialot faction
    • Kabila-Massengo faction
• Inyenzi movement
  Uganda
  Sudan

Foreign support

• Soviet Union
• Cuba
• Tanganyika
• China
• Burundi
• Egypt
• Algeria

Commanders and leaders

• Joseph Kasa-Vubu
• Cyrille Adoula
• Moïse Tshombe
• Louis Bobozo
• Frédéric Vandewalle
• Joseph-Desiré Mobutu
• Charles Laurent
• Robert D. Forman
• Joseph Lagu

• Christophe Gbenye
• Nicholas Olenga
• Gaston Soumialot
• Laurent-Désiré Kabila
• Ildéphonse Massengo
• Al-Khatim Al-Khalifa
• Che Guevara

Strength Congo-Léopoldville:
~29,000 ANC
Belgium:
350 paratroopers
United States:
128 commandos
200 Cuban dissidents
5 C-130 transport aircraft

• Unknown Simba rebels
• Thousands of Rwandan Inyenzi
• 200 Cuban and Soviet advisors

Casualties and losses Large civilian casualties, including 392 Europeans and at minimum 20,000 Africans executed by rebels. Tens of thousands killed in total during suppression of the rebellion.

The Simba rebellion, also known as the Orientale revolt, was a regional uprising which took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1963 and 1965 in the wider context of the Congo Crisis and the Cold War. The rebellion, located in the east of the country, was led by the followers of Patrice Lumumba, who had been ousted from power in 1960 by Joseph Kasa-Vubu and Joseph-Désiré Mobutu and subsequently killed in January 1961 in Katanga. The rebellion was contemporaneous with the Kwilu rebellion led by fellow Lumumbist Pierre Mulele in central Congo.

The Simba rebels were initially successful and captured much of eastern Congo, proclaiming a "people's republic" at Stanleyville. However, the insurgency suffered from a lack of organization and coherence, as well as tensions between the rebel leadership and its international allies of the Eastern Bloc. When the Congolese government launched a number of major counter-offensives from late 1964, spearheaded by battle-hardened mercenaries and backed by Western powers, the rebels suffered several major defeats and disintegrated. By November 1965, the Simba rebellion was effectively defeated, though holdouts of the rebels continued their insurgency until the 1990s.