Congo was at last being set free from Belgium–1 of 17 countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. Just days after the handover, however, Congo's new army mutinied, Belgian forces intervened, and its leader Patrice Lumumba turned to the United Nations for help in saving his newborn nation from what the press was already calling "the Congo Crisis." Dag Hammarskjöld, the tidy Swede who was serving as UN secretary-general, quickly arranged the organization's biggest peacekeeping mission to date. But chaos was still spreading. For the Congolese people, the events of 1960-61 represented the opening chapter of a long horror story. For the U.S. government, however, they provided a playbook for future interventions.