Africa's World Wars
Congo and Africa's World Wars
Congo's Wars
The First Congo War
- In 1996 Rwanda and Uganda invaded the eastern DRC in an effort to root out the remaining perpetrators of the genocide.
- A coalition comprised of the Ugandan and Rwandan armies, along with Congolese opposition leader Laurent Désiré Kabila, eventually defeated dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
- Laurent Désiré Kabila became president in May 1997 and in 1998 he ordered Rwandan and Ugandan forces to leave the eastern DRC, fearing annexation of the mineral-rich territory by the two regional powers.
- Kabila's government received military support from Angola and Zimbabwe and other regional partners.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is slowly recovering from a conflict known as Africa's first world war, which led to the loss of some five million lives between 1994 and 2003, but many eastern areas are still plagued by violence as various rebel groups continue to operate there.
What has the fighting been about?
DR Congo is extremely wealthy - and extremely big. Similar in size to Western Europe, it is rich in diamonds, gold, copper, cobalt and zinc.
The country also has supplies of coltan, which is used in mobile phones and other electronic gadgets, and cassiterite, used in food packaging.
Unfortunately for the people of DR Congo, its resource wealth has rarely been harnessed for their benefit.
This vast country has hardly any roads or railways, while the health and education systems lie in ruins.
Instead the natural riches have attracted rapacious adventurers, unscrupulous corporations, vicious warlords and corrupt governments, and divided the population between competing ethnic groups.
In the early 20th Century, Belgian forces arrived and enslaved millions, while King Leopold ruled the country as his personal fiefdom.
During a painful independence struggle in the 1960s, the vast country almost disintegrated as regions fought each other.
But Joseph Mobutu seized power in 1965 and set about crushing internal rebellions and unifying the nation - eventually changing its name to Zaire.
However, Mobutu was soon seduced by wealth and once he controlled most of the country and achieved a level of stability and prosperity, he began using the country's riches for one thing - to ensure he remained in power.
As his rule went on, his plunder continued and the country gradually slipped out of his control.
The 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda hastened his downfall and helped plunge DR Congo into the deadliest conflict in African history.
Why did Rwanda's genocide affect DR Congo so badly?
Eastern DR Congo has porous borders.
After Rwanda's genocidal Hutu regime was overthrown, more than two million Hutus are thought to have fled into DR Congo fearing reprisals against them by the new, Tutsi-dominated government.
Among them were many of the militiamen responsible for the genocide.
They quickly allied themselves with Mobutu's government and began to attack DR Congo's sizeable population of ethnic Tutsis, who had lived in the country for generations.
Rwanda's Tutsi government started to back rival militias, fighting both the Hutu militias and Congolese government troops.
The Tutsi militias, allied to other local groups backed by Uganda, eventually marched on Kinshasa and overthrew Mobutu's government.
They installed Laurent Kabila as president and he once again renamed the country - from Zaire to DR Congo.
But Mr Kabila failed to expel the Hutu militia and tiny Rwanda, which had put him in power, soon sent a new force to oust him.
Mr Kabila then called in help from Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola, and for the next five years all six countries, and others, fought a proxy war on Congolese land.
All sides were accused of using the cover of the war to loot the country's riches.
More than five million people died in the war and its aftermath - mostly from starvation or disease.
Although the war was declared over in 2003, the east of the country continues to be unstable.
The Second Congo War
- The ensuing conflict has often been referred to as Africa's World War with nine countries fighting each other on Congolese soil.
- After a bodyguard shot and killed President Kabila in 2001, his son Joseph Kabila was appointed president at the age of 29.
- The April 2002 Sun City Agreement, the ensuing July 2002 Pretoria Accord between Rwanda and Congo, as well as the Luanda Agreement between Uganda and Congo, put an official end to the war as the Transitional Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo took power in July 2003.
- In 2006 Joseph Kabila won the presidency in the DRC's first democratic elections in 40 years.
The Second Congo War was a conflict that took place largely in the territory of Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). The war began in 1998 and officially ended in 2003 when a Transitional Government took power. The widest interstate war in modern African history, it directly involved nine African nations, as well as about twenty armed groups, and earned the epithet of "Africa's World War" and the "Great War of Africa." An estimated 3.8 million people died, mostly from starvation and disease brought about by one of the deadliest conflicts since World War II. Millions more were displaced from their homes or sought asylum in neighboring countries.
Despite a formal end to the war in July 2003 and an agreement by the former belligerents to create a government of national unity, the state remains weak and much of the eastern region continues to suffer from violent conflict. In 2004, an estimated one thousand people died every day from violence and disruptions to basic social services and food supply. Sporadic outbreaks of fighting continue to lead to large scale forced migration.