The Great African War
Congo and Regional Geopolitics, 1996–2006
This book examines a decade-long period of instability, violence and
state decay in Central Africa from 1996, when the war started, to 2006,
when elections formally ended the political transition in the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC). A unique combination of circumstances
explain the unravelling of the conflicts: the collapsed Zairian/Congolese
state; the continuation of the Rwandan civil war across borders; the
shifting alliances in the region; the politics of identity in Rwanda,
Burundi and eastern DRC; the ineptitude of the international commu-
nity; and the emergence of privatised and criminalised public spaces and
economies, linked to the global economy, but largely disconnected from
the state on whose territory the ‘entrepreneurs of insecurity’ function.
As a complement to the existing literature, this book seeks to provide an
in-depth analysis of concurrent developments in Zaire/DRC, Rwanda,
Burundi and Uganda in African and international contexts. By adopting
a non-chronological approach, it attempts to show the dynamics of the
inter-relationships between these realms and offers a toolkit for under-
standing the past and future of Central Africa.
Filip Reyntjens is Professor of Law and Politics at the Institute of
Development Policy and Management, University of Antwerp. He has
worked in and on the Great Lakes Region of Africa for more than
thirty years. Professor Reyntjens’s main research interests are contem-
porary history, legal anthropology, political transitions and human
rights, and he has published several books and numerous articles on
these subjects. He co-edits a yearbook on current affairs in Central
Africa, L’Afrique des grands lacs, which is a major reference work on
the region. In addition to his academic work, Reyntjens serves as a
consultant for governments, international organizations and NGOs,
and as an expert witness before courts in several countries, including
the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court. The Great African War
Congo and Regional Geopolitics, 1996–2006 Filip ReynTjens University of Antwerp cambridge university press
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press
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permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2009
Printed in the United States of America
A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data Reyntjens, Filip.
The great African war : Congo and regional geopolitics, 1996–2006 / Filip Reyntjens. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-521-11128-7 (hardback)
1. Congo (Democratic Republic) – Politics and government – 1997– 2. Congo
(Democratic Republic) – Foreign relations – 1997– 3. Civil war – Great Lakes Region (Africa) I. Title. dt658.26.r489 2009 967.5103∙4–dc22 2009004017
isbn 978-0-521-11128-7 hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or
accuracy of urls for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in
this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is,
or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Information regarding prices, travel
timetables and other factual information given in this work are correct at
the time of first printing, but Cambridge University Press does not guarantee
the accuracy of such information thereafter. Contents
Acknowledgements page ix List of Maps xi Introduction 1 1 A Region in Turmoil 10
1.1 Kivu: Land of confrontation 10 National context 10
Crises of identity, of land and of politics 13
The new given: Influx of Hutu refugees 16
South Kivu: The Banyamulenge 21
1.2 Rwanda: From genocide to dictatorship 23 The power base 24 The drift 25
‘Burundisation’ of Rwanda 29
Militarisation of the political landscape 31
Continuity in managing the state 32
1.3 Burundi: From putsch to civil war 34 Creeping coup 34
Extension of the civil war 39
Coup of 25 July 1996 and its aftermath 41 1.4 Regional junctions 42 2 The ‘War of Liberation’ 45
2.1 The ‘Banyamulenge Rebellion’ and the Rwandan operation 45
2.2 The other eastern neighbours: Uganda and Burundi 58
2.3 Angola enters the fray: Kinshasa in 100 days 61 2.4 Other regional allies 65 2.5 U.S. involvement 66 v vi Contents
Logistical and political support 66
Supply of material and personnel 70 Incoherence 74 Degree of involvement 77
3 Massacre of the Rwandan Refugees 80
3.1 Aborted international intervention 80
3.2 Crimes against humanity: Genocide? 87
Attacks against refugee camps and concentrations 93
Humanitarian assistance withheld or used as bait 96
Separation of men from women and children 97 Involvement of the RPA 98
Massacres of other groups 99 3.3 The force of manipulation 99
4 The Fall of the Mobutist State 102 4.1 The players 102
Laurent-Désiré Kabila and the Alliance des Forces
Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre (AFDL) 102
The Forces Armées Zaïroises (FAZ) and their allies 108 4.2 The diplomatic ballet 118
4.3 Meanwhile, in Kinshasa, the orchestra on the TITANIC 131
4.4 The new geopolitical situation 140
5 Congo: Waiting for Another War 144
5.1 The ‘liberated territories’ in the East 144
Two problems worse than before 144
Massive human rights violations 152
Practices of governance 153
5.2 The end of an alliance and the prelude to a new war 155 The regime adrift 155
The art of making enemies 164 Towards a new war 166
6 Impasse in Rwanda and Burundi 170 6.1 The civil wars 170
6.2 Political or military outcomes? 179 6.3 Justice in deadlock 181
6.4 Institutional developments and practice of governance 184
7 ‘The First African World War’ 194
7.1 From Goma to Kitona, and to military stalemate 194 7.2 Shifting alliances 201 7.3 Wars within the war 207 The Kivus 207 Ituri 215
7.4 Privatisation and criminalisation 221
State collapse and the privatisation of public space 221
Criminalisation of states and economies 224 Contents vii 8 Negotiating the Transition 232 8.1 The political landscape 232 The regime in Kinshasa 232 The rebel movements 238
8.2 The false start of negotiations: From Victoria Falls to the death of Laurent Kabila 244
Many cooks in the same kitchen 244 The Lusaka process 247
From Lusaka to the assassination of Laurent Kabila 250
8.3 Towards an imposed settlement: From the accession of Joseph Kabila to Sun City 252 A dynastic succession 252
From Sun City to Pretoria, and back to Sun City 256
8.4 Political transition in conflict 261
The bumpy road towards elections 261 The 2006 elections 271 Conclusion 279
Appendix 1: Sources on the killings of Rwandan refugees in early 1997 287
Appendix 2: Chronology 291
Appendix 3: List of abbreviations 297 References 303 Index 319 Acknowledgements
Writing a book like this is essentially a lonely business that can, however,
be conducted only with the support and assistance of many people. After
I served for seven years as Chair of the Institute of Development Policy
and Management, the University of Antwerp offered me a sabbatical year.
Without my employer’s generosity, it would have been impossible to con-
duct the research that has led to this book and to another, smaller, one.
During this period, my colleagues at the Institute have taken over some
of my tasks, in addition to their already busy schedules. I thank them sincerely for their support.
After having worked for more than thirty years on the Great Lakes
region, I have developed extensive networks of friends, colleagues and
political and social actors. They have been a rich source of information,
a sounding board for ideas and a platform for sharing analysis. I cannot
thank them individually. However, it is my pleasure to express the debt
I owe to those who have generously given their precious time to com-
ment on draft chapters, including an earlier version in French: Alison Des
Forges, Gauthier de Villers, Erik Kennes, René Lemarchand, Emmanuel
Lubala and three readers who will remain anonymous, either because
that is their wish or because they reviewed the manuscript for Cambridge
University Press. I wish to specially mention the help of René Lemarchand,
who has gone well beyond what colleagues routinely do for each other in
terms of help and advice. Without his careful reading of successive drafts
and his insightful and detailed suggestions, this book would probably not
have been published. Of course, the usual disclaimer applies.
The maps have been drawn by the University of Antwerp media service.
Craig Rollo and Stephanie Hughes, colleagues from the University of
Antwerp, have revised the language and style. Frank Smith, Jeanie Lee
and Cathy Felgar of Cambridge University Press and Kavitha Lawrence ix x Acknowledgements
of Newgen Imaging Systems have turned this manuscript into a book. I sincerely thank them all.
For many years now, my companion Greet has suffered considerably
due to my passion for Africa, and I am sorry to say that she will probably
suffer more in the future. I thank her for her patience; unfortunately, I
cannot promise that I will find more time for her.
This book is dedicated to the memory of Alison Des Forges (1942–
2009), for her friendship and her unremitting struggle for the cause of
human rights in Central Africa. Filip Reyntjens list of Maps
1. The Great Lakes region page 12
2. Zaire/DRC and its neighbours 46
3. Attacks on refugee camps (autumn 1996) 52
4. First phase of the war (autumn 1996) 56
5. Second phase of the war (spring 1997) 64
6. Massacre of the Rwandan refugees 94
7. Military situation – early 2000 200 8. The east–west divide 274 xi introduction
This book examines a decade-long period of instability, violence, war
and extreme human suffering in Central Africa. Whilst a great deal has
been written on specific aspects and episodes of the successive Congo
wars, studies attempting a global overview are almost nonexistent.1
Interpretations have considerably diverged, with emphasis put on state
failure, the resource base of the conflicts, their internal or external nature,
ideological issues both regional and global, the macro or micro levels
and the rationality or lack of it displayed by the actors. Three perspec-
tives have dominated the question of why the recent wars in the region
have occurred: the collapse of the Zairean/Congolese2 state, ‘warlordism’
coupled with plunder and local political dynamics, and external interven-
tions, both by neighbouring countries and by more distant international
players.3 A combination of these and other perspectives, rather than a sin-
gle perspective, will emerge in this book. Indeed, in order to understand
the multifaceted and complex nature of the conflicts, an eclectic approach
to factors is required; some factors occurred simultaneously, whilst oth-
ers were successive. Take Rwanda’s motives as an example. They were a
combination, changing over time, of genuine security concerns, economic
1 An exception is T. Turner, The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality, London/
New York, Zed Books, 2007. However, there is little overlap between this book and that
of Turner, which focuses on the cultural and ideological aspects of the wars.
2 The name of the country at the relevant time will be used, that is, Zaire until May 1997,
the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) or Congo after that date.
3 These perspectives are summarised in J. F. Clark, ‘Introduction. Causes and Consequences
of the Congo War’, in: J.F. Clark (Ed.), The African Stakes of the Congo War, New York/
Houndmills, Palgrave MacMillan, 2002, pp. 2–4. 1 2 Great African War
interests, ethnic solidarity and even (selective) humanitarian concerns, the
need to ‘buy’ internal elite solidarity, (military) institution building and
a feeling of entitlement coupled with a sense of invincibility against the
background of the comfort offered by the collapse of its rich neighbour.
Considered in the past as peripheral, land-locked, and politically and
economically uninteresting, in the 1990s, the African Great Lakes region
found itself at the heart of a profound geopolitical recomposition with
continental repercussions. Countries as varied as Namibia in the south,
Libya in the north, Angola in the west and Uganda in the east became
entangled in wars that ignored international borders. However, the seeds
of instability were sown in the beginning of the 1960s: the massive exile
of the Rwandan Tutsi, who fled to neighbouring countries during and
after the revolution of 1959–1961, and the virtual exclusion of Tutsi
from public life in Rwanda, the radicalisation of Burundian Tutsi who
monopolised power and wealth and the insecure status of Kinyarwanda-
speakers in the Kivu provinces – all these factors were to merge with
others to create the conditions for war. The acute destabilisation of the
region started on 1 October 1990 when the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF )
attacked Rwanda from Uganda with Ugandan support. After the collapse
of the 1993 Arusha peace accord and following the genocide and massive
war crimes and crimes against humanity, the RPF won a military victory
and took power in July 1994. More than 1 million people died and more
than 2 million fled abroad, mainly to Zaire and Tanzania. Eight months
earlier, the democratic transition had ended in disaster in Burundi: tens of
thousands of people were killed, and the country embarked on a decade-
long civil war. At the end of 1993, some 200,000 Burundian refugees
inundated the Zairean Kivu provinces, followed in mid-1994 by 1.5
million Rwandans. This was the beginning of the dramatic extension of
the neighbouring conflicts, most prominently of the Rwandan civil war.
The progressive implosion of the Zairean state, undermined by gen-
eralised ‘predation’, was a major contributory factor to this extension.
However, Zaire was also surrounded by nine neighbouring countries,
seven of which were endemically or acutely unstable.4 In a perverse cycle,
the instability of its neighbours threatened Zaire, just as Zaire’s instabil-
ity was a menace to its neighbours. We shall see the determining impact
of circumstantial alliances in a situation where borders are porous and
where actors reason using the logic of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my
friend’. State collapse opens space for very diverse local and regional,
4 I consider Tanzania and Zambia as stable. Introduction 3
public and private actors, each with contradictory interests. Such a
context favours the privatisation of public violence and the challenging of
states’ territorial spaces. I therefore agree with Nzongola , when he writes
that “[t]he major determinant of the present conflict and instability in the
Great Lakes Region is the decay of the state and its instruments of rule in
the Congo. For it is this decay that made it possible for Lilliputian states
the size of Congo’s smallest province, such as Uganda, or even that of
a district, such as Rwanda, to take it upon themselves to impose rulers
in Kinshasa and to invade, occupy and loot the territory of their giant
neighbour.”5 Others are less pessimistic. Bayart argues that, as has been
the case in Europe,6 wars in Africa might be the expression, albeit a pain-
ful one, of a process of state formation. He sees conflicts as contributing
to the emergence of ‘trickster states’, which skilfully exploit the interstices
of the global economy and the interface between formal and informal, even illegal activities.7
Be that as it may, state collapse was not the only factor. Conversely,
a unique combination of circumstances explains the unravelling of the
successive wars. The main circumstance can be found in the recent history
of Rwanda. Although it is the smallest country in the region, it is there that
the epicentre of all the crises lay. Without it, the conflicts would not have
developed to such an extent. On the one hand, the 1994 genocide is a fun-
damental reference: as a consequence of both the old regime’s resistance
to change and the deliberate strategy of tension conducted by the RPF ,
not only were hundreds of thousands of Tutsi killed, but the Rwandan
civil war also resulted in the violent restructuring of the whole region.
On the other hand, the RPF – incapable of managing its victory – chose
exclusion, ethnic domination and the military management of a politi-
cal space, a mode of management which it extended beyond Rwanda’s
5 G. Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila. A People’s History, London/
New York, Zed Books, 2002, p. 214.
6 He adds the important proviso that war has not been a sufficient cause of state formation in Europe.
7 J. F. Bayart, ‘La guerre en Afrique: dépérissement ou formation de l’Etat?’, Esprit, 1998,
pp. 55–73. For a similar argument, based on local-level politics, see D.M. Tull, ‘A Recon-
figuration of Political Order? The State of the State in North Kivu (DR Congo)’, African
Affairs, 2003, pp. 429–446, who argues that, contrary to the discourse on collapsed states,
the evidence suggests that there is a resilient (if ambivalent) attachment to the idea and prac-
tice of the state in North Kivu. I disagree, because the practices Tull outlines (the mimicry of
the Mobutist ‘state’) are precisely those that led to the demise of the Zairean state. While the
continuity between Mobutu and the RCD-Goma suggested by Tull is undeniably present, it
does not lead to state formation, but rather to its collapse. 4 Great African War
borders. Encouraged by its moral high ground and by the ineptitude of
the so-called international community,8 the new regime explored the limits
of tolerance, crossing one Rubicon after another, and realised that there
were none. (Military) success is intoxicating: the Rwanda Patriotic Army
(RPA ) went from war to war, and from victory to victory (from 1981 to
1986 on the sides of Museveni in Uganda, from 1990 to 1994 in Rwanda,
from 1996 to 1997 in Zaire, though not in the Democratic Republic of
Congo [DRC] after 1998). The status of regional superpower acquired
by this very small and very poor country is truly astonishing, and it was
obtained through the force of arms, which was allowed to prevail because
of the tolerance inspired by international feelings of guilt after the geno-
cide. Paraphrasing what was said in the late 19th century about Prussia,
Rwanda became an army with a state, rather than a state with an army,
and it emerged as a major factor of regional instability.
This book attempts to present a synthetic overview and analysis of
the complex and violent evolution of Zaire/Congo in the regional set-
ting, between the beginning of the first war in 1996 and the elections of
2006 that marked the formal end of the transition. Given the length of
this period and the vast amount of empirical data, this book cannot go
into great detail. It does, however, provide a broad map for understand-
ing, with references for further study. The focus is on the ‘small’ Great
Lakes region, with Rwanda, Burundi and Kivu at the centre. However,
successive wars have entailed a considerable geopolitical extension of
this area, so much so that the notion of the ‘greater Great Lakes region’
has emerged. As many as eleven ‘core countries’9 participated in the con-
ference on peace, security and development in the Great Lakes region,
which was held in Nairobi at the end of 2006. Although focusing on the
smaller region, this book will also take into account wider developments where necessary.
A macro perspective has been adopted. This does not mean that the
importance of local-level dynamics should be underestimated. On the
8 I use the expression ‘so-called’, because the ‘international community’ does not really
exist. Is it its institutional translation, namely the United Nations? Or does it refer to
specific countries with a particular interest in a given situation or the press or vocal non-
governmental organisations (NGOs) attempting to influence international public opinion?
As can be seen in the situation analysed here and elsewhere in the world, the international
community is all of these, and the notion lacks clarity and allows the actors to escape
their responsibilities. However, after this caveat, the expression will be used frequently throughout this book.
9 Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, the DRC, the Republic of Congo, Kenya,
Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. Introduction 5
contrary, these dynamics are important in order to understand the situation
fully, and they are both under-researched and highly relevant from the
perspective of human agency and suffering. Moreover, there is no strict
dividing line between the international, regional and national levels on the
one hand, and the local level on the other: macro actors interact with local
forces, while local actors interpret larger dynamics and enlist the support
of macro players. Autesserre shows the joint production of violence due to
the interaction of local, national and regional motivations: “[L]ocal vio-
lence was motivated not only by top-down causes (regional or national),
but also by bottom-up agendas, whose main instigators were villagers,
traditional chiefs, community chiefs, or ethnic leaders.”10 Although play-
ers external to the local arena feature prominently in this book, this does
not suggest that the Congolese were passive objects at the receiving end
of events. All the actors, including many Congolese, have exercised var-
ious degrees of agency and have engaged in violence and plunder, and,
in Taylor’ s words, they were “not simply automatons carrying out the
wishes of outside forces.”11 As an issue of Politique Africaine on ‘the war
from below’12 clearly documents, local players were actively engaged in
the violence, sometimes in a ritual fashion; marginalised groups actively
seized the opportunities to renegotiate their status and/or to gain access to
resources; ‘civil society’ and new political actors found their way into the
system; and entrepreneurs of insecurity at both the micro and macro levels
fully exploited the possibilities offered by instability, war, statelessness,
and social, economic, and political reorganisation. In order to address the
micro level, brief reference will be made to the rare studies that are avail-
able, such as those by Vlassenroot and Raeymaekers .
Chapter 1 examines the premises of the extreme violence that has cost
the lives of millions of people. While Rwanda, Burundi and Kivu have
been hotbeds of instability for decades, the events in Burundi and, more
so, in Rwanda in 1993–1994 have been fundamental accelerators. The
enormous flows of refugees, among whom there were many ‘refugee-
warriors’, in a context of ‘transborderness’, the conclusion of alliances
and the absence of a functioning state in Zaire, transformed domestic
civil wars into a regional war in 1996, and into a continental one in 1998.
10 S. Autesserre, Local Violence, International Indifference? Post-Conflict ‘Settlement’ in the
Eastern D.R. Congo (2003–2005), Ph.D. Dissertation, New York University, September 2006, p. 298.
11 I. Taylor, ‘Conflict in Central Africa: Clandestine Networks and Regional/Global Con-
figurations’, Review of African Political Economy, 2003, No. 95, p. 46.
12 RDC, la guerre vue d’en bas, Politique Africaine, No. 84, December 2001. 6 Great African War
Chapter 2 analyses the first war. Without entering into the military details,
the role played by national, regional and international players will be
analysed. Chapter 3 studies the ‘collateral damage’ inflicted on hundreds
of thousands of Rwandan refugees, who were massively slaughtered by
the Rwandan army, whilst a divided international community turned a
blind eye to their fate. Chapter 4 analyses the fall of the Mobutist state,
amid the hypocrisy and ineptitude of both the international community
and the Zairean political class. Chapters 5 and 6 study the inter-bellum, a
period which contained all the seeds of the new war that started in August
1998. Chapter 7 addresses the dialectics of continental war. Because of
shifting alliances and the rallying of regional powers behind the Kinshasa
regime, contrary to the first war, the outcome was not overthrow but
military stalemate, thus leading to a fragile political settlement. How this
settlement came about is the subject of the final chapter (Chapter 8).
This book does not have one particular thread other than to attempt
to offer an orderly presentation of a very complex episode in the region’s
troubled history. A number of key dimensions are analysed. They have
not operated in isolation: rather, there is a logical sequence between them,
and they acted against the background of a failed state in Zaire/Congo.
The overarching one is the unfinished Rwandan civil war, exported in
1996, and again in 1998, to the DRC. It was at the core of the succes-
sive wars and it is going on up to the present day through the presence
of the Hutu rebels of the Forces démocratiques pour la libération du
Rwanda (FDLR ) and Rwandan support for Congolese Tutsi renegade
General Laurent Nkunda . A second recurring factor lies in the politics
of identity in Rwanda, Burundi and eastern DRC. The Congolese Tutsi
Banyarwanda (or Kinyarwanda-speakers) are torn between their local
and national allegiance on the one hand, and their ethnic and trans-
boundary loyalty on the other, with the latter offering (the illusion of)
protection and being a threat at the same time. The interlocking con-
flicts allowed ethnic entrepreneurs to mobilise identities across boundar-
ies, thus giving rise to instant ‘ethnogenesis’ under the form of a divide
between ‘Bantu’ and ‘Hamites’. Thirdly, at the regional level, the shifting
alliances produce an unpredictable and constantly evolving geopolitical
landscape, where players engage in cost–benefit analyses and, as previ-
ously stated, adhere to the logic of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’.
Both these traits instill a strong element of ‘realism’ and of ‘rationality’
of sorts in the calculations, at least in the short term. International play-
ers, the United States and France in particular, functioned very much in
the same vein during the first war, though much less during the second Introduction 7
war, by which time the magnitude of Pandora’s box had become clear.
A fourth dimension relates to the humanitarian fallout. Wars are always
costly in terms of (mainly civilian) lives lost, but the first war was marked
particularly by the massive atrocities committed by the RPA against
civilian Hutu refugees, while the second war caused the death of millions
of Congolese, particularly in Ituri and the Kivu provinces. Although the
International Criminal Court (ICC) has indicted a few Ituri warlords and
former Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba (for crimes committed in the
Central African Republic), these crimes have been left largely unpun-
ished. A fifth dimension concerns a consequence of the combination of
weak Zairean/Congolese statehood and the strategies developed by local
and regional entrepreneurs of insecurity. This combination has allowed
profoundly privatised and criminalised public spaces and economies
to emerge. These are linked to the global economy but largely discon-
nected from the state on whose territory they function. These networks
of violence and accumulation can also be found in vulnerable peripheries
elsewhere in the world. A final dimension shows the ineptitude of classical
international diplomacy, despite the recent rhetoric on conflict resolution,
peace-building and the duty to intervene and protect. Local and regional
players, be they state or non-state, seized the initiative and largely pre-
vailed because they had the advantage of being on site and not hindered
by considerations of international (humanitarian) law. During the second
war, regional powers, South Africa in particular, imposed a settlement
and, together with international players, put the DRC under a de facto
trusteeship and imposed elections on a reluctant domestic political class.
The externally induced nature of the transition is also its weakness.
As a complement to the existing literature, this book seeks to provide an
in-depth analysis of concurrent developments in six realms: Zaire/DRC,
Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and the African and international contexts. By
adopting, as far as possible, a non-chronological approach, the dynamics
of the inter-relationships between these realms become apparent. This
allows the discussion of developments in different places and at different
levels and times not as being peripheral to the war(s), but as a consistent and concurrent whole.
A chronology is provided at the end of the book, but, given the
complexity and abundance of events, a brief timeline is proposed here to
assist the reader. After the genocide and the overthrow of the Rwandan
Hutu-dominated regime in July 1994, 1.5 million Hutu refugees settled
just across the border in Zaire. Among them were the former government
army, the Forces armées rwandaises (FAR ), and militia. They launched 8 Great African War
cross-border raids and increasingly became a serious security threat to
the new regime, dominated by the mainly Tutsi RPF. Under the guise
of first the ‘Banyamulenge rebellion’ and later the ‘AFDL rebellion’, the
RPA attacked and cleared the refugee camps during the autumn of 1996.
Having security concerns similar to those of Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi
joined from the beginning, to be followed by a formidable regional coali-
tion intent on toppling Mobutu . In May 1997, Laurent Kabila seized
power in Kinshasa. During the latter half of 1997, relations between the
new Congolese regime and its erstwhile Rwandan and Ugandan allies
soured rapidly. In August 1998, Rwanda and Uganda again attacked, and
they did so once more under the guise of a ‘rebel movement’, the RCD
(Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie), which was created in
Kigali. The invading countries expected this to be a remake of the first
war, only much faster this time. The reason for this failing to occur was
the result of a spectacular shift of alliances, when Angola and Zimbabwe
sided with Kabila against their former allies Rwanda and Uganda. This
intervention made up for the weakness of the Congolese army, thus ensur-
ing a military stalemate along a more or less stable frontline that cut the
country in two. Considerable pressure from the region led to the signing
of the Lusaka Accord in July 1999. However, Laurent Kabila blocked its
implementation, and only after his assassination and succession by his
son Joseph in January 2001 was the peace process resumed. Again under
great pressure, by South Africa in particular, and after cumbersome nego-
tiations, the Congolese parties signed a ‘Global and All-Inclusive Accord’
in December 2002. It took another three-and-a-half years to implement
the accord, along a bumpy road replete with incidents, obstructions, nego-
tiations and renegotiations, and constantly threatened by the resumption
of the war. An informal international trusteeship, supported by a large
U.N. peacekeeping force and also by the international and Congolese
civil society, imposed elections on very reluctant political players. These
took place in July–October 2006, in an overall free and fair fashion, and
were won by Joseph Kabila and his party PPRD. Kabila was sworn in
in December 2006, both houses of parliament were installed in January
2007, and a new government was formed in early February, thus formally ending the transition.
A final introductory word must be said about sources. As this is a book
on contemporary history, much of the material used is ‘grey’, in some
cases oral, and contemporary to the events it addresses. This sort of mate-
rial is often partisan, serving a political, ideological or personal cause,
and untested by previous research. The advantages of such documents