The civil war raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo is a heady cocktail of rebel groups and corrupt regimes, with lead players changing sides all the time. All that and the country was at one point called Zaire. And there’s a country next door called the Republic of Congo. Confused yet?

Crikey asked African Consultancy Services Director and La Trobe University Honorary Research Associate Dr David Dorward: How did the bloodshed start and who are the main players?

Rwanda

The current crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo had its genesis in the Rwanda genocide of 1994 and the insatiable global demand for cheaper computers and mobile phones. As the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) fought their way toward the Rwandan capital of Kigali in 1994, the Inyarahamwe Hutu militia, Rwandan Army and Hutu political elite fled across the border into Zaire, a shambolically corrupt state ruled by Mobutu Sese Seko.

This is Mobutu — he liked wearing spotty hats

The Inyarahamwe Hutu militia, Rwandan Army and Hutu political elite established themselves in the refugee camps around Goma in eastern Zaire, from whence they carried out raids into Rwanda in the hope of coming back into power. The refugee camps became recruiting grounds for the Rwandan Hutu exile leadership, while Mobutu’s Zaire used the international relief effort as a mulch cow to siphon off graft and corruption.

Zaire (aka Democratic Republic of Congo): The Kabila family dictatorship

The RPF government in Rwanda and its ally Uganda concluded that the only way to bring political stability was the overthrow of the Mobutu regime. Zaire had not only offered refuge to the Hutu perpetrators of genocide, it turned a blind eye to incursions into Uganda by the notorious Lords Resistance Army rebels (infamous for child soldiers and led by Joseph Kony). Mobutu also allowed the US CIA-backed UNITA rebels to use southern Zaire as a refuge in their fight to destabilise the Marxist-government in Angola.

In 1996, Laurent-Desire Kabila‘s Alliance des Forces Democratiques pour la Liberation due Congo-Zaire, with the support of Rwanda and Uganda, began a civil war that rapidly led to the overthrow of the Mobutu regime the following year.

This is Laurent Kabila

But Kabila soon fell out with his Ugandan, Rwandan and Angolan backers for his failure to address the proliferation of armed factions in Zaire. Kabila was more concerned with consolidating his position in the capital of Zaire, Kinshasa, and buying off the ethnic-based rebels on the periphery, in eastern and southern Zaire. Kabila changed the name of the country to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but only the name contained a semblance of democracy.

Laurent Kabila proved as corrupt as Mobutu, prepared to strike a deal with any exploiter for a percentage. He was prepared to support the Hutu-extremist Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) as long as they attacked his political opponents in eastern DRC.

UNITA had long funded its rebellion through the sale of illicit diamonds — so-called ‘blood diamonds’. Now the Hutu militia and other ethnic-based rebels seized control of the mineral-rich Katanga Province of DRC. In eastern DRC, local peasants were forced to mine coltan, an essential mineral used in computers and mobile phones, worth more than gold. Greed soon supplanted the quest for political power. DRC has 70% of the known world reserves of coltan.

Rwanda and Uganda became increasingly disaffected with their protégé and sought to crush their enemies in eastern DRC, allying themselves with various local ethnic-factions and thereby challenging Kabila’s authority. It soon degenerated into a civil war, with Rwanda and Uganda supporting various ethic factions in eastern DRC against the Kabila government, supported by troops from Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Sudan, each fighting in DRC in return for political and economic concessions. The increasingly corrupt Mugabe government of Zimbabwe secured control over much of the cobalt exports from DRC, which has over 50% of known world reserves.

Laurent Kabila was assassinated by one of his own henchmen in 2001 but his supporters in Kinshasa appoint his son, Joseph Kabila as head of state.

This is Joseph Kabila

UN peace negotiations

In 2002, after prolonged UN-backed negotiations, a crude coalition government was created, comprising various factions, and Joseph Kabila was confirmed as president in an election in 2006. As part of the peace accord, alien forces were to withdraw from DRC and rebels were to lay down their arms. Of course, rebels who were outside the government refused to do so, including the Hutu-extremists in eastern Zaire.

The UN sent in a peacekeeping MONUC force of some 17,000 to monitor the ceasefire, not very many considering with DRC is the size of Western Europe without modern roads or communications.

Enter the new guy, Laurent Nkunda

Laurent Nkunda is the leader of rebel National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), one of the many rebel groups in eastern DRC.

This is Nkunda, he likes wearing sunglasses

Nkunda is a DRC Tutsi who served in the RPF liberation war in Rwanda. He later returned to DRC and gathered a force of some 6000, with the support of Rwanda, to fight the Hutu-extremist FDLR, occupying parts of the DRC’s eastern province of Kivu. However, increasingly Nkunda’s objectives appear to have shifted from his self-proclaimed role of protector of the Tutsi against Hutu extremists to exploiting the coltan and other resources to demanding a power-sharing role in the government of DRC. So now it’s Joseph Kabila vs Laurent Nkunda.

The DRC-government of Joseph Kabila has a rag-tag army of 90,000, a local Mai Mai militia of some 3500 and the support of the 17,000 UN MONUC peacekeepers, albeit Kabila has been reluctant to admit an additional 3000 MONUC troops — largely from the crack Indian Army.

Former Nigerian President and UN envoy Olusegun Obasanjo has been seeking a negotiated settlement but just how many factions can the Kabila government incorporate?

The latest on the conflict in the Congo:

Congo rebels withdraw from town on Uganda border. Congolese rebels have withdrawn from an eastern border town they captured last week after a U.N. envoy told their leader they were not respecting a ceasefire, the rebels and the U.N. said on Monday. UN peacekeepers said Tutsi rebels loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda had pulled back from Ishasha, on Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern frontier with Uganda. — Reuters

Calls mount for international action in DR Congo. International pressure mounted Sunday for Europe to send an emergency security force to halt strife in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as thousands more fled fighting between rebels and government forces. An estimated 250,000 people have been displaced since new fighting between renegade Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda and government forces erupted in August. This has worsened over the past six weeks with the main eastern city of Goma now surrounded by rebels. — AFP

Death watch. A mortality survey conducted by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and released earlier this year demonstrates that this conflict is the most deadly crisis since the second world war: an estimated 5.4m people have died as a consequence of the war and its lingering effects in the last decade. Today, a quarter of a million people are on the run, almost half of them on territory under rebel control and with almost no access to aid. They need food and shelter, clean water and latrines, medical care, and education. Women and girls need protection from sexual violence, which flares up when families are forcibly displaced. — The Guardian

Two mass graves found in eastern Congo. Two mass graves containing as many as 2000 bodies have been discovered in eastern Congo, government officials said Wednesday. Justice Minister Luzolo Bambi told reporters the graves were found Saturday in the town of Bukavu in a plot of land formerly owned by a member of the Congolese Rally for Democracy, or RCD, a Rwandan-backed rebel group. At one point, the RCD controlled much of eastern Congo, but it became a political party in 2003. Many of its top leaders were integrated into the government, taking jobs as vice presidents and army chiefs. — International Herald Tribune

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