First Congo War 1996-1997

Summary: The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), formerly called the Belgian Congo and then Zaire, underwent two prolonged wars involving ethnic groups from inside the country and armies of surrounding African states. The first of these wars lasted from 1996-1997 and resulted in the overthrow, after three decades in power, of President Joseph Mobutu (who had renamed the country Zaire). This war involved troops of Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Angola, and Namibia-which variously backed Mobutu or domestic opponents of Mobutu. The First Congo War ended in May 1997 with installation as president of Laurent-Desire Kabila, a long-time rebel from eastern Zaire, where he had been joined for a short time in the 1960s by revolutionary leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Kabila soon lost the support of his allies and was engulfed in the Second Congo War (1998-2003).

Note on naming convention: The country in central Africa now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo had been called the Belgian Congo from the nineteenth century until its independence in 1960 as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Joseph Mobutu, who became president in 1967 in a military coup, renamed the country Zaire in 1971. Mobutu's successor, Laurent-Desire Kabila, reverted to the name Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1997. There is also a neighboring country called the Republic of the Congo. The journalistic convention is to use the term DR Congo, or DRC, to refer to the former Belgian Congo/Democratic Republic of the Congo/Zaire, and to use RC to refer to the Republic of the Congo. Some sources use the terms Congo (Kinshasa) for DRC and Congo (Brazzaville) for RC, after their respective capitals.

The First and Second Congo Wars: During the period 1996-1997 armies from Rwanda and Uganda invaded what was then still Zaire to support the overthrow of Mobutu, along with a militia comprised of Congolese. This conflict is referred to as the First Congo War. The Second Congo War, a larger and wider conflict, began in 1998 and officially ended in 2003, although guerrilla fighting continued in some areas. The second war is sometimes called Africa's World War, or the Great War of Africa, echoing the term First World War to describe the intra-European war of 1914-1917, since it eventually involved eight countries. (See separate Background Information Summary on the Second Congo War in this database).

For seven years, from 1996-2003, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, formerly known as Zaire) experienced a series of conflicts that claimed 3.8 million lives, including many civilians who died of starvation or disease. The conflicts involved both domestic ethnic groups, particularly Hutus and Tutsis in the East, and armies of surrounding countries who aided rival Congolese in achieving and maintaining power. The prolonged turmoil is divided into two parts: the First Congo War, from 1996-1997, which focused on the overthrow of President Joseph Mobutu with the participation of the armies of Rwanda and Uganda; and the Second Congo War, 1998-2003, in which Congolese President Kabila called on help from surrounding countries to defend his regime against rebels supported by Rwanda and Uganda, in effect turning the DRC into the center of what has been called Africa's World War.

The Country: The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) lies at the center of Africa. It was long known as the Belgian Congo, having been held as a personal possession of Belgian King Leopold II, and later a colony of Belgium. It was known as Zaire during the rule of Joseph Mobutu (aka Mobutu Sese Seko) between 1971 and 1977. The DRC occupies an area of 875,000 square miles (about the size of Western Europe, or just under one-fourth the land area of the United States). It has borders with Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.

DRC is remarkably rich in natural resources, especially gold, diamonds, and coltan (used in manufacturing electronics). The area has experienced repeated civil conflict since independence, starting with the abortive bid for independence by its southern province, Katanga, in 1960 that led to prolonged conflict and eventual intervention by the United Nations.

DRC's population is estimated to be just over 66 million, divided among 200 distinct ethnic groups, many of whom speak separate languages (or separate dialects) and none of whom is dominant. Ethnic rivalries and discrimination have often been an important element in internal conflicts in a country whose borders reflect the nineteenth century colonial ambitions of Belgium, rather than population patterns of native peoples.

Combatants and Main Players: The First Congo War involved a mix of domestic groups and foreign armies. Among the major players were:

People

Joseph Mobutu (changed his name to Mobutu Sese Seko), a military officer who seized power in 1967 and received strong support from the United States and other Western countries at a time when Cold War rivalries extended to Africa. Mobutu resisted political reforms during the 1990s while heading what was widely regarded as a corrupt government. The overthrow of Mobutu-the chief element in the First Congo War-had three themes: democratic reforms, ethnic rivalries between Tutsi and Hutu in eastern Zaire, and an echo of Cold War rivalries from the 1960s. The man who replaced him as president, Laurent-Desire Kabila, had a somewhat checkered history as leader of a left-wing guerrilla group in eastern Zaire/DRC since that period.

Laurent-Desire Kabila, (1939-2001), leader of a rebel group in eastern Congo since the 1960s, led Congolese forces, aided by the armies of Rwanda and Uganda, who overthrew Mobutu in 1997. Kabila had headed the People's Revolutionary Army, a nominally left wing guerrilla force in eastern Zaire since the 1960s, when he was joined for six months by a renowned veteran of the Cuban revolution, Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Kabila spent most of his time in Tanzania. During that period his followers were reputed to deal in gold, diamonds, and elephant tusks smuggled from Zaire through Burundi. By the late 1980s his guerrilla army had all but disappeared. He re-emerged in autumn 1996 as leader of the Alliance des Forces Democratiques pour la Liberation du Congo (AFDL), a coalition of Congolese rebels opposed to Mobutu (see below). Critics of Kabila say he was a convenient choice of Rwanda and Uganda, useful since he gave a domestic face to what amounted to their foreign invasion of Zaire in October 1996. Kabila nevertheless was able to attract allies among various Congolese ethnic groups, and when anti-Mobutu forces captured the capital, Kinshasa, in May 1997, Kabila became president. He soon lost the support of Rwanda and Uganda, which tried to replace him, leading to the Second Congo War during which Kabila relied on support from Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Chad to stay in power. Kabila was assassinated by a bodyguard in 2001, to be succeeded by his son Joseph.

Joseph Kabila, son of Laurent, who accompanied his father on the march on Kinshasa in 1997, succeeded his father as president after his father was assassinated in 2001. He was elected president in 2006.

Groups

Alliance des Forces Democratiques pour la Liberation du Congo, (AFDL), a coalition of revolutionary parties in exile opposed to Joseph Mobutu. The AFDL came together in 1996 as a domestic ally of the armies of Rwanda and Uganda. Together the three forces crossed Zaire from east to west, defeating the army loyal to Mobutu and installing Laurent Kabila as president in May 1997.

National Sovereign Conference (CNS), a group of non-violent political opponents of Joseph Mobutu which began meeting in 1991 to bring political pressure on Mobutu, who was simultaneously under pressure from his Western allies to introduce political reforms.

Interahamwe, a Hutu civilian militia that had fled to eastern DRC after participating in the 1994 massacre of Tutsis. Eliminating the Interahamwe as a potential recurring threat was one of the motivations for Rwanda to send its army into DAR in 1996 in the drive to oust Joseph Mobutu.

Forces Armees Rwandaises (FAR), also called the Army for the Liberation of Rwanda (Armée pour la libération du Rwanda, ALIR), the Hutu army of Rwanda responsible (with the Interhamwe) for the massacre of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. Elements of FAR, like the Interahamwe, had taken refuge in the eastern DAR after 1994. Their presence among Hutu refugees was a source of fear for nearby Zairian Tutsi, who launched attacks on the Hutus that broadened into the First Congo War.

National Zairian Army (NZA), the army of what was then called Zaire. NZA was controlled by President Joseph Mobutu at the outset of the First Congo War.

External powers

Rwanda. By 1996 the government of Rwanda was under control of ethnic Tutsis, who had been the targets of a genocidal campaign waged by ethnic Hutus in 1994. Rwandan Tutsis were concerned that exiled Hutus living in eastern Zaire posed the threat of a recurrence of the 1994 killings. Soon after fighting erupted between Tutsis and Hutus in Zaire, Rwanda sent its army into Zaire, leading a westward march across the country that resulted in the overthrow of authoritarian president Joseph Mobutu in September 1996.

Uganda. The army of Uganda joined that of Rwanda in the drive towards Kinshasa to defeat Mobutu. In the early 1990s a rebel leader, Yoweri Museveni, seized power in Uganda with help from exiled Tutsis. Laurent-Desire Kabila participated in Museveni's rise to power, while an associate of his, Paul Kagame, became vice president and leader of Rwanda in 1994. Not only was there an affiliation between Rwanda and Uganda, but also the Mobutu government had alienated Uganda by allowing a rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army (see separate Background Information Summary in this database) to travel from its Sudan redoubt through Zaire and into Uganda.

The Issues

The principal issue in the First Congo War was the overthrow of President Joseph Mobutu, who had come to power in a military coup in 1967. Mobutu, who changed the name of the country to Zaire in 1971, was widely regarded as a corrupt, authoritarian ruler who resisted demands to share power. He had also been a firm ally of the West during the Cold War in a region that was an ideological battleground between East and West. In 1991 a group of political opponents who rejected political violence organized the National Sovereign Conference (NSC), designed to set up an alternative governing structure. Although Mobutu acknowledged the NSC, he never implemented any of its suggested reforms and, while promising elections, never held any.

Against this background of dissatisfaction with Mobutu's rule after three decades, the DRC faced an unrelated crisis between two ethnic groups, the Tutsis and the Hutus, near its eastern border with Rwanda and Uganda.

Tutsis vs. Hutus and the Rwandan civil war. In 1994 ethnic Hutus in Rwanda, just east of Zaire, launched genocidal attacks against ethnic Tutsis, killing about 800,000 people. The Tutsis eventually overcame the Hutu and drove thousands of them into exile in neighboring Zaire. There Hutu refugees lived in large refugee camps commingled with members of the Interahamwe, a civilian Hutu militia active in attacks against Tutsis in Rwanda, and the former Hutu army of Rwanda called Forces Armees Rwandaises (FAR). From Zaire the Hutu exiles continued to launch attacks against Tutsi across the border in Rwanda.

The First Congo War. Ethnic Tutsi living in the eastern Zaire province of Kivu found the presence of so many Hutus, including the two groups responsible for genocidal attacks against Tutsi in Rwanda, unsettling. In October 1996 these tensions erupted in attacks by Tutsis in southern Kivu province against the Hutu camps-in some respects a preemptive attack to avoid a repetition of the Rwanda genocide. In other respects it was an extension of the Rwanda ethnic civil war into the same populations living in Zaire.

The Hutus fled their camps. Some went east, back into Rwanda. Others, including the ex-FAR and Interahamwe, headed west, towards the capital of Kinshasa, knowing that the Mobutu government had been sympathetic to the Hutus in Rwanda. The Tutsi-dominated Rwandan army quickly joined the chase, as did the Tutsi-dominated army of Uganda, which had its own reasons to oppose the regime of Mobutu (see section on Uganda above).

At the same time, a long-time Congolese rebel, Laurent-Desire Kabila, organized the Alliance des Forces Democratiques pour la Liberation du Congo-Zaire (AFDL), a coalition of anti-Mobutu forces that in effect took advantage of the opportunity to oust Mobutu that was afforded by the Rwandan-Ugandan invasion.

In early May 1997 Mobutu left the country, and the anti-Mobutu coalition entered Kinshasa. Kabila declared himself president on May 17, 1997, bringing to a close the First Congo War.

Just 15 months later, in August 1998, rebels backed by Rwanda and Uganda began advancing on Kinshasa with the aim of replacing Kabila, thus launching the Second Congo War, which would prove to be far longer and more deadly than the first (see separate Background Information Summary in this database).

Bibliography

Breytenbach, Willie, Dalitso Chilemba, Thomas A Brown and Charlotte Plantive. "Conflicts in the Congo: From Kivu to Kabila." African Security Review 8:5 (1999). http://www.iss.co.za/Pubs/ASR/8No5/ConflictsInTheCongo.html

"Democratic Republic of the Congo." UN Chronicle. 343:2 (1997) 2p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=9709280772&site=isc-live

Mabry, Marcus and Tom Masland. "Back to the Congo." Newsweek. 129:21 (May 26, 1997( 3p.

Weiss, Herbert. "War and Peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo." American Diplomacy 5:3 (Summer 2000). http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD%5FIssues/amdipl%5F16/weiss/weiss%5Fcongo1.html