A Nation in Ruins

The rebellion that brought Laurent Kabila to power in May 1997 unfolded in a nation staggered by three decades of corruption and repression.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly known as Zaire) is a shambles. Following the 32-year rule of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, the nation lacks a competent civil service, and its economy is in ruins due to government malfeasance and poor planning. Although the country is potentially one of the richest on the African continent, with lucrative oil fields and abundant mineral deposits, Congo needs hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to feed its rapidly growing population of 46 million people and to rebuild its decrepit network of roads, utilities and communications.

During the Cold War, Mobutu was a pampered client of the United States, which welcomed a willing bulwark against communism in a nation bordering nine other countries. Until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1990, when Mobutu’s usefulness ended, Washington supplied him with arms and aid and largely ignored the pillaging of resources and violations of human rights.

While opposition groups, including Laurent Kabila’s Parti de la Révolution Populaire, mounted armed challenges, Mobutu survived by tightly controlling the central bank, army and security police. The president also was skilled at dividing his enemies by inciting violence among the more than 200 tribes in Zaire. But it was ethnic tension that ultimately proved Mobutu’s undoing, when Hutu and Tutsi tribal warfare spilled into Zaire from neighboring Rwanda.

In 1994, after Hutu militants killed some 500,000 Tutsis, Tutsi rebels seized control of the Rwandan government. One million Hutu civilians fled to refugee camps in Zaire, where the ousted Hutu leaders eventually formed an alliance with the Mobutu government. In late 1996, the Tutsi-led Rwandan government furnished supplies and troops to Kabila. As his forces swept across Zaire, they allegedly exacted a horrific price. Among the reported atrocities were mass killings of Hutu refugees living in tent cities.

For months in 1997, Kabila’s government blocked U.N. inspectors from areas where massacres were said to have occurred. Kabila’s government is still obstructing the investigation, the U.N. team says. And the bloodshed continues. Members of Mobutu’s defeated army have joined with Rwandan Hutu still in Congo for new attacks on the Tutsi, prompting Kabila to dispatch thousands of troops to eastern Congo to defend the Tutsi. Segments of those forces stand accused of committing a new massacre of civilians in February.