21.10.08 How to Become an Expert on the Congo in Just Five Minutes a Day (Kate Cronin-Furman)

Well, never fear! "WrongingRightsNotes™ – First and Second Congo Wars" (yes, I was calling them CliffsNotes before,
but then I realized, that shit is trademarked), and the much needed
appendix to the new edition, "Yes, They Ended a While Ago, But It's
Still an Issue and Here's Why" is here!

So, down to business.
The world said "someone really ought to do something," then decided to
go out for Thai food as 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda
during the spring and summer of 1994. Here's what happened next:

• Members
  of the Hutu militias responsible for the Rwandan genocide decide they'd
  be much more comfortable if they had a couple million of their
  countrymen between them and the advancing RPF forces, craftily spark
  general panic of retaliatory genocide, prompt mass militia-disguising
  Hutu flight into neighboring Zaire (now DRC).
• Militias hidden among fleeing Hutu civilians join refugees in what UN Special Rep. Shahryar Khan describes as "a revision of hell." Over-crowding, disease, and inadequate aid lead to the deaths of over 50,000 people in the camps in mid-1994.
• Massive
  influx of aid leads to stabilization of the humanitarian situation,
  gives Hutu militias the opportunity to reorganize, take control of the
  camps, begin launching attacks on Rwandan Tutsis and the Banyamulenge
  (Congo's Tutsi group).
• President of Zaire Mobuto Sese Seko looks other way, hums loudly as militias ship arms into the camps.
• Humanitarian
  aid groups supplying the camps ask themselves if they really want their
  delicious Meals, Ready to Eat in the bellies of genocidaires, begin
  cutting off aid.
• Global community, having not learned its
  lesson, ignores requests from UN for peacekeepers to separate out
  militias from genuine refugees in the camps.
• Rwanda, pissed off at UNHCR for feeding its enemies, begins to arm the Banyamulenge.
• The
  vice-governor of North Kivu decides in October of 1996 that it's time
  for things to go from bad to worse, orders Banyamulenge out of the
  country.
• All hell breaks loose. Banyamulenge, well-stocked with Rwandan-supplied arms, rebel.
• A
  seemingly already-prepared Laurent Kabila emerges as head of an
  surprisingly well-organized new rebel group incorporating the
  Banyamulenge militias called the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the
  Liberation of the Congo (ADFL). Mystery is later cleared up when Rwanda
  and Uganda admit: "Oh yeah, we totally orchestrated that whole thing."
• As
  the ADFL sweeps through the Kivus clearing the camps, the Hutu militias
  decide it's time for Operation Massive Human Shield: Phase 2 and push
  hordes of long-suffering refugees ahead of them from camp to camp.
• Rwandan
  and Ugandan troops appear on the scene, assist ADFL as it decimates
  Hutu forces and Mobutu's army. Angola, Burundi, and some Sudanese
  rebels show up for the party as well. ADFL insists that this was
  accomplished sans any incidental massacring of civilians; demographic statistics and eye witness accounts suggest otherwise.
• ADFL, with Kabila at its head, begins march / amble to Zairian capital Kinshasa. Mobutu's government insists that everything is FINE, thank you very much.
• Mobutu
  gives up and flees the country in May 1997. Kabila declares victory,
  appoints himself President and announces that he never liked the name
  "Zaire" anyway. Proving that even corrupt warlords have a sense of
  humor, country is renamed the "Democratic Republic of the Congo."

This
concludes our discussion of the First Congo War. Stay tuned for
tomorrow's installment "the Second Congo War," in which Rwanda and
Uganda have second thoughts about their hand-picked stooge, and
virtually every country in Africa decides to field an army.