Congo - The Country

It's hardly surprising that Laurent Désiré Kabila and the late Mobutu Sese Seko (born Joseph Désiré Mobutu) share the same middle name. Leaders of Africa's dark heart since the 19th century raped this lush, mineral-rich region with impunity, turning what is potentially the richest African nation into a stinking cesspool of squalor and greed. The media predicted a new era of stability for the Congo, but history has more clout than optimism.

Like a child born prematurely, Zaire became the Democratic Republic of Congo on May 16, 1997, after a seven-month pregnancy. The "pregnancy" in this case was brutal, short-term insurgency led by veteran guerrilla Kabila, who swept his ragtag rebel army westward to Kinshasa and toppled longtime dictator Mobutu in a mere seven months. For Mobutu, the end was not a pretty picture. He suffered from a wicked case of prostate cancer (and some say AIDS). But the real cancer that killed Joe Mobutu was born of 32 years of greed, corruption, brutality, ethnic hatred and chaos. (CIA-installed Mobutu, a onetime key U.S. ally, plunged the former Zaire into despair and unimaginable poverty during his three-decade rule, amassing for his own coffer of a fortune in diamonds (US$4 billion) to make him one of the richest people in the world.

The Democratic Republic of Congo should be the envy of Africa. Twice the size of Texas, it is the African continent's third-largest country, after Sudan and Algeria. It boasts fertile soil, vast mineral wealth and the world's eighth-longest river. This natural force is powerful enough to provide electricity for the entire African continent. Instead, its 44 million people are among the poorest in the world, and among the world's most likely to hack each other to pieces.

There is no other country on the continent that more typifies the deep, tormented core of darkest Africa. The Portuguese first poked around the area in the 15th century, but it was the Belgians who began the plunder in earnest. Belgian King Leopold colonized Congo in the 19th century and duped his stronger European rivals into thinking his sortie into Africa was simply an honorable humanitarian mission. Instead, he made the Belgian Congo his personal treasure chest, amassing a fortune in diamonds and rubber plantations.

His employees were slaves, whose hands and feet he had cut off as punishment for not meeting quotas. One interesting twist is that Leopold made the Congo his own personal property. Likewise, Congo's natural resources and a healthy dose of Western aid made Mobutu one of the world's richest men. How honest is Kabila? A good litmus test will be the $615.5 million the government made off diamonds in 1998.

Joseph Conrad based his famous tale of depravity and corruption on this dying, diseased land when it was called the Belgian Congo. It is hot, violent and dark. Congo is everyone's favorite hellhole-corrupt, fetid, dangerous and deadly. Whether it's the bloodshot-red eyes of your first customs inspector or the apocalyptic way the earth reclaims the symbols of civilization, you will always remember your first trip to the dark heart of Africa: abandoned bulldozers, wooden houses, a sense of carnivorous danger. So into this history of greed, depravity and corruption comes Marxist, former terrorist and Tutsi-backed Laurent Kabila. When 1.2 million Hutu refugees streamed into northeastern Congo (then Zaire), they joined a substantial number of former Rwandan Hutu soldiers and government officials already there. From their makeshift camps in Congo they began staging raids against the then Tutsi Patriotic Front, which controlled Rwanda. In July 1996, the killing of Tutsis spread from Rwanda to Congo.

This was when Paul Kagame (see "Rwanda, Players") put together and trained 2,000 Tutsi fighters from Zaire and sent them back into their homeland to resist the Zairean attempt to oust all Tutsis from Zaire.

Instead of a bloodbath, the Zairean soldiers fled, leaving a curious power vacuum in Kivu province. Realizing that he could not just take over Zaire, the Rwandan Kagame dialed up Uganda leader Yoweri Museveni (who had supported Kagame's fight to oust the anti-Tutsi government in Rwanda in the early '90s). Museveni suggested that his old bushfighter pal, Kabila, would be an ideal next-door neighbor for Rwanda and Uganda. So Kagame faded away and, in two weeks, Kabila-a low-budget rebel who was visited (and dumped) by Che Guevara in the 1960s but who couldn't get arrested for jaywalking in Kinshasa-now was the leader of a revolution, thanks to Kagame, Museveni and, of course, the CIA.

The Name Game

Many people are confused by the names given to this festering region. In 1483, Portuguese Admiral Diago Cao arrived at the mouth of a large river. He asked the locals who said "Ndazi" (river) which the Portuguese misheard as Zaire. Since the Portuguese had named the river Zaire they automatically called anything upriver or in the basin Zaire. In November 1908, the Belgian parliament changed the name to the Belgian Congo as a warning to other colonial predators. Half a century later in 1960, independence brought the name Republic of Congo, when the politicians had enough time to come up with a constitution and create 21 autonomous provinces. In 1964, it was renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The fact that there was another country peopled by the Bakonga tribe didn't matter. It was called Congo (Brazzaville) vs. Congo (Kinshasa). Mobutu not only changed his name but decided to create the Republic of Zaire to shift the focus off of the Bakonga tribe. After all, they just lived around the mouth of the river. Meanwhile, commie Kabila kept fighting for the "Democratic" Republic of the Congo even though he had no intention of holding democratic elections and was not a Bakonga by birth.

But Kabila did an about-face on his buddies. He sacked his Tutsi government ministers and did nothing about the Hutu rebels using Congo as a base for attacks on Uganda and Rwanda. So it came as little surprise when Rwandan and Ugandan forces showed up in Congo to help a new group of rebels-the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), or Congolese Democratic Coalition (CDC)-take a whack at Kabila. Then it became a game of musical chairs. Shortly after the CDC insurrection was launched in the east in August 1998, no fewer than six African nations had taken sides and the war was on. A year later, it had dissolved into a bloodbath of attrition, with the rebels in control of the eastern 50 percent of the country and swinging their sights at Congo's diamond mines.

The objects of their own Desire.