The First Congo War, lasting from November 1996 to May 1997, was a revolution in Zaire that replaced President Mobutu Sésé Seko, a decades-long dictator, with rebel leader Laurent-Désiré Kabila. Destabilization in eastern Zaire that resulted from the Rwandan genocide was the final factor that caused numerous internal and external actors to align against the corrupt and inept government in Kinshasa. The new government renamed the country the Democratic Republic of the Congo, although it brought little true change. Kabila alienated his allies and failed to address the issues that had led to the war, ultimately allowing the Second Congo War to begin in 1998, mere months after coming to power. In fact, some experts prefer to view the two conflicts as one war.
Read more about First Congo War: Banyamulenge Rebellion, 1996, 1997, Aftermath
Famous quotes containing the word war:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)