Second Congo War - Kabila's March To Kinshasa

Kabila's March To Kinshasa

The First Congo War began in 1996 as Rwanda grew increasingly concerned that members of Rassemblement Démocratique pour le Rwanda militias, who were carrying out cross-border raids from Zaire (currently known as the Democratic Republic of Congo), were planning an invasion. The militias, mostly Hutu, were entrenched in refugee camps in eastern Zaire, where many had fled to escape the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front in the aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide. The new Tutsi-dominated government of Rwanda protested this violation of their territorial integrity and began to give arms to the ethnically Tutsi Banyamulenge of eastern Zaire. The Mobutu government of Zaire vigorously denounced this intervention but possessed neither the military capability to halt it nor the political capital to attract international assistance.

With active support from Rwanda, Uganda and Angola, Laurent-Désiré Kabila's rebel forces moved methodically down the Congo River, encountering only light resistance from the poorly trained, ill-disciplined forces of Mobutu's crumbling regime. The bulk of Kabila's fighters were Tutsis, and many were veterans of various conflicts in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Kabila himself had credibility because he had been a longtime political opponent of Mobutu, and had been a follower of Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of the independent Congo who was murdered by a combination of internal and external forces, to be replaced by the then-Lt. Gen. Mobutu in 1965. Kabila had declared himself a Marxist and an admirer of Mao Zedong. He had been waging armed rebellion in eastern Zaire for more than three decades, though, according to Che Guevara's account of the early years of the conflict, he was an uncommitted and uninspiring leader.

Kabila's army began a slow movement westward in December 1996 near the end of the Great Lakes refugee crisis, taking control of border towns and mines and solidifying control. However, there were reports of massacres and brutal repression by the rebel army. A UN human rights investigator published statements from witnesses claiming that Kabila's ADFLC engaged in massacres, and that as many as 60,000 civilians were killed by the advancing army (a claim strenuously denied by the ADFLC). Roberto Garreton stated that his investigation in Goma turned up allegations of disappearances, torture and killings. He quoted Moese Nyarugabo, an aide to Mobutu, as saying that killings and disappearances should be expected in wartime.

Kabila's forces launched an offensive in March 1997 and demanded that the government surrender. On March 27 the rebels took Kasenga. The government denied the rebels' success, starting a long pattern of false statements from the Defense Minister as to the progress and conduct of the war. Negotiations were proposed in late March, and on April 2 a new Prime Minister, Étienne Tshisekedi—a longtime rival of Mobutu—was installed. Kabila, by this point in rough control of one-quarter of the country, dismissed this as irrelevant and warned Tshisekedi that he would have no part in a new government if he accepted the post.

Throughout April the ADFLC made consistent progress down the river, and by May was on the outskirts of Kinshasa. On May 16 the multinational army headed by Kabila battled to secure Lubumbashi airport after peace talks broke down and Mobutu fled the country (he died on September 7, 1997, in Morocco). After securing Kinshasa, he proclaimed himself president on the same day and immediately ordered a violent crackdown to restore order. He then began an attempt at reorganization of the nation.