Word: congoes
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With Congolese rebels reportedly only days away from seizing power from President Laurent Kabila, the man they installed in office 15 months ago, the question wasn't "Who will be the new President of the Congo?" but rather, "What does the Vice President of Rwanda want?" That man--Paul Kagame, who is also the Rwandan Minister of Defense--is considered to be the mastermind behind both President Mobutu Sese Seko's removal from power in 1997 and what looks to be Kabila's political demise. What Kagame seems to want is a loose federation of autonomous regions based on ethnicity...
...agenda except power," says TIME reporter Clive Mutiso. "He spent almost 30 years in opposition and Mobutu's demise took him completely by surprise. Once he achieved power he didn't know what to do with it." It was his failure to clamp down on Hutu rebels using eastern Congo as a base from which to attack Rwanda that prompted Kabila's erstwhile sponsors to seek his ouster. "When Kabila last week began recruiting 12-year-olds to fight off these seasoned, well-trained, well-equipped fighters, it was clear that he had little chance of holding the capital," says...
...Kabila's failure to stop attacks on Rwanda by Hutu militants operating out of Congo angered his erstwhile sponsors, but the last straw came when Kabila ordered Rwandan troops out of the capital and his supporters began attacking Tutsi civilians. "This is an extremely emotive issue for the Rwandans and Burundians given the recent genocide," says Mutiso. "Once Kabila's government began whipping up anti-Tutsi sentiment, Rwanda felt compelled to act." With the battle lines drawn by Kabila's anti-Tutsi purge, Congo's president may wind up with plenty of time to mull over the maxim that...
Armed rebellion in the Congo may be a sign that the powerful neighbors who swept President Laurent Kabila to power 18 months ago have lost patience with him. The current conflict appears to stem from the fact that Kabila has been unable to thwart rebel guerrillas who've been operating from the Congo, says TIME correspondent Marguerite Michaels. Indeed, in April 1997 Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni told Michaels that if Kabila failed to stop rebels from crossing his borders to attack Rwanda and Uganda, "the regional alliance that brought Kabila to power would remove him just as easily...
...Rather than seek to install a new leader in the capital, however, the Ugandans and Rwandans would this time be more likely to simply take control over the parts of Congo immediately across their borders. Either way, that's bad news for a president whose power was almost entirely borrowed from the neighbors...