Word: kabila
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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They got everybody to the Congo peace table except the ones who really matter. After six weeks of haranguing over which rebel groups got to sign where, the document that is solemnly being called the "Lusaka Accord" bears all the big names: Congolese president Laurent Kabila and his backers in Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia, plus two rebel groups (and one splinter group) with their backers, Rwanda and Uganda, witnessing. But TIME chief of correspondents Marguerite Michaels doesn?t give peace much of a chance until all the soldiers lay their guns down. "I?m not optimistic," she says, "because there...
...Interahamwe are the Hutu militants behind the 1994 massacre of more than half a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda. They make their camps in the wilds of eastern Congo - formerly known as Zaire - wreaking havoc there or across the border in Rwanda, and current Congolese president Laurent Kabila has shown little inclination to control them. (Rwanda, the region?s military heavyweight, once backed Kabila?s rebellion against Mobutu Sese Seko because Mobutu would not control the militias; now it is backing the new Congo rebels against Kabila for the same reason.) So what happened in Zambia on Tuesday...
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni had similar designs on Congo. Ugandan troops have been supporting a second group of Congolese rebels eager to remove Kabila. Museveni insists his intentions are peaceable. As he appeared on television last week describing his army's hunt for the Bwindi killers, he was polished, global and sophisticated. Museveni takes pride in his soldiers and insists their presence in Congo is a stabilizing force. They train the Congolese rebels. They turn over any mines captured to the rebels so that they can buy the hearts and minds of their fellow Congolese...
...Museveni's generosity hasn't stopped him from exporting more Congolese gold last year than any other nation in the region--trade he swears was legitimate. Congo's civil war has destroyed what was once a promising personal alliance between Kabila and Museveni, men who seemed to embody a new kind of progressive African leadership. "Museveni is a nigger like Mobutu," Kabila says of his onetime ally. "He's an exploiter." Says Museveni: "Kabila was always weak, but I didn't know he would also be so treacherous...
...that jockeying for political and economic advantage that has splintered the central-African alliance. Oil-rich Angola, under the leadership of Jose Eduardo dos Santos, has supported Kabila since they began fighting together to unseat Mobutu at the end of 1996. Namibia, in support of Angola, has sent a small force to support Kabila. Zimbabwe's leader, Robert Mugabe, has sent 10,000 soldiers to Kabila's assistance. In return, Kabila has promised Zimbabwe a slice of Congo's economic pie: lucrative contracts with Congo's mining conglomerate and the protection of investments by Mugabe cronies...