Word: kabila
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...hopeful alliance that united four African nations--Uganda, Angola, Rwanda and Burundi--with the promise of establishing a stable, democratic Congo. But the alliance, formed in 1996 to speed the ouster of longtime Congolese leader Mobutu Sese Seko, was split almost instantly by self-interest, greed and ambition. Laurent Kabila, the onetime Congolese rebel installed at the head of the new Congo government, is fighting against three of his ex-allies--Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi--in a desperate war to preserve his rule. The fighting has bled across Congo's border with Angola, and with last week's killings, there...
...Congo that Kabila inherited was in need of help. The vast river basins and dense rain forests of the Congo, a piece of land the size of the U.S. east of the Mississippi, have never been conquered by asphalt or rail ties. Steamers still ply the Congo River, the only efficient means of transport that survived Mobutu's unbenign neglect...
...Kabila meant to turn that promise into a future. Between his arrival in office in May 1997 and the outbreak of civil war last August, he changed the name of the country back to Congo (from Zaire). He brought inflation down from 900% to 5%. He attempted to build a professional army. But what Kabila didn't do was broaden his political base beyond his own tribe. And he began using arrests of politicians and journalists as a management tool...
...never had a chance," says Daniel Simpson, U.S. ambassador to Zaire when Kabila arrived. "He was a minor opponent of Mobutu who had been operating for more than 30 years in the bush. He never had an army; he never had an ideology. He couldn't delegate as President. He became obsessed with his personal security and became dependent on people from his tribe in the south of the country...
Take Laurent Kabila, dictator of the Congo. He is suspected of involvement in the disappearance of tens of thousands of innocents--far more than the worst of what Pinochet is charged with. His fate? While Pinochet was under house arrest in London, Kabila was in Paris, a guest at a Franco-African summit...