Word: mobutu
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...latest turmoil has its roots in the meltdown of a once 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...
...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...
...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...
Almost immediately his allies turned against him. The first was Major General Paul Kagame, Rwanda's Vice President and Minister of Defense. It was Kagame, with Uganda's and Burundi's support, who had chosen Kabila to replace Mobutu. In exchange, Kagame made one demand: he wanted Rwandan officers to retrain the Congolese army, as a way to help stop cross-border attacks by Congo-based Hutu warriors on Rwanda's Tutsi population...
...interesting to note that the world is crawling with former brutal dictators who are currently living it up. (My parents, for example, vacationing in Paris a few months ago, found themselves in the same hotel as former Zairan dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.) And it's even more interesting that someone who kills one person is more likely to wind up in prison than someone who kills thousands. But what's most interesting about both of these facts is that neither of them seem at all remarkable...