Word: rebels
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Much of that will depend on Kabila's eldest son, Major General Joseph Kabila, 31, who should be sworn in as President this week. A shy nonsmoker and teetotaler, Joseph is unpopular with many Congolese. He grew up in East Africa during his father's rebel days and reportedly prefers English and Kiswahili to French and Lingala, the most widely spoken Congolese language. Joseph takes charge of a country in name only. The war that began as a rebellion in the east of the country in August 1998 quickly became an African scramble for Africa. Rwanda and Uganda, which...
...deities. To the Thais, they were demons. But when they staggered down from the mountains of Burma (now known as Myanmar) at dusk last Tuesday, Johnny and Luther Htoo bore neither miracles nor M-16s, just Bibles in their knapsacks. The tiny teenage twins and leaders of the mysterious rebel force known as God's Army approached a company of Thai soldiers and asked for sanctuary. Whisked to a police compound in the nearby town of Suan Phung, they soon found themselves exchanging bewildered stares with Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai and a dozen of Thailand's top generals. As Chuan...
...they've installed his son, Joseph, as head of state. But nobody believes there's much traction in that outcome, since the 31-year-old military commander is viewed as simply another inept family appointee of the slain strongman, with no greater support base than his widely reviled father. Rebel movements backed by Rwanda and Uganda control half of the country, and they're urging Kabila the younger to return to a peace agreement consistently sabotaged by his father. The U.S. and other Western powers are scrambling to restrain Uganda and Rwanda, as well as Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia, which...
...Rwandan imposition on a country that might have had its own ideas on alternatives to Mobutu. Kabila's failure to stamp out the Hutu insurgency exasperated the Rwandans, and his leadership style fomented widespread resentment in the ranks of those who'd fought in the rebel armies of the east. When Kabila switched his support to the Hutu groups in 1997, the Rwandans and Ugandans resolved to overthrow him - and quickly. And they'd have succeeded, but for the intervention of Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia to shore up Kabila...
...tendency to find pretexts for breaking agreements or avoiding them altogether had begun to exasperate even some of his regional allies. Kabila's army was reportedly incensed by a speech he made over the weekend in which he ordered a final assault to eliminate the Ugandan- and Rwandan-backed rebel forces in the east. But a power vacuum in the capital could also accelerate the dismemberment of the vast country into fiefdoms controlled by neighboring states...