Word: rwandan
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...their own leader as much as the spokesman for the Zimbabwean and Angolan armies currently pouring reinforcements into the war-ravaged country. Which is, of course, a double irony for the Congolese, since his father had arrived in the capital four years ago as the handpicked representative of the Rwandan and Ugandan forces that had put the dictator Mobutu to flight - the same armies that young Kabila's backers are now fighting...
...been some time since he who ruled the capital also ruled the provinces. That much the Rwandan military discovered in early 1997, when it rolled across the border, hoping to carve out a buffer zone to prevent Hutu militiamen using sanctuaries in the state then known as Zaire for their genocidal campaign against Rwandan Tutsis. As they moved westward, the Rwandans encountered no resistance - the army of the reviled dictator Mobutu Sese Seko had no interest in defending the borders of a state that hadn't paid them for years. Mobutu's kleptocracy had finally reduced Zaire to an empty...
...Kabila had no political base, of course, outside of his home region in the far-off southeast, and his autocratic ineptitude and shameless cronyism did little to endear him to the residents of the capital, who saw him as a 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...
...since his 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...
...Many of Kabila's officers had begun to express frustration over the war, which began in earnest early in 1997 when Kabila turned on those who'd brought him to power. The former guerrilla leader tapped into resentment of his "outsider" regime in Kinshasa by initiating a pogrom against Rwandan Tutsis - the very army that had transformed him from a minor regional insurgent into the president. Rwanda had installed Kabila precisely because Mobutu had provided shelter to the Hutu genocidaires who had killed a million of their Tutsi countrymen in 1994, and Kabila had failed to deliver on promises...