Where is the congo
Videographic: A short, recent history of Congo | The Economist
in eastern Congo this month a rebel
leader declared his intention to march
west on the capital it's not a new
threat we've heard it now three times in
the past ten years one man even made
good on it between 1998 and 2004 this
almost cyclical movement both ways
across the Rwandan border and sometimes
west towards the capital cost the lives
of an estimated 4 million people
it continues to impoverish the country
Congo is roughly the size of Western
Europe it's blessed with gold copper
timber and coltan which you'll find on a
chip in your mobile phone as well as a
quarter of the world's cobalt which
you'll find in your mobile phone's
battery rich mineral deposits and
competing groups of violent people are
concentrated in the eastern provinces of
north and south key vu
the official language of Congo is French
the country is surrounded by a colonial
patchwork of French Portuguese and
English
in 1994 in Rwanda groups of ethnic Hutu
militias working for the government of
the day carry out a terrifyingly
efficient genocide against that
country's ethnic Tutsi minority killing
800,000 people in a hundred days after
the genocide Hutus now fearing for their
own safety stream west across the border
into congo which for 30 years had been
ruled by the West's favourite African
dictator Mobutu who had named the
country Ziya with the refugees across
the border come the militias the refugee
camps attract disease and the militias
attract trouble in 1997 the Rwandan
government now Tutsi controlled is
worried that the Hutus across the border
might return and back to Congolese rebel
Laurent Kabila a man of elephantine
appetites whom Che Guevara had once
dismissed as not the man of the hour
but with Rwandan and Ugandan help he is
and he takes control of the East he
announces his plan to march to Kinshasa
all the way across a massive heavily
forested country with no real roads to
everyone's surprise he does by some
reports massacring Hutu refugees as he
goes he reaches Kinshasa de poses Mobutu
and re renames the country as Congo the
Hutu militias joined with the Congolese
Hutus to form the FDLR a French acronym
that implies a future change of power in
Rwanda they still control parts of
eastern Congo today
a year later mr. Kabila has alienated
Rwanda Uganda donor countries and the UN
Rwanda has again had enough and with
Uganda sends a force west across the
border to back yet more Congolese rebels
this time Angola Zimbabwe and Namibia
come to mr. Kabila's defense and begin a
regional war that ends in a stalemate
short of Kinshasa in 1999 there is a
peace deal and in 2000 the UN stations a
peacekeeping operation in eastern Congo
eventually the largest and most
expensive such operation in the world in
2001
Laurent Kabila is assassinated and
eventually replaced by his son the
normal-sized Joseph Kabila who in 2006
manages to hold a somewhat fair and free
election
now Lauren Kunda a farmer and former
psychology student at the head of a
mainly Tutsi rebel army is advancing on
targets in the eastern Congo with a
tacit support again of the Rwandan
government the consequences of the
almost 15 year old Rwandan genocide
continue to lay waste to north and south
kevo in the past two years 850,000
people have left their homes in eastern
Congo Rwanda stated goal is to
repatriate the good Hutus and bring the
bad ones to justice but it doesn't seem
to actually want either of them back
ever again and Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa
is unable to produce an army that would
force them to leave and Congo after a
decade of war and cursed by geology is
now at the bottom of global measures of
both health and wealth behind even its
neighbor to the east that keeps helping
caused all the trouble
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