information:extraction
Kabila's march to Kinshasa

The First Congo War began in 1996 as Rwanda increasingly expressed concern that Hutu members of Rassemblement Démocratique pour le Rwanda (RDR) militias were carrying out cross-border raids from what was then Zaire, and planning an invasion of Rwanda. The militias, mostly Hutu, had entrenched themselves in refugee camps in eastern Zaire, where many had fled to escape the Tutsi -dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

The Tutsi -dominated RPF government of Rwanda, which had gained power in July 1994, protested this violation of Rwandan territorial integrity, and began to arm the ethnically Tutsi Banyamulenge of eastern Zaire. The Mobutu regime of Zaire vigorously denounced this intervention, but possessed neither the military capability to halt it nor the political capital to attract international assistance.

With active support from Uganda, Rwanda and Angola, the Tutsi forces of Laurent-Désiré Kabila moved methodically down the Congo River, encountering only light resistance from the poorly trained, ill-disciplined forces of Mobutu 's crumbling regime. The bulk of Kabila's fighters were Tutsis, and many were veterans of various conflicts in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Kabila himself had credibility as a long-time political opponent of Mobutu, and had been a follower of Patrice Lumumba (the first Prime Minister of the independent Congo), who was executed by a combination of internal and external forces in January 1961, and was ultimately replaced by Mobutu in 1965. Kabila had declared himself a Marxist and an admirer of Mao Zedong. He had been waging armed rebellion in eastern Zaire for more than three decades, though Che Guevara in his account of the early years of the conflict portrayed him as an uncommitted and uninspiring leader.

Kabila's army began a slow movement west in December 1996, near the end of the Great Lakes refugee crisis, taking control of border towns and mines and solidifying control. There were reports of massacres and of brutal repression by the rebel army. A UN human-rights investigator published statements from witnesses claiming that Kabila's Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (ADFLC) had committed massacres, and that the advancing army had killed as many as 60,000 civilians, a claim the ADFLC strenuously denied. Roberto Garreton stated that his investigation in the town of Goma turned up allegations of disappearances, torture and killings. He quoted Moïse Nyarugabo, an aide to Mobutu, as saying that killings and disappearances should be expected in wartime.

Kabila's forces, with support of Rwanda, launched an offensive in earlier October 1996 in South Kivu, and demanded that the Kinshasa government surrender. The rebels took Kasenga on 27 March 1997. The government denied the rebels' success, starting a long pattern of false statements from the Defense Minister on the progress and conduct of the war. Negotiations were proposed in late March, and on 2 April a new Prime Minister of Zaire, Étienne Tshisekedi —a longtime rival of Mobutu—was installed. Kabila, by this point in control of roughly one-quarter of the country, dismissed this as irrelevant and warned Tshisekedi that he would have no part in a new government if he accepted the post.

The ADFLC made consistent progress in its advance from the east throughout April 1997, and by May its troops had reached the outskirts of Kinshasa. Mobutu fled Kinshasa on 16 May, and the "libérateurs" (liberators) entered the capital without serious resistance. Mobutu fled the country and died in exile in Morocco four months later. Kabila proclaimed himself president on 17 May 1997; he immediately ordered a violent crackdown to restore order, and began an attempt at reorganisation of the nation.