I niche historical thing I found very interesting is post colonial Africa, so I decided to do a thread about the Two congo wars because why not

Let's start with Rwanda, the country that started all since the famous genocide wich I'm not gonna talk about here, governed (and still now) by the Tutsi FPR of Kagame

They kicked the Hutu militias out the country, who fled directly over the border to Zaire, where Mobutu harbored them and armed them.

The Hutu remnants began to start raiding across the border Rwanda. Kagame's government is now in a reverse situation, now they are the government in charge fighting bush guerrillas

The goverment of Rwanda sees that these hit and runs tactics across the border could go forever so they decided to create a plan to destroy the thread

Since they couldn't just go across the border and start killing Hutus they decide to create a African Coalition against Zaire

Given that basically nobody in the surrounding countries liked Mobutu (Mobutu often funded rebel groups in neighboring countries)

Uganda is sympathetic to the RPF (they harbored the RPF when the Tutsis began their fight against the Hutus), so they are the first on board and provide mechanized and armored units that were gived to them during Idi Amin time

Burundi also joins in since Zaire funds enemy militias like the CNDD-FDD and Zimbabwe for the support of ther militia groups and to get resources

Mugabe joins in and while Zimbabwean forces do not participate directly (that would change in the second war), they only provide logistical support

Have to said first that since the fall of Rhodesia the Zimbabwe adquaried some excellent military material that belonged to the Rhodies

Angola has always had a long running feud with Mobutu due to his harboring of UNITA (milita group founded by the USA in the Angola War), so they're immediately on board.

Angola deploys some regular forces in 1997, but also sends in old Katangese gendarmes (soldiers from the long gone country of Katanga) who served all the way back in the original Congo Crisis and had been in exile for years

Ethiopia and Eritrea also provide some limited technical, moral, and financial support

However, the bulk of the anti-Mobutu alliance's manpower was made from an rebel coalition known as the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDLC) made up mainly of disgruntled ethnic minorities from Zaire's border regions as well as political dissidents

The Anti-Mobutu alliance directly funded and trained this rebel Coalition, providing them with the means to fight the Zairian military, in essence forming a massive proxy army manly directed from Kigali in Rwanda

The Rwandans realize that such a large movement needs a good leader, someone that would be pliable to Rwandan interests and that wouldn't cause trouble for them, they choose Laurent Kabila

He's a washed up old Marxist revolutionary who's been fighting against Mobutu for decades, with rather little to show for it other than being a small thorn in his side. He once fought alongside Che Guevara during the latter's ill-fated expedition to the Congo

El Che actually though he was rather incompetent though

Kabila is overjoyed at having new "comrades" in the fight against the oppressor Mobutu. His contribution is mostly grandstanding and making grandiose marxist speeches that nobody really cares about. The Rwandans make a point to not put him in charge of anything military-related

After formulating a large rebel movement and after everything's lined up, the First Congo War kicks off in late 1996 piggybacking off the ongoing Banyamulenge rebellion (ethnic Tutsis living in Zaire commander by this madman)

Join me tommorow as I explain even more of this humanitarian disaster

Let's continue this shitfest. The anti-Mobutu alliance makes massive inroads very quickly into Zaire (no small feat considering that Zaire/Congo is fucking HUGE)

The Zairian military is in a state of decay, with most troops having not been paid and having little food or ammunition despite having much better equipment than the rebels. The rebels are bolstered by the armed forces of the coalition seeking to topple Mobutu

The Rwandan military is the biggest participant of the foreign coalition, and they are by far the best soldiers of it, highly motivated and veterans against the Hutus

Mobutu is largely disconnected from reality, he fully believes that its a minor revolt that will soon be crushed meanwhile with each passing day the rebels move ever closer to Kinshasa far in the west

Eventually the Zairian leadership realizes how bad the situation is and tries calling in mercenaries. There are several ex French Foreign Legionnaires who answer the call, as well as the Yugoslav White Legion

The former FFL guys act like professional mercs, but quickly realize that the military situation is utterly fucked for Zaire and try to tell the Zairian high command to no avail. They didn't listen of course

The White Legion spends most of their time getting drunk and randomly shooting anyone that looks at them funny. Despite having several aircraft from Yugoslavia, most of these fall into disrepair.

On one occasion a drunken Serb pilot crashes a Mig-21 directly into a Zairian military parade. They got their shit pushed every time and made no meaningful contribution, the Yugos eventually leave

I found no source of the plane crash, but it is still hilarious.

The end is nigh for the Mobutu government as the Zairian armed forces are falling apart as most soldiers and commanders are deserting. Mobutu's government is disintegrating as all the rich ministers and officials grab everything they can and fly the fuck out of the country.

Mobutu is finally convinced that there is no more hope in staying, and gets out to exile in Morocco (where he would die of prostate cancer in later in 1997)

Now time for a anecdote during the fall of Zaire, was what happened the deceased former president of Rwanda Juvénal Habyarimana (a Hutu who's death sparked the Rwandan genocide when his plane was shot down)

Mobutu had been a close friend of Habyarimana, and had personally assured the latter's family that one day the Zairian backed Hutu rebel groups would re-take Rwanda and that he would be buried with honor in Rwandan soil

Mobutu, now realizing that burying Habyarimana in Rwandan soil was never going to happen moved his body from a special refrigerated mausoleum Gbadolite to Kinshasa. The body's container sits for 3 days out on the tarmac in Kinshasa's airport because everyone forgot about it

Only as Mobutu is about to leave does he remember, and decides to cremate the body as the last decent thing he could do for his former friend Of the foreign nationals fleeing Kinshasa, the Zairian security forces find an Indian Hindu.

Who basically gives them a quick run down on how cremation mostly works and they burn Habyarimana's remains on the tarmac. Mobutu leaves the next day

The AFLDC enters Kinshasa with Kabila at the head. Kabila installs himself as president of the new Democratic Republic of the Congo

While all of the fighting is happening, Rwandan military forces are scouring Zaire for Hutu refugee camps with the sole intent of killing every last Hutu they can find. The idea is that if they can kill as many Hutus as possible, it will reduce the chance of the Hutu's comingback

There is only guesses as to how many Hutu's were slaughtered in Zaire, but that estimates of several hundred thousand dead (there were two million Hutu refugees in Zaire when the war started)

This is mostly glossed over today because everyone had stopped paying attention to the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, and because the Rwandan's had figured out how to orchestrate PR to their advantage, using aid send in the Tutsi genocide to invade Congo

Angola gets to go after UNITA with relative impunity, Uganda and Rwanda informally occupy chunks of Congolese territory, and the other nations have a chance to get some of the natural resources in the Congo

So the first Congo War is over, and initially everyone in the coalition is rather happy. Meanwhile Kabila promises a new beginning for the new Congo and everything looks like its going pretty well, what could go wrong?

Next day I will tell how everything goes wrong

Hey hey people AlexRS, and today I'm gonna continue with this thread about African culture

So begin to go bad as Kabila is now in a position that he had dreamed about for decades so now he's also mostly out of touch with how the world has changed over time and still acts like a 1960's revolutionary

He begins to start a personality cult in the same vein as Mobutu, and declares that elections will not be held for two years as he needs time to make sure all is well in the country. He's also very fond of the new luxuries afforded to him

In a rather short time he essentially becomes another Mobutu, just one spouting a bit more leftist rhetoric but with the same authoritarianism, nepotism and corruption as before. Of course this is the norm in much of Africa and things may have simmered down, but that didnt happen

Kabila makes the one mistake of biting the hand that fed him, and begins to become very hostile to Rwanda (image not related)

During this time Rwanda still had troops inside the Congo, ostensibly to provide security and stabilization but also to make sure Kabila was playing ball (also to kill Hutus)

Kabila becomes less and less happy with this arrangement and begins to order the Rwandans out of his country while branding them as foreign occupiers. Kagame and company down in Rwanda are less than pleased by this turn of events

When Kabila begins to hint that he may help Hutu rebel groups fighting against Rwanda, he crossed a line that you do not cross with Kagame. The Rwandan leadership decide that if it worked once, it can work twice and begin to make plans for a second invasion of the Congo

They call on the neighbor countries again in an attempt to form a similar coalition to last time. This happen. Many of the countries in the first coalition are rather happy with the outcome, with Kabila giving them what they want

Angola can go after UNITA with impunity, Ethiopia and Eritrea no longer care,and Zimbabwe is going after gold mines, natural resources, and diamonds. Only Burundi and Uganda are willing to support Rwanda in another push towards Kinshasa.

So Kagame decides to go with what he has, and directs the Rwandan military to form and back a new rebel group known as the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RDC), again made up of Congolese minorities and quite a few former members of the AFDLC

This rebel coalition, much like the first, begins to make very quick inroads into the Congo (the new Congolese military wasn't much better than their former Zairian counterpart). However, this progress did not last long.

There is a insane Rwandan paratrooper mission near Kinshasa that lands very close to Angola border

For more (unverified) information on the paratroopers see this

The Angolans freak the fuck out over this, and immediately deploy their military in support of Kabila. They are followed by Zimbabwe, and later Namibia and Chad. There are now a lot of countries now in conflict in the DRC during this war.

The Angolans and Zimbabweans push the rebels away from the capital Kinshasa with their relatively modern armed forces. The Angolans spend most of the war near Kinshasa, guarding the capital and not venturing out much except to attack UNITA

Chad and Namibia provide small troop contributions for different reasons, and don't do much. Zimbabwe ends up deploying the most troops to aid Kabila

The Pro-Kabila and Anti-Kabila coalitions duke it out for roughly 4 years (officially, there's plenty of fighting that happens after the ceasefire)

The war becomes mostly a grinding stalemate, as the pro-Kabila forces manage to stave off the initial rebel advance but are unable to push far enough to make a decisive offensive

The Anti-Kabila forces do not have the hardware necessary to fully take on the combined Zimbabwean/Congolese military (it was mostly Zimbabwe that had to do the heavy lifting), but retain a decent chunk of their initial gains

The Rwandans and Burundians have arguably the best infantry in the conflict, but they need the Ugandans to provide armor and they don't have much to defend against the Zimbabwean air force and mechanized forces. Occasionally, they find creative ways to mitigate this

On one occasion, the Rwandans were confronting a dug-in Zimbabwean mechanized force that would easily repel a Rwandan infantry-based assault

The Rwandan commander force-marches his troops 10 miles around the Zimbabwe positions during the night, and the next day the Rwandans hit the Zimbabweans from all sides and surprise them, killing most of them

However most battles usually turn into slugfests, with high attrition for both sides. The Zimbabwean military is a massive boon to Kabila, as the Zimbabweans still have a decent arsenal from Rhodesia's days and have augmented it slightly with more aircraft and armored vehicles

Still, the war strains the Zimbabwean army heavily as their performance is still average at best. Several Zimbabwean planes and helicopters are shot down (with some evidence that mercenaries on the Rwandan side did some of the shoot-downs)

Many Zimbabwean armored vehicles are lost due to mechanical failure and close-in RPG attacks. The Zimbabwe military also loses several hundred soldiers in combat

Zimbabwe arguably saves the Kabila government from destruction, but irreparably damages its military in the process as they have no means to replace its hardware losses

Meanwhile the Zimbabweans have not been able to reap any rewards from their mining investments in the Congo as they have none of the necessary equipment to take advantage of the Congo's mineral and gold deposits

Overall, the war devastates Zimbabwe's economy and military and leads to much of the turmoil in the country today (get fucked Mugabe)

eanwhile on the pro-Kabila side, the Namibians provide some token troop and logistical support, but that's about the extent of it and they are not eager to send their men into combat. Their deployment is not well received at home or abroad

Meanwhile Chad sends troops in to help Kabila, and quickly pulls them out after multiple reports of Chadians raping and pillaging many villages in the Congo

The Angolans still stick mainly to the area around Kinshasa and hunt UNITA, their forces are still invaluable in maintaining Kabila in power

Gonna end it for today because this is fucking massive, I hope tommorow I can end this shit

Fuck it, Congo war history time

Let's continue with how the war is developing, On the anti-Kabila side, all is not well. There are some frays in the rebel movement, and it does not help that Rwanda and Uganda are beginning to have different interests

Uganda is more concerned with occupying chunks of the Congo as a buffer zone as well as to exploit economically (while also backing their own proxy rebel groups) while Rwanda is still maintaining their own groups and fighting against Kabila

Tensions between the Rwandans and Ugandans come to a head in the city of Kisangani. The Ugandan and Rwandan commanders constantly shit-talked each other, with the Ugandans constantly boasting that they could easily defeat the Rwandan forces in the city due to the Ugandan tanks.

The Rwandans keep telling the Ugandans to fuck off. Eventually a skirmish between Ugandan and Rwandan troops breaks out into a full-blown battle

The battle of Kisangani ends in a decisive Rwandan victory, despite the Ugandan armor presence. The Rwandan infantry were much better at close quarters than the Ugandans, and were able to isolate and destroy Ugandan tanks in the city

Between 1-2000 die in the battle, the majority of the casualties being Ugandan. After this, the anti-Kabila coalition is a rather fractured group with the main goal being supporting various rebel groups rather than seeking all-out victory

In January of 2001, Laurent Kabila is assassinated by one of his own bodyguards, it is heavily implied that Rwandans orchestrated the killing. His son, Joseph Kabila takes power

Joseph proves to be much more adept at running the DRC than his father, and presents himself much better on the international stage. With the war running on and with every side getting nowhere, the participants agree to a ceasefire in July of 2003

The anti-Kabila side failed to topple him, but succeeded in forming long-lasting rebel movements that would keep the border regions under nominal control of Rwanda and Uganda. The war did little to resolve the ethnic conflict in the Congo, and there is still fighting

There are also still a myriad of rebel groups operating in the DRC, with various state backers. While the 2nd Congo war did end, its repercussions continue to echo on

Ok so now that I finally end this, Im gonna say thst you should resd Dancing in the glory of monsters, a great book about the war, and Heart of Darkness, wich is not about the war, but you should read if you are interested in Africa.

Now I'm gonna talk about what makes this war so interesting compared to the other African conflicts, the first is how absurdly big the war, 5.4 million people died in total by 2008, that makes it the most bloody war since WW2

The other is how the war was almost entirely fought and organized by Africans, foreign powers of course supported one side or fucked the other, but in the big scale of things this war was African

So now that this is over, I will make some day a thread about other African country, maybe South Sudan, Central Africa Republic or the Liberia