Second Congo War 1998-2003: Africa's World War Explained

The Second Congo War was a conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that lasted from August 1998 until a transitional government took office in July 2003. Armies from nine African countries and many rebel groups fought across a territory the size of Western Europe, which is why it is often called Africa’s World War. Through violence, displacement, hunger and disease it caused the deaths of millions of people, making it one of the deadliest conflicts since the Second World War.

Background: from genocide to the First Congo War

The roots of the war lay in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. When a Tutsi-led rebel army took power in Rwanda, more than a million Hutu refugees fled into eastern Zaire, as the DRC was then called. Among them were soldiers and militiamen responsible for the genocide, who used the refugee camps as bases for attacks on Rwanda.

Zaire’s long-ruling dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, tolerated these forces. In 1996 Rwanda and Uganda backed a rebel alliance led by the veteran guerrilla Laurent-Désiré Kabila. In what became known as the First Congo War, the alliance swept across the country, and in May 1997 Mobutu fled. Kabila declared himself president and renamed the country the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The country had been unstable since the Congo Crisis that followed independence, and its state institutions were by now extremely weak.

Outbreak of the war

Kabila soon fell out with his patrons. Rwandan officers held key posts in the new Congolese army, which many Congolese resented, and Rwanda and Uganda complained that rebels continued to attack them from Congolese soil. In late July 1998 Kabila ordered Rwandan forces to leave the country.

On 2 August 1998 units of the Congolese army in the eastern city of Goma rebelled, and a new rebel movement, the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD), was formed with Rwandan and Ugandan support. In a daring operation, Rwandan-led forces flew across the country to Kitona on the Atlantic coast and advanced towards the capital, Kinshasa, aiming to topple Kabila within weeks.

A continental war

The plan failed because Kabila’s neighbours came to his rescue. Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia sent troops and aircraft in August 1998, and Angolan forces drove the rebels back from the west. Chad later sent soldiers, and Sudan provided support. On the other side, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi committed their own armies.

The war then settled into a rough division of the country. The government and its allies held the west and south, the RCD and Rwanda controlled much of the east, and Uganda backed a second rebel movement, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) led by Jean-Pierre Bemba, in the north. The RCD itself split into rival factions. Former allies Rwanda and Uganda fought each other in the city of Kisangani in 1999 and 2000, killing hundreds of civilians.

Much of the violence was carried out by local militias, including the Mai-Mai groups and Hutu armed groups from Rwanda, which shifted alliances. Massacres, looting and widespread sexual violence against women and girls were reported by all sides. Foreign armies and their local partners also profited from Congo’s mineral wealth, including diamonds, gold and coltan, a concern documented by UN expert panels.

The road to peace

The Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement was signed by the states involved in July 1999 and by the main rebel groups in August. It called for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of foreign forces and a national dialogue, and in November 1999 the UN Security Council created a peacekeeping mission, MONUC. In practice fighting continued, and MONUC deployed only slowly.

The deadlock broke after Laurent-Désiré Kabila was shot dead by one of his bodyguards in Kinshasa on 16 January 2001. His son Joseph Kabila succeeded him and proved more willing to negotiate. The Inter-Congolese Dialogue opened in South Africa in 2002. Bilateral deals followed: the Pretoria Agreement with Rwanda in July 2002 and the Luanda Agreement with Uganda in September 2002. The Global and All-Inclusive Agreement, signed in Pretoria in December 2002, created a power-sharing transitional government, which took office in Kinshasa in July 2003.

Fighting did not stop everywhere. In the north-eastern district of Ituri, ethnic militias carried out massacres in 2003, and a French-led European Union force, Operation Artemis, was sent to the town of Bunia between June and September of that year.

The human cost

Estimating the death toll is extremely difficult in a country with poor records and vast inaccessible areas. Mortality surveys by the International Rescue Committee estimated about 3.9 million excess deaths between 1998 and 2004 and about 5.4 million between 1998 and 2007. Most of these deaths were caused not by fighting but by disease, malnutrition and the collapse of health services among displaced people. Some researchers, including the Human Security Report Project, have argued that these methods overstate the figure, and the true number remains debated.

The war also uprooted people on a vast scale. According to UN estimates, the number of people displaced inside the country exceeded 3 million at its peak, and hundreds of thousands more fled to neighbouring states.

Legacy

In 2005 the International Court of Justice ruled that Uganda had violated international law by occupying parts of the DRC and plundering its resources. Elections in 2006 confirmed Joseph Kabila as president, but armed groups in the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu continued to fight, and conflict there has persisted in various forms into the 2020s. The war left deep mistrust between the DRC and its eastern neighbours.

Key people

Laurent-Désiré Kabila had fought as a rebel in the 1960s and spent decades on the margins before Rwanda and Uganda made him president in 1997. His decision to turn against his former backers started the war. His son Joseph Kabila, still in his late twenties when he took power in 2001, opened the way to the peace agreements.

On the other side stood Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s vice-president and military leader, who became president in 2000, and Yoweri Museveni, president of Uganda since 1986. Both justified their intervention by the threat from armed groups based in Congo. Jean-Pierre Bemba, a businessman and son of a wealthy Mobutu-era tycoon, led the Ugandan-backed MLC and became one of the country’s vice-presidents in the transitional government. Among Kabila’s allies, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe sent the largest foreign contingent, reportedly more than 10,000 troops at its peak.

Timeline

• 1997, 17 May: Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s forces take Kinshasa after Mobutu flees.
• 1998, 2 August: Rebellion breaks out in Goma, starting the Second Congo War.
• 1998, August: Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia intervene in support of Kabila.
• 1999, July-August: The Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement is signed.
• 1999, 30 November: The UN Security Council establishes MONUC.
• 2001, 16 January: Laurent-Désiré Kabila is assassinated; Joseph Kabila succeeds him.
• 2002, 17 December: The Global and All-Inclusive Agreement is signed in Pretoria.
• 2003, July: The transitional government is installed in Kinshasa.

Why it matters

The Second Congo War showed how a genocide in one small country could spill over into a regional catastrophe. Its vast toll among civilians, its links to the trade in minerals and its unresolved aftermath in eastern Congo make it essential for understanding Central Africa today, even though it remains little known to many people in Europe and North America.