Congo-Kinshasa: DRC's Recurrent History of Conflicts, Wars

analysis

History seems to be repeating itself in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Once again, armed rebels are on the move in the vast country's eastern borderlands with Rwanda and Uganda. The Great Lakes area, where colonial era borders cut at random through ethnic groups, has in the last 20 years been the centre of conflict and ethnic rivalry that led to multiple uprisings and invasions. One of such revolts even reached the Congolese capital, Kinshasa - 1,000 miles to the west.

The latest Tutsi insurgents, calling themselves M23 and mirroring a previous 2004 to 2009 revolt, last week easily seized the North Kivu Provincial capital of Goma and say they want to march to Kinshasa and "liberate" Congo. The M23 revolt is once again focusing the attention of a bewildered world on a country the size of Western Europe. The DRC has dazzled explorers and invaders for years with its treasure of resources: rubber, timber, gold, diamonds, copper, as well as cobalt, uranium and coltan.

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