Congo Wars - Zimbabwe

The Congo Wars resulted from the Rwanda Civil War. The Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) - which included Paul Kagame and was predominantly Tutsi - began operations in 1990 against President Juvenal Habyarimani (a Hutu). This conflict resulted in the Genocide of 1994, and the installation of the RPF as government. The Hutu extremists, those guilty of genocide, the former Rwanda army, and many Hutu refugees, fled to eastern Zaire. They attempted to continue the war.

In 1996, Rwanda (now RPF) invaded Zaire to end the war. See First Congo War. The Rwanda army invaded Zaire to remove Hutu/Interhamwe militias forming in the refugee camps. The Alliance des Forces Démocratiques por la Libération du Congo (AFDL) came in to being. Ultimately headed by Laurent Kabila (the man the Cuban Column, headed by Dreke and including Che Guevara, fought for in the Fizi-Baraka pocket), an anti-Mobutu politician. The AFDL including many other anti-Mobutu opposition forces, and including many Zaire Tutsi (Banyamulenge), this force moved all the way to Kinshasa, often not stopped by the disintegrating Zaire Army. On 16 May 1997, Mobutu fled. On 23 May 1997, Laurent Kabila arrived in Kinshasa and formed an AFDL dominated government. Zaire was renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). ^[1]

The Second Congo War started in July 1998, with Kabila attempting to remove the Ugandans and Rwandans from the DRC.
The Lusaka Agreement was negotiated in July 1999, but it was not respected and the war continued. The elections in the USA in 2000 brought in a new President and administration who forced the Lusaka agreement to be implemented through January 2001, Laurent Kabila was assassinated on 16 January 2001, and Joseph Kabila (his son and successor) brought the conflict to an end.