http://killingtrain.com/node/912
When Belgium realized in the 1950s that, given that France and Britain were
losing their African colonies, it would no longer be able to hold on to Congo,
it set about trying to guarantee continued control over the strategic aspects
of the economy, especially the mines. At first, it sponsored its local
political groups, but lost control of these. The next step, just after the
Congo became independent, was mercenaries and proxy warfare – a huge
international crisis and United Nations mission that was, in the 1960s, called
“The Congo Crisis”. The political strategy accompanying the acts of Belgium's
mercenaries (many of which were from apartheid South Africa) was to support the
secession of Katanga province from the Congo. Once a dictator, Mobutu, came to
power, the international community allowed him to crush the secessionists.
Decades later, the international community was not capable of stopping a
real genocide in Rwanda. After the Rwandan genocide, when the victors in the
Rwandan civil war took over that country and the losers of the civil war fled
into Congo, the international community helped Rwanda invade the Congo.
