PARTY rule and the opening of Zaire to democracy. Though Mobutu remained President, the announcement heralded the end of Mobutism and the beginning of a long, failed, transition. Hundreds of new parties, the vast majority of them artifices of the elite, were created; a ‘Sovereign National Conference’that proclaimed a new constitution and electoral timetable led to nothing; and presidential and opposition blocs, each fragmented and constantly shifting, stalemated one another, causing government effectively to cease. 1

In the absence of a state, and in the context of the extraterritorial extension of neighbouring civil wars, Laurent Kabila’s AFDL (Alliance des forces pour la libération du Congo-Zaıre) rebellion was launched in the Fall of 1996. Initially aimed at destroying Rwandan Hutu refugee camps and establishing a buffer zone for Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi against crossborder rebel attacks, a game of objective alliances (‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’) soon merged the Great Lakes war with the Sudanese and Angolan civil wars, and a formidable regional coalition, led, nominally, by Kabila and supported by the US, emerged to topple the Mobutu regime in May 1997.