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Rival Armies Ravage Congo in Africa's 'World War'

Congo and the nine nations around it sit on what may be the richest patch of this planet: There are diamonds, oil, uranium, gold, plentiful water, fertile land and exquisite wildlife.

It is now also one of the biggest battlefields in African history, the object of a conflict that has been dubbed ''Africa's first world war.''

Experts say Africa has not been so consumed by conflict since colonial days. Tens of thousands have died. Hundreds of thousands have been uprooted from their homes. Elephants and gorillas are poached for food. Economies, already as diseased and undernourished as their people, are dying.

Six outside states are fighting inside Congo alone, with at least 35,000 soldiers, men and boys, battling for a bewildering number of reasons. Some armies are allied with rebel groups to overthrow President Laurent Kabila of Congo. Others are protecting him. Nine rebel groups in Congo are fighting to overthrow governments in neighboring countries. Nearly everyone carts off Congo's riches.

These conflicts are a series of related wars, fueled by ethnic conflict, by a scramble for power and riches among people with very little of either, and by leaders with little notion of responsibility for those people. Rooted in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the fighting has smoldered inconclusively for 18 months; during this time rebels and invading armies have expanded their reach to half of Congo's vast expanse, but the war remains largely a stalemate.

Neither Mr. Kabila nor the rebels have strong support in the population. The foreign armies on both sides have been reluctant to commit their men to all-out battles that could explode into even greater warfare, perhaps beyond Congo.

Now, into this chaos, the United Nations is considering the deployment of the oddly precise number of 5,537 troops to monitor a cease-fire signed last summer, but violated with impunity by all sides ever since.

In late January, seven African presidents met at the United Nations for a special Security Council session, convened by Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. chief representative, to try to make the cease-fire stick.

They did little beyond reasserting the goals of the agreement, and continuing negotiations at a lower level hold out only minimal hope.

The worries are clear, the solutions elusive. Many experts argue that the force contemplated by the United Nations is far too small, considering the sheer size and terrain of Congo - a decomposed nation of thick jungle, poor communications and ghost tracks that once were roads.

But for some of the nations that would pay for this peacekeeping force - the United States first among them - any number of soldiers is too many unless the warring nations and factions in Congo show they are serious about peace.

The peacekeepers, they argue, would simply not be safe.

This is a conflict of unprecedented scale in Africa. On the eastern borders, two nations that had helped to install Mr. Kabila only three years ago, Rwanda and Uganda, are now fighting just as fiercely to overthrow him. They are allied with three Congolese rebel groups, which have also skirmished with one another.

On the other side, Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia saved Mr. Kabila from almost certain defeat when the war started in August 1998, and Mr. Kabila has also allied himself with tens of thousands of Hutu militiamen responsible for the Rwandan genocide, as well as with indigenous warriors known as the Mayi-Mayi, who believe that water has magical qualities that protect them from bullets.

The motives are as tangled as the conflicts. For those arrayed against Mr. Kabila, the keystone is the devastating Hutu-Tutsi rivalry that has kept Rwanda and Burundi in convulsions for years. The Tutsi-led government of Rwanda is there to curb the Hutu militia; Uganda joined in the fray to support Rwanda and to curb its own rebels based in Congo. Burundi has also sent forces into Congo to fight Hutu rebels of its own.

From the south, Angola needs Mr. Kabila to fight its own UNITA rebels, based in southern Congo. Namibia is there to help Angola. The president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, has come to Mr. Kabila's support out of a personal ambition to be a force in the region and because his generals are growing rich exploiting Congolese timber, gold, diamonds and metals.

The participation of these nations, in turn, has sent shock waves further afield, in the form of fleeing refugees or opportunistic rebellions, to Zambia, Burundi, Tanzania, Sudan. What further confuses matters is the rivalry for regional authority between Mr. Mugabe and the president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni - and, on all sides, the lure of Congo's riches.

It is virtually impossible for outsiders to witness the fighting around Central Africa, often because it takes place far inside jungles so dense that UN logisticians have debated whether peacekeepers should bother to carry binoculars.

It is a war both modern and primitive, fought with helicopter gunships and aerial bombings but more often by bands of men armed with rifles and machetes darting in and out of forest that has become as inaccessible as when King Leopold II of Belgium first commissioned Henry Stanley to explore it in 1878.

Nobody knows the toll; the estimate most often cited is 100,000 combatants, refugees and civilians killed since fighting in Congo flared in August 1998.

Some experts argue that the war in Congo is actually three wars:

The first is the battle between Mr. Kabila and the Congolese rebels fighting to overthrow him.

The second war is an ethnic war in the eastern provinces of Congo, primarily against ethnic Congolese Tutsi.

The third war - really a series of conflicts - involves all the outside countries: Rwanda and Uganda on the side of the rebels; Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia on the side of Mr. Kabila.

And the wars rage on. In Kinshasa, the government has erected billboards in recent months seemingly preparing the Congolese for a long war: ''Peace has a price. Be prepared for any sacrifice.''

Following, country by country, is a look at the strife in Central Africa:

CONGO: After pursuing a somewhat quixotic rebellion against President Mobutu Sese Seko for decades from eastern Congo (then Zaire), Mr. Kabila came to power in 1997, largely through the patronage of Rwanda and Uganda, which needed someone Congolese to head an anti-Mobutu movement.

Once in power, Mr. Kabila was joined in the Kinshasa government by many advisers from Rwanda. Their presence angered the Congolese, and Mr. Kabila cut his ties with the Rwandans. They started a new war, now against Mr. Kabila, in August 1998. Rebels now occupy about half of Congo, roughly the east and northeast. What that usually means is that they nominally hold pivotal towns, airstrips and roads, but remain highly unpopular.

Mr. Kabila inherited an army of about 70,000 when he seized power. He has been joined by several thousand soldiers from the southern province of Katanga, and the government has begun a major recruitment drive. Although Mr. Kabila's own army has improved in the last year, his forces remain poorly trained and poorly paid. Many are simply boys.

In many areas nominally under Mr. Kabila's control, it is Angola and Zimbabwe that are the real powers.

Although Western diplomats generally acknowledge that Rwanda and Uganda have invaded Congo, almost no one has publicly supported the Kabila government.

First, Mr. Kabila himself came to power in what could be described as Rwanda and Uganda's first invasion of Congo in 1997; after that war, he allowed his Rwanda-Tutsi allies to seek out and sometimes slaughter Hutu responsible for the Rwanda genocide.

Second, Mr. Kabila's government, after promising reforms, openness and elections, has turned into a repressive regime that has tolerated little or no political opposition, has jailed journalists and has failed to respect basic human rights.

Third, Mr. Kabila, in his struggle to survive, has made dubious alliances, most notably with the genocidal Hutu, who were largely responsible for the Rwandan genocide and who have taken refuge in Congo.

Last July, Mr. Kabila signed the Lusaka accord, calling for a cease-fire and peace talks, but his commitment has been in doubt.

He is now under increasing pressure to negotiate. Of his allies, Angola has reduced its participation in the war, and Zimbabwe's efforts are proving increasingly costly for the government of President Mugabe.

REBELS: Nearly half of Congo is occupied by three rebel groups. With some exceptions, the rebels hold all areas of northern and eastern Congo bordering the Central African Republic, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and most of Lake Tanganyika.

Despite the peace accord last summer, fighting has been intense in several areas - in the northwest corner of Congo around Gemena and south across the Congo River, southwest of Kisangani, and in the North and South Kivu provinces in the far east of Congo. Mbuji-Mayi, the major diamond mining town, is held by the government but surrounded on the north and east by rebels.

Since late in 1999, the rebel groups have tried to work together, with limited success. The major groups are:

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The Movement for the Liberation of Congo, headed by Jean-Pierre Bemba, a cell-phone entrepreneur and son of an influential Congolese businessman. Mr. Bemba is backed by Uganda, whose soldiers occupy all the territory he holds. The group is believed to have fewer than 10,000 guerrillas.

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The Congolese Rally for Democracy-Goma, the main branch of a rebel group that later split into two. Based in Goma, it is headed by a medical doctor, Emile Ilunga. This group has a fighting force estimated at 10,000 to 15,000 men, headed by many disaffected Congolese officers, many of them Tutsi. It is backed by Rwanda, which has many thousands of troops in Congo.

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The Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement, headed by Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, a university professor once jailed by Marshal Mobutu, who was kicked out as president of the main movement last summer. Its soldiers number fewer than 3,500. Ugandan troops occupy most of the territory the movement vaguely claims.

The presence of groups sometimes termed ''nonstate actors'' further complicates the situation in Congo. These are mostly aligned with Mr. Kabila. They include:

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Hutu militias, which carried out much of the killing in Rwanda in 1994 and then escaped to Congo. Rwanda and Uganda claim that Mr. Kabila and Zimbabwe have trained thousands of them, some in Zimbabwe itself.

They are said to be at the front around the Mbuji-Mayi diamond mines in the thousands. They are also active in the Kivus, crossing occasionally into Rwanda. Many of the Hutu militias have also crossed into Burundi, linking up with other Hutu rebels fighting against the Tutsi-led government there. Rwanda has said it will not leave the Congo until it is convinced the Hutu militias are under control.

Estimates of the number of Hutu militiamen vary widely; Rwanda has cited figures between 5,000 and 25,000.

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The Mayi-Mayi warriors: These are groups of indigenous fighters with shifting loyalties in the eastern Congo, North and South Kivu.

Most of them work for Mr. Kabila and alongside the Hutu. The Mayi-Mayi believe that water protects them from bullets, so some of them go into battle wearing things like rubber tub stoppers.

Many experts maintain that eastern Congo has become ungovernable and that the Mayi-Mayi have emerged as the warlords of a disintegrated land. Their numbers are unknown.

RWANDA: The problems facing Rwanda are in many ways the driving force of the Congo war. If Rwanda's security could be resolved, diplomats say it is at least possible that the conflict in Congo could be settled.

The problem began in 1994, when hundreds of thousands of Hutu fled into what was then Zaire, fearing retribution after Hutu extremists massacred at least 500,000 Tutsi in Rwanda.

Those extremists began attacking Rwanda from Zaire. In 1996, the new Tutsi-led government in Rwanda and its ally and neighbor, Uganda, decided to put an end to these attacks by putting their power behind Mr. Kabila. After Mr. Kabila came to power, he began to distance himself from Rwanda, and Rwanda accused him of allying himself with Hutu fighters.

So in August 1998, Rwanda and Uganda teamed up again, behind another rebel group, the Congolese Rally for Democracy, to start another rebellion. Rwanda reportedly has about a quarter of its 40,000-strong army in Congo.

The Rwanda government has not disclosed what the war is costing it in money terms, but there is no doubt it has been effective in terms of security. Northwestern Rwanda - a Hutu extremist stronghold - has largely been quiet since Rwanda invaded Congo. Rwanda says it will leave Congo only if the safety of its borders is guaranteed and the Hutu fighters are disarmed - a task that most experts maintain is far too dangerous for the United Nations to take on.

The Tutsi make up only 15 percent of the population of Rwanda. But they argue that it will take time to recover from the genocide sufficiently to share power.

UGANDA: Uganda is often accused of being involved in Congo largely for opportunistic reasons, and it may be eager to get out now that the war no longer serves the interests of President Museveni, a man with a reputation as one of Africa's brightest and most progressive leaders. But withdrawal might make Ugandans question the worthiness of the adventure in the first place.

Uganda reportedly has between 8,000 and 10,000 soldiers in Congo.

Uganda backs two rebel groups, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo, in the northwest, and the splinter group of the Rally for Democracy headed by Mr. Wamba dia Wamba.

Ugandan soldiers are reported to be the most vigorous in cashing in on Congo's wealth, taking out diamonds, gold, timber and ivory.

BURUNDI: Burundi has also admitted to having soldiers in Congo. It claims not to be allied with either side, but to be fighting Hutu rebels.

Burundi has the same ethnic division as Rwanda between Hutu and Tutsi, who have been locked in civil war since 1983.

The war has sharply escalated, and the Burundi government has herded 300,000 people, mostly poor Hutu farmers, into ''regroupment camps'' in the hills surrounding the capital, Bujumbura. The government has partly lost control over the nation's southeast, where fighting is pushing some 1,000 refugees a day into neighboring Tanzania.

TANZANIA: Tanzania's role in the war has been mostly that of a haven for hundreds of thousands of Hutu who have fled there since 1994.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, there are 320,000 Burundians in camps in western Tanzania. Since October, when the fighting in Burundi began to escalate, 50,000 more have arrived. Refugees from Congo are also arriving at a steady, though lower, rate.

SUDAN: Sudan has reportedly helped Mr. Kabila several times, providing aircraft to bomb towns in rebel zones in northern Congo last year. Khartoum denies this, but Mr. Kabila is clearly on friendly terms with the Sudanese government, apparently on the theory that the enemy of an enemy - in this case Uganda - is a friend.

Though Uganda and Sudan agreed late last year to end hostilities, the Ugandan government supports the Sudan People's Liberation Army, which has been fighting the Islamist Sudanese government for 16 years.

ANGOLA: After the fall of Marshal Mobutu in 1997, the Angolan government led by Jose Eduardo dos Santos plunged into Congo, largely for its own strategic reasons - to attack the Congo bases of UNITA, the Angolan insurgent movement led by Jonas Savimbi. The Mobutu government had been helping UNITA for decades.

UNITA, the Portuguese acronym for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, is believed to command about 35,000 troops, and the Angolan government, about 90,000.

NAMIBIA: Namibia joined the fighting in Congo almost a year and a half ago, and in December began allowing the Angolans to fight from Namibian soil. Namibia, which has often accused UNITA of helping a Namibian insurgency, and apparently believed the Angolan government was finally in a position to crush UNITA, reportedly has 2,000 soldiers in Congo - anywhere from a third to half its army.

ZIMBABWE: The government of Mr. Mugabe has sent between 7,000 and 11,000 troops to Congo to support Mr. Kabila, according to varying reports. The intervention is motivated in part by Mr. Mugabe's longing to be a major player in southern Africa and his rivalry with the leaders of Uganda and Rwanda. Zimbabwe has taken advantage of access to diamond mines under the control of Mr. Kabila.

But Zimbabwe's military involvement in Congo is deeply unpopular at home. The full cost of the deployment has been concealed from international donors and, a Zimbabwean banker said, is seen by many Zimbabweans as contributing to the country's economic crisis.

The International Monetary Fund suspended aid to Zimbabwe last year because of suspicion that Mr. Mugabe misled it about the cost of supporting Mr. Kabila.

ZAMBIA: Landlocked and abutted by several troubled lands, Zambia has long sought to cast itself as an island of stability in central Africa's turbulence.

Like former President Kenneth Kaunda, President Frederick Chiluba, in power since 1991, has acted as a broker in the wars that have consumed the region from the independence struggles of the 1970s to the present-day conflagrations in Angola and Congo. That has led to peace deals in Angola and Congo, though these have been undermined by the combatants' refusal to lay down their arms.

In the current Angolan war, about 200,000 refugees - 160,000 of them from Angola - have flowed into Zambia. Zambia has sent troops to its border to prevent Angolan troops from entering in pursuit of fleeing UNITA rebels. The easy availability of weapons in Angola has fostered arms trade and an upsurge of violent crime.