# First Congo War October 1996 to May 1997. The war that ended [[Mobutu Sese Seko]]'s 32 years, and the war in which mining companies began paying a rebel movement before it had won. ## How it started The 1994 Rwandan genocide pushed roughly 1.2 million Hutu refugees into eastern Zaire, including *ex-FAR* soldiers and *Interahamwe* militia who militarised the UNHCR camps around Goma and Bukavu. The tinder was already laid: Zaire's 1981 citizenship law had stripped the Banyamulenge and Banyarwanda of political rights, communal attacks killed around 14,000 between 1993 and 1996, and by early 1996 Hutu forces in Zaire were killing Banyamulenge and Tutsi at roughly a hundred a month. The Banyamulenge rebellion broke out on 31 August 1996. In October the **AFDL** formed under [[Laurent-Désiré Kabila]] — a veteran of the 1960s Simba rebellion, and largely a front for Rwandan sponsorship, with Rwandan Patriotic Army regulars integrated into the force. Uganda, Eritrea and later Angola backed it. Angola supplied the Katangan "Tigres" gendarmes as proxies — the same Katangan military lineage that had fought for [[Moïse Tshombe]] and later invaded Shaba in 1977 and 1978, now taking Katanga back a third time. Kisangani fell in March 1997, Lubumbashi on 19 April. Mobutu fled Kinshasa on 16 May; Kabila declared himself president the next day and renamed the country the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mobutu died of prostate cancer in Rabat on 7 September 1997. ## The atrocity record The UN OHCHR **Mapping Report**, published 1 October 2010, documented 617 of the most serious incidents between March 1993 and June 2003. On the 1996–97 campaign it described the "apparently relentless pursuit and mass killing of Hutu refugees" by the Rwandan Patriotic Army and the AFDL, with deaths in "several tens of thousands," the majority of them children, women, the elderly and the sick — and concluded that these attacks "reveal a number of inculpatory elements that, if proven before a competent court, could be characterized as crimes of genocide." The report was explicit that it was not designed to make judicial determinations. Amnesty International's higher figure of up to 200,000 is contested; the war's total is commonly given as around 250,000. ## The mining contracts signed before victory This is the part that belongs to [[Conflict Minerals Hub]]. **Tenke Fungurume.** On 30 November 1996 Lundin Holdings and [[Gécamines]] created a joint venture over the Tenke Fungurume copper-cobalt deposits — Lundin 55% for a $250 million transfer fee. Adolf Lundin had met Mobutu in France that August and admitted offering a donation to his election campaign. The mine was captured by the AFDL in early April 1997. On 5 May, with the rebels a fortnight from Kinshasa, Lundin said: *"I think we already have the blessing of the new government."* The share price rose the next day. The DRC's own Lutundula Commission later alleged that half of the first $50 million instalment went to a company partly owned by Kabila; Lundin denies it. World Bank-funded audits found Gécamines had signed "precipitously... without much discernment," on disadvantageous terms. **America Mineral Fields.** Jean-Raymond Boulle met Kabila in March 1997, provided a Learjet and advanced $1 million in fees, and obtained contracts for the Kipushi mine and the Kolwezi tailings — assets Forbes valued at around $16 billion in extractable minerals. Kabila's government cancelled the deal in December 1997, intending to hand it to Anglo American; Boulle sued for $3 billion and the two ended up 50/50 partners. > [!note] The rhyme > In 1960 a mining company financed a secessionist movement to keep control of Katanga's ore ([[Katanga Secession]]). In 1996–97 mining companies paid a rebel movement, in advance of its victory, for the same ore body. UMHK's 1.25 billion franc advance and Lundin's $50 million instalment are structurally the same transaction. ## See also [[Second Congo War]] · [[Zairianization]] · [[Congolese History Hub]] · [[Conflict Minerals Hub]] · [[Gécamines]]