Since 1998 a brutal war has been raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in which approximately 5.4 million people have died. Despite the international community’s $500 million investment in 2006 elections and the world’s largest United Nations peacekeeping mission (costing more than $1 billion per year), the current round of fighting is the most destructive since 2005 and the latest chapter in more than 12 years of near continuous warfare.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo had a brutal colonial history. Beginning in the 1880s, Belgian King Leopold II treated the territory as his personal kingdom, exploiting the country's vast natural resources through indigenous forced labor. In 1960 the Belgian Congo finally achieved independence, and in May of that year a nationalist movement led by Patrice Lumumba won the parliamentary elections. Five years later, following Lumumba’s kidnapping and murder, the DRC fell under the dictatorship of Joseph Mobutu, who renamed the country Zaire and whose staunch opposition to Communism won him the support of the United States.

With the end of the Cold War, the suspension of international economic aid and the global collapse of raw commodity prices at the end of the eighties, Mobutu began to lose his grip on the country. Under strong internal pressure to democratize, he reluctantly agreed to hold a national conference in 1991 and restored multiparty politics. Following the Rwandan genocide in 1994, Mobutu attempted to regain international support by providing shelter and protection to the two million refugees who had fled to eastern Congo. Mobutu sided with the remnants of the Hutu power regime, but he lost the war waged by Rwanda, Uganda, and Laurent-Désiré Kabila's Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo, or AFDL, in July 1996. The ailing Mobutu was finally ousted from Kinshasa in May 1997 as Laurent-Désiré Kabila took over the country.

War broke out again in August 1998 when Kabila attempted to gain independence from his regional backers and moved to purge Rwandan elements from his government. Backed by Rwandan and Ugandan troops, a newly-formed rebellion known as the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) invaded Congo, taking control of the Kivus and targeting the diamond towns of Mbuji-Mayi and Katanga, the economic lifelines of Kabila. Uganda also sponsored an alternative rebel group, which advanced to Kinshasa through Orientale province and Equateur. Kabila called on Zimbabwe, Angola, and Namibia for help and with their military support managed to stop the invasion.

A ceasefire agreement was reached and signed in July 1999, and was built around three main pillars: the disarmament of the external armed groups that were using Congolese territory as a sanctuary; the withdrawal of all foreign troops; and the convening of an inter-Congolese dialogue that would lead to a new political dispensation. Fighting continued, however, until Laurent-Désiré Kabila was assassinated in January 2001 and was replaced by his son, Joseph Kabila. Peace negotiations were re-launched and by the end of 2002, the Angolan, Zimbabwean, Rwandan, and Ugandan troops had fully withdrawn from DRC. In December 2002, all Congolese belligerents, civil society groups, and the unarmed opposition signed an agreement in South Africa, leading to a three-year transition which began in June 2003 and during which Kabila shared power with four vice-presidents.

A new constitution was adopted by a referendum on December 18, 2005, and national assembly and presidential elections were held between July 30 and October 28, 2006. Joseph Kabila was elected for a five-year term with 58 percent of the vote, the first democratically elected president since Congolese independence. The establishment of a transitional government failed, however, to stop local conflicts, specifically in the Ituri district and in the North Kivu, South Kivu, and Katanga provinces. Rebel groups, including dissident members of former rebel movements and untamed militias, continued to fight the government and local enemies, often seeking to maintain or establish control of mineral wealth. 45,000 people die each month, mostly from the crippling effects of widespread displacement in the country’s eastern provinces. Worse still, armed groups routinely commit acts of rape and sexual violence against Congolese women and girls.

The world’s response to the crisis in eastern Congo, the deadliest conflict since World War II, remains largely reactive and offers civilians little evidence that their suffering will ease. A miscalculation by any of the actors involved—the Congolese government and its army, rebel leader Laurent Nkunda and the National Congress for the Defense of People, or the CNDP, regional governments involved in the conflict, and the U.N. Peacekeeping Force, or MONUC—could increase the fighting by an order of magnitude.