The African World War | Animated History

today's video is brought to you by squarespace the easy-to-use all-in-one platform for building your website hi i'm griffin johnson the armchair historian today's video the second congo war [Music] the second congo war has been called africa's great war and according to reuters news it is the deadliest conflict since the second world war although the death toll is still the subject of vigorous debate what makes this subject difficult to cover is that as of this video's release the conflict is still arguably going on depending on how we differentiate different wars despite that fact we'll do our very best to explain who's fighting who and why before we begin i'd like to let you know we've got a discord server up we'd love to have you join the link is in the description below the first thing that we need to address here is that the conflict was fought along both ethnic and national lines like we've mentioned before on this channel postcolonialism has been messy to say the least as it turns out when you draw national borders without any regard to pre-existing cultural identity you tend to create countries full of people that well don't get along too nicely the most important transnational force in our story is the tutsis a loosely defined socio-ethnic group that have historically lived throughout the african great lakes region most prominent in burundi and rwanda they've long dominated the more populous hutus in the same area why is that relevant because in 1994 the hutus perpetrated a large-scale genocide mostly in rwanda inadvertently creating a tutsi diaspora we're going to come back to the tutsis but for now just remember that a great many members of this historically powerful group were dispersed all over the region the second bit of backstory here is the first congo war which is arguably the same conflict as the second congo war in 1997 laurent kabila who led the alliance of democratic forces for the liberation of congo zaire overthrew mabutu seisei seiko the military dictator of the democratic republic of congo or later renamed the republic of zaire kabila accomplished this with military backing from nearby nations particularly uganda and rwanda the latter of which at this point was once again controlled by a tutsi dominated government rwanda's motivation for removing mobutu was to stymie cross-border raids by various guerilla groups including some hutu extremists considering how small rwanda's territory is these raids essentially brought remnants of the previous hutu government uncomfortably close to the capital uganda had similar concerns about the allied democratic forces a sudanese-backed group that engaged in cross-border violence and kidnapping and yes the allied democratic forces is a different group from the alliance of democratic forces many of kabila's soldiers were congolese tutsis so they had a vested interest in creating a secure state that could defend their kinsmen with the help of these and a few other outside factions the afdl were able to take control of the country in may 1997 marking the end of what is usually considered the first congo war unfortunately for everyone involved the piece lasted for only about a year one of kabila's first discoveries as the new leader of the democratic republic of the congo was that it's a whole lot easier to invite military allies over for dinner than to ask them to go home his government was awash with foreign military advisors and many congolese citizens began to wonder if their president was just a puppet of those who had put him in power meanwhile those who had put him in power were really wishing they had a better puppet kabila was unable to stem the tide of guerrilla fighters raiding uganda and rwanda and in fact tacitly supported them his hope was that by disassociating himself from the tutsis that had put him into power he might be able to establish a more reliable political base well he succeeded in disassociating himself from them so much so that his former allies invaded him the direct antecedent of the war occurred in july 1998 when kabila dismissed his rwandan chief of staff james kabarabe and formally requested that all rwandan military units leave the country instead on august 2nd the 10th brigade of the congolese army stationed in goma and primarily made up of tutsis announced their defection from the government these congolese rebels eventually renamed themselves the rally for congolese democracy or rcd and were backed by rwanda and uganda who soon invaded in support or perhaps more accurately the defecting rebels offered those two countries a retroactive justification for the war they already wanted this coalition struck their first devastating blow two days later in an attack they called operation katona led by the recently unemployed james cabarebe on august 4th 200 ugandan and rwandan troops flew aboard four boeing airliners stolen from goma to the katona air base located just 250 miles away from the capital city of kinshasa the lightly undefended base was quickly taken as much of the garrison force defected to the ugandan rwandan coalition the rebels and invaders then used it as a staging area for further troops and supplies to arrive over the course of the next day combined with the defectors from the democratic republic of congo's own armed forces the rebels had nearly 5 000 troops within striking distance of kinshasa by august 5th this intrepid attack seemed poised to overwhelm the nascent government before they had time to put up any meaningful resistance the situation was especially dire after they captured a number of cities in the congo central province including the provincial capital and congo's most important port matadi just three days later on august 13th the invading forces took the inga dams a critical target that provided power to kinshasa as this was occurring however it became clear that the rwandan ugandan alliance had made a critical miscalculation unlike the fighting against mabutu the government of congo had powerful foreign allies willing to come to its defense zimbabwe and angola were the first and most important of these allies providing air support and armor that kabila's forces desperately needed these new players proved too potent for the invading forces whose march to the capital was foiled by mid-august in a neatly symmetrical development the rwandan ugandan invasion ended with another daring plane hijacking this one at an airfield in angola in september though the invaders retreated from the western portion of the country on their stolen aircraft fighting continued in the country's northeastern province orientale by the end of the year even more nations were drawn into the conflict on either side in a tangled web of alliances that many observers thought reminiscent of the first world war aligning with kabila's congolese government were the already mentioned angola and zimbabwe whose leaders had vested financial interests in his regime as well as shared marxist leanings the angolans were concerned about their own rebels the national union for the total independence of angola or junita for short angolan president jose eduardo du santos suspected rwanda and uganda of backing the rebels who had been a thorn at the countryside since the 60s he was probably right before the war but once it got started their support for unita became overt up north sudan joined the angolan president's cause as a means of harassing their enemy uganda while chad joined mostly at the behest of france that's right france is involved too ready to make up for its utter failure to do anything useful during the rwandan genocide meanwhile namibia's president sam nujoma had personal ties to zimbabwe and committed his forces in part to honor this friendship and to fight unita there were a number of other independent or quasi-independent groups involved in the fighting but the last two that we're going to mention are the movement for the liberation of the congo or mlc and the lord's resistance army or lra if you thought there would be fewer abbreviations you haven't been paying attention the mlc was essentially a ugandan-backed alternative to those congolese defectors we mentioned earlier the rcd which was becoming increasingly influenced by rwanda such an alternative became necessary as relations between the two initial invaders deteriorated over the course of the war the lra meanwhile is a fundamentalist christian cult slash militia that was founded with sudanese support and remains at least nominally active to this day it's most notable for its leader joseph kony with all of these new powers involved a military stalemate eventuated and would continue for the rest of the conflict but only as far as large organized battles along the scale of operation katona went make no mistake though blood continued to be shed during the brutal proxy battles that occurred from there on out throughout 1999 numerous peace accords sponsored by the likes of muammar gaddafi and nelson mandela tried and failed to bring an end to the violence the rcd was not even invited to these accords which may seem like a major oversight but also a likely result of the fact that the group had splintered into competing factions this newly fractured group was difficult to negotiate with holistically for obvious reasons the next year ugandan and rwandan forces actually began to fight each other as well near the city of kisangani one of the earliest rebel strongholds with many of the nations involved both supporting and fighting both non-state actors in addition to each other the prospect of a peace settlement that would end the multi-polar conflict was growing increasingly complicated and unlikely over 5500 u.n peacekeeping forces did little to stop the violence as the dawn of a new millennium came and went the conflict seemed destined to remain a violent stalemate the first major change in years occurred on january 16th 2001 when laurent kabila was killed by his own child soldier bodyguard his son joseph succeeded him as the president of the democratic republic of congo and by all accounts seemed to have a better head for politicking under a u.n peace plan uganda and rwanda began their long withdrawals that would be finalized under the 2002 sun city and pretoria accords while the rcd and other rebel groups at least nominally began the process of disarming that process has not always gone smoothly and occasional fighting still occurs especially in the itori region having gone through all of that we still have a fairly important question why haven't you heard more about this war part of the issue is undoubtedly the tendency of western media and history courses to ignore the happenings of sub-saharan africa but there are other factors as well one of them is the complexity of the conflict which pitted one faction against another only to bring them together against a different faction only to tear them apart yet again moreover these myriad factions often employed guerilla tactics waging an asymmetrical style of warfare that defies easy summary other than operation katona large scale sieges and battles in this war are hard to come by this is the most recent topic we've ever covered on this channel and it is difficult to take an objective view on such contemporary events but hopefully you come away from this video with a better understanding of this often unrepresented chapter of our recent history now i want to take a minute to thank our sponsor squarespace if you've spent any time on youtube in the last couple years i'm sure you already know what squarespace is but let us explain to you just how it can come in handy squarespace is a robust intuitive all-in-one website and online store builder that could be useful to just about anybody whether you're looking to start a business create an online portfolio or more commonly negotiate an end to a bloody geopolitical quagmire squarespace includes integrated analytics built-in social media sharing buttons and personalized email campaigns for when you really need to invite about two dozen or so different rebel factions to your peace talks personally this happens to me quite a lot so i do recommend you go to squarespace.com slash armchair historian and get 10 off of your first purchase of a website or domain you

Channel: The Armchair Historian

Views: 2,985,340

Keywords: the second congo war, great war of africa, first congo war, great african war, african world war, kabila, mobutu sese seko, african history, history of africa, scramble for africa, imperialism

Id: 1XuRsZGmC9o

Length: 14min 26sec (866 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 07 2019