The post-colonial history of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which from 1961 to 1997 was named Zaire, has been punctuated by a succession of dictatorships and civil conflict. When, in 1997, after a long civil war, Laurent Kabila overturned Mobutu's thirty-year dictatorship, the local population and international opinion greeted the news with optimism. For thirty years, the despot Mobutu had ruthlessly impoverished the country, amassing enormous wealth for himself and his family while the Western powers did nothing to prevent or discourage his autocratic regime.
But Kabila, who reinstated the country's name to Democratic Republic of Congo, did not introduce any substantial improvements in the country, and ruled in yet another dictatorial regime, without doing anything to change the country's situation of poverty.
In early August 1998, groups of rebels opposing Kabila took control of some cities on the eastern border, and marched on the capital, Kinshasa. In January 2001, Kabila was assassinated by one of his bodyguards.
The son of the despot, Major General Joseph Kabila, took the reins of power, and, differently to his father, demonstrated a desire to search for solutions to the country's problems, admitting United Nations peace forces who attempted to permit progress in the process of normalisation.
Some steps that were taken, such as the signature of a peace treaty with rebel militia in 2002 and the compilation of a new constitution in April 2003, seem to represent signs of hope. However the situation remains critical, and rebel militia still control strategic areas and resources, perpetrating slaughter and violence on the civilian population. Conflict, disease and the destruction of what precarious infrastructure exists make the Democratic Republic of Congo a country with a serious humanitarian crisis, where local conflicts are bound up with many international interests that further complicate the situation.