At the Inter-Continental Hotel here, Zimbabwean soldiers get on the elevators on one floor, Namibians on another and Angolans on yet another, all wearing different uniforms, but armed with pounds of guns and explosives. In Kisangani in the rebel-held area and Lubumbashi in the Government zone, there are reports of food shortages. People around the nation are adamant that Congo must remain intact. It's your place. It can never be divided.
Congo is Africa's second largest country after Sudan, a third as big as the United States.
By sheer size, location and potential for wealth, it is one of Africa's most important countries. But it barely ever existed as a state, either under Belgium's loose colonialism or under Mobutu's years of corruption and neglect. More than 200 ethnic groups live in Congo. Roads are impassable. Kinshasa, in the west, is a capital in name only, its monuments crumbling and its hold over the east theoretical even before the war.