The country is no stranger to suffering. Given its vast mineral wealth, this country the size of western Europe should be one of Africa's richest. But successive rulers have bled it dry.

Brutal slavery

The DRC was the personal fiefdom of Belgium's King Leopold II from 1885 to 1908, when it became the colony of the Belgian Congo. Leopold initiated a brutal process of slavery and exploitation that continued until independence in 1960.

But independence brought only a further descent into violence, from which the DRC is only just beginning to emerge.

1960-61:
On independence in June 1960, Patrice Lumumba is the elected prime minister and Joseph Kasavubu the president. The secession of several provinces, notably mineral-rich Katanga in the southeast, sparks civil war and the deaths of at least 500 000 people by 1965.

Intense rivalry between Kasavubu and the prime minister ends when Lumumba — seen as a communist in Washington and disliked by Belgium — is overthrown in a September 1960 coup in which Colonel Joseph Desire Mobutu plays a key role.

1965:
Mobutu, now a general, stages a coup and imposes dictatorial rule. As self-declared president, he gets US backing as a bulwark against Soviet influence in Africa.

1990:
Mobutu, who has renamed the country Zaire, lifts ban on political parties but retains control of key ministries and security forces. His kleptocratic regime bleeds the country dry.

1997:
Mobutu is toppled by rebel Laurent Desire Kabila, who is backed by Uganda and Rwanda. They resented Mobutu for letting Hutus behind Rwanda's 1994 genocide flee over the border.

1998:
There is a fresh rebellion against the new regime — a civil war that enflames the entire region. When Kabila accuses Rwanda and Uganda of keeping troops in the renamed Democratic Republic of Congo to plunder minerals they back Tutsi-led rebels seeking to overthrow him. Angola, Chad, Namibia and Zimbabwe send in troops to support Kabila.

2001:
Kabila is murdered, to be replaced by his son Joseph (29).

2002:
Foreign troops officially leave. DRC factions sign peace deal that leads in 2003 to power-sharing government, run by Kabila and including former rebel foes and the political opposition.

The death toll from five years of conflict, hunger and disease is put at three million. In the post-war transition, the UN deployment of peacekeepers becomes the largest such force in the world at more than 17 500 personnel.

2006:
Despite ongoing violence in the east, the DRC declares elections for 30 July, which pass off peacefully.

20 August:
Joseph Kabila is announced front-runner in the presidential poll. The news triggers clashes in Kinshasa between supporters of Kabila and his challenger, former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba, in which at least 23 people are killed.

15 November:
Kabila is declared winner of the election after a run-off vote, by which time the death toll from war, hunger and disease since 1998 has risen to four million.

AFP