Second Congo War: Loyalist troops backed by Angolan and Zimbabwean forces repulse the RCD and Rwandan offensive on Kinshasa.
The Congolese Rally for Democracy (French: Rassemblement Congolais pour la Dmocratie; abbreviated RCD), also known as the Rally for Congolese Democracy, is a political party and a former rebel group that operated in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It was supported by the government of Rwanda, and was a major armed faction in the Second Congo War (1998-2003). It became a social liberal political party in 2003.
The Second Congo War (also known as the Great War of Africa or the Great African War, and sometimes referred to as the African World War) began in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in August 1998, little more than a year after the First Congo War, and involved some of the same issues. The war officially ended in July 2003, when the Transitional Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo took power. Although a peace agreement was signed in 2002, violence has continued in many regions of the country, especially in the east. Hostilities have continued since the ongoing Lord's Resistance Army insurgency, and the Kivu and Ituri conflicts.
Ultimately, nine African countries and around twenty-five armed groups became involved in the war. By 2008, the war and its aftermath had caused 5.4 million deaths, principally through disease and starvation, making the Second Congo War the deadliest conflict worldwide since World War II. Another 2 million were displaced from their homes or sought asylum in neighboring countries.Despite a formal end to the war in July 2003 and an agreement by the former belligerents to create a government of national unity, 1,000 people died daily in 2004 from easily preventable cases of malnutrition and disease. Major funding for this war, and for subsequent fighting, came from conflict minerals.