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Lt. Col. Freddy Ngalimo (MLC)

The biggest, strongest tribes in Central Africa were the Hutu and the Tutsi, who were based in Rwanda and Burundi. They ended up in power over various parts of Congo at the end of the century just because nobody in Congo had the organization. The Hutu and the Tutsi are real law-abiding, organized people. If you've only heard about them from the genocide news out of Rwanda, that might seem surprising. But...well, to understand this you have to be willing to tell the bitter truth. And here it is: the people who do genocide best are law-abiding, decent, stand-up folks. Strange but true. Take the Germans: wouldn't hurt a fly...unless someone in uniform told them to. Then they would fry every fly on the planet.

The Tutsi and Hutu had been lucky -- in a way. The European colonists liked hanging out in the Hutu and Tutsis' homelands, Rwanda and Burundi -- cool mountain air, fertile volcanic soil. And they liked these two intelligent, obedient tribes. So they, um, "civilized" them. The Hutu and Tutsi turned into the most literate, Christian, tidy, hard-working people in Central Africa. Then the Europeans overseers left...and after a little while these two tribes get that old itch to wipe each other out. It was all organized. The churches helped out. Two of the big war criminals were nuns. It's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, imagining hundreds of thousands of neat, clean Hutus with machetes running around cheerfully hacking every Tutsi or Tutsi-lover they catch. The old line, "I was just following orders," may seem pretty lame, but after you read about the Hutu killers you end up kind of believing it. They did it because they were told to.

Under Mobutu, Congo was officially "at peace." Which meant it was small-scale stuff, murder and torture, instead of big armies. It'd be a lie to call that "Peace," but it kept Congo out of the headlines. When "war" came, it was thanks to that dynamic duo, the Tutsis and the Hutus. Congo was too fucked up to have a war by itself. To have a war, you need organization. Soldiers who obey orders. Lines of communication. The only people in the neighborhood who had what it took to make a war were...you guessed it! Those Hatfields'n'McCoys of Central Africa: the Hutus and the Tutsis!

The bloodbath really got going in the early 90s, after a suspicious plane crash that killed the leaders of Rwanda and Burundi. The Rwandan Hutus polished up their machetes and started killing Tutsi. Maybe a million or so. Only then did the feud spill over into that big stinking power vacuum to the west: Congo.

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