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Museveni says he still dreams of building a road from Uganda to Kisangani, fathering a Uganda-Congo economic and military alliance that would be among the strongest forces in Africa--an idea that is a nightmare for other African states.
It is that jockeying for political and economic advantage that has splintered the central-African alliance. Oil-rich Angola, under the leadership of Jose Eduardo dos Santos, has supported Kabila since they began fighting together to unseat Mobutu at the end of 1996. Namibia, in support of Angola, has sent a small force to support Kabila. Zimbabwe's leader, Robert Mugabe, has sent 10,000 soldiers to Kabila's assistance. In return, Kabila has promised Zimbabwe a slice of Congo's economic pie: lucrative contracts with Congo's mining conglomerate and the protection of investments by Mugabe cronies.
As peace in Congo slips out of reach, leaders like Mugabe and Museveni find the stability of their regimes wrapped up in Congo's war. The real fear is that the fight inside Congo will become a fight for Congo, a struggle to carve up the nation and assign new borders. Explains Johan Peleman, director of the Belgian-based International Peace Information Service: "The longer the war lasts, the more politically and economically involved the players become in the territory they are occupying." A year ago, that involvement was a hopeful guarantee of peace. Now it seems to be taking Africa down an unfamiliar and dangerous path.
--With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Cape Town and Clive Mutiso/Kigali