On the 9th of October 1996, the Vice-Governor of South Kivu, Lwabanji Ngabo, summoned all Banyamulenge (ethnic Tutsi of the highlands to the east of the Rusizi river and Lake Tanganyika) to leave the country. He thus sparked off an escalation of a scope nobody could yet imagine: a war of seven months, involving troops from Zaire, Rwanda, Uganda and Angola as well as logistic support from Zimbabwe, leading to the ousting of President Mobutu and his entire political entourage.

However, the war between Rwanda and Zaire did not come as a surprise. Vice-President Paul Kagame told diplomats in early 1996 that if the international community was unable or unwilling to stop the delivery of weapons to the ex-FAR and Interahamwe and the military training in the refugee camps, the Rwandan government could decide to take preventive military action. Furthermore, the notorious corruption of the Mobutu regime had left Zaire a hollow state that only continued to exist thanks to the skilful manipulation of political opponents and foreign allies by the master of Gbadolite;7 once the external support had faded because of the end of the Cold War, and as soon as the internal manipulation was hampered by organised democratic opposition, the country was precipitated into protracted political instability.

In spite of this structural weakness, the war did not immediately lead to a wholesale violation of Zaire's national sovereignty and territorial integrity. First of all, the military campaign by Rwanda and Uganda in eastern Zaire did contain a genuine Congolese component, crystallised in a coalition of four movements opposed to the Mobutu regime, the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaire (AFDL), even if most military operations were conducted or commanded by Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers.9 In addition, the rebellion supported by Kampala and Kigali spent considerable time to consolidate its power on a narrow strip of land from Lake Tanganyika to the Sudanese border, and this did not seem to pose a serious threat to the Government, which retained control of 85% of the national territory, including all major cities.10 Furthermore, the AFDL rebellion counted only some 3,000 to 4,000 combatants, whereas the combined Zairian security forces numbered officially more than 100,000. Until the fall of Kisangani, nobody in Kinshasa took the security challenge in Kivu very seriously.

In December 1996, President Museveni proposed to Mobutu's special security advisor a 12-point peace plan, which was explicitly based on the respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Zaire, in accordance with international law. Kinshasa rejected the plan; Prime Minister Kengo announced on 20 January 1997 "a total and crushing counter-offensive" ("une contre-offensive totale et foudroyante"). This counter-offensive backfired not only on the Mobutu regime, but also on the principle of inviolability of national borders, established by the UN and OAU Charters and specifically reaffirmed for Africa in the Cairo Declaration of 1964 of the OAU.11 After taking Kisangani in mid-March 1997, Rwandan and Ugandan troops walked all the way across the country to Kinshasa.

Despite a flurry of diplomatic activities to negotiate a political settlement, involving the UN, US and EU Special Envoys, as well as President Nelson Mandela and Mwalimu Nyerere, nobody in the international community bothered any more about the foreign military intervention.12 Even in Zaire itself, the Rwandan and Ugandan troops met little resistance from government soldiers, who preferred to flee or to join the ranks of the rebels instead of fighting for a dictator hated by the Zairian people. In the end, everybody was relieved that the war did not cause too many victims and that Mobutu, his family, and his entourage were leaving the country. Kabila and his foreign allies were received by cheering masses in the Zairian capital. The donors were hoping that the new government would engage in a vigorous policy of national reconciliation and reconstruction, and generally agreed "to give Kabila the benefit of the doubt".