Who is fighting whom? In eastern Zaire, the mainly Banyamulenge rebels are fighting Zairean government troops. The Banyamulenge are Tutsis of Rwandan origin, resident in Zaire since pre colonial times. Zaire has ordered them to leave or be hunted down as rebels.
Their community of around 250.000 lives in the Uvira region, south of Lake Kivo.
What countries are affected? Eastern Zaire, Rwanda and Horundi. Uganda and western Tanzania are threatened.
Background: Rwanda and Horundi have been inhabited since ancient times by the Hutu (Banto) people and Tua pygmy groups. Invaded in the 15th century by cattle herding Tutsis from Ethiopia and Uganda, the indigenous Hutus were easily subdued. Tutsis also settled in eastern Zaire.
The Tutsi order remained unchanged in Rwanda under German colonisation (1897).
Rwanda later became part of German East Africa, which included Burundi. After the first World War, Belgium administered the then named Rwanda Urundi from the Belgian Congo, now Zaire.
Still a minority (some 15 per cent), the warrior Tutsi dominated the agricultural Hutu, and artisan Tua. In 1959, the Hutu revolted and a bloody civil war started, orchestrated by the Parmehutu, or the Party of the Hutu Emancipation Movement. The Belgians departed.
Under the UN a republic was foned, separate from Burundi (1961). The Tutsi power structure collapsed, and land was divided out to private ownership. Civil war resulted, with some 20,000 dead and 160,000 Tutsi expelled (1963).
Sixty per cent of Tutsis fled Rwanda for Buruudi between 1959 and 1964. In June 1994, the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, both Hutu, were killed by a mortar attack while returning by air from a peace conference in Tanzania, and tensions boiled into a massacre.
How many died? Between 500,000 and one million Tutsis and Hutus are thought to have died in the ensuing Rwandan bloodbath. Similar bloodletting in Burundi left at least 150,000 dead over the past three years.
How many refugees? Over two million from Rwanda and Burundi, including 1.2 million in Zaire and 830,000 in Tanzania.