1993

• 21 October. Coup d'état in Burundi: President Ndadaye killed, beginning of civil war.

1994

• April–July. Resumption of the civil war in Rwanda; genocide against the Tutsi by extremist Hutu, crimes against humanity and war crimes by RPF; RPF seizes power; 2 million Hutu, including defeated army and militia, flee to neighbouring countries, Zaire in particular.

• Fall. First signs of authoritarian rule, human rights abuse and ‘Tutsification’ in Rwanda.

1995

• Fall. Large-scale violence in North Kivu: Hutu vs. Hunde and Tutsi; Hunde vs. Tutsi and Hutu.

• Hit-and-run operations by Rwandan Hutu refugees, operating from Zaire, against targets in Rwanda.

• June–July. Banyamulenge in South Kivu increasingly victimised and their organisation, Milima, banned.

• 25 July. Coup d'état returns Major Buyoya to power in Burundi.

• September. Start of the ‘Banyamulenge rebellion’ supported by Rwanda.

• October. Creation in Kigali of the AFDL, with Laurent-Désiré Kabila as its spokesman; U.S. support for the ‘rebellion’; France sides with Kinshasa.

• October. Rwandan refugee camps attacked in North and South Kivu. Uganda joins the invasion of Zaire.

• 18 October. Fall of Uvira.

• 28 October. Fall of Bukavu.

• 31 October. Fall of Goma.

• 4–5 November. Nairobi-I regional summit on the Zairean crisis.

• November. Buffer zone established along Rwandan and Burundian borders. Hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees ‘repatriated’, while hundreds of thousands of others flee westwards.

• November-December. Aborted attempts at launching an international ‘military-humanitarian’ intervention to protect the Rwandan refugees.

• 16–17 December. Nairobi-II regional summit.

• 17 December. Mobutu returns to Kinshasa from France, where he was undergoing medical treatment.

• […]