Editing AFDL (section)

==Background==
{{See also|Great Lakes refugee crisis}}
By the middle of 1996, the situation in eastern [[Zaire]] was simmering with tension. Following the [[Rwandan genocide]] in 1994, hundreds of thousands of ethnic [[Hutu]]s had fled across the border into Zaire where they settled in large [[refugee]] camps. Many of those responsible for the [[genocide]], the former [[Rwandan Armed Forces]] (FAR) and ''[[interahamwe]]'' militia, used the anonymity offered by the camps to reorganize into the rebel [[Rassemblement pour le Retour et la Démocratie au Rwanda]] (RDR). The RDR began to use the camps as bases to infiltrate back across the border and conduct an [[insurgency]].  Despite protests by the new [[government of Rwanda]], the Zairian government and international organizations providing humanitarian aid to the camps were unwilling to remove the militants from the refugee population.<ref name="Hutu"/>

At the same time, the position of the [[Banyamulenge]] minority, ethnic [[Tutsi]]s who had lived in Zaire for generations, was growing precarious. They had long been discriminated against for being relative newcomers to the region and having a different language and culture than neighboring tribes, part of [[Mobutu Sese Seko]]'s strategy of encouraging a low level of internal discord in the country so an alliance would not form against him. The arrival of large numbers of Hutus, many of them militant Hutus who carried out attacks on Banyamulenge targets, had substantially upset what equilibrium existed. The Rwandan government also saw the Banyamulenge as natural allies and had quietly armed and trained a substantial force in anticipation of what it felt to be an unstable situation.