ABSTRACT
Inter-African intervention has emerged since the Cold War as an effective, if blunt, instrument for effecting political transition in a state's strategic sphere. Rwanda - driven by the successful use of armed intervention by its new leaders - was the leader in advocating and implementing the 1996 and 1998 interventions in Congo-Zaire. Despite the apparent supremacy of a crude profit motive in recent times, in order to understand the Rwandan interventionary impulse it will be necessary to consider Rwanda's recent interventions as a result of a sequence of events. Rwanda's intervention in the affairs of its giant neighbour may only be explained in light of the intervener's regional and domestic imperatives, and of its history as an object of intervention since 1990. All parties to the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have been responsible for massive violations of human rights, but the large presence of Rwandan troops greatly exacerbates the situation.
