anganyika. Rwandans had held the town since March 1999, nine months after launching the current war by encouraging a rebellion in the Congolese army's ranks, then pouring its own forces into Congo to topple Kabila -- the same leader Rwanda had installed barely a year earlier by backing a rebellion that drove dictator Mobutu Sese Seko from power.At issue, according to Rwandan officials, was Kabila's support for the very forces Rwanda had put him in place to eradicate: the Interahamwe -- thousands of ethnic Hutu extremists who had fled into Congo in 1994 after leading an attempted genocide against Rwanda's minority Tutsi tribe that left more than a half-million dead.The Interahamwe were now allied with Kabila, and more formidable as a result. What had been degenerating into a ragtag guerrilla force was receiving new weapons from the Congolese government and new training from the army of Zimbabwe, which also rushed to support Kabila against the Rwandan invasion.But when shells began exploding behind the Rwandans' Pepa foxholes in the predawn hours of Oct. 15, the charge was led by yet another force. Hutu extremists from Burundi -- another tiny country divided by the Hutu-Tutsi chasm -- made up the brunt of the eight brigades that pushed across the rolling rangeland, according to Rwandan commanders. The Congolese infantry also advanced, reinforced by armored personnel carriers and British-made Hawker combat aircraft, both from Zimbabwe."They were coming in big numbers, really very big numbers," said Lt. Col. John Tibesigwa, the Rwandan commander at Pepa.With a much smaller force on hand, the Rwandans slowly pulled out of Pepa, along with the Congolese rebels they sponsor, a force known as Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD). In fact, Rwandan commanders maintain that they were already pulling some units back when the attack came."While we were disengaging, they were massing troops," said Tibesigwa. "To keep them from coming back, we had to t...
