“No quick or easy solutions are available. The damage to Congo has simply been too extensive, the killing too vast, the many decades of past misgovernment too destructive. But the world must not abandon the Congolese people. Their agony challenges our humanity.” 1 The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been seen as a problem to be solved for far too long, rather than a country offering a set of interests and values to the world. This is not surprising for a country at the threshold of disintegration. Africa and the rest of the world face the daunting task of finding a lasting solution to the problems haunting this vast African country. This chapter gives an account of restructuring efforts, centring on disarmament as a component of the process of DDR (disarmament, demobilization and reintegration) in the DRC. It concludes by proposing some of the elements that may add value to stabilization in the country. The conflict The 1990s was a period of tremendous turbulence in the Great Lakes region, where a convolution of tragedies and misfortunes befell the states of the region. First was the genocide in Rwanda, triggered off by the killing of Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, presidents of Rwanda and Burundi respectively on 6 April 1994, when Habyarimana’s plane was shot down near Kigali Airport, allegedly by extremists suspecting that the presidents were considering to implement the Arusha Peace Accords. Habyarimana’s remains were taken to Zaire under Joseph Désiré Mobutu’s orders and installed in a mausoleum. Then followed the overthrow of Mobutu on 16 May 1997 following a rebel assault on Kinshasa, led by Laurent Kabila and involving alliances of neighbouring countries and armed rebel groups. The tragedies of the decade culminated in the assassination of Laurent Kabila by one of his bodyguards at the presidential palace in Kinshasa, in January 2001, followed by the immediate swearing in of his son Joseph Kabila, as the new president. CHAPTER 4 DRC: ON THE ROAD TO DISARMAMENT Nelson Alusala 56