Some of the 3.5 million have been killed directly in the fighting. Many more have suffered lingering deaths because of starvation and disease because the war has shattered Congo's agriculture, economy and society. Three out of every four children born during the war have already died or will die before their second birthday.

The Great Powers and imperialism are involved, just as they have always been in Congo's history. In the 1960s the Great Powers brought Joseph Mobutu to power. This dictator ruled from 1965 to 1997 over a country which he renamed Zaire. It was a prized asset during the Cold War. One attraction was the mineral wealth. The mineral belt in Katanga province contains copper and zinc in far higher concentrations than neighbouring countries.

Cobalt is a key mineral for jet engines. The US has no domestic source of supply, and Zaire produced half the world's supply in the 1980s. No wonder a US ambassador once referred to "the Congo caviar" in a cable back to headquarters.

But even more important to the US was keeping strategic control over a huge swathe of Central Africa. Mobutu could be relied on as an ally against the USSR-so long as he was thrown enough loot and allowed to butcher his opponents. Mobutu was allowed by his Western backers to plunder so much money that he became legendary in Africa. When he bought a $5.2 million villa on the French Riviera he asked as an afterthought whether the price was in dollars or Belgian francs.

The 39-fold difference was unimportant for a man with a country's treasury at his disposal. Mobutu stayed in power because he murdered his opponents, and because he could rely on Western backing. During the Shaba rebellion in the 1970s the US organised a military airlift and France parachuted in legionnaires to crush Mobutu's enemies.

French and Belgian troops flew in to police the streets when the army rioted in Zaire's cities during the 1990s. The present war in Congo has its roots in the horrific events of 1994 in neighbouring Rwanda, when around 800,000 people were slaughtered in a hundred days.

The Rwandan government of the time, dominated by members of the Hutu group, unleashed a meticulously planned campaign of murder against people in the Tutsi group and opposition Hutus.

In response to the killing, a Tutsi-dominated rebel movement of Rwandan exiles invaded Rwanda. Those who had organised the genocide and hundreds of thousands of ordinary Hutus fled the country. Many ended up in eastern Zaire under Mobutu's protection. The Rwandan and neighbouring Ugandan governments wanted to smash the potential threat from the Hutu militias.

In 1997 they allied with the Zairean opposition under Laurent Kabila to drive Mobutu out. But instead of ushering in a new era of freedom, this opened up widespread slaughter. It detonated a struggle between regional competitors and, behind them, the US and France vying for control of an area where both believed they should dominate.

In 1998 Uganda and Rwanda fell out with Kabila and organised a military rebellion against him. Kabila turned to Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola for military assistance. The rebellion split into many factions as the local and international ruling classes fastened like vultures on the rapidly decaying corpse of what was now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo.