The mineral-rich DRC, Africa's second-largest country, has been plagued by cycles of violence and instability. Since 1998, violent conflicts, poverty, and disease have killed more than 5.4 million people in the country, according to estimates by the International Rescue Committee. The DRC was colonized as a personal possession of Belgian King Leopold II in 1885 and administered by the Belgian government starting in 1907. It achieved independence from Belgium in 1960. For almost 30 years of the post-independence period, the DRC, then known as Zaire, was ruled by an authoritarian regime under Mobutu Sese Seko. Following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the establishment of a new government there, some perpetrators of the genocide and refugees fled to the neighboring Kivu provinces of eastern DRC. A rebellion began there in 1996, pitting the forces led by Laurent Kabila against the army of President Mobutu Sese Seko. Kabila's forces, aided by Rwanda and Uganda, took the capital city of Kinshasa in 1997 and renamed the country the Democratic Republic of the Congo. See figure 1 for a map of the DRC's provinces and neighboring countries.