Second Congo War
'Africa's World War', with deaths in the millions
In August 1998 Rwanda and Uganda backed a rebellion against their former ally, Congo's President Laurent-Désiré Kabila, while Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia came to his defence. Nine African countries and dozens of armed groups, many fighting over mines, were drawn in. The International Rescue Committee estimated 5.4 million excess deaths from 1998 to 2007, mostly from hunger and disease; other researchers consider this too high.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 18 years earlier
- 1981 AIDS first described — 17 years earlier
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 10 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 9 years earlier
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 9 years earlier
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — 7 years earlier
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 6 years earlier
- 2002 Euro notes and coins — 4 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1980 Solidarity — 18 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 13 years earlier
- 1986 Chernobyl disaster — 12 years earlier
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 9 years earlier
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 7 years earlier
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 19 years earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 18 years earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 8 years earlier
- 1993 Oslo Accords — 5 years earlier
- 2011–2024 Syrian civil war — 13 years later
Asia
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 23 years earlier
- 1997 Handover of Hong Kong — 1 year earlier
- 1998 Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests — same year
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 6 years later
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — 13 years later
Americas
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 15 years earlier
- 1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope — 8 years earlier
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 3 years later
- 2003 Human genome sequenced — 5 years later
- 2007 Apple unveils the iPhone — 9 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 6 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 80)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 68)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 87)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 79)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 74)
- Fidel Castro (aged 72)
- Elizabeth II (aged 72)
- Gabriel García Márquez (aged 71)
- Mikhail Gorbachev (aged 67)
- Boris Yeltsin (aged 67)