Republic of Congo

'travel to the capital should be by air as by road is not safe'. with many tourist attractions and fanscination congo river,congo has plenty to trigger the imagination.but recently, civil war and militia conflicts has plagued and the country is struggling to build on a peace accord signed with southern rebels in 2003.
before the French came,congo was a group of seperate but trading kingdoms comprising of different tribes.but French seduced the governing tribe to sign a series of treaties and finally crasped it as one of its African Equatorial colonies.and they made full use of congo's considerable natural resouces such as ivory,tropical hardwood and rubber,as well as the locals who were forced as labour.French colonial rule could easily reach as brutal as German,but seldom draw attention.an imposing example is in 1928,a revolt broke out in congo over renewed forced labour and other abuses carried out in the course of building the congo-ocean railway,which resulted in the death of more than 17,000 people.finally in 1946, congo given a territorial assembly and representation in the French parliament.
but the successive congolese government haven't done any better since the country gained independent in 1960---instead, the northerner leader simply used his time in office to pull up his villagers and subjugated southerners.vice versa.unsurprisingly,tensions between two sides have given rises to three civil wars .
the first president after independence was widely perceived as a puppet of French only.so he's just in office for 3 years. his successor tried to strengthen his position as imposing one-party state,but was ousted by a captain.this captain was one of the northerners who bathed in an era of Maxism and greater ties with Soviet Union.ironically,he was assassinated by his 'friends'in the north.the new president has certainly showed that he has the ruthlessness to survived at the stage of congolese politics which others failed.
but in 1990,like most of the ex-communist countries in the world,they abandoned maxism.in 1993,the bloody conflict between the government and opposition erupted.though in 1994, a cease-fire deal established but was broken again in 1997 as full-scale civil war.in 2001,peace conference ended up adopting a new constitution ,paving the way for presidential and parliamentary elections.the biggest losers in the civil war are their people---they had to hide into the forest or jungles. many children died from hunger or exhaustation.
as u see, the modern history is full of coup,civil wars and dirty politics...nothing else.

*the name of the capital of republic of congo,this gloomy and hopeless country,reveiled a beautiful and romantic story about an italian(but worked for French government)colonier who devoted his whole life to the justice and healthy-develope of congo.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/5370744.stm