Imperialism

In the mystery over what happened to DR Congo's leader, Laurent Kabila, many of the early facts were first confirmed by the Belgian Government.

Belgium was, of course, the colonial power in Congo until 1960, and links between the two countries remain strong. Each has helped shape the other.

But while Belgium prospered from its African connection, Congo's story has been one of chaos and decline.

Rich rewards

Belgium's capital, Brussels, would have been a very different city without its Congo connection. There is a Congo flavour in music and food and Congo exiles can be found plotting in Brussels' bars and hotels - some still referring to their homeland by its former name, Zaire.

Two of Brussels' most elegant thoroughfares, Avenue Louise and Avenue Terveuren were laid out with money raised from Belgium's adventures in the Congo basin, and many of the city's most grandiose buildings were funded from the proceeds of rubber, timber and ivory.

Even the district largely rebuilt with European Union offices is dominated by an imperial Arc de Triomphe - a rival to the one in Paris. Bureaucrats and politicians see it every day as they whizz round the Schuman roundabout. It is an eye-catching centrepiece for an elegant park.

But once again, the money to pay for this symbol of grandeur was squeezed from the Congo.

African prize

More than in any other of the European colonial powers, one man was responsible for Belgium's grip on a vast chunk of central Africa: Leopold II.

Leopold - as king of a small, newly-formed European country - told his advisers that Belgium must have an empire and by 1885, he had one.

And that was how he viewed the raw materials and the people of the Congo - as a prize to be consumed. But even by the standards of the day, Leopold's attitude to his colony was ruthless and exploitative.

The scandal which eventually shamed the Belgian Government to bring to an end Leopold's 20 years of despoiling the Congo was the discovery that his agents had been using forced labour to harvest rubber - a highly sought-after commodity at the time. Villages which resisted paying the rubber-tax were punished.

Accounts of atrocities reached London and Brussels - including one which described how Leopold's enforcers had collected baskets of severed hands to prove they had been doing their work.

History repeats

In the end, Leopold's own ministers took his private fiefdom from him and his vast territories became the Belgian Congo - to distinguish them from the French colony on the other side of the Congo River. But by the time Leopold was stopped, the damage was done.

In Brussels, Leopold left his mark in stone - in monuments and buildings. But in Congo his influence was much more malign. The years of terror broke down traditional communities and created a long-lasting pattern of plunder.

Africa's most rapacious modern leader had failed to pay his soldiers and there had been a spasm of rioting and looting. From the far bank of the Zaire River, looking across Stanley Pool, Kinshasa seemed almost like a normal city, the glass of its tall tower blocks reflecting the evening sun.

Up close, though, Kinshasa's pretensions were unravelling. Young men in combat trousers stood by the roadside selling looted goods - tennis rackets, a toilet bowl, a fish tank. Under Mr Mobutu, as under King Leopold, theft was becoming part of the mainstream economy.

Mr Mobutu invited journalists to witness him swearing in a new batch of ministers, a new collection of snouts at his government's trough.

With his leopardskin hat and his throne, the old manipulator still looked the part, but in a country the size of western Europe he was losing control. Others were looting the economy on an extravagant scale - even the embassy buildings in Japan were said to have been stolen.

Perhaps Congo is too big a country to be governed as a single state. Mr Mobutu held it together while there were assets to spread around, but his successor Laurent Kabila had a more torrid time right from the start.

For the last three years, six countries and at least three rebel groups have been at war, squabbling over Congo's remaining mineral wealth, diamonds and oil.

Curiously, Laurent Kabila did come to Brussels to meet the present Belgian King, but the days of European intervention in Congo's affairs are over.

King Leopold and his European rivals created the conditions for chaos in Congo a century ago, the most the former colonial powers will do now is withdraw their nationals and stand well back.