units from the Congo, and moved to build a coalition including Namibian, Angolan, Zimbabwean and Zambian forces, soon encompassing a string of African nations from Libya to South Africa, although their support varied. The tripartite coalition responded with a second invasion of the east, largely through proxy groups. These actions constituted the catalyst of the Second Congo War the following year, although some experts prefer to view the two conflicts as one continuous war whose aftereffects continue to date. Background Dying state in Zaire An ethnic Ngbandi, Mobutu came to power in 1965 and enjoyed support from the United States government because of his anti-communist stance while in office. However, Mobutu's totalitarian rule and corrupt policies allowed the Zairian state to decay, evidenced by a 65% decrease in Zairian GDP between independence in 1960 and the end of Mobutu's reign in 1997. Following the end of the Cold War in 1992, the United States stopped supporting Mobutu in favour of what it called a "new generation of African leaders", including Rwanda's Paul Kagame and Uganda's Yoweri Museveni. A wave of democratisation swept across Africa during the 1990s. Under substantial internal and external pressure for a democratic transition in Zaire, Mobutu promised reform. He officially ended the one-party system he had maintained since 1967, but ultimately proved unwilling to implement broad reform, alienating allies both at home and abroad. In fact, the Zairian state had all but ceased to exist. The majority of the Zairian population relied on an informal economy for their subsistence, since the official economy was not reliable. Furthermore, the Zairian national army, Forces Armées Zaïroises (FAZ), was forced to prey upon the population for survival; Mobutu himself allegedly once asked FAZ soldiers why they needed pay when they had weapons. Mobutu's rule encountered considerable internal resistance, and given the weak central state, rebel groups could find refuge in Zaire's eastern provinces, far from the capital, Kinshasa. Opposition groups included leftists who had supported Patrice Lumumba (1925–1961), as well as ethnic and regional minorities opposed to the nominal dominance of Kinshasa. Laurent-Désiré Kabila, an ethnic Luba from Katanga province who would eventually overthrow Mobutu, had fought Mobutu's régime since its inception. The inability of the Mobutuist régime to control rebel movements in its eastern provinces eventually allowed its internal and external foes to ally. Ethnic tensions Tensions had existed between various ethnic groups in eastern Zaire for centuries,