The Democratic Republic of Congo has been repeatedly ravaged by war, rebellion and attacks on civilians in the last two decades. Though the country is rarely without some skirmish going on somewhere — a result of a complicated history of rivalries among ethnic groups and constant conflicts over land ownership and resources — the government made a strategic move toward peace several years ago. It signed a treaty on March 23, 2009, with a rebel group called the National Congress for the Defense of the People, which had taken a fair amount of control over the mineral-rich eastern part of Congo and was backed by Rwanda, Congo's much smaller yet more powerful neighbor to the east.
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