Spillover effects: The 1994 Rwandan genocide has played a role in creating the DRC’s chaos. After the slaughter, a massive influx of Hutu refugees poured into neighboring Zaire, as the DRC was then named. Rwandan Hutu militiamen launched incursions into Rwanda from the resulting refugee camps in the DRC. The presence of the Rwandan Hutu militias in Zaire proved destabilizing, eventually contributing to the ethnic strife and civil war that led to the ouster of Mobutu in 1997. Here, a Hutu militiaman brandishes a machete, which came to be a chilling symbol of the genocide, on June 12, 1994, in Gitarama, Rwanda.