Just over one year after it crawled out of a ruinous civil war, the Democratic Republic of Congo seems poised to return to the separatist and ethnic struggles that so recently claimed the lives of three million of its people.
The capture of the city of Bukavu in the east of the country by renegade soldiers, despite the presence of a large United Nations peacekeeping force, has been followed by an attempted uprising in the capital itself. The transitional government of President Joseph Kabila has never looked shakier.
The government was formed in April last year and Mr Kabila received justified praise for bringing into it not just the leaders of several political parties but also some of the rebel groups. But while the leaders of the rebels may be on board, in theory at any rate, some of their followers are not. At the same time the giant Congo nation, Africa's second-largest, continues to suffer militarily from the ambitions of tiny Rwanda on its eastern border.
The short-lived takeover of Bukavu was led by Brigadier-General Laurent Nkunda of the Rally for Congolese Democracy, a rebel army which is meant to be under the government's control and whose former leader, Mr Azarias Ruberwa, is one of Mr Kabila's vice-presidents. General Nkunda maintains that he seized the city in order to protect its Tutsi population. His soldiers then proceeded to sack, loot and rape at will. The 800-strong South African peacekeepers either couldn't or wouldn't intervene and that sparked off riots against the UN across the country. At least 12 people died when a UN compound in Kinshasa was attacked.
Mr Kabila has been quick to blame Rwanda and there is considerable evidence that it may, once again, be using Congo instability to establish a presence in the resource-rich province of South Kivu. Both of the last two Congo wars started with a Rwanda-backed takeover of Bukavu. Mr Kabila's army, such as it is, is incapable of maintaining order throughout the country and even members of his own presidential guard were involved in the failed uprising in Kinshasa. The transitional government is in office but not much in power and soon it may not exist at all. It needs more support quickly from regional governments and more effective peacekeepers.
Mr Louis Michel, Belgium's foreign minister, says that an EU peacekeeping force has been agreed in principle but decisions have yet to be taken on the "modalities". Mr Kabila's government is far from perfect but it remains the best chance the Congo has of avoiding a return to widespread chaos and killing. The modalities must be sorted out without delay.