THE FIRST whispered doubts as Laurent Kabila's rebels pass through each village and town on their trek to Kinshasa are usually more questioning than hostile.
Once the euphoria of liberation passes, people look into the soldiers' faces and listen to their accents. They wonder if they have not been occupied by foreigners.
Zaireans might also ask themselves how an ageing Marxist revolutionary - once dismissed by Che Guevara as more interested in drinking and whoring than fighting - emerged from decades of obscurity to sweep across the breadth of Zaire within months.
While Mr Kabila continues to insist his is solely a home grown revolution, there is ample evidence that it has been driven by forces from beyond Zaire's borders. President Mobutu Sese Seko, an autocrat kept in power for over three decades by Western governments, has been overthrown by African ones.
Rwanda was the prime mover. Uganda was in from the start, and Washington gave its approval. But the war has since brought in most of Zaire's neighbours on the side of the rebels, drawn together by their contempt for the old breed of autocratic African rulers. And if peace talks between Mr Kabila and President Mobutu fail, Kinshasa could fall to a combined force of Rwandan, Angolan, Eritrean and Zairean fighters.
Rwanda's interest is clear. For more than two years, one and a half million Hutu refugees were camped just outside its border with Zaire. That was destabilising enough to the attempt to rebuild the country after the anti Tutsi genocide. But captured documents proved that Hutus in the camp - fed by Western governments and agencies were finalising plans to reinvade Rwanda.
Rwanda had planned an outright invasion of Zaire to clear the camps. But a new round of anti Tutsi pogroms in eastern Zaire provided both a source of rebels and a cover for attack. The Tutsi victims were galvanised into the newly invented Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo Zaire. Rwanda and Uganda provided the military leadership, training and weapons.
Mr Kabila was plucked from obscurity to head the revolution". He had a long standing relationship with Uganda's President, Mr Yoweri Museveni, and was known to Rwanda's army chief, Gen Paul Kagame.
But from the beginning, Rwanda and Uganda used Mr Kabila as an instrument. Guevara described Mr Kabila as the most talented leader among the rebels who led the Congo's uprising in the 1960s, but said he was unwilling to lead from the front.
Little has changed. Rwandan troops have led the alliance's fight right up to the gates of Kinshasa. The rebels' success hatched theories that the war is part of a masterplan by the United States to lever French influence from Africa and secure business interests. But initially, US policy was divided between offering active support for Rwandan, intervention and looking the other way. In practice, it did both.
Rwanda's initial intent was limited to removing the threat posed by the camps and to carving out a buffer zone inside Zaire. But Gen Kagame probably never expected it to be so easy.
The speed of the Zairean forces collapse left the rest of the country as a tempting target. Arguably Rwandan soldiers and Zairean rebels had little option but to continue their advance or watch the country descend into anarchy.
As rebel successes grew, so Zaire's other neighbours emerged. Mr Mobutu had made too many enemies over the years. Tanzania helped to train alliance troops on its soil. Some rebels were permitted to travel through Zambia.
But it is Angola which has come to the fore. It is home to Zaireans who fled into exile when Katanga's independence was crushed in the early 1960s. The Katangans, backed by Angolan troops, have been trained, armed and sent across the border. Angola's armed forces have a score to settle with Mr Mobutu for hosting Mr Jonas Savimbi's Unita through two decades of civil war.
The unanswered question as final victory looms is the extent to which Mr Kabila has shaken off his handlers. Rwanda's soldiers continue to call the shots on the ground. The rebel leader's movement has no unifying cause other than Mr Mobutu's overthrow.
But for all the foreign involvement, even the Rwandans are obliged to maintain the fiction that Laurent Kabila is the man who liberated Zaire.
