President Suharto, like Mr Mobutu and Mr Castro, is a product of the cold war.
It was made worse after 1973 when Mr Mobutu began to nationalise mines and industries.
Its cocktail of Congolese Tutsis, exiled academics and old-style Mobutu supporters became increasingly fractious.
"As I speak now, over 300 of Mobutu's soldiers have already joined our forces, " the commander said.
CNN: Rebels thrust toward last government-held town in E. Zaire
As the rebels get closer to Mr Mobutu's strongholds and to the capital, Kinshasa, resistance may stiffen.
Under the late Mobutu Sese Seko he was an officer, earning enough to keep his family alive.
When western pressure forced Mr Mobutu to institute a semblance of multi-party democracy in 1991, he excelled himself.
In the power vacuum after the fall of Mobutu, Rwandan troops were moving into the east of the Congo.
But Mr Mobutu bought off some opposition parties and created scores of new ones which were loyal to him.
But as Mr Mobutu dies of cancer in France, his regime is dissolving.
But Mr Mobutu's skills of political manipulation are not confined to domestic affairs.
The government in Kinshasa has had little control over the east since the overthrow of Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997.
The Mai Mai were set up in the late 1990's by Laurent Kabila, shortly after he overthrew President Mobutu Sese Seko.
In the 1960s and 1970s, it could be claimed that at least some of Mr Mobutu's actions were good for his country.
ECONOMIST: Will he try to give Zaire a new start, or more of the same?
Mr Kabila could do with some of that, after the criticism he has received since he took over Congo from the late Mobutu Sese Seko.
At a party hosted by one of Mobutu Sese Seko's crooked lieutenants, Michela Wrong failed to drain her glass of pink champagne swiftly enough.
When, in 1997, the Congolese rebels, led by Laurent Kabila, were poised to overthrow the late Mobutu Sese Seko, South Africa tried to mediate.
In the early 1990s ethnic Tutsi rebels from both sides of the border had fought the Hutu-led Rwandan government, which was supported by Mobutu.
But Rwandan-backed rebels did take Kinshasa once before, in 1997, sweeping away the old dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, and installing Mr Kabila's elephantine father, Laurent.
ECONOMIST: The UN may send more troops to Congo. Would they do any good?
The first handover of money in Mr de Villepin's presence occurred in 1995, he said, involving 10m francs from the then Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko.
Some years ago in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, then President Mobutu Sese Seko adopted a controversial policy of putting an infected village in quarantine.
Until recently the European Union has trailed after Mr Mobutu like a child that has been promised a sweet, believing that he would hold an election.
Some Congolese recall the unquestioned support western governments gave to the young Mobutu Sese Seko in the 1960s, helping keep the brutal kleptocrat in power for decades.
With Mr Mobutu on his last legs and Mr Kabila poised to take the capital, Kinshasa, Zaireans can only hope that their ruler-in-waiting is really their deliverer.
ECONOMIST: Will he try to give Zaire a new start, or more of the same?
In the early anarchic years of Zaire's independence, Mr Mobutu was the army commander and Mr Kabila was a leader of a regional uprising in the east.
Mende said the arrested men also had links to former Congolese strongman Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the country, then known as Zaire, for more than three decades.
He could attract the followers of his fallen allies: Hutus from Rwanda, the late Mobutu Sese Seko's presidential guard from Congo, exiled supporters of Congo-Brazzaville's ex-President Pascal Lissouba.
Then President Mobutu Sese Seko was pushing his authenticity campaign.
Even those like a former prime minister, Nguza Karl I Bond, who had fled into exile where he denounced Mr Mobutu, could be bought off, brought back and reinstated.
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