Posted on 01/02/2003 2:52:02 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
KINSHASA (Reuters) - Renewed fighting in northeastern Congo has forced over 100,000 people from their homes and a local peace deal has yet to halt the exodus from the vast country's latest battlefield, aid workers say.
Months of clashes between rival rebel groups have intensified around the town of Beni, near the Ugandan border, raising fears a broad deal signed in South Africa last month to end the war could go the way of previous failed peace bids.
Rebel and pro-government forces said they had clashed further south near the border with Burundi on Wednesday, killing several people and sending thousands fleeing for the frontier.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and other aid organisations estimated that some 110,000 people had been displaced by the fighting around Beni, including pygmies who had been forced to leave their homes deep in the Ituri Forest for the first time.
"There was panic as the frontline got nearer, and they simply voted with their feet," MSF's Nicholas Louis told Reuters by satellite phone from Beni on Thursday.
Aid workers said villages and towns emptied as soldiers from two rival rebel factions advanced on Beni, held by a third rebel group.
The three rebel factions battling for control of the mineral-rich region signed a local ceasefire on Monday, but aid workers in Beni said people were still on the move on Thursday.
"The situation is very fluid, so every time we think the situation is calm and stable, things change overnight," Michelle Brown of medical charity MERLIN said.
Unarmed U.N. observers monitoring the ceasefire reported no new incidents of fighting on Thursday, but a spokesman in Kinshasa said "they remained concerned by the situation".
SEVERAL KILLED IN NEW FIGHTING
Further south, thousands of people fled after rebels clashed with pro-government forces near the lakeside port of Uvira, which has changed hands several times in recent months.
Bernard Ntwari, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, said over 2,000 refugees fleeing the violence in South Kivu province had arrived at the Burundi border on Wednesday.
Manace Bita, a spokesman for the Mai Mai militia loosely allied to Congo's government, said 20 civilians, eight fighters of the powerful Rwandan-backed rebels Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD) had died as well as two Mai Mai fighters -- traditional warriors who use bows and arrows as well as guns.
"Our objective is to capture Uvira town and the whole east region of DRC," Bita told Reuters.
The RCD, which recaptured Uvira in December after three days of fighting, denied any of its troops were lost in Wednesday's battle and said many Mai Mai fighters had been killed.
"Mai Mai and their allied Interahamwe tried to attack our positions...but they did not succeed," RCD Secretary General Azarias Ruberwa told Reuters.
Congo's warring parties signed a deal in December to share power and reunify the vast country that has been divided since war broke out in August 1998, sucking in six foreign armies.
Many foreign soldiers have pulled out, but local militia violence has surged in the vacuum they left behind, prolonging a war which has already killed an estimated two million people.
Historical fact indicates Kwanza is the invention of the son of a Maryland chicken farmer in the early 1970s; how is that, in any way, connected to the Congo?
I heard about that, do you think he is that clueless or just that much a political oppotunist that he believes the rest of the country is stupid enough to just go along with such ignorant musings?
"Later" for some!
Let us hope that is the intent.
Kwanzaa's ancient roots lie in African first-fruit harvest celebrations, from which it takes its name. The word Kwanzaa is derived from the Swahili phrase "matunda ya kwanza," which means "first fruits."
Those roots are the foundation on which the modern holiday was built. Maulana Karenga, an African-American scholar and activist, conceived Kwanzaa in 1966 following the Watts riot. Currently, Karenga is chairman of the Department of Black Studies at California State University at Long Beach.
Kwanzaa is organized around five fundamental activities common to other African first-fruit celebrations:
Sources: Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, United Press International, San Francisco Chronicle, Encarta 96 Encyclopedia
It is my understanding the "Swahili", as you call them, occupy the western part of Africa and are not the African people who where sold into slavery by the eastern African slave merchants. There seems to be no evidence that any form of "Swahili" culture has ever been exported to America.
I could be wrong.
I have come to be convinced that facts are meaningless at all liberal propaganda organizations.
Yes, you are correct, they were on the southeast coast and according to the information I found, they were classified as a civilization that was a mixture of Arab and Bantu, see below:
"The Swahili civilizations slowly expanded southwards until they reached Kilwa in Zanzibar (from the Arabic word al-Zanj ). Later, Swahili civilization carved out a small territory even further south around Sofala in Zimbabwe. While the northern cities remained localized and had little influence on African culture inland from the coast, the Sofalans actively went inland and spread Islam and Islamic culture deep in African territory.
The major Swahili city-states were Mogadishu, Barawa, Mombasa (Kenya), Gedi, Pate, Malindi, Zanzibar, Kilwa, and Sofala in the far south."
This is where the Kwanzonians lose me. They want to use Swahili words as their original language but American slaves came from West Africa not East Africa. The East Africans were sent to Arab countries as slaves.
I guess I'm just being picky.
To be geographically accurate, the five points to celebrate would go something like: Famine, Slaughter.......
I agree. One can only conclude that this is a silly politically correct invention that has little or no basis in fact or tradition.
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