Posted on 06/10/2004 12:39:19 PM PDT by propertius
Congo
The battle lines are redrawn, again
Jun 10th 2004 | BUKAVU From The Economist print edition
Though the rebels have withdrawn, they haven't given up on war
THE Congolese rebels made no apology for their murder, rape and pillage. But, as they withdrew this week from Bukavu, eastern Congo's biggest town, they did concede that their week-long occupation of it had been a “mistake”. Their leader, Brigadier-General Laurent Nkunda, said he had been “mis-led” into thinking that the national army had been massacring Congolese members of his own Tutsi ethnic group in Bukavu. With that, General Nkunda's columns of Tutsi fighters plodded back into the green hills outside the town, carrying suitcases on their heads and driving herds of cattle before them.
If only the damage wrought by General Nkunda's stunt could be so easily undone. One hundred people were killed, including many civilians, as the rebels fought their way into the town. Shops and houses were looted and women raped. Ethnic tensions are now boiling. Fearing reprisal, thousands of Congolese Tutsis have fled across the nearby border into Tutsi-run Rwanda. But even these sorrows will be quickly forgotten if, as some fear, General Nkunda's raid on Bukavu turns out to have re-ignited Congo's vile civil war.
Its latest phase began in 1998, when Rwanda engineered a rebellion in eastern Congo, then invaded. Seven more African armies joined the fray, on one side or another, spawning yet more rebel groups. Some 3m people died, before the last foreign armies left last year. President Joseph Kabila then concocted a national-unity government with sundry rebel leaders. But in eastern Congo several rebel commanders disobey orders from Kinshasa, Congo's capital, and still look to their former sponsors in Kigali, Rwanda's capital. General Nkunda, for example, who spent several years in the Rwandan army, admits he is in contact with his old comrades, if “only by telephone”.
Rwanda is widely loathed in eastern Congo, which it occupied brutally. As a result, the area is always awash with wild stories of its latest meddling. Yet it is a bit hard to explain General Nkunda's attack on Bukavu unless it was ordered by his former master. The action has drawn hatred on his tribe, widened his rift with Kinshasa, and seemingly won him nothing.
Across eastern Congo, old battle-lines are now being drawn again. As the government's defeated troops marched back into Bukavu in the rebels' wake, they were attacked by another pro-Rwanda militia. Units of Mr Kabila's elite presidential guard, with smart black uniforms and gleaming rocket-launchers, have been spotted arriving at airstrips in eastern Congo. Seizing their chance amid the chaos, a fugitive Rwandan Hutu militia, which fled into Congo after perpetrating the 1994 genocide, kidnapped at least 60 villagers near the eastern Congolese town of Uvira.
Who will stop Congo disintegrating again? Belgium's foreign minister, Louis Michel, has suggested that a European Union force be deployed in Bukavu, following the success of a French-led intervention in the bloody province of Ituri, in north-eastern Congo, last year. But European diplomats say it is unlikely such a force could be raised. That leaves the UN's peacekeeping mission in Congo, which could barely defend its own staff during the recent mayhem. Blaming the blue helmets for Bukavu's fall, mobs attacked the mission's compounds in three towns. In Kinshasa, UN guards shot five protesters dead. In Goma, two South African peacekeepers were killed after their convoy came under fire.
There is confusion over what the peacekeepers are authorised to do to stop further fighting. One senior UN man argued that the UN's mandate in Congo only allows “the use of force to protect civilians, not to protect the peace process”. But if Congo slid back into war, its civilians would certainly suffer most.
Some brave peacekeepers are finding ways around such bureaucracy. During the battle for Bukavu, one South African captain came across a rebel blazing away with a machinegun at no apparent target. “I asked him what the hell he was firing at, and to stop,” the captain said. “He refused. So I said if you don't stop I'll kill you. Ja, then he stopped.” But such confrontations were rare. After one aid worker was raped and another wounded, the peacekeepers instead concentrated on evacuating wounded and threatened civilians and a Canadian punk band, SUM41, which had come to film a music video.
By the way there is a great photo caption on the link.
I have a hard time working up much caring. Burned out.
Anything the U.S. did, or tried to do, in sub-Saharan Africa would be "racist" and "colonial", so why bother?
And the UN obsesses about Israeli "atrocities" while our own media obsesses about Abu Ghraib.
bttt
That's what they're saying about Iraq but we're there aren't we? US isn't going to do anything. They're not doing anything in the north where the Sudan slaughtered millions now.
Anything the U.S. did, or tried to do, in sub-Saharan Africa would be "racist" and "colonial", so why bother?
Not to worry. The UN has things well in hand, having made the Congo its premier demonstration project since oh, 1959 or 1960 or so, courtesy of Dag Hammarskjold and the evacuating Belgians.
All who laud the UN for its great expertise and mighty works of nation-building: look upon the Congo and despair.
I think it's a tad different. There aren't a pile of Islamoterrorists using the Congo as a training / arming waystation.
The Sudan funds terrorism. Why aren't we there bombing them? There's more of a connection to terrorism in the Sudan and Saudi Arabia than Iraq. When the US goes about missions they never stopped to think it was 'colonial'. Who cares what other people think? If we're going to engage in foreign diplomacy then we should offer it to people who really need it.
And don't forget, the UN, American, and Arab media have all described Iraqi prisoner abuse as "atrocities" at one time or another. Of course, they would never call Rwanda or Sept. 11th atrocities.
Whenever the Marxists lose a battle, we get press coverage and hand wringing and concern and calls for outside intervention. Whenever they win and slaughter their opponents, we hear nothing.
Blast the bloody media.
What is this "rebel" craparoonsky? Who is rebelling against whom, and why?
Hooda badguys; hooda goodguys?
It's Congo man. They all bad guys. Give a Congolese a gun or give him a machete ane he'll turn into a savage. I'm watching some now, wandering past my window with looted stuff on their heads.
You're in the Congo?
Max pucker factor.
WOW-where are you and how did you get a computer hook up--i just spent time in the rebel controlled southern SUDAN
in Bukavu, just liberated from renegades. Hook up via a satphone. Where were you in Sudan? I've gone around the south a bit this year, although most recently it's been in Darfur. What were you doing there?
wow-exciting stuff for you-living history--i am a physician and was doing a medical mission in KAPOETA and surrounding villages
Oh, no, it's NOT the US' problem -- the Belgians created the problem, let them solve it
Wow. What's your take on the situation? I think it may be better if we split up the country -- and do the same with Rwanda and Burundi -- make Rwanda and large chunks of Eastern Congo Tutsi and Burundi and large chunks of Eastern Congo Hutu. Ditto for the other tribes fighting it out.
Kapoeta? Last time I was there the street was filled with bodies after the SPLA took the town. Not a nice place. Samaritans' Purse do stuff up there, right?
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