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JAMES NACHTWEY / VII FOR TIME
Government
troops celebrate after battling rebels in Tcheyi village last week.
At least 37 people died. From the Magazine | Cover / World. |
The Deadliest War In
The World
Simmering conflict in
Congo has killed 4 million
people since 1998,
yet few choose to cover the story.
TIME looks at a
forgotten nation -- and what's needed
to prevent the deaths
of millions more
By SIMON ROBINSON,
VIVIENNE WALT, from Time.com May 28, 2006
Sitting on a bed in a refugee camp in
Katanga, a cursed province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaïre),
Mukeya Ulumba, 28, recounts the epic losses she has suffered in recent months.
Several of her relatives and neighbors were killed when antigovernment rebels
stormed their village last November, moving from house to house in a murder
spree that lasted for hours. Ulumba and her husband managed to flee with
their four children, leaving behind their life's possessions, a ravaged
community of torched houses and the bloodied corpses of family members and
friends. Now Ulumba is struggling to save another life: that of her
6-month-old son Amoni Mutombo. The baby lies whimpering in a clinic run by
the aid organization Doctors Without Borders. His belly is distended by
malnutrition, and although he appears to be in pain, he has no energy to cry.
A nurse tries for half an hour to inject antibiotics into Amoni's twiglike arm,
its wrinkled skin wrapped loosely around the bones. Without the drugs, he
will die, wasting away from starvation.
Some wars go on killing long after they end. In Congo, a nation of 63
million people in the heart of Africa, a peace deal signed more than three years
ago was supposed to halt a war that drew in belligerents from at least eight
other countries, producing a record of human devastation unmatched in recent
history. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) estimates that 3.9
million people have died from war-related causes since the conflict in Congo
began in 1998, making it the world's most lethal conflict since World War II.
By conventional measures, that conflict is over. Congo is no longer the
playground of foreign armies. The country's first real election in 40
years is scheduled to take place this summer, and international troops have
arrived to keep the peace. But the suffering of Congo's people continues.
Fighting persists in the east, where rebel holdouts loot, rape and murder.
The Congolese army, which was meant to be both symbol and protector in the
reunited country, has cut its own murderous swath, carrying out executions and
razing villages. Even deadlier are the side effects of war, the scars left
by years of brutality that disfigure Congo's society and infrastructure.
The country is plagued by bad sanitation, disease, malnutrition and dislocation.
Routine and treatable illnesses have become weapons of mass destruction.
According to the IRC, which has conducted a series of detailed mortality surveys
over the past six years, 1,250 Congolese still die every day because of
war-related causes -- the vast majority succumbing to diseases and malnutrition
that wouldn't exist in peaceful times. In many respects, the country
remains as broken, volatile and dangerous as ever, which is to say, among the
very worst places on earth.
Yet Congo's troubles rarely make daily news headlines, and the country is often
low on international donors' lists of places to help. After Sudan, Congo
is the second largest nation in sub-Saharan Africa, a land so vast and
ungovernable that it has long been perceived as the continent's ultimate
hellhole, the setting for Joseph Conrad's 1899 book Heart of Darkness. It
is in part because of that malign reputation -- and because the nation's
feckless rulers have consistently reinforced it -- that the world has been
willing to let Congo bleed. Since 2000, the U.N. has spent billions on its
peacekeeping mission in Congo, which is known by its French acronym, MONUC, and
it is at the moment the largest U.N. force anywhere in the world. But
troops number just 17,500, a tiny presence in such a large country. In
February the U.N. and aid groups working in Congo asked for $682 million in
humanitarian funds. So far, they have received just $94 million -- or
$9.40 for every person in need. By comparison, the aid group Oxfam
estimates that the U.N.'s tsunami appeal last year raised $550 for each person.
There are various explanations for the neglect. Perhaps the global
reservoir of wealth and goodwill runs only so deep. Perhaps the attention
and outrage directed toward another African tragedy, the genocide in Darfur,
have left the world too exhausted to take on Congo's. But a choice like
that comes with a cost. Congo represents the promise of Africa as much as
its misery: its fertile fields and tropical forests cover an area bigger
than California, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon and Texas combined.
Its soils are packed with diamonds, gold, copper, tantalum (known locally as
coltan and used in electronic devices such as cell phones and laptop computers)
and uranium. The waters of its mighty river could one day power the
continent. Yet because Congo is so rich in resources, its problems, when left to
fester, tend to suck its neighbors into a vortex of exploitation and chaos.
And so fixing Congo is essential to fixing Africa. Says Anneke Van
Woudenberg, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch: "If you want peace
in Africa, then you need to deal with the biggest country right at its heart."
That task is enormous. Over the past year, TIME reporters who visited the
worst-hit areas in the east of the country found much of it in ruins.
Roads and railway lines have washed away or simply disappeared into the jungle.
Hospitals and health clinics have been destroyed. Electricity, for those
lucky enough to receive it, is patchy. Refugees fleeing fighting between
government troops and rebels talk of beheadings, rapes, massacres and torched
villages. Their stories, coming eight years after the start of fighting in
Congo, sound eerily similar to the reports of atrocities committed in Darfur.
In that sense they are powerful admonishments to those who believe the West's
responsibilities in Darfur may have been lifted with the signing of a peace
agreement in early May: Congo's warring parties too say they are abiding
by a peace deal, monitored by U.N. troops. But the dying continues.
Congo provides tragic proof that in some places peace and war can look a lot
alike.
Malemba-Nkulu is a small town on the upper reaches of the Congo River.
Since late last year, the town has swelled with the arrival of some 18,000
refugees who left their villages to escape fighting between government troops
and a vicious rebel outfit known as the Mai Mai. Most arrive with little
more than the clothes they are wearing. Sitting outside a modest house
where they rent a room, Ngoi Banza Leontine, 45, and her husband Monji Banza,
47, say they fled the fighting with their nine children just before Christmas,
after the Mai Mai came to their village and burned many of the houses. The
Mai Mai, who believe in magic and occultism, began cutting open people's
stomachs even before killing them to take parts of their bodies for fetishes.
Leontine says she is haunted by the memory of one friend's death. The
woman was killed by a machete and then beheaded. "Her head was put on a
stick on the edge of the village. I was very, very sad because it was
someone I knew," Leontine says softly, holding her 7-month-old baby boy to her
chest to keep him quiet. "Whoever could flee ran as fast as possible.
They raped women and burned the houses ... Sometimes people were still inside
them." Says her husband, who works for local farmers for about 25¢ a day:
"They took tongues and thumbs and the genitals of women and men. We want
to have a normal life. We need clothes and mosquito nets."
For millions of Congolese like Esperance Live, every day seems to bring a fight
for survival. TIME met her last year in a rundown government hospital in
Bunia, a dusty town in Congo's northeast. Her son Jonathan, 2, was propped
up on a tangled wad of clothes atop a rusting bed; he hadn't moved his limbs or
spoken for weeks. Live had already endured a lifetime of sorrow. She
lost two children to treatable illnesses. Her sister, her father and an
aunt were all murdered in attacks by one of the ethnic militias that terrorize
this corner of Congo. Doctors at the hospital determined that Jonathan had
meningitis, a life-threatening but treatable inflammation of the lining around
the brain and spinal cord. Françoise
Ngave, a nurse in the children's ward, said, "If he stays here, he can live,"
but his mother had little hope left.
Congo's history often seems like an uninterrupted tale of woe. After
decades of often brutal foreign rule, first as the private possession of King
Leopold II of Belgium and then as a Belgian colony, Congo won its independence
in 1960. But within months its first elected Prime Minister had been
killed by Belgium- and U.S.-backed opponents because of his growing ties to the
Soviet Union, an assassination that eventually opened the way for army general
Mobutu Sese Seko to grab power. A U.S. favorite during the cold war,
Mobutu presided over one of the most corrupt regimes in African history,
siphoning off billions from state-owned companies and allowing most of the
country to languish. In 1996 neighboring Rwanda and Uganda jointly invaded
Congo to eliminate the Hutu militias, known as the Interahamwe, that had been
responsible for the Rwandan genocide and were hiding in Congo's eastern forests.
As the invading armies advanced across the country, Mobutu fled, and the
invaders installed a small-time rebel leader named Laurent Kabila as President.
But things got worse. In 1998, after Kabila got too friendly with the
Interahamwe, Uganda and Rwanda invaded Congo again, triggering what became known
as Africa's first world war. The scramble for power and resources dragged
in forces from at least eight African neighbors, spawned a myriad of Congolese
factions and set off campaigns of ethnic cleansing. Kabila, as nasty and
corrupt as his predecessor, was shot dead by one of his bodyguards in 2001.
His son Joseph, 29, assumed power. One year later, after some arm twisting
by continental power South Africa (whose leaders recognize the crucial role
Congo could play in their plan for an African rebirth), the young leader and
most of the rebel groups and foreign forces in the country signed a peace deal.
A national army was formed, aimed at integrating soldiers who had previously
been trying to kill one another. And the Congolese people, who maintain a
sense of spirit and beauty despite the horrors around them, dared to hope for a
better country.
In the three years since then, some things in Congo have improved. Mining
firms have returned, and cell-phone companies--particularly welcome in a country
that has just a few thousand fixed lines serving more than 60 million people --
are doing a booming business. But in some parts of the country, the
fighting has never really stopped. The U.N.'s peacekeeping force has got
tougher in the past year, chasing rebels and apprehending or even killing them,
but the force lacks the numbers to impose complete order. Congolese troops
who are supposed to be helping the U.N. peacekeepers have proved ineffective and
corrupt and have been hampered by slow and often nonexistent wages. The
European Union is working on ensuring that salaries and rations get to Congo's
soldiers, and there has been some improvement. But corruption is still a
big problem. A Western official in Kinshasa, Congo's capital, estimates
that at least $3.2 million of the $8 million a month budgeted for Congo's
military is stolen.
Frustrated and often hungry, Congolese units have taken to looting and pillaging
the people they are meant to protect. In early May, Congolese troops in
Ituri in the northeast forced at least 4,500 refugees out of a camp because they
suspected militia fighters were sheltering there. Some Congolese units
have split back into their rebel and ethnic parts and turned on one another.
The upsurge in rapes, killings and torture by Congo's security forces has become
so serious that the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo is debating whether to
end its cooperation with the police and army altogether.
Congo's elections, set for July 30, have become both the great hope for and the
great threat to the country's recovery. A report by the Brussels-based
International Crisis Group warns of trouble ahead, since many former
belligerents "stand to lose power in the elections and are set on prolonging or
disrupting the transition." The elections will be the Congolese people's
first chance to choose their leaders in more than four decades. But just
holding the vote will pose a logistical nightmare. It can take four or
five days to travel 50 miles by road. The country's main artery remains
the snaking Congo River, which is full of treacherous sandbars and shifting
currents. The country "hasn't had a census since 1984. There are no
ID cards in memory. We will need at least 40,000 to 50,000 polling
stations," says William Lacy Swing, veteran U.S. ambassador in Africa and head
of the U.N. peacekeeping mission to Congo. He says the poll will cost $422
million. "Elections should be a time of national unity and reconciliation.
But if it is not handled correctly, it can be a moment of great division."
Even if the election does run smoothly, Congo's worst problems will surely
persist. The country is less a functioning nation-state than a patchwork
of disjointed cantons. While the war's messy front line no longer exists,
trade between the east and the west is almost nonexistent. "It's as if we
are still two countries," says Dr. Pascal Ngoy, a health coordinator for the
IRC. That division is felt most keenly in the provinces and is made worse
by the long-standing perception that the capital doesn't care about the
country's farthest reaches. The local administration in Bunia, for
instance, says it sent about $1 million in taxes to Kinshasa in the first half
of 2005. It got back just $5,000.
Can Congo be saved? Maybe, but it can't save itself. If the country
has any hope of escaping the cycle of violence, misrule and despair, it will
need the largesse and mercy of governments and citizens all over the globe.
"Even in five years, it will be lucky if we have isolated pockets of real
progress," says a Western official in Kinshasa, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity. Van Woudenberg of Human Rights Watch says, "The focus is on
bringing this country to elections, but there's almost no interest in the
impunity and human-rights abuses that continue today. The truth is, Congo
isn't magically going to become a democracy. It's going to take years of
hard work and money."
Is the world willing to see it through? The shame of indifference should
be reason enough for action. But without more money from the developed
world to help rebuild, without more troops to secure the peace and protect
innocent civilians, without a genuine effort by Congo's leaders to work for the
country rather than just their part of it and without Congo's neighbors ending
their meddlesome ways, Africa's broken heart is unlikely to heal. In 10
years' time, you may be reading another story much like this one. The only
difference will be that millions more people will have died.
Where Is The Rage?
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