It Never Seems to End
One year after the Congolese elections, civilians flee renewed fighting in the east
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AMONG the crowd of displaced civilians clamouring for food stood a young boy. He had fled his village and was left with little but a filthy T-shirt that read: “I’m voting for Kabila, the peacemaker”.
A year ago, Congo did indeed hold elections that many had feared would never take place. They were won by the incumbent president, Joseph Kabila, largely thanks to support in the east, which he promised to pacify. But for the people of North Kivu, an eastern province at the heart of a decade of war, the aftermath of the voting has brought anything but peace. Some 500,000 civilians have fled their homes, out of a total population of about 4m, to escape the growing fighting between the army, rebels and militias. In the past two months alone, more than 160,000 people have been displaced.
Making comparisons between humanitarian crises may not always be fair or useful. But those dealing with the emergency in Kivu are starting to do so. “The situation at the moment in North Kivu is worse than Darfur,” says Sylvie van den Wildenberg of the UN mission in the province. Many more people have fled their homes this year than in Darfur. Refugee camps are starting to pop up just outside the provincial capital, Goma.
Congo’s last war, which officially ran from 1998 to 2003 but is still simmering in North Kivu, was the world’s deadliest since 1945: some 4m people died. Most were silent deaths from hunger or disease, rather than bullets, blades or bombs. The current crisis in North Kivu is now adding daily to the death toll. Aware that they and their homes are targets for all sides, civilians flee at the first sign of fighting, many blending into the bush. Many villages are empty, while those sheltering the displaced are starved of bare necessities by roadblocks and attacked by gunmen.
Some make it to camps. But there is no guarantee of safety. Cholera and malaria continue to kill, mostly the children. And sometimes, as on November 13th near Mugunga camp, just 15 kilometres (9 miles) west of Goma, fighting erupts; this time 30,000 people had to flee again. “We are seeing this repeated displacement of civilians, which is exacerbating the problem. People who have already fled are having to flee again,” says Jane Coyne, head of Médecins Sans Frontières in North Kivu.
The conflict has taken on another dimension of brutality too. Women have been raped on an unprecedented scale, in the thousands. According to experts, rape is being used as a weapon of war. Such are the scale and violence of the attacks in eastern Congo, claims Yakin Erturk, the UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women, that they constitute a war crime. Rape is being carried out by all sides and, worryingly, by civilians too.
Pity the UN
Stuck in the middle is the world’s largest UN peacekeeping mission. Its soldiers are meant to protect civilians and support the army. But neither party is satisfied. On November 5th, 27 Indian peacekeepers were injured when attacked by a mob of hungry civilians who claimed not to have received any food aid. Other peacekeepers were stoned by government troops, angry that the UN had prevented them from trying to achieve a total military defeat of the rebels.
Much of the latest violence is attributed to Laurent Nkunda, a dissident Tutsi general who now leads a rebellion. But, to complicate matters, American diplomats trying to resolve the crisis have persuaded the Congolese army that Rwandan Hutu rebels, who operate from North Kivu, must be dealt with as well as Mr Nkunda. These rebels were at the heart of Congo’s decade of violence and were twice cited by Rwanda as a reason to invade Congo.
Rwanda is backing Congo. But it says it wants the government and the UN to come up with plans to defeat the Hutu rebels by the end of the month. With another military front opening up, the humanitarian crisis is sure to continue.
