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Congo
war leaves legacy of chaos
By
Declan Walsh
Scotsman,
November 16, 2003
Child
soldiers in green wellington boots perch on the deserted market stalls
swinging their AK-47 guns lazily from their shoulders.
Nearby
in the main street rebels unload a rocket launcher from a pick-up truck.
While there are plenty of arms on show there is little sign of food
appearing on the streets of this eastern Congolese town.
This
is a scene repeated in many remote areas of Congo,
a country theoretically at peace after five years of devastating war,
thanks to the formation of a transitional government under president
Joseph Kabila, and the presence of UN soldiers.
But
for communities such as Walikale, chaos still reigns. Despite the world
hailing a peace deal between warlords, rebel leaders and the government
three months ago, life in the east - 900 miles from the capital Kinshasa - is desperate.
At
first sight forests around Walikale hold the promise of food. But there is
none. Farmers have stopped tilling their fields because soldiers were
looting the harvest at gunpoint. And their wives were afraid to help them
for fear of rape.
Pockets
of fighting still rage in this region, from Bukavu in the south to Bunia
in the north. Gangs of dangerous gunmen continue to roam the vast forests,
and perilous tensions have emerged in the ranks of RCD-Goma, the main
rebel group. Villages are still being pillaged, women are gang-raped and
hundreds of thousands of people are starving.
As
RCD leaders were joining the new Kinshasa government last July, their troops were wreaking misery on the people.
Dorothea Kisa from Walikale was raped and beaten, and she knows of many
others who have suffered, including a 63-year-old grandmother and an
11-year-old girl.
"They
accuse women of being a witch as an excuse to take them for the
night," she said. "They can even execute you."
Philemon Mongi-Punzu, a human rights worker who tries to help these people, sits
inside his rickety office brandishing a copy of Congo's
new constitution, recently sent from Kinshasa.
"The ideas are good," he said, "but we have yet to taste
them here."
Mongi-Punzi
describes the brutality his people are still suffering. He said the RCD
detained civilians on a whim, throwing them in waterlogged pits, sometimes
for weeks. Last month soldiers dragged the town chief from his house, slit
his mouth with a machete, then shot him.
Despite
all this the transitional government has brought some stability to
Walikale - a town so isolated it virtually vanished from the map during
five years of war.
Battles
between RCD-Goma and the local Mayi-Mayi militia have stopped since their
leaders signed the peace deal, and western aid is slowly returning.
The
first delegation of UN workers for years arrived last week, landing their
plane on the road that cuts through the dense forest. But as they venture
into previously isolated territory, they are discovering the true extent
of Congo's
humanitarian catastrophe.
More
than three million people have perished since war exploded in 1998, mostly
due to hunger and disease. According to the World Food Programme, half a
million displaced people still face severe hunger.
"We
are in a sort of vacuum," said Robert Dekker of WFP. "It is
positive that little fighting is happening for now. But without a strong
presence from the transitional government, it could explode again, with
disastrous consequences."
A
few miles from Walikale, on the road to Kisangani,
a starving family stand outside a crumbling mud hut. These are the kind of
people the WFP fear for - the children's stomachs are bloated and their
normally thick black hair has withered to blonde wisps. Their mother,
Yvonne Njiki, explains why. "The soldiers come, they fight, we run.
Every time," she said, wearily.
When
RCD forces clashed with the Mayi-Mayi, the family fled to the forest. For
weeks they slept under banana trees and lived on scavenged food. When her
nine-year-old son died from malaria, they buried him in the bush. Weeks
later she suffered a miscarriage.
Even
basic possessions have been ruined. Tattered clothes with football-sized
holes dried on the ground beside her. "Termites," she explained.
Tackling
the desperate poverty underlying the war could go a long way to bring
stability to the Congo.
But while western donors have promised millions in aid to the transitional
government, little has been delivered so far.
In Walikale, an RCD soldier loitered by the roadside as the team of aid
workers prepared to leave by helicopter. "The war is over," he
said, summing up the town's feeling. "Or at least, it's over for
now."
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