DRC: SPECIAL REPORT ON WAR AND PEACE IN THE KIVUS

August 6, 2004 - (IRIN) A major stumbling block to the achievement of peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo is the present showdown in South Kivu Province between the dissident army general, Laurent Nkunda, and loyalist government troops.

Fighting between loyalist and dissident troops erupted again following a brief lull since 9 June when the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC) persuaded Nkunda and his ally Col Jules Mutebutsi to withdrew from the South Kivu capital of Bukavu.

Nkunda first revolted against the Kinshasa government in 2003, when he refused to be sworn into the new unified army created on 3 September that year. His reason for doing so, he said, was that his security could not be guaranteed.

The government in Kinshasa has since then issued a warrant for his arrest, which, he has said, prevents him from retiring to a quiet life with his family in Goma. His condition for abandoning the rebellion and submitting to arrest is that the government also arrest the commander of the 10th military region, Gen Mbuza Mabe, for acts against humanity committed in Bukavu.

Until the Nkunda issue is resolved and other militias are disarmed humanitarian tragedies, already brought on by two wars, seem likely to continue.

Background to the conflict

The first series of recent armed conflicts broke out in 1996, when Rwanda and Uganda backed Congolese forces led by Laurent Kabila in toppling President Mobutu Sese Seko the following year.

Kabila then fell from grace with his erstwhile allies who backed rival rebel groups that tried to oust him. This started a second series of conflicts.

Fighting increased in ferocity, snaring the armies of seven African countries into the fray and threatening to plunge the entire region into what has been dubbed 'Africa's World War'. Kabila was shot dead on 16 January 2001 by one of his palace guards. His son, Joseph, took power but the fighting continued.

Although all foreign forces left Congo following the Pretoria and Lusaka peace accords of July and September 2002, fighting erupts occasionally in the east.

The serenity of the River Ruzuzi belies eastern Congo's violent times.

A widely held view on the cause of the present conflict in the Kivus is competition for control over vast mineral resources - such as Coltan, Gold, diamonds - but some observers offer a more basic reason.

"Very high" population pressure on land is one reason, says Jean-Marie Katikati, a Goma-based researcher and member of a local NGO, Campaign for Peace. He said with a rapidly expanding population, controlled of land was a matter of survival.

For years Goma's fertile soil and pleasant climate drew migrants to the area, Katikati said. During the colonial period, the migrants encountered older inhabitants such as the Hunde, Hutu, Nande, Bashi, Bahuvu, Banyanga and others, whose chiefs held the land on behalf of their communities.

In an effort to ease land pressure in present-day Rwanda, Katikati said, and meet their labour needs in eastern Congo, Belgian colonialists organised the migration of Rwandans to the Kivus from 1937-1954 under a programme known as 'la Mission d'immigration Banyarwanda'. Those migrants created a new chiefdom of Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis in Masisi, some 50 km northwest of Goma, alongside existing structures; thereby sowing the seeds of future resentment and conflict after independence in 1960.

In 1966, the Mobutu government abolished the Rwandan chiefdoms reverting the situation to the former status quo. This, Katikati said, "made the dispossessed Rwandans foreigners in the eyes of the original inhabitants".

The situation improved somewhat in 1972 when Mobutu adopted a law giving collective nationality to the Rwandans. They also received land he had seized from Belgian and Italians "settlers". However, Mobutu repeal the law in 1981 following strong public protest.

"This placed the Rwandans in a situation of legal insecurity," Katikati said.

In effect, it meant that while Hutu and Tutsi Rwandans owned land, they lacked the protection of citizenship.

During the 1980s, in an effort to resolve the Rwandan-Congolese citizenship issue, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana declared that Rwandans outside their country should not return because there was no longer room for them. But most Congolese insisted that the Rwandans did not belong in the Congo and should return home.

In 1988, elections were suspended for the provincial assemblies of North and South Kivu to try to solve the nationality issue. They never did. Today the nationality issue is before the transitional parliament in Kinshasa. It remains one of the most contentious issues to be resolved if the Congo is to have a shot at lasting peace.

In debating the issue, parliamentarians may well consider claims that before 1884, when the Europeans colonialists began their conference to draw their boundaries in Africa, the areas of Rutshuru and those near the Virunga Forest were ethnically part of Rwandan kingdoms.

"Even Kinyarwanda [the Rwandan language] place names such as Mount Nyiragongo attest to the Rwandan origins of this area," said a Congolese Rwandaphone, who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisal.

Though the nationality question has always been contentious, armed conflict between the Congolese and so-called foreigners only broke out in the early 1990s when Mobutu appointed a governor and vice-governor who tried to stop Rwandans in Walikale from acquiring land. Out of this situation grew a politico-military movement called MAGRIVI, otherwise known as the Mutuelle Agricole de Virunga. That led to inter-ethnic conflict that still continues in one form or another.

Rape and sexual violence

The most recent major fighting occurred from 28 May to 8 June when dissident and loyalist Congolese soldiers battled for the control of Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu.

In addition Rwandans, some of whom took part in the 1994 genocide in the country, have turned against their Congolese "hosts"; committing atrocities that would shake the most hardened heart.

Observers say that all armed groups have committed acts of sexual violence and rape but that the Interahamwe from Rwanda have been largely responsible.

Since 2002, a German technical aid body GTZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit) has been documenting the various forms of sexual violence on residents in South Kivu. The violence includes rape by individuals and gangs; incidents in which entire families are forced to watch their wives and daughter being raped, as well as forced incest. In addition, GTZ has documented victims who have had cassava stalks or gun barrels repeatedly rammed into their vaginas. Some were also shot in their organs.

"Most of these rapes were by the Interahamwe but some were by members of the national army," Stanilas Bya Mungu, GTZ project manager in Bukavu, told IRIN.

Army dissidents led by Mutebutsi and Nkunda carried out rapes systematically during their occupation of Bukavu, he said. The dissidents, he said, targeted neighbourhoods then went from house to house to rape victims ranging from one to 80 years old.

"We noticed that Viagra was attributed to [Mutebutsi's] military," he said.

The dissidents, he added, broke into four medical distribution centres in the city and took the viagra.

The woman blinded by her rapists in Goma, North Kivu Province, to prevent her from identifying her attackers. Similar acts were carried out in South Kivu Province.

Combatants were brutal with women who resisted rape. "In some cases they dripped melting rubber into their vaginas and onto their breasts," Bya Mungu said. "Sometimes, after raping a woman they would spread her legs until they snapped like chickens."

In one report, combatants killed the husband of a family and raped the wife and daughter all on the same spot. "The woman recounted how her husband's warm blood was seeping onto her as his Interahamwe killers raped her," Bya Mungu said.

In acts seemingly designed to belittled the men further, the Interahamwe reportedly beat men's penises with rifle butts while telling them they would never have use of their organs again.

Why the Interahamwe should turn against their "hosts" is unclear. Bya Mungu offers one explanation: The Interahamwe fought for the Congolese transitional government against the Tutsis but Kinshasa failed to help them regain power in Kigali.

Another opinion offered by an observer is that before June 2003, the Interahamwe had worked with the pro-government Congolese Mayi-Mayi militia but were angered when the Mayi-Mayi agreed to join the government. The Interahamwe reacted by fighting them and refusing to abide by the 1999 Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement that calls for their disarmament and repatriation.

Some consequences of rape

London Pauline, coordinator of Action pour l'encadrement des Soeurs Dinah (AESDI) a protestant church centre caring for raped women and children of rape victims.

A Bukavu woman, London Pauline, has set up a centre in Bukavu for women and child victims of rape called Action pour l'Encadrement des Soeurs Dihah. She cares for 53 children up to four years old who were conceived by rape during the earlier conflicts. Now, she also cares for 42 women and girls who were raped during the weeklong occupation of Bukavu by Mutebutsi's forces. Eleven of the rape victims endured the ordeal more than once. The youngest is 13 years old and pregnant.

GTZ has documented cases of scores of women raped during the occupation. Some have had their wombs destroyed. Others are suffering from fistula, a medical condition whereby a tear is created between the anal cavity and the birth canal.

Many of the schoolgirls at Pauline's centre were caught by Mutebutsi's forces when they rose against the government. "Most of them were girls on holiday," she said.

Some of these girls have now been rejected by their families and society and may never find husbands.

Rape victims in Bukavu, South Kivu Province, learning new skills as seamstresses at AESDI. The instructor in red dress, standing, is not a victim.

Pauline's centre is the only support these women and children have. Initially Pauline had no support to care for the children. Later, a Swedish missionary from the Pentecostal Church visited the centre and donated money.

With this money, Pauline embarked on a micro credit scheme for the girls and provided seeds and farming implements for those rape victims from rural areas. Some of the girls at the centre have returned to school; others are making a living from petty trade.

The centre also provides legal aid to victims who can identify their attackers. "Some were raped by their neighbours," Pauline said.

Some of the girls are still traumatised by the events in Bukavu but the NGO World Vision said it would soon begin to provide them with psychosocial care.

For the complete report, select the following link: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=42551&SelectRegion=Great_Lakes&SelectCountry=DRC