JUBA, Southern Sudan—“We can’t always judge a student as ‘traumatized,’” said Mother Jina, the headmistress of Usratuna Basic Education School, a Catholic primary school in Juba, the capital of southern Sudan. “But their behavior—active, quiet, stubborn—is sometimes difficult for teachers to deal with.” Mother Jina spoke to me about the students at her school who were orphaned during the devastating civil war between Sudan’s North and South, which ended in 2005 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

Usratuna opened in 1989, when Juba was a garrison town for the North’s army, the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF. The school remained opened through the most brutal periods of the war, when U.N. planes attempting to bring relief supplies into Juba were shot at regularly by the southern army, or the SPLA, troops surrounding the town. Today, Usratuna has 1,000 students, and is known as one of the best primary schools in Juba.

Despite its strong reputation, the school faces many constraints such as overcrowded classes (between 50 and 85 students per class) and a dearth of resources—the school has no library, few textbooks, and Mother Jina lamented that it can be dangerous for the children to run around the open schoolyard because of soil erosion, poor irrigation, and large ditches in the school’s grounds.

Posted on trees in the schoolyard are wooden painted signs with messages to encourage and advise the students: “Pray Always,” “God Loves You,” “Do Your Homework,” “Don’t Cheat on Exams.” The most meaningful sign to me was one that spoke to the history of the place where these students come from: “Be Educated for a Better Future.”

At first glance, this sign is not out of the ordinary. It could appear on any poster printed by the U.N. or by a development or education organization supporting the message of education and empowerment in any number of countries. But the message struck me as particularly significant in this school in this part of the world. As Mother Jina said, many of her school’s students are clearly traumatized by the direct or indirect effects of the civil war, by decades of conflict and violence in southern Sudan. Even those children whose families fled the South during the war—and who were perhaps born in a refugee camp in neighboring Ethiopia, Uganda, or Congo, or in a hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, if they were lucky—are living with the reality of their country’s history. It is not an exaggeration or an insult to say that this history is tortured, painful, and traumatic. However, despite this history, and often even because of this struggle, the people of southern Sudan are also proud. They are hopeful for a better future and they are working towards it.

When I asked a southern army general recently how he felt about the challenges of the current, critical period in the run-up to the nationwide elections and southern self-determination referendum, he said, “A freedom fighter is always hopeful.” This hope is evident in the eyes of some people I have met in Juba, like Mother Jina, who works hard every day to make her school a safe and positive environment for her students. Sadly, some of her students’ young faces seem less hopeful. These children have already witnessed enough of war and its effects to lose hope. It may well take years of peace to change these faces and bring hope back into them.

A special thanks to Mother Jina for her assistance in editing this blog post.

“Tell them about our suffering here,” said the Bishop of Yambio of the Sudanese Episcopal Church. “The LRA is killing, raping and looting in our communities and the world does not know about it,” he added.

Bishop Peter’s words came at the end of a meeting I had with Episcopalian pastors from various Western Equatorian districts in South Sudan. Packed in the All Saints Church in Yambio, the capital of Western Equatoria State, or WES, I heard many hours-worth of testimony from people who had been victims of the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, most of them in the past two months.

The village of Yubu, for instance, which is 4 km away from Yambio, was attacked at the end of September. Many people were abducted, some were released but at least six were killed. The remnants of their bodies were collected only a few days before my visit. These events have become common in WES. A report by the U.N. coordination agency estimated 202 LRA related deaths and 131 abductions in September alone.

LRA attacks on the civilian population have been particularly brutal and frequent in and around Ezo, a town close to Sudan’s border with Congo, where the LRA attackers are coming from. As a result, many people have been internally displaced, moving to areas as far as Yambio – a 7 to 10 day trek on foot – trying to escape the LRA.

The displaced people I spoke to in Yambio described how the LRA had destroyed most of their villages around Ezo in search of food. Stories of killings, rape, and looting are again, all too common. There are at least 1,500 displaced people around Yambio living in squalid conditions without much help. An estimated 25,000 people in WES are displaced and most are thought to have fled LRA attacks.

The number of refugees from Congo and Central African Republic are also on the rise. The refugee camp of Makpandu, 45 km northeast of Yambio town, currently houses over 2,500 refugees, and at least 50 people arrive each week, according to the U.N. refugee agency. At least 3,000 refugees are stuck in Ezo town where food distribution is rare due to LRA attacks, but relocation of these refugees to the Makpandu site is on hold until the security situation improves.

In the meantime, LRA attacks in Western Equatoria continue. On October 7, the LRA attacked the village of Nimba near Yambio town. Two women were mutilated and killed.

The attacks have prompted more displacement, misery, and hunger. Food supplies for the local population and the displaced are dwindling because of the looting and destruction. On Wednesday, Governor Jemma Nunu Kumba of Western Equatoria appealed on Radio Miraya FM for swift humanitarian aid to the people of WES. The governor’s plea echoed the words of the director of the Sudanese Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Committee in our meeting: “We had never had people dying of starvation in Western Equatoria until the LRA came.”

With a hardened face and chiseled features, Mathias looked older than his age of 23.  Born to a farming family in Muramvya—a town on the route between Bujumbura and Gitega—Mathias grew up extremely poor.  This hardship limited his ability to attend school and so Mathias devised another way to work his way up and out: he joined the National Liberation Forces, or FNL, in 2005 in the hopes that someday members of the rebel forces would be integrated into the Burundian army where, he explained, he wanted to be an officer. 

But his plan didn’t completely deliver.  While he was given the chance to integrate into Burundian army, he was only offered the rank of corporal. He refused and chose instead to demobilize.  He had been a captain in the FNL, he explained to me.  I asked him if he was disappointed.  He hunched his shoulders and unclasped his hands as if to say, “obviously.”

Having previously worked in eastern DR Congo—a place where armed groups proliferate by the day and there seem to be more officers than foot soldiers—I knew Mathias’ attempt at trading up through integration was not unusual.  He explained his story to me with a mix of indifference and exhaustion , and I assumed he was too depleted or too apathetic about the future to have thought of another plan.  I was wrong.  He told me that he wanted to go to school and eventually own and run a small business. “But not in Burundi,” he added. “There are no jobs here. I want to go to school in Tanzania where I could get a job after finishing my studies.” I asked him what kind of small business he wanted to own. He didn’t know, adding only “not in Burundi.”

Joseph didn’t give many details about his life as a combatant except for when he explained—so softly I could barely hear—that he still has nightmares about the time when he was forced to kill his best friend who had raped a woman.  Not raping is one of the many FNL rules that are strictly enforced by officers of the rebel force.  Joseph was chosen to administer the ultimate punishment by shooting his friend. His gaze focused on the ground.

I asked him what he wanted to do in the future.  He gave a small grin and started to describe the ‘video salon’ he wanted to open in his village. Joseph imagined his neighbors coming to his place to watch movies.  From the glimmer in his eye, I could tell he had been dreaming of it for quite some time.  All he needed now was a piece of land and a TV.

This post is the third in a series about Burundi.  Visit us again in the coming weeks for more posts from Rebecca’s trip.

“Madame, they are very dangerous. They can be extremely violent, especially if they don’t like what you say,” warned Romain Ndagabwa without looking up from the papers swallowing his desk.  Ndagabwa, director of the demobilization center in Burundi’s second largest city, Gitega, was referring to the former combatants of the National Liberation Forces, or FNL, which were cycling through the center as part of the process of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration, or DDR.  Ndagabwa wanted to participate in my discussions with the combatants, but was too busy. I had a feeling he was trying to scare me away from doing so altogether. “I’m sure I’ll be fine,” I assured him. “I’ve interviewed former combatants before. Plus, I won’t be talking that much. Hopefully they’ll do all of that.” Mr. Ndagabwa didn’t press further. He shook my hand and agreed to gather a few of the ex-combatants for me to interview. Then he looked at his watch and ran out the door.

The pro-Hutu FNL was the last rebel group operating in Burundi until, in April of this year, the government of Burundi agreed to recognize the FNL as a legitimate political party. The FNL, in turn, agreed to integrate some combatants into the security services and demobilize others.  For those being demobilized, the center in Gitega was the last stop before being released back into their communities. I was at the center to talk to the former rebels about their pasts and was also curious about their expectations for re-integration into civilian life.

That day the center housed roughly 700 ex-combatants who would stay there only a week.  It seemed nothing more than a holding pen where most just wandered aimlessly or floated between the administrative block and the sleeping quarters. A few stepped outside the compound to buy lollipops or cigarettes. Many of them were eager to talk to me when I sat down with a group of 40 or so combatants.

Explaining the purpose of my research to them and my interest in repatriation had a rough start. Most of them wondered why I was there if I wasn’t going to donate money, while others hinted at fears of being exploited without compensation. Once one combatant mentioned his need for more funds, about 20 others raised their hands to explain how they, too, didn’t have any money to survive after they left the demobilization center.  “We hear about the World Bank and the UN and all the millions they receive, but we see none of it.” “That’s not totally true, is it? Don’t you get multiple installments of money after you leave here?” I asked. “Yes, but it’s not enough,” they said in unison.

I shared my thoughts about how I believed re-integration to be the most neglected component of the process. “We westerners tend to get very excited when we hear about peace accords and armed groups agreeing to DDR, but the first two D’s tend to capture our attention and efforts more than re-integration.” I got a few smiles. I went on to explain that without strong re-integration efforts that include access to education and job skills training, former combatants can be tempted to rejoin armed groups on the promise of surviving by any means necessary. I was preaching to the choir. “We don’t want to go back and fight again, but we’ll do so if we have no other option, no other way to survive,” said one combatant as many nodded.  A few offered that they wanted to go back to school, while others wanted to start a small business or just cultivate land.

In a post-conflict environment, if peace has any hope of surviving, the employment or active engagement of ex-combatants in the civilian community must yield greater returns than an armed group.  It is not easy to advocate for the needs of ex-combatants in Burundi and elsewhere when there are hundreds of millions of innocent civilians who have been affected by armed conflict and who continue to suffer as well. The civilians are, rightfully, the priority of international assistance and aid. However, if our aim is to prevent the re-escalation of conflict, we must also try to ensure that those who once carried arms can become productive members of society.

As I was leaving the center, one of them grabbed the notebook from my hand. Then he held out his palm waiting for my pen. I gave it to him, curious to see what he would do. “I’m going to give you my name and my email address, so you can write me and tell me when there will be more money for us.” I told him I didn’t think I could tell him about the money. “Ok then, just write me and tell me when your post is up. So we know when more people know about us.” I smiled and said yes.  This, at least, was a promise I could keep.

This post is the second in a series about Burundi.  Visit us again in the coming weeks for more posts from Rebecca’s trip.

I was standing next to my Burundian friend Parfait looking down at old flowers and messages left in memoriam. We were at Kibimba Memorial site, roughly an hour and a half east of Bujumbura. In Kibimba, on October 21, 1993, over a hundred Tutsi students and teachers were rounded up and taken to a gas station where they were burned alive by Hutu civilians, angered over the assassination of president Melchior Ndadaye—a Hutu—by members of the Tutsi-dominated army just hours earlier.  Next to the gas station, a memorial had been erected with the words “Plus Jamais Ca” or “Never Again.” Behind it was a spectacular view of Burundi’s countryside. It was a beautiful place for contemplation and reflection.

Surprisingly, despite Burundi’s long history of civil war and conflict, only two memorials commemorate past suffering and loss, and only one—Kibimba—commemorates the loss of Burundian citizens.  The other memorial in Gatumba, near the Congolese-Burundian border, honors the 166 Congolese refugees (mainly Tutsi) who were massacred on August 13, 2004, by the National Liberation Forces (FNL) and a mixture of other regional pro-Hutu rebel groups.

Parfait was reading messages at the memorial site, when I saw a cross placed among the flowers that said “Child Victims of Genocide, October 21, 1993.” I was surprised to find the word “genocide” used to describe what happened in Kibimba. Most experts would agree that an isolated, reactionary event like Kibimba would have difficulty qualifying as genocide under international law. I nudged Parfait and asked him what he thought, if he agreed that it was genocide. He turned to look at me, tilting his head. “It was genocide,” he responded. “It was targeted towards a specific ethnic group and it was planned.”

Most academics and regional analysts would agree that genocide did indeed take place in Burundi, but in 1972. After a local Hutu-led insurgency killed several hundred Tutsis in late April 1972, the Tutsi-led government responded to the threat by killing an estimated 200,000-300,000 Hutus from May to September.  Yet it is the massacre at Kibimba and other events in 1993 that appear to be in the collective consciousness of Burundians, not the 1972 genocide. Why is this? Is it simply a matter of time, a case of the most recent civil conflict eclipsing the former?  Does collective memory only have room to record one tragic history?

Often after conflicts governments promote peace over justice as a passive way of moving on. Furthermore, if the government was involved in violations against their own citizens, peace can translate into a policy of silence.  This is what happened after 1972 in Burundi. The Tutsi government erased all references to their sanctioned massacres of Hutus.  The official silence is only challenged by a weak patchwork of stories and information from missionaries and those Hutus who were able to flee. I asked several Burundians about 1972. Was there ever any talk of it? The general response was a shrugging of shoulders, a shaking of heads.  One 30 year old man told me that “probably only people that were directly affected by the genocide remember it or want to talk about it.” It is a genocide left up to individual records. 

There is no national memorial, no day or week of remembering, and there is no international tribunal to bring the perpetrators to justice. But should there be?  As Burundi currently attempts to move on and heal from the civil war that began in 1993, should it go back even further and attempt to remember and honor those who lost their lives in 1972?  If remembering is the first step in helping to prevent such atrocities from happening again, then I say yes.

This post is the first in a series about the current situation in Burundi.  Visit us again in the coming weeks for more posts from Rebecca’s trip.

***

As we were dodging potholes my taxi driver, Roger, was shaking his head.  “Is this your first time in Bujumbura?” he asked me.  I nodded.  “I wish you could have seen this city before the war.  It was beautiful,” he sighed. 

I looked out the window.  It was 2006 and the post-war transitional period had officially ended a year earlier with the election of Pierre Nkurunziza as President.  Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi, did indeed bear the marks of a difficult and war-torn past but we were driving along Lake Tanganika and able to see the striking mountainous terrain that frames the city. “Still looks beautiful to me,” I remarked. Roger shook his head again. “No no, you don’t get it.  I mean no potholes, nice buildings, infrastructure….things used to work. We’ll see now if Nkurunziza can make it all work again.”

Three years later it appears that Nkurunziza has started to make Burundi work again, or is at least giving it a major facelift.  While traffic remains bad in Bujumbura, it is most often due to the major road repairs that have been taking place throughout Burundi.  Many older buildings have been rehabilitated and more health care centers and hospitals have opened in recent years. But perhaps the most significant recent development is the agreement reached in April of this year between the armed opposition group, the Forces Nationales de Libération or FNL, and the Burundian government. The government finally agreed to the registration of the FNL as a political party. The FNL—the last of 19 armed groups that once operated in Burundi-- agreed to disarm and demobilize their combatants. Burundi appears to be on the track towards peace after years of negotiations and multiple agreements.

While most know about the genocide in Rwanda that took place during the spring of 1994, Burundi’s struggle during that period is less well known .  For years, the Burundian government, and more importantly the army, was dominated by the Tutsi minority.  In the summer of 1993 Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, was democratically elected as President. The army, however, still dominated by Tutsis, feared losing their control within the state and, in an act of overthrowing the Hutu government, assassinated Ndadaye, the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly on October 21, 1993. Anti-Tutsi violence by Hutus ensued just hours after Ndadaye’s death, which then triggered anti-Hutu violence by the army.  Ethnic extremism snowballed and armed groups proliferated, enabling conflict in Burundi to continue for over a decade, killing an estimated 200,000 people.

Most Burundians would agree that ethnic relations have improved in their country and that it would be difficult for ethnic violence to occur again in Burundi. Augustin, a young Burundian who works at a youth center in Bujumbura, recently told me “We realized after years of war that the politicians had manipulated ethnicity for their own political gains. We didn’t really care much about ethnicity before the war, and we don’t really care about it now. We are tired of war and just want peace.”

But don’t check Burundi off the list of post-conflict countries to watch just yet.  Human rights groups and regional analysts have been seeing a steady increase in politically-motivated violence in the past year as Burundi approaches its 2010 presidential and parliamentary elections.  In Burundi—not unlike other countries in the region—to capture state power is to capture the money, and thus the political party in control will do just about anything to stay there.  The ruling party—Conseil National pour la Défense de la Démocratie-Forces pour la Défense de la Démocratie, or CNDD-FDD, has been accused of killings, beatings and arrests in an attempt to intimidate and weaken their opposition, which is mainly the FNL.

President Nkurunziza had long refused to recognize the non-military wing of the FNL as a political party because of fears that such a party could split the Hutu vote—a vote his CNDD-FDD party heavily relies upon. Thus, the majority of reported politically-motivated violence in recent months has been between the CNDD-FDD and the FNL.  The CNDD-FDD has targeted FNL supporters and combatants and the FNL has responded in-kind and have been accused of burning down several CNDD-FDD meeting places. Many fear that the violence will only increase as elections near.

I asked Christophe, a young Burundian working for an NGO in Bujumbura who he thought would win the elections next year.  “The CNDD-FDD for sure,” he replied.  I nodded, waiting for him to elaborate.  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure….but you never know. This country is still learning how to ride a bicycle.  You get on and you fall off a lot in the beginning.  But eventually, if you are determined, you can learn to ride smoothly.” “So you think Burundi is determined?” I asked.  He shrugged, looking away. “Yeah, I think so. I hope so.”

In 1944, Josef Stalin ordered the deportation of the entire Chechen population to Central Asia.  As many as three out of every ten Chechens died, and those who survived were not allowed to return home until 1957.  Targeting not only a people, but also their memory, Soviet authorities demolished mosques and cemeteries.  Gravestones were used in the construction of roads, livestock sheds, and foundations.  Recovered in part, these gravestones now lie in a memorial dedicated to the victims of the 1944 deportation.  Our colleague told us that this memorial “is the main connection between the past and future.  The gravestones of fathers and mothers who were at one time deported into faraway lands were returned to their own roots and their land.”

It was not the last time Chechens would face destruction and violence. In 1994, Russian President Boris Yeltsin militarily crushed Chechnya’s move to post-Soviet independence.  And then in September 1999, a massive Russian military force again entered Chechnya, all but destroying the Chechen capital of Grozny and initiating a policy of targeting Chechen civilians.

In the years since, Chechens have struggled to remember the past as they recover from its trauma.  It has not been easy.

Over the winter months in 2008, our colleague captured images of daily life in Grozny.  His work reveals a city immersed in contradictions: sparkling new buildings tower over squares of rubble; women sift through the ruins of once thriving marketplaces; and new monuments guarded by well-armed militiamen celebrate former President Akhmad Kadyrov and his son, pro-Russian Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, whose personal paramilitary guard is well known for its ruthlessness.  Mandatory displays of presidential posters populate every state, educational, and cultural institution.  Our colleague writes, “They are at every entrance to every village and town, at intersections, at markers for administrative borders.  Everywhere that it is possible and even where it is not.” Even evidence of the city’s post-war calm – a photo of a man fishing by the river – reminds the photographer of the corpses that once floated by in water that could still be contaminated today. 

A few of the photos portray the Akhmad Kadyrov Mosque. Construction of the mosque began in 1997, in between the wars when the Chechen government was de facto independent. Situated on the location of some of the most brutal fighting of the first Russian-Chechen war, the mosque was intended to be a memorial to scores of volunteers who died defending Grozny. However, the project was not completed until 2008, under the pro-Moscow Kadyrov administration on what is now named Kadyrov Square, which sits on Kadyrov Avenue, opposite a monument to Kadyrov.

These photos illustrate a nation in the midst of rebuilding. Grozny, a city reduced to rubble, is slowly returning to life.  Beneath the surface, however, questions remain: Will stability hold? At what price?  What will the legacy of violence mean for future generations?  Will human rights be protected and group identities preserved? In the answers to these and many other questions lies the future of the Russian republic.

The UN peacekeeping operation in Congo, MONUC, is opening a base in Duru to be staffed by Moroccan soldiers arriving by road.  Charged with protection, MONUC soldiers and Congolese army troops are ill-equipped to combat the LRA, and hard pressed to protect civilians from the lean and mobile rebels who are masters at navigating this vast and inhospitable terrain.

We touch down on long grass, surrounded by Moroccan soldiers who secured the field moments before, and duck under helicopter blades.

I walk over with Congolese army guards past a razed church, a muddy water hole and refugee families huddled under makeshift huts, and arrive at the village’s elementary school.

The first thing I notice are the school’s doors.  Bright green, they have been scrawled upon by the LRA soldiers who attacked Duru last December, with the students’ own colorful chalk.  Ghastly depictions of a woman being killed, words of gloating and warning to the Congolese army, promises of retribution.  A disturbing display of pride in workmanship.

In this case, their work was to abduct children and teachers alike from the school after razing the town, killing dozens and burning down the church.  At least 65 children were taken, according to Human Rights Watch interviews.  Locals say they took many more.

I step carefully inside the door of the second grade classroom, its hinges hacked and broken off by a machete.  The floor is strewn with the torn out pages of French notebooks, the tiny wooden desks now occupied only by wasps.  The teacher’s morning message to his students lies untouched on the chalkboard.  Above this, written on the chalkboard’s frame, a simple request.

“kill kony please”

Many experts believe Joseph Kony will never agree to peace, that the military solution needs to be pushed to completion and the LRA leadership destroyed after 20 years of bringing untold misery to the people of Uganda, Congo, and the region.  But without real protection of civilians by the UN peacekeeping mission as well as the Congolese Army, such operations are sure to result in many more Congolese bearing the brunt of Kony’s revenge.

I was recently sitting on the bank of the Nile River in Juba, the capital of southern Sudan. I am in Juba to research some of the myriad challenges facing Sudan and the international community in the next 19 months—before the “interim period” of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or CPA, ends, and southern Sudan votes in a self-determination referendum for “unity” with or “separation” from northern Sudan. It would be untruthful to say that the situation in southern Sudan is anything other than very grim.  The recent violence and death tolls in the South have surpassed the deaths this year in Darfur, and the number of risks and dangers threatening the fragile peace (fostered by the CPA when it was signed in 2005) between Sudan’s North and South are poised to multiply in the run-up to Sudan’s general elections in 2010 and the 2011 referendum to determine whether Sudan will remain as one country or split into two.

When I was sitting by the Nile, I was thinking about some of these dangers and becoming increasingly depressed by what I had learned during my research in Juba. I was absentmindedly watching an old, decrepit barge struggle upstream in the direction of the Nile’s source in Uganda. The barge moved slowly as it fought a rather strong current, and I observed the sorry state of the boat, its hull covered in rust and a torn flag of southern Sudan flying from its mast. Then I noticed that there were about eight men on a small, high platform where the flag was flying. They were dancing up a storm. I couldn’t hear the music, but it was clear that they were enjoying it, because they didn’t stop dancing for as long as I was able to see the barge making its slow progress on the Nile. They were just having fun on an ordinary afternoon of work on their barge.

These men may not know where their next meal is coming from, and their families may have been affected by the recent violence across southern Sudan, from Unity to Jonglei to Lakes states and beyond. I think it is fair to generalize and say that many people in southern Sudan also likely face a great deal of obstacles in their every day lives that would be hard for outsiders like me to fathom, much less grapple with myself. But they were still enjoying themselves that afternoon as they cruised down the Nile. I felt lucky to have witnessed this small moment of joy in the midst of broader circumstances that seem so grim. Witnessing this scene reminded me not to forget the human side of every “charged political climate” or “complex humanitarian emergency.” People are more than “IDPs,” and “inter-communal violence” is more than arms and proxy militias. Sometimes it takes having an unexpected, random experience like this one to remind oneself of the humanity we all share.

It is at the Catholic Parish here in Faradje where I first meet Joseph, a 19 year old Congolese teenager captured by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) near Dungu six months ago.  He sits quietly across from me in a wooden chair and continues the story that began with him being captured and taken to Joseph Kony’s base in Garamba National Park.  Today Joseph is free; the last time he was in Faradje was as a slave to the LRA, and an unwilling witness to the horrors that were brought to a quiet village on Christmas day.

In the aftermath of the operation against the LRA at their base in Garamba Park on December 14th, Kony ordered his soldiers to send a message to the world and the Congolese people, who he accused of supporting the attacks against him.  The message was simple.  If you want war, we will do it on our terms.  We will bring it straight to the people. 

A group of a hundred rebel soldiers and a dozen porters including Joseph marched east from the park until they came to the outskirts of Faradje.  The rebels split up and fanned out, moving towards the center of town, burning homes and killing quietly as they went.  They used machetes and clubs to save bullets and maintain the element of surprise.  It was here on the outskirts they tried to kill Roger, a farmer and carpenter with dull scars on the top of his head, who described to me the moment he saw the LRA enter the village:

At about 4:00PM I was at my house and saw a column of soldiers splitting up into groups, one going on the road and the other arriving right behind my house.  A soldier knocked on the door.  I came out and said hello, asking them what they wanted.

He hit me in the head with wood from behind my house until they thought I was dead.  A neighbor saved me, crying out “stop, you have already killed him!” They left after hitting my father and also leaving him for dead.

When the LRA arrived to the center of the town, while Joseph and the others were tied together under guard, they turned the celebrating village into a killing field.

Marie, a teenage girl Joseph’s age from Faradje, was captured during the attack and tied up next to Joseph.  During an interview at the parish she described the chaos of the LRA’s attack:

I was at home with my family when I saw them.  I ran with the others, but the LRA caught up and hit me in the head with the butt of a rifle.  I was taken to the market and tied up with at least a hundred others.  We saw them killing people in front of us with machetes and clubs, one by one.

Joseph had already been tied up outside the parish, the same building in which I was now conducting the interview.  He describes seeing homes burned, children captured and tied up next to him, and a man killed on the doorstep of the parish itself.  The LRA even killed the town’s doctor and his child, burning them alive in their house.  His wife they took into the forest.

During the attack on Faradje, according to a report by Human Rights Watch, the LRA murdered at least 143 people and abducted 160 more, mostly children.  Hundreds of others were killed and captured in simultaneous attacks on other villages near Doruma and Duru west of Faradje.

At 10:00PM, after the killing stopped, Joseph, Marie and a hundred and sixty others were forced to march from town through the forest, carrying heavy loads of looted food and supplies.  Marie recounted life with the LRA:

For the next month we marched from place to place.  The LRA would attack a village while leaving us behind, guarded.  During that month, I saw them kill four boys, beating them to death.  If you were sick, or too tired to walk, they killed you.  They didn’t kill the girls, but did rape at least two of them.  I was scared the whole time.  They communicated only with gestures and we couldn’t understand what they said.

After a month of bloody attacks on nearby villages, hard marches and constant abuse, Marie and Joseph escaped.  By this time the groups had split up into several smaller ones.  Joseph woke up one night to relieve himself and found his guards asleep.  He slowly crept away through the forest, and ran the entire night.  He walked for days until he reached a Congolese military post near Faradje, and was brought here.  Marie was rescued later with six others after Congolese soldiers caught the group trying to pillage the village of Tadu, unaware that the army was nearby.  The LRA was pushed back, leaving a group of porters behind, and Marie was able to flee to the center of town.

Joseph and Marie were lucky.  For many this enslavement lasts months, or years, and most who try to escape the LRA don’t succeed.

At the end of our interview, I learn that Joseph has been trying to get home to Dungu for months, but the road is too dangerous.  I am flying back the next morning, and tell him I will do my best to find him a seat.

Joseph shows up at the airstrip the next morning, and my heart is in my throat.  He is wearing a smart red tie on a crisp white shirt, and khakis several sizes to large.  He owns nothing, yet has managed to make sure he looks sharp for his homecoming.

The Canadian pilot Jean calculates fuel and nods; we have just enough for another passenger. He gently buckles Joseph into his seat, and soon we are airborne.

The tiny six-seater plane dashes through a carwash, Jean calls a dark cloud full of rain, fat streaks charging backwards up the windshield, defying gravity.  We do a final pirouette over the Kibali river and abruptly fall from the sky, wheels touching down on the grassy red clay of Dungu’s airstrip.

Having defied the LRA’s own brutal gravity, Joseph is finally home.

The land below has been Joseph’s home for nearly twenty years.  But over the past six months it has also been his prison, one shared with thousands of other children, teenagers, and adults.

I am here in Northeast Congo to look into atrocities committed against civilians in the area, which have increased dramatically over the last 8 months.  Joseph, after months of enslavement, has experienced these crimes first hand.  He is finally on his way home to Dungu, a small village near the border with Sudan.

Over the past eight months the people of northeastern Congo, southern Sudan and the Central African Republic have been terrorized by the Lord’s Resistance Army, a small rebel group of no more than a thousand soldiers that began its life in Northern Uganda twenty years ago among the Acholi tribe.

While the LRA’s original aim was to overthrow the government of Uganda and install Joseph Kony, the LRA’s charismatic and superstitious leader, to power, today their motivation is far less clear.  At times it seems they are simply trying to survive.

The stories of the pain left in their wake over the years are chilling.  Children stolen from their homes, forced to kill their own families in ‘initiation’.  Young boys trained to kill, other children enslaved as porters.  Entire villages murdered.  Girls of just 10 or 11 becoming ‘wives’ to soldiers.

Several years ago the LRA moved its base of operations from Uganda to Northeast Congo, fleeing the Ugandan military.  Since a botched operation against them last December, at least 1,400 people have been killed and nearly 2,000 people abducted, mostly children.  More than 200,000 people have been displaced from their homes.

Joseph is a tall teenager, a good student.  He smiles readily but talks with a disconnected quietness.

I met Joseph in Faradje, a hundred miles from his home of Dungu, where he told me his story.  Joseph slowly describes how one warm morning last September, he was walking along the road to Dungu from his house a few miles outside of town, on route to the market to buy some vegetables for that evening’s dinner.

The LRA came out of the forest, sporting Khaki uniforms and dirty dreadlocks, and tied Joseph up along with seven others. The rebels forced them to march four days through the snake-infested forest.  If anyone walked too slowly they were beaten.  Joseph’s knee shows the evidence of this punishment, the treatment given a slave.  If anyone couldn’t walk any more from their wounds, they were shot.

They arrived at Kony’s main base in Garamba National Park in northeast Congo, a complex of four smaller camps within a few miles, and were greeted by a commander.  “You are going to stay with us here, without any problems,” Kony told them.  He rubbed oil on Joseph’s chest.  “If you try to flee,” he warned, “this magic oil will bring you back to us.” Magic and superstition is a defining characteristic of the LRA’s cult culture.  So is brutal discipline.

A few weeks later, this warning was tested when several children attempted to escape.

The teenagers were caught a short time later and marched back to camp. They were beaten to death in front of Joseph and hundreds other children as a lesson.

“If any of you try to flee as well, this is what will happen to you,” said the commander.

Joseph was put to work in the fields, raising maize, peanuts and sweet potatoes.  He saw Kony on occasion, tall and thin, his hair well-coiffed and dressed in well-tailored civilian clothes who moved from camp to camp for meetings, or to see his “wives.” While the lower soldiers who could be trusted were provided a young girl, he was reputed to have between 30 and 40 such unwilling wives.

On December 14th, three months after Joseph was captured, Kony’s camp in Garamba was bombed by Ugandan attack helicopters in a secret operation by Ugandan, Congolese and South Sudanese forces, supported by the U.S. military.  It was called Operation Lightning Thunder, and was so secret that not even the UN peacekeeping commanders were told of it until mere hours before.

But it ended in disaster.  The slow helicopters arrived before the bomber jets, delayed by poor weather.  The helicopters destroyed the camp, but with even worse coordination with ground forces (who didn’t arrive until at least 48 hours later), the operation failed to capture or kill Kony, or put a dent into the LRA’s strength.

The hornet’s nest had been kicked.

Joseph was fishing with a small group near the base when it was bombed.  The soldiers and slaves hid in the forest near the base until it was safe to move.  He remembers the group’s commander being called up on his satellite phone by a furious Kony.  “This is war,” pledged the rebel leader.

The LRA forces splintered into dozens of small groups, the larger ones with more than a hundred soldiers, others no more than four or five. Kony ordered some groups west and others east to avoid the circling Ugandan and Congolese soldiers.

In the several years the LRA had operated in Congo they had pillaged, stolen food and supplies, harassed the population, and captured children.  During that time they told the people here that their fight was with the government of Uganda, not the citizens of Congo.  The killing of civilians here by the LRA was not widespread.

That was about to change.

Read part two of Joseph’ story, in the next post from the village of Faradje.

To learn more about the Lord’s Resistance Army, visit the website of the Enough Project, and read the February report by Human Rights Watch.

The rebel force run by Laurent Nkunda (National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP), that just weeks ago was battling the Congolese government and poised to capture Goma itself, is no more.  Its soldiers have been integrated into the same army they fought in the hills of North Kivu for years, the charismatic and once seemingly untouchable rebel commander arrested by his one-time ally, Rwanda. 

Earlier this year Rwanda and Congo launched a surprise joint military operation to fight the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (FDLR) and flush them out of the jungles, with some success in demobilizing – or killing – a portion of this rag tag rebel force that increasingly seems to lack a motivating political purpose.

Taken at face value these events are positive, suggesting a possibly fundamental turn in the stalemate that has long characterized the conflict in eastern Congo.  But it is premature to state that the region is on the road to reclaiming its security and prosperity—or that it will be safe for Congolese to return from IDP camps to communities ravaged by fighting and pillaging.

The joint operation may be a sign of thawing relations between Rwanda and Congo, but is viewed here mainly as an opportunistic move, one that does not promise peaceful relations in the future.  Some experts suggest Rwanda may have agreed to arrest Nkunda in exchange for Congo allowing them to fight the FDLR directly.  A UN report released last December that alleged direct support by Rwanda for the CNDP, also increased international pressure on Rwanda to make a serious move towards dealing with Nkunda.

General Nkunda may be out of the game, but long time second in command Bosco Ntaganda, indicted by the International Criminal Court for atrocities against civilians and recruiting children to fight over the past decade, is on the scene with support from both Rwanda and Congo, and was even invited to help lead the joint operation against the FDLR.

Already the FDLR has struck back in revenge for the operation in recent weeks, attacking villages in Lubero in North Kivu, burning hundreds of homes and displacing up to 250,000 civilians since last September, wanting to prove to the world that they are still a force to be reckoned with.  Nearly a million people remain displaced in North Kivu.

And while many sigh with the relief that the imminent threat of Nkunda’s CNDP in North Kivu has subsided, integrations of rebel groups into the army, processes with names like “brassage” and “mixage”, have failed spectacularly in years past, erupting into renewed violence.  The fall offensive by the CNDP started just months after they, along with other armed groups, signed a peace deal at a conference in Goma earlier in the year. Loyalties to commanders – as well as arms caches – are not forgotten overnight, and the CNDP could be quickly revived if the calculation of power changes for Bosco or other leaders.
Finally, and most importantly, the tangled mess of former militias that is the Congolese army- unpaid, corrupt and completely unaccountable for its actions- still runs rampant throughout Eastern Congo, and along with the FDLR is responsible for the worst exactions against civilians, especially sexual violence.  Eastern Congo remains one of the very worst places to be a woman, the rape capital of the world.

The all-too-real human consequences of a crisis going back 15 years are still easily apparent here in Goma.

Here in the capital of North Kivu, a city devastated by the volcano Nyarigongo in 2002 (which scientists suggest could erupt again in the coming months), hundreds of thousands of displaced persons still haunt the half dozen camps and shanty towns on the city’s outskirts.

The largest single camp, Mugunga, today with a population of 27,000, offers a sad illustration of both the change and constancy that has defined this area since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.  Just after the genocide millions of Hutu refugees, including the genocidaires who perpetrated the killing of Tutsis and moderate Hutu, fled Rwanda and gathered here in Mugunga and other camps.  They would occupy this desolate land on the outskirts of Goma, between the volcano and serene Lake Kivu, for the next several years, organizing attacks into Rwanda from the camps themselves.

After Rwanda invaded in order to end the threat once and for all (and at the same time, some experts say, seizing vast mineral resources and indiscriminately exacting revenge in Hutu communities), the camps were destroyed, killers and refugees fleeing deep into the jungles of Congo.  Today, the remnants of the genocidaires and others recruited here over the past decade, who formed what is today the FDLR, continue to loot, rape, torture and kill.  The fleeing residents come here to Goma, where they live in the same camps once inhabited by their attackers.

Here in Eastern Congo, the only constant at times appears to be the misery inflicted on the population, yet there may well be light around the corner.  The moment one believes the reality of this place is set in stone, Congo always has another surprise in store.