Our MI-17 transport helicopter rumbles to life and lifts up from the UN base outside of Dungu, above American-made Humvees parked next to piles of supplies and prefabricated offices squatting alongside the dirt runway.  UN staff in blue Kevlar and helmets buckled in next to me put on a jovial air, but there is an undercurrent of tension.  We are flying into the heart of Lord’s Resistance Army territory, just a few miles from their former base in Garamba National Park.

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.

Posted By: Michael Graham | June 24, 2009 | Comments (0)

This guest post is part of a series on southern Sudan by Enough Project policy assistant Maggie Fick, who is currently conducting research for Enough in the region.

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.

Posted By: Michael Graham | June 22, 2009 | Comments (0)

The pilot dips the plane’s wing under the horizon as we circle Faradje to get a better look at the destruction below.  Dozens of blackened huts line the road cutting its way across the forest from Dungu, empty circles scorched black inside.

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.

Posted By: Michael Graham | June 09, 2009 | Comments (3)

Joseph fiddles with his bright red tie and peers intently out the window of our small prop plane over the landscape of northeastern Congo.

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.

Posted By: Michael Graham | June 01, 2009 | Comments (0)

Don’t blink.  If you look away for a moment here in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, everything changes.

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.

Posted By: Michael Graham | May 19, 2009 | Comments (0)