Here is a rather ironinc bit of news from one of my favorite blogs about the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Extra-Extra:

"Hotels to profit from peace conference
Posted: 29 Dec 2007 01:44 PM CST

News from eastern congo is mixed. A conference on 'peace, security and development' is to be held in Goma from January 6th. It's better to talk than fight, but Congolese commentators are sceptical, and ongoing forced recruitment of children by armed groups suggests that they are not about to change their ways.

Hotel owners will certainly profit from the conference, as 500 or more delegates plus press and entourage descend on a town that boasts, I believe, around 250 hotel rooms. Ironically, many of the smartest hotels in Goma pay 'taxes', willingly or unwillingly, to Laurent Nkunda's rebels.

The merry-go-round continues."


CongoBlog: Cedric Kalonji

...or at least some sort of revenge...

Thai police arrested Viktor Bout arms trafficker. His clients have included the Taliban and the US government, African warlords and the UN.

As far as he was concerned, he was purely a businessman, providing an international freight service stripped of any ideology. As far as some aid agencies were concerned, on occasion Bout was the swiftest supplier of relief to disaster zones. As far as the then Foreign Office minister Peter Hain was concerned, when he denounced him in the House of Commons in 2000, he was a "merchant of death", cynically fuelling the civil wars in Africa. He supplied both sides with weapons.



He has as many aliases as an AK-47 has rounds, and has acquired the nicknames Merchant of Death and Lord of War. Pursued for years by the intelligence services of the world, and tracked for months by Thai detectives, yesterday the elusive 41-year-old was finally arrested in a five star hotel in Bangkok.

Source:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/07/thailand.russia

"You know all that money we spend on nuclear weapons and defence each year, trillions of dollars, correct? Instead... just play with this... if we spent that money feeding and clothing the poor of the world, and it would pay for it many times over, not one human being excluded and we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace."

-Bill Hicks

Diane

What a fantastic (if depressing) post. You have done a great service in bringing this to all our attention. 5 from me

What a vicious world this can be

Here's a couple of articles concerning the rape of women in the DRC (not so bloody democratic is it)



Harrowing and heart-rending and maddening and confounding, Lisa F. Jackson's documentary "The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo" looks at the sexual violence done to the women of the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo over the course of the last decade -- the period, more or less, of the Second Congo War, which, notwithstanding peace treaties in 2003 and January of this year, seems to be rumbling on.

Jackson, whose film won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance and airs tonight on HBO, was herself the victim of a gang rape in Washington, D.C., at age 25, and there is a sense of mission here; it's personal, though not in any way that makes it all about her.

Unfunded, Jackson traveled to the DRC, formerly known as Zaire, on frequent-flier miles and into the bush with U.N. peacekeepers (whose hold on the peace is tenuous) to meet the victims of this ongoing monstrosity -- as many as 200,000 women and girls raped (and more) in a conflict generally regarded as the bloodiest since World War II.

She told them of her own rape, "hoping that if I told a woman my story she would break the silence surrounding hers." ("They asked about the war that was happening in my country.") She also talked to rapists -- Congolese soldiers, as it happens, who are ostensibly there to protect the women they've attacked from the foreign militias responsible for the worst atrocities of this multi-party war but who believe that rape is a mystical component to their success on the battlefield. (And there is also male talk of "needs.")

A country the size of Western Europe, the DRC is rich in gold, silver, diamonds, oil, uranium and, not least, coltan, a mineral used in the manufacture of cellphones and laptop computers. The war has provided cover for Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundi militias to steal coltan -- perhaps a million dollars' worth a day; indeed, it's suggested that it's the reason for the war. (Think about that the next time you needlessly upgrade your mobile phone.)

There is ample room, physically and psychologically, for the unaffected to ignore the afflicted, and Congolese society has traditionally made second-class citizens of women. Government is slow, even loath, to act; perpetrators who are caught easily bribe their way out of custody.

It is a difficult thing to watch, but there's no arguing with it. The documentary brings you close to its subject, and though its main point is unwavering -- women are being brutalized in the most unspeakable ways in eastern Congo -- its effect is increasingly complex.

Jackson does a good job of capturing the paradoxical beauty of the setting, and she has structured her film so that even as it grows more horrible, hope glimmers.

We meet Major Honorine Munyole, "eastern Congo's one-woman Special Victims Unit" ("I myself am the sex-crimes police, and I'm also the child protection police"); Dr. Denis Mukwege of the Panzi Hospital, who does what he can to repair broken bodies; and Jackson's gentle U.N. liaison Bernard Kalume, at home with a loving family, perilously close to the Rwandan border. They are beating against a great tide, but they press on.

It's difficult to know what a film like this can accomplish, though it's necessary that such films be made. In 1960, Edward R. Murrow closed the TV documentary "Harvest of Shame," about the ill treatment of American migrant workers, saying, "The people you have seen have the strength to harvest your fruit and vegetables. They do not have the strength to influence legislation. Maybe we do."

One woman seen in "The Greatest Silence" hopes that with Jackson's film, "our complaints will be heard at a higher level . . . and we will get some help."

Clip of film

Source: LA Times

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BUKAVU, Congo � Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist, cannot bear to listen to the stories his patients tell him anymore.

Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.

�We don�t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,� said Dr. Mukwege, who works in South Kivu Province, the epicenter of Congo�s rape epidemic. �They are done to destroy women.�

Eastern Congo is going through another one of its convulsions of violence, and this time it seems that women are being systematically attacked on a scale never before seen here. According to the United Nations, 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in South Kivu Province alone, and that may be just a fraction of the total number across the country.

�The sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world,� said John Holmes, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs. �The sheer numbers, the wholesale brutality, the culture of impunity � it�s appalling.�


No one � doctors, aid workers, Congolese and Western researchers � can explain exactly why this is happening. �We don�t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,� said Dr. Mukwege. �They are done to destroy women.�



The days of chaos in Congo were supposed to be over. Last year, this country of 66 million people held a historic election that cost $500 million and was intended to end Congo�s various wars and rebellions and its tradition of epically bad government.

But the elections have not unified the country or significantly strengthened the Congolese government�s hand to deal with renegade forces, many of them from outside the country. The justice system and the military still barely function, and United Nations officials say Congolese government troops are among the worst offenders when it comes to rape. Large swaths of the country, especially in the east, remain authority-free zones where civilians are at the mercy of heavily armed groups who have made warfare a livelihood and survive by raiding

villages and abducting women for ransom.

According to victims, one of the newest groups to emerge is called the Rastas, a mysterious gang of dreadlocked fugitives who live deep in the forest, wear shiny tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys and are notorious for burning babies, kidnapping women and literally chopping up anybody who gets in their way.



United Nations officials said the so-called Rastas were once part of the Hutu militias who fled Rwanda after committing genocide there in 1994, but now it seems they have split off on their own and specialize in freelance cruelty.

Honorata Barinjibanwa, an 18-year-old woman with high cheekbones and downcast eyes, said she was kidnapped from a village that the Rastas raided in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was tied to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her delicate neck. The men would untie her for a few hours each day to gang-rape her, she said.



�I�m weak, I�m angry, and I don�t know how to restart my life,� she said from Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where she was taken after her captors freed her.

She is also pregnant.

While rape has always been a weapon of war, researchers say they fear that Congo�s problem has metastasized into a wider social phenomenon.


Panzi Hospital has 350 beds, and though a new ward is being built specifically for rape victims, the hospital sends women back to their villages before they have fully recovered because it needs space for the never-ending stream of new arrivals.



�It�s gone beyond the conflict,� said Alexandra Bilak, who has studied various armed groups around Bukavu, on the shores of Lake Kivu. She said that the number of women abused and even killed by their husbands seemed to be going up and that brutality toward women had become �almost normal.�

Malteser International, a European aid organization that runs health clinics in eastern Congo, estimates that it will treat 8,000 sexual violence cases this year, compared with 6,338 last year. The organization said that in one town, Shabunda, 70 percent of the women reported being sexually brutalized.

At Panzi Hospital, where Dr. Mukwege performs as many as six rape-related surgeries a day, bed after bed is filled with women lying on their backs, staring at the ceiling, with colostomy bags hanging next to them because of all the internal damage.

�I still have pain and feel chills,� said Kasindi Wabulasa, a patient who was raped in February by five men. The men held an AK-47 rifle to her husband�s chest and made him watch, telling him that if he closed his eyes, they would shoot him. When they were finished, Ms. Wabulasa said, they shot him anyway.

In almost all the reported cases, the culprits are described as young men with guns, and in the deceptively beautiful hills here, there is no shortage of them: poorly paid and often mutinous government soldiers; homegrown militias called the Mai-Mai who slick themselves with oil before marching into battle; members of paramilitary groups originally from Uganda and Rwanda who have destabilized this area over the past 10 years in a quest for gold and all the other riches that can be extracted from Congo�s exploited soil.

The attacks go on despite the presence of the largest United Nations peacekeeping force in the world, with more than 17,000 troops.

Few seem to be spared. Dr. Mukwege said his oldest patient was 75, his youngest 3.

�Some of these girls whose insides have been destroyed are so young that they don�t understand what happened to them,� Dr. Mukwege said. �They ask me if they will ever be able to have children, and it�s hard to look into their eyes.�

No one � doctors, aid workers, Congolese and Western researchers � can explain exactly why this is happening.

�That is the question,� said Andr� Bourque, a Canadian consultant who works with aid groups in eastern Congo. �Sexual violence in Congo reaches a level never reached anywhere else. It is even worse than in Rwanda during the genocide.�

Impunity may be a contributing factor, Mr. Bourque added, saying that very few of the culprits are punished.


Honorata Barinjibanwa, 18, said she was kidnapped from a village during a raid in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was tied to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her neck. Her kidnappers would untie her for a few hours each day to gang-rape her, she said.



Many Congolese aid workers denied that the problem was cultural and insisted that the widespread rapes were not the product of something ingrained in the way men treated women in Congolese society. �If that were the case, this would have showed up long ago,� said Wilhelmine Ntakebuka, who coordinates a sexual violence program in Bukavu.

Instead, she said, the epidemic of rapes seems to have started in the mid-1990s. That coincides with the waves of Hutu militiamen who escaped into Congo�s forests after exterminating 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus during Rwanda�s genocide 13 years ago.

Mr. Holmes said that while government troops might have raped thousands of women, the most vicious attacks had been carried out by Hutu militias.

�These are people who were involved with the genocide and have been psychologically destroyed by it,� he said.

Mr. Bourque called this phenomenon �reversed values� and said it could develop in heavily traumatized areas that had been steeped in conflict for many years, like eastern Congo.

This place, one of the greenest, hilliest and most scenic slices of central Africa, continues to reverberate from the aftershocks of the genocide next door. Take the recent fighting near Bukavu between the Congolese Army and Laurent Nkunda, a dissident general who commands a formidable rebel force. Mr. Nkunda is a Congolese Tutsi who has accused the Congolese Army of supporting Hutu militias, which the army denies. Mr. Nkunda says his rebel force is simply protecting Tutsi civilians from being victimized again.

But his men may be no better.

Willermine Mulihano said she was raped twice � first by Hutu militiamen two years ago and then by Nkunda soldiers in July. Two soldiers held her legs apart, while three others took turns violating her.

�When I think about what happened,� she said, �I feel anxious and brokenhearted.�

She is also lonely. Her husband divorced her after the first rape, saying she was diseased.

In some cases, the attacks are on civilians already caught in the cross-fire between warring groups. In one village near Bukavu where 27 women were raped and 18 civilians killed in May, the attackers left behind a note in broken Swahili telling the villagers that the violence would go on as long as government troops were in the area.

The United Nations peacekeepers here seem to be stepping up efforts to protect women.

Recently, they initiated what they call �night flashes,� in which three truckloads of peacekeepers drive into the bush and keep their headlights on all night as a signal to both civilians and armed groups that the peacekeepers are there. Sometimes, when morning comes, 3,000 villagers are curled up on the ground around them.


A woman at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, Congo. The hospital treats the most extreme internal damage caused by rapes that occur with epidemic proportions in this eastern part of the war-torn African nation.


But the problem seems bigger than the resources currently devoted to it.

Panzi Hospital has 350 beds, and though a new ward is being built specifically for rape victims, the hospital sends women back to their villages before they have fully recovered because it needs space for the never-ending stream of new arrivals.

Dr. Mukwege, 52, said he remembered the days when Bukavu was known for its stunning lake views and nearby national parks, like Kahuzi-Biega.

�There used to be a lot of gorillas in there,� he said. �But now they�ve been replaced by much more savage beasts.�

Source: NY Times

What an unimaginable hellhole

Despite the potential for cynicism, I do believe the rich and famous should go - and go often - to the DRC and similar places on Earth. Rulers, gangsters and warlords of Hellish places need the international publicity, the glare of flashing cameras. They should be invited to explain their atrocities.

Here are some of them:
Government troops, Ituri Province.

"...The dissident, General Laurent Nkunda, leader of the CNDP (National Congres for the Defense of the People), poses at his headquarter in his stronghold of Kichanga, Masisi hills in North-Kivu [Province]. Written on the wall: Justice is rendered in the name of the people." (See more of these prize-winning photos by Cedric Gerbehaye - Agence VU/Newsweek.)

Ben Affleck has been to the DRC three times in the past year, according to BBC News Online. One of my favorite bloggers is CongoGirl, a rather heroic figure herself, who led me to this BBC article.

Very likely at Panzi Hospital* in Bukavu,
though the photo captions don't specify.


Ben Affleck films DR Congo Crisis
Friday, 27 June 2008

Quote:

---

Actor Ben Affleck has said he made a TV report on the Democratic Republic of Congo because the humanitarian crisis there deserved "our eyes and our ears".
.
The Oscar-winner visited refugee camps, warlords and hospitals while in the African country to record a film for Nightline, on US channel ABC.
In the past decade more than four million people have died during the conflict, most from hunger and disease.
.
The 35-year-old has visited the country three times in the past year. It has been embroiled in a civil war since 1994, when an influx of refugees from neighbouring countries arrived [mainly because of the Rwanda genocide].
[...]
"I view this as a long and ongoing learning experience to educate myself before making any attempt to advocate or speak out," the star of Good Will Hunting and Pearl Harbour said.
.
Affleck met conflict survivors, aid workers and warlords on his visit
"My plan has been to explore, watch, listen and find those doing the best work with - and on behalf of - the people of the DRC."
.
He was trying to "give exposure to voices which might not otherwise be heard", he added. Affleck joins the long line of celebrities, among them Madonna, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Bono, who have campaigned for relief in the continent. But Affleck, who paid for the trip himself, stressed: "It makes sense to be sceptical about celebrity activism."
.
"There is always the suspicion that involvement with a cause may be doing more good for the spokesman than he or she is doing for the cause," he added.

---

If it takes celebrities to get the attention these places deserve, so be it. On the other hand, how much progress toward peace has really been made in the Sudan because of the attention it gets?

*CLICK HERE for information about Panzi Hospital, a medical refuge for women,
and Dr. Mukwege, who surely by now has earned the Nobel Prize for Peace.

This from the intrepid blogger CongoGirl today:


This begs a few questions:

- Exactly what crimes are "crimes against humanity" and which are acts of war and rebellion? Who decides which is which?

- Does the amnesty include such perpetrators as the UN Peacekeeping troops, who are widely reported to have been raping, smuggling gold and ivory, and committing robbery and assault against civilians? (See the links covering these accusations in News24. There are many elsewhere, too.)

- What about child soldiers? Who's the criminal, the brutal 17 year old or the militia boss who hired or kidnapped him two years ago?

- Finally, as CongoGirl asks, will this large concession to the rebel Nkunda - even if it works - further weaken an already ineffectual government in faraway Kinshasa?

Perhaps a reading of the entire document could answer some of these questions. But, the last one is the most difficult, because we see poor results anywhere there is a weak government granting amnesty to warlords.

Sickening, frightening news from the DRC. Quite possibly the end of NGO staffing and the nominal government presence in North Kivu province. This Nkunda fellow is clearly determined to destroy life and hope in his supposed mission to "protect" his fellow Tutsis in the area. Nkunda is clearly not interested in a ceasefire, amnesty (see post above this one) or any other triffling deal with the DRC government - even though he periodically pretends to be. Where is his money coming from - Rwanda? My opinion is that Nkunda's end goal is to carve out a resource-rich empire for himself, a Congolese Tutsi, with the help of Rwandan Tutsi financing. Thus, the legacy of the Rwandan genocide rolls on. It is tragic that a place as beautiful as the eastern Congo seems endlessly to be overrun by madmen.

From NYTimes, 29 Oct 2008 (Jeffrey Gettleman):

GOMA, Congo � The exodus has begun.

Women with babies on their backs. Families crammed into cars with coolers and suitcases stuffed to the windows. United Nations trucks. Aid workers. Businessmen. Congolese government troops literally running for their lives.

On Wednesday afternoon, countless people of all kinds poured out of Goma, a strategic Congolese city on the border of Rwanda, fleeing the advancing rebel forces massing on the outskirts of town.

This was a place that was supposed to be safe, a town full of war-weary, displaced people who had come here for shelter, a town that the United Nations peacekeepers had defended against the very same rebels before.

There is no caption for this NYT photo, but that appears to be Mt. Nyiragongo in the far background. If these are the people, as the NYT article states, "pouring out of Goma," they are traveling roughly southeast to Gisenyi, right across the border in Rwanda. If so, they may find no safe haven. The displaced are once again on the run and vulnerable to the whims of thugs.

[...]
�The Congolese army has abandoned most of their positions,� said United Nations spokesman Madnodje Mounoubai. �The road to Goma is now open to the rebels.�
[...]
�I�m going to Rwanda,� said Safi Dayoo, a mother of six.

She crossed the border, on foot, as dusk sank over the city and the streets emptied into an eerie silence.

Several residents said that vanquished Congolese soldiers were looting shops on their way out of town. A band of fleeing soldiers commandeered a car that had been rented by a team of Western journalists and threatened the journalists at gunpoint to drive them west, away from the rebels. At one Goma hotel, the manager demanded payment for the room up front.

�Who knows what will happen tomorrow,� he said.

A desperate, dangerous security vacuum seemed to be opening up. Congolese officials seemed dismayed � but not surprised.

�What can we do?�� said Kikaya Bin Karubi, a member of Congo�s Parliament. �We don�t have a national army. Our so-called army is a combination of different rebel militias, with a 100 from this group, a 100 from that group, and so on. They haven�t even trained together for a year. How do they stand a chance?�

The enemy they are facing is a relatively well-armed, cohesive force, led by Laurent Nkunda, a renegade Congolese general with impressive military acumen and a taste for crisp uniforms, dark sunglasses and power. He calls himself a protector of the Tutsi people. Many people here call him a warlord.
[...]
It is not clear what Mr. Nkunda�s plans are. He has tried several times before to seize Goma, one of the biggest towns in eastern Congo and an important trade hub that sits near the crossroads of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. His previous attacks were foiled by United Nations peacekeepers who used helicopter gunships to blast his rebels from the air.

But this time, he seems more determined � even talking about �liberating� the entire country, which would not be unprecedented because the rebellion that overturned Congo�s longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997 started out in the same green hills around here.

Mr. Nkunda seems to have learned from his mistakes. United Nations officials said he has deftly calibrated his tactics to a more guerilla-style war this time, with his soldiers attacking in small groups that blend into the thick forest or the civilian population.

In 2004, when Mr. Nkunda�s forces briefly seized control of Bukavu, a similarly-sized city just south of Goma, Mr. Nkunda�s men (and boys � because many are four-foot-tall child soldiers) ransacked the town, smashing windows, pillaging stores and going house to house to rape women.
[...]
United Nations officials said on Wednesday said they were considering a formal evacuation of their personnel in Goma but they had not made the decision yet. Many United Nations aid workers in Goma were concentrated in fortified compounds.

Goma residents said that Mr. Nkunda�s forces were within 5 miles of the town. Heavy machine fire erupted around 7 p.m., followed by the deep bark of artillery.

Oscar Batezi, a law student, stood on the streets of Goma and watched his world spin once again into a cycle of the violent unknown.

�If Nkunda comes here, nothing good will come of it,� he said. �Our government is a total disappointment. I have no place to go. All I can do is wait.�
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Edit 10/30: I was directed to the following by another of my favorite blogs, which used to be exclusively about the Congo, now has the occassional update because the author went back to the UK - Extra-Extra. He never revealed who he is or why he lived in the DRC for so long, but I suspect he was with the UN or an international aid organization. Many expat bloggers in African countries stay anonymous if they are in the habit of writing critically about their host governments.

From The Independent, 30 Oct 08 (Johann Hari):

(Photos: The Independent)
Refugees who fled fighting between government soldiers and renegade Congolese General Laurent Nkunda queue for water at a makeshift camp near Kibati


There are two stories about how this war began � the official story, and the true story. The official story is that after the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu mass murderers fled across the border into Congo. The Rwandan government chased after them. But it's a lie. How do we know? The Rwandan government didn't go to where the Hutu genocidaires were, at least not at first. They went to where Congo's natural resources were � and began to pillage them. [...] Congo is the richest country in the world for gold, diamonds, coltan, cassiterite, and more. Everybody wanted a slice � so six other countries invaded.

These resources were not being stolen to for use in Africa. They were seized so they could be sold on to us. The more we bought, the more the invaders stole � and slaughtered. The rise of mobile phones caused a surge in deaths, because the coltan they contain is found primarily in Congo. The UN named the international corporations it believed were involved: Anglo-America, Standard Chartered Bank, De Beers and more than 100 others. (They all deny the charges.) But instead of stopping these corporations, our governments demanded that the UN stop criticising them.

[...] As with the first war, there is a cover-story, and the truth. A Congolese militia leader called Laurent Nkunda � backed by Rwanda � claims he needs to protect the local Tutsi population from the same Hutu genocidaires who have been hiding out in the jungles of eastern Congo since 1994. That's why he is seizing Congolese military bases and is poised to march on Goma.

It is a lie. Fran�ois Grignon, Africa Director of the International Crisis Group, tells me the truth: "Nkunda is being funded by Rwandan businessmen so they can retain control of the mines in North Kivu. This is the absolute core of the conflict. What we are seeing now is beneficiaries of the illegal war economy fighting to maintain their right to exploit."

At the moment, Rwandan business interests make a fortune from the mines they illegally seized during the war. The global coltan price has collapsed, so now they focus hungrily on cassiterite, which is used to make tin cans and other consumer disposables. As the war began to wane, they faced losing their control to the elected Congolese government � so they have given it another bloody kick-start.

[...] Nkunda only has enough guns and grenades to take on the Congolese army and the UN because we buy his loot. We need to prosecute the corporations buying them for abetting crimes against humanity, and introduce a global coltan-tax to pay for a substantial peacekeeping force. To get there, we need to build an international system that values the lives of black people more than it values profit.


Refugees on the main road to Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after fleeing fighting in Kibumba

Somewhere out there � lost in the great global heist of Congo's resources � are Marie-Jean and her children, limping along the road once more, carrying everything they own on their backs. They will probably never use a coltan-filled mobile phone, a cassiterite-smelted can of beans, or a gold necklace � but they may yet die for one.


People cook as they stay in an improvised Internally Displaced People (IDP) camp in Kibati, about 25 km (15.5 mi) north of the provincial capital of Goma

To save the lives of the victims of Congo's sexual violence, you can donate money here.
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See my related post, like this one still a work in progress as events develop: The human cost of cell phones.

Today's Congo news, from reports by CNN and AFP:

(AFP photos)
A family passes by DRC and UN troops near Goma...........Children wait outside a Mercy Corps medical aid clinic.

After threatening to storm Kinshasa** and take down the government unless it negotiates directly with him, Gen. Laurent Nkunda (leader of the "rebels") has decided to honor the cease-fire of last week. He has stopped his troops outside of Goma and so far, the anticipated storming of the provincial capital has not happened. It's still a fragile agreement, since there are so many conflicting players in this madness. Each has at stake a piece of the resource pie: control over Congo mineral looting and smuggling. Skirmishes are still breaking out, one yesterday north of Goma slowing down the delivery of international aid. There is no such thing as national or provincial aid, so keeping the dirt roads open and safe is crucial to the lives of the estimated 250,000 refugees. And that's just the estimate since this latest fighting. "It is said the total number of displaced by years of fighting in the region was over 1 million, or 20 percent of the entire Nord-Kivu population," according to AFP. I have not yet seen an estimate for the total displaced in the entire eastern Congo. Keep in mind that the majority of those are women and children, who are especially vulnerable to attrocities of war. Since Sunday, many refugee camps in North Kivu were burned and the people have fled. No one is sure where they have all gone.

In another story about repercussions of North Kivu warfare, from Bloomberg: Congo Park Rangers Missing Since Rebel Uprising Trek to Safety. I recommend you read this good news of men hiking 31 miles to safety from Virunga National Park, amid shelling from Nkunda's forces. Patrols of the park have been suspended. Wildlife groups are worried over the fate of the rare Mountain Gorillas and dwindling elephants of the park.

In my opinion, Nkunda and the DRC Army may not be impervious to the unexpected international attention brought by this latest chapter in the Congo war. The west is suddenly worried about its supply of cheap minerals.

**Never mind that there is no direct overland route from N. Kivu to Kinshasa and the indirect routes are dirt paths largely impassible by an army. When it rains, truck convoys can be held up for weeks while they repeatedly dig out of the mud. This map perfectly illustrates the point:
Map: Digital Globe

Alternatively, Nkunda can load his troops and weaponry into the few rattling, rusted-out riverboats that still transport goods and people on the Congo River. If they get to Kinshasa at all, they will then have the problem of being stranded in unfriendly territory, on foot, with retreat unfeasible. So, his threats to take down the government (as opposed to the gov't troops present in North Kivu) seem hollow. However, if he is willing and able to hold out for a few years, while the resources of the east finance his march to the west, entailing road building and the purchase of troop transport equipment, it's certainly possible. There is also the Rwanda factor. Rwanda's Tutsi president is rumored to be Nkunda's potential financial backer, if this isn't happening already.

(Link takes you to the mountain gorilla range of Virunga National Park. The park itself covers a very large territory along the Uganda and Rwanda borders.)

More bad news from the continuing escallation of the war in eastern Congo. For quite some time, international and Congolese conservation experts have been worried about the survival of the region's rare and fragile mountain gorillas. Much of the fighting surrounds Virunga National Park, made famous by Dian Fossey's gorilla research outpost and her eventual murder by poachers. From the International Herald Tribune:

New wave of fighting in Congo threatens gorillas

By Jeffrey Gettleman
Published: November 18, 2008

BULENGO, Congo: Jean-Marie Serundori wakes up every morning with gorillas on his mind.

"I wash my face, I stare at the mountains, and I think of them," he said. "They are like our cousins."


In the middle photo, two of Virunga's researchers taking field notes. From GorillaFund.org (see link at bottom).

But Serundori, a Congolese wildlife ranger entrusted with protecting some of the most majestic - and most endangered - animals on the planet, is far from the broad-backed mountain gorillas he loves.

Instead, he is stuck in a wet and filthy camp for internally displaced people where the only wildlife are the cockroaches that scurry across the mud floors. He is one of the hundreds of thousands of people left idle and destitute by the most recent spasm of violence in eastern Congo, and the consequences in this case may be dire and irreversible.

Eastern Congo is home to almost a third of the last 700 wild mountain gorillas in the world, with the rest in nearby areas of Rwanda and Uganda. Now, there are no trained rangers to protect them. More than 240 Congolese game wardens have been run off their posts, including some who narrowly escaped a surging rebel advance last month and slogged through the jungle for three days, living off leaves and scoopfuls of mud for hydration. [Italics mine.]

"We figured if the gorillas can eat leaves, so can we," said Sekibibi Desire, who is staying in a tent near the other rangers.

This is just the latest crisis within a crisis. The gorillas of Congo happen to live in one of the most contested, blood-soaked pieces of turf in one of the most contested, blood-soaked corners of Africa.

Their home, Virunga National Park, is high ground - with mist-shrouded mountains and pointy volcanoes - along the porous Congo-Rwanda border, where rebels are suspected of smuggling in weapons from Rwanda. Last year in Virunga, 10 gorillas were killed, some shot in the back of the head, execution style, park officials said.

The park used to be a naturalist's paradise, home to more than 2,000 species of plants, 706 types of birds and 218 varieties of mammals, including three great apes: the mountain gorilla, the lowland gorilla and chimpanzees.

Now Virunga is a war zone.

Rebel soldiers command the hilltops. Government soldiers fire mortars at them, blowing up precious gorilla habitat that is rapidly disappearing anyway because of deforestation and a thriving, but illegal, charcoal trade.

"Armed groups hide in the park, they train in the park and, most importantly, they eat in the park," said Samantha Newport, a spokeswoman for Virunga National Park.

Newport said that two years ago, at one of the lakes in the park, a local militia went on a hippopotamus-hunting rampage, machine-gunning hundreds of hippopotamuses for their meat.

"The lake turned red," she said.

Eastern Congo has been stuck in a vise of bloodshed for more than a decade. The trouble began in 1994, with the genocide in Rwanda, which killed 800,000 people and sent waves of refugees into Congo, along with bloodthirsty militias. Since then, various armed groups and neighboring nations have battled for control of this stunningly beautiful land, loaded with gold, diamonds and other precious resources. Last month, a rebel force widely suspected of being supported by Rwanda routed government troops near the strategic city of Goma and was poised to capture it, when the rebels declared a cease-fire.

That cease-fire remains shaky.

On Sunday, the same day that the rebels' leader, Laurent Nkunda, vowed to stick to the truce, heavy fighting broke out north of Goma. Congolese troops fired rockets. The rebels responded with mortar bombs. Once again, game wardens were caught in the middle. Some of their families have even been shot.

Last month, the 14-year-old daughter of a ranger was shot in the stomach during a firefight near a ranger post deep in the forest.

"I put her in my arms and just ran," her father, Mberabagabo Rukundaguhaya, said. "I thought she was dead."

She lived, though it is not clear when her family will be able to go home.

Officials with Virunga National Park are urging the rebels and government troops to allow them to return to work. The rebels insist the gorillas are safe.

"We are protecting them," said Babu Amani, a rebel spokesman.

Serundori, the veteran ranger, said that in his 20 years as a ranger he had seen the gorillas on more than 100 occasions.

"But what always impresses me is how fragile they are," he said. "They could be wiped out - in a minute."
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Today's blog entry by Emmanuel of Gorilla.cd, the website of Virunga National Park, 18 Nov, 08:

" I am pleased to let you all know that I just spoke to Serge and Safari, our 2 drivers who have been stuck up at Rwindi ... since Saturday with the 47 Rangers and their families right in the middle of the heavy fighting.

Virunga rangers, a brave and dedicated lot. Photo from the park's website (see link at bottom).

They are finally on their way back to Goma in a UN escort.

This has been quite a tumultuous few days for all of them. For now the Rangers and their families will be greeted at Bulengo, where our other displaced Rangers are living in the camp.

What a relief we were able to get them out safely.

Thank you also for your continued support and donations. It means a great deal to all the Rangers on the ground that people actually know what is going on around the world."

Gorilla range is in lime green.

The entire park covers a huge area.

Photos from the Gorilla Fund, where you can make a donation and even "adopt" a gorilla orphan. Maps and ranger photo/information from Gorilla.cd, the official website of Virunga National Park. See this site for nearly real-time updates on the situation in the park and for ways you can help the rangers and their families. They are frequently without pay and now many are refugees.

Congo Armies fight for wealth of mines and forests

The charcoal cutters of Virunga National Park know that their trade is illegal. Their fires, where they turn freshly cut olea trees into blackened cooking fuel, are built far from prying eyes in the war zone.

The illegal trade in charcoal has cut a strip of savannah through the Democratic Republic of Congo�s tropical rainforest, threatening the survival of the park�s rare mountain gorillas. Now the industry, worth �20 million a year, is having an equally devastating effect on human populations as the battle for control of the region�s rich natural resources fans the flames of civil war.


Demand for charcoal is high in Goma, where refugees need cooking fuel


The forest close to Rubare is home to Rwandan Hutu militias, who fled their homeland after Tutsi rebels took power in 1994. Today they are known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda. Back then they were the death squads of the Interahamwe � meaning �those who work together� � responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

One of the cutters, Mumbere Ambrose, used a machete to hack some branches into a convenient size for charcoal as a chainsaw buzzed close by. To get access to the best trees, Mr Ambrose is forced to give money to the Hutu militias, who hold much of the southern reaches of Virunga, skimming cash from the charcoal producers to fund their war. Elsewhere, countless rebel factions are vying for control of other natural resources � among them gold.

Source: Times Online

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Here are some harrowing photos of the Gorilla slaughter from July 2007


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These gentle creatures are among our closest relatives.