A Russian Mi-8 helicopter passes over the hill and settles into a clearing in the forest at Kibua, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Walikale region, roughly 25,000 square kilometers of dense jungle/forest inhabited mainly by remnants of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide perpetrators and witch doctor militias. The former Soviet Union’s aircraft are the primary choice of the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC), the world’s largest peacekeeping force. Shuddering as much as it did in flight, the hulking copter lands. It is at least 20 years old. Others like it have been in service for twice as long and have a gruesome record of crashes. A resupply flight to a company of Indian Army MONUC peacekeepers stationed in about as remote an area as one could ask for, this will be my 15th trip on one of these ancient beasts—I’m hoping my luck holds out.
Africa’s third-largest country in terms of area, the DRC (formerly known as Zaire) lies northeast of Angola. With 68 million people, it is the continent’s fourth most populous country, the 18th most populous in the world. The DRC is home to over 200 different African ethnic groups, the average life expectancy is 54 years, and 1.1 million Congolese have AIDS. Located in Central Africa and straddling the equator, the DRC holds the promise of enormous wealth for its people with its abundance of natural resources, including cobalt, copper, niobium, tantalum, petroleum, industrial and gem diamonds, gold, silver, zinc, manganese, tin, uranium, coal, hydropower, and timber. However, a conflict that began in August 1998 that involved seven foreign armies devastated the country and drastically reduced national output, revenue, and foreign investment, leaving the DRC with the lowest GDP in the world according to the International Monetary Fund. What has been called Africa’s World War has caused the deaths of 5.4 million people from violence, famine, and disease; sexual violence is also widely employed as a tool of war. Although a peace accord was negotiated in 2003, the violence continues in eastern DRC.
The Indian Army first provided UN peacekeepers to the DRC in 1961. Out of roughly 18,500 troops from 49 nations deployed to keep the peace, the Indian contingent is the largest and has served the DRC the longest. As the Mi-8 touches down, I’m greeted by the peacekeeping soldiers. They’re glad to see me, and happily offload the food, water, and fuel that will have to last them until the next flight comes in. I’ll be their guest for a week.
Displaced and on the Run
Surrounded by rough mountains and impenetrable forest, the village of Kibua once served as headquarters to the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR)—an exiled Hutu group whose members are accused of perpetrating the 1994 genocide of nearly one million Tutsis, as well as moderate Hutus. A thriving weekend market in the village at one time drew hordes of people from neighboring areas. In early 2009, a joint operation between Congolese national troops—Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC), the Rwandan military, and the integrated forces of former Tutsi rebel general Laurent Nkunda’s National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP)—swept through the region in an effort to rout the FDLR. As its members retreated into the forest, the Hutu combatants allegedly massacred hundreds of civilians and abducted more, forcing them to carry their goods into the jungle.
Late 2008 saw the culmination of the CNDP’s campaign in eastern Congo. Nkunda had led his force to the gates of Goma (eastern DRC’s “capital” situated on its border with Rwanda), prompting a scorched-earth retreat by the outgunned, unpaid, and undisciplined FARDC, who raped and pillaged through Goma. The uprising was finally put down when officers executed 17 men. The event sparked a massive humanitarian disaster, with population movements of hundreds of thousands fleeing the fighting, and seemed to ensure Nkunda’s victory and control of eastern DRC’s riches, with Rwanda, as Nkunda’s main backer, looking to benefit handsomely.
In late June, 2009, peacekeepers of MONUC’s India Battalion One (INDBAT One) arrived in Kibua, only to find a remaining local civilian population of approximately 2,000 civilians. “When we started foot patrols in the area, we met villagers along the road who told us they were afraid to go to Kibua’s market,” said company commander Major Dev Panwar, who described Kibua as a virtual ghost town. “They had been attacked, looted, and raped by negative armed forces while making the trip between Ishunga and Kibua”—a distance of approximately 10 miles. “That was when I had the idea to offer an escort. At first we accompanied two people to the market. The next week it was 10, then 50. At first, we had no vehicles, so we did the patrol on foot. Now we escort approximately 2,500 people each Friday, and then escort them back on Saturday.”
Trekking to Market
On Friday mornings, a MONUC peacekeeping convoy drives through the mist along the rough mountain road cut through primeval forest, to the outskirts of Ishunga, where thousand of civilians have been assembled since dawn. There’s a buzz in the crowd—everyone’s eager to start the trip to Kibua and the Saturday market. At approximately 10 am, Major Panwar coordinates with his men via radio and the 10-mile exodus begins.
The civilians are eager to get to Kibua, but stay in tight groups out of habit—they’re afraid of getting too spread out. FDLR and politically unaffiliated Mai Mai militias live and operate in the nearby bush. If the civilians get separated, they run the risk of being robbed, raped and/or killed. As midday comes, the sun is high and hard. Old women and children bend to loads larger than themselves. I’ve made part of the hike with them and already feel the beginnings of heatstroke. Generally fit for my age, I find myself winded. The older women with giant loads on their backs keep the pace up and the group assembles at a halfway water point—a small waterfall that tumbles to the roadside from high up the mountain. After 30 minutes of rest the group bunches again ready to finish the march. This time the peacekeepers need to hold the group together—they’ve passed the most dangerous stretch and everyone’s eager to get to Kibua first.
The Indian soldiers walk with the civilians, herding them along, keeping the pace steady. By late afternoon, the group reaches the outskirts of Kibua and starts to disperse and filter off into huts and small settlements for the night. Tomorrow’s market will bring them much-needed supplies and income. A monstrous downpour rolls in and small oil lamps flicker throughout the village as the equatorial night quickly falls. Peacekeepers in watchtowers on the perimeter of the MONUC camp stand vigil as DRC’s heavy tropical darkness folds around Kibua.
The Peacekeeping Life
The Indian peacekeepers are as cut off from the world as the civilians they’re mandated to protect. The terrain makes communications impossible. The company commander makes daily reports to Goma via satellite phone from a tight spot within the camp. They survive on a weekly helicopter delivery of necessities from the city; by the end of the week, food supplies are low and morale wanes. Nonetheless, I’m treated to real Indian hospitality, and in the first days of this trip enjoy meals equal to any offered in Delhi’s finer restaurants. The young peacekeepers are excited to have company. Many of them are on their first and only deployment (India has a standing army of over three million), and for these men this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel and receive extra pay—twice what they make at home.
The officers entertain me in the evenings and a few of the younger enlisted men are allowed to join in—one plays guitar and sings songs from home. During a walk through the heavy rain to my quarters—a “room” in the nearby Red Cross field hospital—I slip in the mud and split my shin open to the bone. I limp back to the camp, where the medic happily puts a couple of rough stitches in—without the aid of anesthetic.
The men of INDBATT One, North Kivu Brigade, are disciplined. In addition to their weekly market escort, days are spent exercising, drilling, and cleaning their weapons. Part of their daily calisthenics routine entails a yoga technique in which the entire company releases an uproarious belly laugh intended to relieve stress. Younger enlisted men in white shorts stand at attention, bearing stainless steel trays with drinking water or coffee. Each officer has a “buddy”—something like a squire or personal assistant. The contrast between this Somerset Maugham-esque setting in their camp and the oil lamp-lit Congo just outside is as incongruous as it is surreal.
The PlayStation War
The morning brings sun and market day in Kibua. The village center fills with people and the sounds of commerce. Women meet and gossip; Congolese national army soldiers mingle through the crowd and flirt with the girls. MONUC peacekeepers watch over the bustle and Major Panwar tells me, “Since we’ve been here, over the last six months or so, the local population has increased to approximately 6,000 on the weekends and the local economy has quadrupled. During our first foot patrols, we met a few FDLR patrols. They told us that this was their area, and we responded that this was now our area. We told them that our mission was to protect civilians, and that they didn’t want a problem with us. We haven’t seen them since.”
I watch the crowd haggle and deal, gossip, and catch up on social activity. What appears as a fairly functional African village was not long ago an area wracked with death and destruction in a continuation of DRC’s tradition of horror. More than 100 years ago, Belgian colonialists, under the order of King Leopold, who had set up “Congo Free State”—a personal fiefdom he privately controlled through a dummy nongovernment organization—began cutting the hands off of local workers who didn’t meet rubber collection quotas.
Years later, after the fall of the infamous US-backed dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in May 1997, eastern Congo devolved into a seemingly endless cycle of conflict, most of it over its rich natural resources. Numerous militias have rampaged through the east (and still do), funded by businessmen who reap enormous profits in the uncontrolled trade of minerals including cobalt, copper, tin, gold, diamonds, and coltan. Coltan is a key mineral that, once refined, becomes tantalum—a significant ingredient of capacitors, which are used in an expansive array of small electronic devices such as cell phones, laptops, pagers, and other electronic devices.
Eighty percent of the world’s supply of coltan lies in DRC. The recent conflict there has been referred to as “The PlayStation War,” with the activist website “Towards Freedom” claiming “millions of dollars worth of coltan was stolen from the DRC to satisfy the West’s insatiable appetite for personal technology,” with Rwandan troops and rebels using prisoners of war and children to mine for the “black gold.”
In addition, there have been incursions into eastern Congo by its neighbors—Angola, Uganda, and Rwanda—and the dense forests provide shelter for numerous and notorious psychopaths, including Uganda’s Joseph Koney (Lord’s Resistance Army). In roughly a decade, Congo’s conflicts have killed an estimated four million—more than any other since World War Two—displaced millions more, and given rise to commonplace massacres, forced abductions, child soldiers, and rape as a weapon of war. On the fringe, the Mai Mai—a witch doctor militia that is a hybrid mafia local constabulary—perpetrate routine slaughter, rape, and abductions.
Eastern Congo’s perpetual burden—proxy wars fought over the region’s rich natural resources—lurks in the forest nearby. I’ve covered this region for the past few years and am reminded of the fragility of this “civilization.” In late 2008 and early 2009, I watched as war raged through the region, displacing hundreds of thousands, and killing and traumatizing thousands more. Just months ago, armed militias massacred civilians here. In the last FDLR massacre, a pregnant woman was butchered—her belly sliced open.
A Promising Future?
Today, things look somewhat promising in Kibua. This is Congo heading into a brighter future, after decades of brutality—one the Congolese would like to believe in. As the community has grown again, the peacekeepers have become a sort of local informal government arbiter. Local chiefs bring grievances and work, supported by the UN, has begun on a new school. Major Panwar and his officers slowly build relations with local Congolese government troops, softly encouraging them to respect human rights, and rule of law.
By early afternoon, the market in Kibua starts to close, and the thousands who’ve come from the West begin to assemble for the march home. Wanting to make it back by dark they hurry along, trying to keep pace with the MONUC escort. As the group reaches Ishunga, a collective sense of relief settles in. They’ve made it once more. As I make my way to Kibua with the peacekeepers, the resupply flight arrives with word from home and another week’s worth of rations. The peacekeepers bid me farewell and go back to their routine. I make my 16th trip on the MI8, shin stitches in place. The war, waiting in the bush, has spared Kibua for another week.
Tim Freccia is a journalist based in Nairobi.
This article appears in May 2010.
