Dec

Sun 22nd

!"#$%%& () *"$"+%&, -.%
%/-*0-$%1 by civilian
helicopters lrom a N
compound in Bor, South
Sudan, leaving an estimated
3,000 loreigners still trapped
in the town by hghting. An
earlier S mission to rescue its
citizens lrom Bor was
abandoned alter its helicopters
were hred upon. Fri 27th
Mon 23rd

Denis MacShane, the lormer
Labour MP and Europe
minister, is ,%&$%&*%1 $2 ,"3
42&$5, "& 6.",2& lor making
lalse expense claims
amounting to almost 913,000.
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three months ahead ol
schedule. Nadezhda
Tolokonnikova and Maria
Alyokhina claim the amnesty is
a PP stunt by the Kremlin
ahead ol the Winter Olympics
in Sochi and announce plans
to set up a human rights
organisation.
Tue 24th

A Pussian research ship gets
$.-66%1 "& 5%-/= "*% "&
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4%49%., 2& 92-.1A The
Akademik Shokalskiy is stuck
about 1,500 nautical miles
south ol Hobart, Tasmania.
Wed 25th

Pussia 1.26, ->> *5-.;%,
-;-"&,$ $5% ?.*$"* BC, the
28 Greenpeace activists and
two journalists who were
arrested in September when
Pussian authorities boarded
their ship, the Arctic Sunrise.
The group had protested
against a Gazprom oil rig.
A child born today
will grow up with
no conception of
privacy at all
S whistleblower D18-.1
)&281%& 8-.&, -;-"&,$
;2/%.&4%&$ ,6="&; in
Channel 4's annual
Christmas message.
Postscript
to a genocide
On 28th December,
the UNs Force Intervention
Brigade in the Democratic Republic
of the Congo called on the FDLR militia
whose members perpetrated the
Rwandan Genocide in 1994 to put down
their weapons and hand themselves in.
Susan Schulman, who has been
tracking this violent, ruthless group
for the last ve years, tells the story
of their devastating impact on
the local population and of
the armed children who nally
stood up to them
Photography: Susan Schulman
Sat 28th
October 2013
He has gone as far as he can by
road. After six bone-shaking hours
on the heavily potholed dirt track
the motorbike rider deposits him at
the intersection and drives of. He is
alone. He looks at the footpath ahead
of him. He has longed for this moment
since violence engulfed his family
and forced him to ee his birthplace
in the heartland of eastern Congo.
His village, Langira, where I first
met him in 2009, is still a three day
walk away over mountainous terrain.
But for the rst time in almost ve
years, 60-year-old Azayi Kabunga is
going home.
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February 2009
The helicopter circles over the densely
forested terrain below, its Ukrainian
pilots peering intently out of the
window, searching for the smoke
signal that will guide us to the landing
pad. The mountains spread out in
all directions as far as the eye can
see. This is eastern Congo. There are
no roads here, no phone reception.
It is accessible only by foot. It is some
of the most deadly terrain on earth.
Conict and insecurity have raged
here for nearly 20 years, as myriad
armed militias and home-grown Mai
Mai (self defence groups) have preyed
on the population, competing for the
regions abundant resources. Five
million lives have been lost in these
forests in two decades, and a million
people displaced. In 1999, the UN
established a peacekeeping mission,
Monusco, here. At 22,000 troops it is
now the worlds largest and longest-
serving UN force.
The area borders Rwanda, and
after the genocide of the Tutsis in
Rwanda in 1994 some of the perpe-
trators, members of the notorious
Hutu Interhamwe, fled into these
dense forests. They never went home.
Instead, they regrouped into a military
and christened themselves the Forces
Dmocratiques de Libration du
Rwanda the FDLR. Heavily armed,
and estimated to number around
4,000, they are the most organised
and deadly of the many armed groups
who live in these forests. Since arriving
in the area, they have used horric
violence murder, torture and rape
against the local population. Not one
family has been left untouched.
But now, at last, hope for peace is in
the air. A groundbreaking agreement
between Congo and Rwanda has just
been concluded, which prioritises
ridding eastern Congo of the FDLR.
Joint military operations against the
FDLR have been launched and we
are en route to the front line of this
efort, the forward operating base of
the Rwandan Defence Force (RDF).
The thin plume of smoke is
spotted. As we begin our descent, a
rough 50 metre-wide circle hacked
out of the dense bush becomes visible.
A gaggle of local Congolese dressed in
rags stand at the edge of the landing
pad as heavy bags are unloaded from
the helicopter. Marked Lady Shoes,
they contain the green wellington
boots favoured by the RDF. The RDF
ofcers are enlisting the assembled
Congolese to help carry the sacks to
their troops deeper in the bush. Its
a rare opportunity for the locals to
earn money, and theres no shortage
of volunteers.
Operations will be conducted on
foot. The soldiers, accompanied by
their chosen porters carrying sacks of
Lady Shoes, le silently into the bush.
The path descends steeply, criss-
crossed by roots, and the thick jungle
enclosing us creates an eerie twilight.
The soldiers move swiftly and it is
hard to stay upright. We cross a small
river, and an ascent brings us out of
the bush and onto a high crest where
we catch our breath.
The path disappears. Feet slip
on the steep hillside. An old porter,
exhausted, barefoot and thin as a rail,
drops his sack and struggles to hoist
its 50 kilo load onto his back. His feet
sink deep into the mud as the younger
porters mock him and the soldiers
shout at him to hurry.
Dusk has fallen by the time we
reach Langira. It is a typical village in
the rural, resource-rich area of North
Kivu where, in the absence of roads,
communications and state presence,
impunity rules. This is where the
thousands who ood the camps for
the displaced many miles away come
from; this is where the GBV (Gender
Based Violence) victims who crowd
the far-away hospitals have been
grievously wounded. This is where
people have struggled to survive since
the FDLR arrived 15 years earlier,
fresh from their butchery in Rwanda.
Dawn has barely broken the next
day when a group of villagers emerges
through the morning fog. They have
been sleeping in the bush in fear
for their lives. One of them, Azayi
Kabunga, 56, shows me around the
village. He is an important man in the
area: a teacher, plantation owner and
leader. His house has a corrugated iron
roof, a sign of uncommon prosperity.
The FDLR have killed a lot of
people, he says, gesturing at the
verdant surroundings. There are
a lot of tombs around here. The
group has murdered eight of Azayis
family members, including his father
and sister.
We pass small houses with peaked
thatch roofs. All are deserted and
empty. Small tufts of green poke
through the mud walls.
The years of relentless violence
have had a catastrophic impact.
Education, healthcare, agriculture,
commerce: all have been decimated,
impoverishing people who had always
lived comfortably and easily from
the produce of their fertile region,
and sending many others to the grim
refuge of distant camps. The ongoing
operations are intended to end the
horror and at long last bring peace.
Hopes are high.
Mortars echo in the hills around
us. The RDF radios crackle. The
commander issues quick-re orders
to his troops. The military operation is
planned to last for a month. It is now
entering its third week.
A few hours later a woman
emerges from the bush, struggling
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October 2009
I have come to Goma, the main town
in North Kivu. In 1994, thousands of
Rwandan refugees poured over the
border here to escape the genocide
in their country as it unfolded over
a period of 100 days in April. By the
time it ended, 800,000 Rwandans
had been killed and 850,000
Rwandan refugees occupied ve huge
camps set up for them in DRC just
north of Goma. When the refugees
started to return home the camps did
not close. They soon lled again, but
this time with Congolese displaced by
the FDLR.
I am in Mungunga camp, a vast,
hellish terrain of plastic sheeting
shelters set on a bed of sharp lava
rocks. It is a harsh environment.
It begins to rain, and I step into
a shelter. A woman of about 30 sits
inside. A baby clings to her, screaming
inconsolably, and a dazed toddler is
pressed up against her side. Sat on
the bare lava rock oor are two young
boys, both terrifyingly skinny and
utterly devoid of energy. Their knee
joints bulge obscenely, their eyes are
sunk deep in their sockets.
The woman looks at me. I know
you, she says, incredulously. You
were with the Rwandan soldiers in
Langira, lming us just when we had
started to ee.
It is difficult to reconcile this
Eleema with the woman I met nine
months earlier. It is even more difcult
to reconcile her boys, whose vibrant
energy and high spirits had so struck
me then, with the two boys now sat in
front of me, listless and barely able to
keep their eyes open. They had never
intended to come this far.
The FDLR was burning whole
villages, Eleema tells me. After the
RDF left, they started hunting people.
If they found you they would cut your
arms, your legs or pierce your eyes
and leave you blind. They were raping
women they raped you and tied you
to a tree and just left you there. Some
people died because there was no way
we could care for their injuries. We
just had to leave them there and they
bled to death.
Travelling on foot, it took them
three months to make the 100 mile
journey here.
See how the children look. Thats
because theyve been ill for a long
time, without food or medicines.
Looted of their belongings early on,
Eleema and her children never spent
more than two days in one place and
didnt dare eat a cooked meal for fear
the smoke would give them away. You
just had to pull your children by the
arm to keep them going that was the
only way to survive. Many didnt make
it. Eleemas in-laws, grandparents
and brother-in-law were amongst
those killed.
The population of Langira has
also been forced to ee. Azayi and
his family are in Goma too, sharing
a dirt oor with two other displaced
families. Left with nothing to do and
no way to make a living, Azayi has the
air of a defeated man. The operations
launched in February were meant to
bring peace. Not this.
Meanwhile, in Kimua, in Azayi and
Eleemas home area of Walowa-Yunga,
the UN has established a small base
of 30 Uruguayan soldiers. The area is
thick with FDLR, hidden in the dense
forests where they have lived rough for
15 years, The purpose of the base is to
persuade FDLR combatants to leave
the bush and repatriate to Rwanda,
and to protect the civilian population.
Occasional FDLR combatants,
AK-47s slung over their shoulders,
grenades attached to their belts,
pass through on the path which runs
between the hilltop village and the UN
base set in the muddy eld below. They
pause to chat amongst themselves
and, at one point, try unsuccessfully
to persuade the UN soldiers to loan
them their satellite phone. Very
occasionally, a combatant wanting to
be repatriated to Rwanda will arrive in
the dead of night at the base.
Despite his muddy bush home,
FDLR Major Nassor, 40, is wearing
i mpeccabl y pressed fati gues
and gleaming wellington boots when
I meet him at the derelict ruins of a
school, accompanied by a teenage
soldier whose AK-47 hangs over
a green shirt with a gorilla emblem
on it. The teenager is as inarticulate
and unhappy as Major Nassor
is garrulous.
Handsome, cocky and vain, Major
Nassor scofs at the idea that RDF and
UN operations are having any impact
on the FDLR. He not only denies any
abuses against the locals, but also
declares they are all friends. The
Congolese population testies to our
friendship! he exclaims.
I have yet to meet a Congolese
who will testify to anything of the sort.
Certainly not the man who arrived at
the UN base with his head split and
bleeding from an FDLR attack that
had happened just 500 metres from
where we were sitting, nor the woman
with the terrified baby screaming
on her shoulders who also arrived at
the base after being attacked nearby.
Nor the many hiding in terror in the
bush from the FDLR, like Kabeti
Boulenbe Mputo and his family, for
whom the arrival of the UN brings
hope from the relentless violence of
their friends.
Kabeti is a local chief and school
teacher in the nearby village of
Mukoberwa. He has come from
his bush refuge to the main path to
meet the UN patrol. At last the UN
has come. Now we can be saved,
he declares.
Azayi greets her. Her name is Eleema
Nbandu.
The refugees soon move on,
disappearing back into the bush. A
small girl, ve or six years old, wearing
a ragged dress and with a small fabric
sack hanging from her forehead
pauses on the edge of the clearing,
staring at me. She has never seen
anyone like me before. The last white
person to have come here was decades
earlier, a missionary in the 1960s.
I ask her if she thinks I am the
only white person in the world or if
she thinks there are others. Ha! I
know there are others, she exclaims
triumphantly. They live in the
helicopters and airplanes. And
with that, she runs of to catch up
with the others.
against the weight of the sack hung
from her forehead. Close behind
comes a steady stream of people
carrying all manner of belongings
mattresses, sewing machines, pots and
pans, goats, chickens. One small child
cradles a white guinea pig; the woman
behind her balances a teetering stack
of schoolbooks on her head. These
are refugees from the neighbouring
community of Brazza. They are eeing
the horror of the FDLR.
The convoy pauses for a while: a
guitar is strummed, children cavort
and, in this brief moment of respite,
an almost carnivalesque spirit sets
in. A woman passes the infant on her
shoulders to her older daughter, and
puts her sack onto the ground, as
her small sons run off to play.
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November 2010
It is almost two years since the launch
of operations to defeat the FDLR. The
little UN base at Kimua has doubled
in size to 60 troops. Azayi and Eleema
are still in Goma. Their circumstances
have gone from bad to worse. But
the FDLR has gone from strength
to strength. They have become the
undisputed rulers of the area, a fact
acknowledged by the UN.
Captain Pasayero is in charge of
the Uruguayan Monusco troops. We
are on the hill overlooking the eld
and the UN base. Some two dozen
heavily armed men are below. They
sway about, crack jokes and play with
their weapons. They look drunk.
The local law and the power in
this area is in the hands of the FDLR,
Captain Pasayero remarks, surveying
the scene below. More armed men
are approaching, crossing the field
directly in front of the UN base. All
those men are FDLR. All of them.
They control who goes where. They
control everything.
The FDLR are no longer living
in the bush. They have appropriated
all the locals houses over the 20
kilometre stretch regularly patrolled
by the UN. Their heavily armed
presence is ubiquitous, inescapable
and shocking. Villages and paths are
overowing with armed, intimidating
and often drunk combatants. The
army operations and the UN were
meant to eliminate the FDLR. Instead,
the UN has presided over a stunning
expansion of FDLR power.
Their brutal regime has made
prisoners of the locals on their own
land. The FDLR are charging road
tax, controlling the markets, and
cultivating the appropriated elds of
the population, starving the locals.
They have revived the health clinic,
press-ganged the local doctor to treat
them and have even installed their
own tailor. They rape, loot, kill and
terrorise at will, uninhibited by the
UN presence.
But something new is happening.
For the rst time since I have been
coming here, a mood of resistance
is sweeping the area. The story of a
young man who had responded to
FDLR violence at the market by taking
an axe to a militia mans head echoes
in proud hushed tones through every
village; the stuf of legend, inspiration
and hope.
Locals have well and truly had
enough. If we leave it to the UN, 15-
year-old schoolboy Amani explains,
we risk being exterminated. Amani
and his friend Vianey have come to
talk to me in the privacy of the UN
base to explain why they are forming
their own Mai Mai group.
There are too many atrocities.
There was a woman that they raped,
and after raping her they destroyed
her eyes. My own mother was raped.
We cant just stand there with folded
arms any more, Vianey declares.
We have to protect our population.
Amani, who wears a small oval amulet
containing a picture of Obama, nods
his assent. We are many now, and not
only schoolboys, Vianey asserts.
However many they might be,
they have no weapons. Instead,
they rely on finding or scrounging
cartridges which they throw onto the
re to trick the FDLR into believing
they are armed.
A hundred miles away I find
Eleema in a shack in the corner of
an overgrown, deserted lot in Goma.
Her previous shelter washed away
in the rain. A man took pity on her,
homeless with five small children,
and has allowed her to stay in the
shack, which was never meant for
habitation. Eleema has just delivered
a baby, Esther. It was the middle of
the night and rain was pouring in
through the roof, as usual, forming a
pool in the middle of the dirt oor. The
older children were stood shivering,
pressed up against the walls, as
Eleema laboured before she tells me
with shame delivering her baby in
the puddle.
Azayi, too, is despondent. Unable
to find any work, he is relying on
what his wife is able to earn carrying
heavy loads which, at 55 years old,
she is barely able to manage. His son
Daniel, 12, is being thrown out of
school almost every day for not having
paid the fees and is nding it hard
to cope.
There are two main feelings I
have, Azayi condes. First is shame.
Second is anger. I am ashamed to see
my son kicked out of school because I
am unable to full my duty of paying
the fees Now I have to be here like
a beggar, waiting for my wife to come
back so that I can be fed. Waiting for
the children to be chased, not having
any solution to provide, to save them
from being expelled.
If I heard the FDLR were no
longer in Langira, I wouldnt even
take the time to pack, I would just
rush back, Azayi says. But, for now, it
is impossible.
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July 2012
Kimua is almost unrecognisable. The
UN base has relocated to the peak of
a hill and it is now surrounded by the
plastic sheeting of countless close-
ly-packed shelters which descend all
the way down the slope.
When I was last here in November
2010, heavily armed FDLR militia
were everywhere. Armed males still
abound. But they are not FDLR. They
are all locals.
A year and a half earlier, schoolboys
Vianey and Amani began their defence
of the community by trying to trick the
FDLR into believing they were armed.
Now there is no shortage of weapons.
They call themselves the Force for the
Defense of Congo (FDC) one of the
DRCs newest Mai Mai groups and
claim to number 500. They have been
organised under the command of a
former ofcer of the Congolese armed
forces, and longtime Mai Mai veteran,
General Ambroise Bwira, who hails
from the nearby village of Buhimba.
There was a failure, General
Bwira tells me, his white tracksuit
gleaming in the sun. The UN mission
didnt succeed. So it was necessary for
the civilian population to take charge.
Some of his warriors are wearing
rafa skirts and bizarre headdresses,
some look no more than 13 years
old. All believe in the invincible
power conferred upon them by their
ancestors. You cant touch it nor
can you see it, Bwira explains. It is
a super metaphysical power. Through
this power, nothing can resist us.
Regardless of the arms of the FDLR,
and even their bombs, they cannot
resist us.
Two young boys, both heavily
armed, one wearing a closely trimmed
mohawk hair style, hurry past me.
Nearby, a teenager is loading pellets
into an empty gun cartridge. Although
the FDC is strongly backed by the
community, little children ee when
they see their armed elders approach,
disappearing so they are not forced to
carry water for them.
For the rst time in years, there
are no FDLR to be seen anywhere.
Major Nassor has been killed.
But the success has come at a cost.
Many young soldiers from this small
community have already been killed
in the ghting. All the homes for 20
kilometres around have been burned
or abandoned. Whole communities
have simply ceased to exist. More
than a thousand people have
been forced to seek refuge in the
makeshift shelters under the local UN
base. The atmosphere has been
transformed from village to military
camp. And the armed boys have
changed. Parents are worried.
People look over their shoulders
before talking. Schoolteacher Baeni
Rumbo will only speak in the privacy
of the UN base. He shakes his head
sadly: When a boy carries a gun, he
is no longer the same person. He is
someone else. The soldier who has a
gun is not a friend of the population.
Hes 50 percent for the population
and 50 percent military. Even if its
my own child.
While you might not be able
to see the FDLR now, they are still
there. They have only retreated to
the surrounding bush. As military
operations continue, everyone in
the community is painfully aware
of the risk to their youth. But they
need to believe the FDC will succeed.
They see their children with guns as
their saviours.
The failure of the government
and United Nations to vanquish
the FDLR has led to the arming of
schoolboys. Eight months later, in
March 2013, the UN closes its base
in Kimua and withdraws, leaving
the children of the FDC to deal with
the FDLR alone.
October 2013
Azayis long-awaited return home
left him dismayed. Emerging into
Langira he found a profoundly altered
atmosphere. My generation is no
longer there, he explains. The young
FDC combatants, the same local boys
who saved the area from the FDLR,
now dominate the villages. They
have diferent priorities. They only
want to live luxurious lives. They sit
around drinking alcohol. When you
suggest they go to work, they think it
is old-fashioned.
They are armed, bored and
spoiling for a ght. It was tense, says
Azayi. People fear someone with a
gun. He feels he has power over you.
Even if that person is your son, your
neighbour, your saviour.
Azayi could only stay a week before
the poisonous atmosphere forced him
back to his half-life in Goma. It wasnt
what he had planned. As long as they
keep their guns, it will be a problem.
I will not go back if they keep their
guns, he adds sadly.
In May 2013, General Carlos
Alberto dos Santos Cruz assumed the
position of Monusco force commander,
along with a new, more muscular
mandate. In November he helped
in the defeat of the rebellion known
as M23 (Mouvement du 23 Mars),
and is now focusing on defeating the
FDLR and the Ugandan Islamist ADF
in the north, the priorities laid out
by the UN security council. But his
newly strengthened remit extends to
all errant militias, including the FDC.
They all need to surrender and return
to normal life, he tells me. But if they
dont agree, we will use all our armed
forces against all armed groups.
The government has issued a call
to the myriad groups of armed Mai Mai
combatants in the area to lay down
their arms and be integrated into the
Congolese military. Eight thousand
combatants have flocked to the
reintegration camps. General Bwira,
accompanied only by his escorts and
leaving his FDC combatants behind, is
amongst them.
But the ofer of integration is swiftly
turning sour. With no negotiations or
communication with the government,
impatience amongst the combatants
is mounting. General Bwira is furious.
We came because we wanted peace,
he tells me. We thought it was a good
deal. His eyes glint ominously. I cant
predict what might happen but just
imagine. I was a big chief controlling
my people and now in the camp they
treat me like a dog? Like a mosquito?
We are very angry.
If the integration fails, General
Bwira will pick up his weapon and
return to his young FDC combatants
in Langira and the other villages of the
area. They will cease to be defenders
and instead will become violent
predators, as can be expected of the
other 8,000 combatants.
Some ghters have already lost
patience and returned to the bush.
Reports of insecurity are on the rise.
Another cycle of displaced people is
beginning to arrive at the camps.
There is a very real risk that
Azayi, Eleema and others from their
area may simply have swapped one
menace, the FDLR, for a new,
homegrown one. They stand on the
brink of a new struggle, this time with
the enemy within.
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