Congo’s power-sharing pact only a start
Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo -- When a band of unidentified militiamen raided Bahalana Deogratias' village, they broke into homes, beat residents and raped and kidnapped two girls.
After the attack, the men of Kindjuba village, in South Kivu province, sent their families out into the bush and waited for the militiamen to come back, hoping to exact revenge. But when the attackers returned five days later, it wasn't much of a fight. Deogratias, a 45-year-old father of seven, was taken hostage with six others as the rebels looted and burned houses.
Left with nothing but the tattered clothes on his back, Deogratias fled 10 miles on foot to Bukavu when he was finally released.
"This war has destroyed so many people, so many lives," said Bruno Bahati, president of the South Kivu Youth Committee in Bukavu. "The people are just tired. They just want it to end."
A power-sharing agreement signed Tuesday between the government, the main rebel groups and opposition parties is offering Congolese hope that their country's chaotic four-year war, which became known as "Africa's First World War," may finally be drawing to a close.
The accord, mediated by the United Nations and South Africa, calls for President Joseph Kabila to head a transitional government until elections can be held in about two years. Rebel groups backed by Rwanda and Uganda -- the Congolese Rally for Democracy and the Movement for the Liberation of Congo -- and opposition parties will join the government.
But many hurdles remain before Congo, which has a long history of dictatorship and conflict, can become a democratic, unified nation -- or a peaceful one.
Bitter enemies that tore the country in two must now peacefully sit side by side as ministers. Rebel troops controlling almost half the country must be integrated into the national army and the police. A new constitution has to be drafted.
One of the biggest challenges -- one not addressed by Tuesday's agreement -- will be sorting out how the contentious groups will share Congo's extensive mineral resources, which are now controlled by criminal networks backed by many African nations, according to a U.N. report released in October.
"Hopefully, if they show good will and work toward this, they'll find a way out of the conflict," said Michael Despines, who spent the past six years as country director of the International Rescue Committee in eastern Congo.
But, he warned, "It's just too soon to tell. . . . These things have been signed before, and it doesn't make a difference on the ground."
One international observer in Bukavu, the main city in war-ravaged South Kivu, said, "We certainly haven't seen any rejoicing in the streets."
At least six foreign armies and many Congolese militias battled in eastern Congo starting in 1998, when neighboring Rwanda and Uganda sent in thousands of troops to quash threats of cross-border attacks by militias based in Congo. Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola entered the fray on the side of Congo's government.
An accord in July led to the withdrawal in October of tens of thousands of foreign troops who had divided up the country into occupation zones.
"The external withdrawal has made this latest agreement more possible," said William Zartman, director of the African studies program at Johns Hopkins University's School for Advanced International Studies.
But attempts to reunify the continent's third-largest nation have been complicated by rebel groups and militias that rushed into the security vacuum created by the foreign armies' withdrawal.
Last week, the United Nations tacitly acknowledged the fragility of the earlier pact when it approved an increase in the U.N. observer mission in Congo from 5,540 troops, including 500 observers, to 8,700.
Key rebel groups, including the Congolese Rally for Democracy-Goma (RCD- Goma) and the Ugandan-backed Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), are still battling for control of eastern Congo, whose vast mineral wealth includes diamonds, timber, gold and coltan, the mineral used in mobile phones.
The situation is especially tense along Congo's eastern border, where two key militias, RCD-Goma and the Mai-Mai, received "substantial arms shipments and other supplies in recent weeks," said a senior U.N. official who asked not to be identified.
The peace agreement "still leaves the enormous scene of conflict within (the strategic North and South Kivu regions) unsettled," Zartman said.
The RCD-Goma had maintained a tight grip on both North and South Kivu with the help of neighboring Rwanda, but since that country pulled out almost 21, 000 troops in October, it has lost ground to the rival Mai-Mai.
The Mai-Mai, traditional warriors who believe that water gives them magical powers and protection, oppose any foreign presence in Congo and have seized control of most of South Kivu.
Chief spokesman Jean-Pierre Lola Kisanga said the RCD-Goma will honor the peace agreement by halting fighting with the Mai-Mai. But he warned that his group will not stop its battles with other militias, such as former Rwandan troops and the notorious Interhamwe -- Hutu warriors now based in Congo who are blamed for carrying out some of the worst atrocities during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It was the Interhamwe, Deogratias believes, who looted his village and raped women there.
"If they continue to abuse the civilian population, we will take it upon ourselves, before the transitional government is in place, to stop them," Kisanga said.
The prospects for peace are complicated by civil unrest. RCD-Goma, which is despised in South Kivu as a proxy militia of Rwanda, almost touched off a rebellion recently with its decision to raise taxes and force car owners to pay up to $120 for new license plates, which are recognized only in the areas it controls and in Rwanda. In Bukavu, schoolchildren tore the plates off cars last week and clashed with the rebel troops.
Long-standing ethnic clashes in Congo's northeast could create further instability. Battles between ethnic Hemas and Lendus in the volatile Ituri area bordering Uganda have killed hundreds and displaced 500,000 people in the past few months.
Until the transitional government is set up, RCD-Goma also is maintaining its controversial policy of blocking aid groups from leaving its air space to regions out of its control, Kisanga said. Along with a surge in fighting, the restrictions, in place since September, have cut off desperately needed aid for civilians.
One program feeding 150 malnourished children in Shabunda has run out of supplies, said Alan Lindquist, senior humanitarian affairs officer with the Congo U.N. observer mission. He added that restrictions placed on aid flights "could well mean that those children will die."
The humanitarian crisis in Congo is considered one of the worst in the world today. The International Rescue Committee, a U.S. aid organization, estimated that 2.5 million people died in the first three years of the war, mostly from malnutrition and disease. As many as 2.1 million people in the east have been displaced by the war, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported last month, and the United Nations says aid organizations still cannot reach about 900,000 people.
Still, some analysts remain tentatively hopeful, saying the new peace pact is a step in the right direction.
"I think we should not expect that all the fighting among the principals is definitively over, or that there won't be some violence, or that this is a watertight agreement," Zartman said. "It's not everything, it's not foolproof, but it's an important step."
Government, rebels, opposition parties sign Congo's unity agreement
The government and key rebel groups signed a power-sharing pact Tuesday in an attempt to unite the war-torn nation. Here are some of the key groups signing the accord:
-- Congolese government. Dictatorship led by President Joseph Kabila, who took over after his father's assassination in 2001.
-- Congolese Rally for Democracy-Goma (RCD-Goma). Anti-government militia backed by Rwanda. It controls much of the east, particularly the strategic Kivu region, and some central regions.
-- RCD-N (National). A small Uganda-backed faction based in the east.
-- RCD-LM (Liberation Movement). Backed by Uganda, but sometimes allied with the Congolese government, it controls portions of the northeast.
-- Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC). Powerful anti-government militia backed by Uganda and located in the north.
-- Mai-Mai. Tribal Congolese warriors who believe water gives them magical powers. They have a large presence in the Kivu region near the eastern border. They fiercely oppose the RCD-Goma and Rwandan control of eastern Congo.
-- Opposition parties. Many parties, including Union for Democracy and Social Progress, led by Etienne Tshisekedi; Popular Revolution Movement, founded by the dictator Mobuto Sese Seko, now deceased; and MNC-Lumumba and PALU, which are loyal to the aims of slain independence leader Patrice Lumumba.