Again, I tend not to view the contents of what the official line of the Americans on such matters as important as how (which we can almost never say with certainty) or when (which this article seems to indicate) it is developed, and where that blows the wind. When North America even sneezes in the direction of Africa, the entire continent can be made ill. Right now, I am wondering why the press is so concerned about the dead in the "civil war". It has passed without a mention (much like the 10 000 dead in Angola, during the four months leading up to the bombing of the human rights violators in the FR Yugoslavia) of such heart-tugging concern, and barely a headline or subsection mention. - Macdonald ------ Congo's War Turns a Land Spat Into a Blood Bath By IAN FISHER UNIA, Congo, Jan. 24 - The head was hacked off a young man who was quite small, witnesses said. It was then skewered on the tip of a spear and paraded on the back of a white pickup truck, only five days before, around the streets of this city in northeastern Congo. Soldiers on the truck sang a soccer anthem. "You doubted we could win," they sang. "But now you see." This went on for several hours, as 250 or more people were hacked or shot to death in a resurgence of ethnic violence between the Hema and the Lendu, the two main groups here. Finally, a Congolese commander told the soldier with the spear it was time to bury the head. "In any family - say of 10 children - one or two will be a little odd," said the commander, Sion Malekera, fumbling to account for his soldier's behavior. "I was horrified. I have never seen anything like that." What is happening here, awful enough on its own, does not bode well for the rest of Congo. What began as a local dispute over land has now become entangled in Congo's larger two-and-half-year civil war - and thus, experts say, has been raised a frightening notch. Politicians and businessmen apparently see something to gain in taking sides. There is now no government in this region - and so no local authority to prevent everyday tensions in a very poor place from exploding. And the de facto rule by outsiders, in this case Uganda - one of five outside nations with troops regularly in Congo - seems to only fan the flames. These conditions exist, in varying degrees, all around Congo. The fear - heightened by uncertainty around the assassination this month of President Laurent Kabila - is that other parts of Congo where order has already been breaking down will also erupt into violence, as Bunia has sporadically done since June 1999. "We are reaching a situation where the soil is so thin that it may crumble beneath them, and we will see a crumbling of Congo," said Suliman Baldo, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch who recently visited Bunia and wrote a report on the situation here. "I fear for the worst." It is hard to imagine much worse here, only a higher body count. "Cover me," a 9-year-old boy, Ngudjolo Bulo, asked his mother in a small, stone-walled room at a hospital with 20 beds, each filled with someone shot or hacked on Jan. 19. The boy's left hand was chopped off completely, along with most of the right, apparently as he tried to shield himself from his attackers' blows with machetes. Bandages cover deep machete gashes on his face. He is the second born of five children, and the only one who survived. He happens to be Hema, but even more Lendu died during the fighting. "These patients can recover but they will be scarred forever," said the doctor, Jean-Norbert Ngadjole. "This is a political problem. They are exploiting the tribal side of things so they do not expose the other side. "Before, all the tribes - Hema, Lendu, Ngiti - lived together," he added. "But since the war began, it has gone to the other extreme." No one knows how many people have died since the conflict between the Hema and Lendu, who have feuded for decades over land and other resources, erupted into violence two years ago. But most here agree that the number of dead is several thousand. There is also general agreement that it began in 1999 as a local dispute over a farm in Djugu, north of Bunia. The allegations are that the farm's owners, who are of the Hema, seen as richer than the Lendu, sought to expand their reach into land owned by Lendu. The disputes broadened, and for several months in late 1999 and early last year they battled viciously, killing hundreds of people in single attacks. >From the start, two aspects of the larger war in Congo have been at play. The first is the weakening of local government as a mediator of such disputes as the Ugandan military effectively took control of northeastern Congo in August 1998. Then, Uganda and Rwanda began backing rebels to overthrow Mr. Kabila. The second is the role of Ugandan soldiers themselves: human rights groups and aid officials allege that rich Hema have hired rogue Ugandan soldiers to drive Lendu from their land, in some cases killing them. Uganda has essentially conceded that point by replacing commanders and removing soldiers accused in the disputes. And their move, along with other political changes, eased tensions considerably after the first wave of killings. But in the last several months the conflict has become embedded in the larger war, people here say, inflaming passions and raising the stakes of even the smallest dispute between individuals from each group. "It's different from the first fighting, which was more about land," said Alidor Mwanza, the editor of a local newspaper, who wandered around Bunia on Friday photographing dozens of bodies. "Now it seems to be more political." What has happened is that the Hema and Lendu have found themselves on opposing sides in an internal power struggle within the rebels here, who are controlled by Uganda. The Hema have sided with two mutinous rebel officials, among them a leading Hema businessman, John Mbogemu Thibasima. And the Lendu have sided with the rebel group's longtime leader, Ernest Wamba dia Wamba. Each side accuses the other's leaders of manipulating ethnic hatred for personal power or financial gain, though it is unclear to what extent that is true. In any case, the situation was not helped when Uganda called the feuding leaders to its capital, Kampala, after a coup attempt against Mr. Wamba dia Wamba in November - leaving no local government at all. "Since November there is political confusion here," said one aid official. "No government. No ministers. Nothing." Officials here say a breaking point came when rumors circulated recently that Uganda had decided to replace Mr. Wamba dia Wamba with the Hema leader. It was then, officials say, that the Lendu essentially declared Uganda an enemy and gave up on any negotiated end to the dispute. On Jan. 19, before dawn, more than 100 Lendu warriors, armed mostly with spears and machetes, attacked the airport here, the main center for Ugandan troops. At the same time, other Lendu warriors attacked villages north of Bunia. When word reached Bunia itself, which is largely Hema, vigilantes went to kill any Lendu they could find. That was when the head, apparently of a young Lendu man, appeared on the spear paraded around the dusty streets of Bunia. "I washed my hands and I said: `God, I have never seen anything like that since I was born,' " said McLambert Isaiah Lutula, 29, an artist and sign painter here. "When I remember what they did, I don't want to eat anymore." The carnage was terrifying: Ugandan military officials told United Nations officials that they had killed 84 Lendu who attacked the airport. Mr. Mwanza, the newspaper editor, said he himself counted 48 Lendu dead - many mutilated - near another military encampment and another 12 Lendu in the market. Both sides committed atrocities: in a village called Soleniema north of Bunia, residents said Lendu fighters hacked about 24 people to death, many of them women and children. At least 30 houses were burned to the ground, on both sides. "We can't understand what happened," said Jackson Dunji, 37, a motorcycle repairman in town and a Hema (and whom the Lendu accuse of being a prolific killer of Lendu). "We were just sleeping in our beds." The worst of the reprisal killings of Lendu were in the Muzibela neighborhood of Bunia, where people from both groups lived before the attacks. A woman named Mbure Dzusu, 18, said Hema warriors beat her and her sister with sticks and tossed them into a latrine. Her sister died. But she lay in the filth for a day, until Congolese Red Cross workers burying the dead arrived and found her. In the end, Mr. Mwanza, the editor, tallied up 159 Lendu who died and 118 Hema - a number that aid officials said seems roughly correct. Another 30,000 people have fled their homes on both sides, aid officials say, on top of the 120,000 already displaced from the earlier fighting. The question of what happens now has no easy answer in the absence of peace or a regular government. The onus, though, is on Uganda: aid groups and the United Nations are urging Uganda not only to step in to stop the killings but also to appoint neutral government officials. "They are the people controlling the area," said Col. Simon Caraffi, the chief of staff for the United Nations mission to Congo, who visited Bunia this week. "That is clear." For their part, the Ugandans are adamant that they are completely neutral, and deny allegations from Lendu and some aid officials that they did not act quickly enough to stop the killings. "We are stopping each side from finishing each other," said Col. Edison Muzoora, the Ugandan military commander of the area. Meantime, the hospitals are full of the war's victims - and for all the tension, Hema and Lendu are nursing their wounds in the same rooms. At Rwankole Hospital, a Lendu teacher, his head battered, whose brother died beside him, lay on a mat recovering not 10 feet from a 2-year- old Hema boy, his cheek split by a machete from his mouth to his ear. "This hospital is too small," said the administrator, Oku-Onzi Dada. "We have no choice but to put them together. It's better that way. They can get used to it." ------------------------------------------- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green ---- Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international ---- In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
