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Congo militia leader holds firm
Recent fighting between Laurent Nkunda's Tutsi rebels and the Army has displaced 65,000.
By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the October 1, 2007 edition
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Kitchanga, Democratic Republic of CONGO - The general walks into the hut, his boots freshly brushed, his green beret tilted just so, his silver-capped swagger stick tucked under his arm. He greets a group of journalists, puts his hand over a table full of food, and closes his eyes in prayer.
"Father, we thank you for the food we are about to eat, and we ask you to ensure a safe journey for your children who have come to visit us," Gen. Laurent Nkunda intones, in the rhythm of an evangelical preacher, which he has been in the past.
It's not the picture one expects of Congo's Public Enemy No. 1.
Called a war criminal and terrorist by his opponents in the Congolese Army, General Nkunda maintains a well-armed and -supplied militia of 8,000 in the mountainous eastern region of Congo, carrying out a guerrilla war against the government and other ethnic militias in defense of his ethnic group, Congolese Tutsis.
"We are asking government to take a position against the negative forces, so we can get peace," said Nkunda at a recent press conference held in his headquarters in the town of Kitchanga. His enemy is not the Congolese army, he insists, but rather the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a militia of ethnic Hutus who have taken refuge in Congo since carrying out the 1994 genocide that killed more than 800,000 Tutsis. "It's a threat, and not just to us but to the people of Congo. They have an ideology of genocide, and they did genocide in Rwanda, and they want to do it in Congo."
Bad time for a rebellion
Nkunda's rebellion couldn't have come at a worse time for the war-torn nation, a massive sprawling country of 250 ethnic groups bound together by the Congo River. The newly elected government of President Joseph Kabila is just now learning the ropes of government. Aid workers were about to help move 700,000 displaced people back to their villages and begin reconstruction of the country. And foreign investors were just beginning to help Congo extract its almost unlimited mineral riches. Renewed fighting puts all that at risk.
Yet, while President Kabila recently signaled his frustration, announcing on TV that "the time for carrots is over," the solution of this conflict will not easily be won by battle.
"There should be a political solution in eastern DRC, because there is no military solution," says retired Maj. Gen. Patrick Cammaert, former commander of UN peacekeepers in Congo.
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