By Michael KavanaghWorld FocusMarch 26, 2009Michael J. Kavanagh of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
returned to eastern Congo last month to understand the
conflicting news
coming out of the region. Below he explains what he saw in some of the
most remote areas of Congo. Along the way, he reconnects with Pascal
and Vestine Bumbari. He reported on the
signature story: Pascal and Vestine are alive in Congo, but still not home.“Michel, we are suffering so much.” Those were the first
words Pascal said to me over the
phone in February, when he called out
of the blue.Pascal and his wife Vestine live on non-arable lava rocks in their
new camp; his clothes are all torn; they don’t have enough food;
the
rain seeps through the tarp that covers their hut. Until the day we
arrived, Pascal had done nothing - nothing - with his days for four months. Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps are
not really the place you’d go to look for work.There is a misconception right now that peace is spreading throughout eastern Congo. Tutsi rebel-leader Laurent Nkunda is under house arrest in Rwanda. There’s a new peace agreement between his rebel group (the CNDP) and the
government. Joint-military operations
between erstwhile enemies Congo and Rwanda
continue against the Rwandan
Hutu rebel group hiding in eastern Congo (the FDLR). It all seems like
hopeful stuff.But this new development, this surprising volte-face, is only a beginning.
The main issues
that caused the war in the
first place - land, resources, tribalism,
refugees and the continued presence of the FDLR in Congo - have not
gone away.To use the example of our own story: Pascal is Hutu, and he stilldoesn’t feel safe enough to return to his home, which is still - for
the most part - under control of soldiers once loyal to Nkunda. And
while 350,000
Congolese in North Kivu have returned
home in the last few months
(mainly to land formerly occupied by Nkunda’s troops), another 160,000
have been displaced since January as the FDLR takes its revenge on the
villages where (they allege) people collaborated with the
Rwando-Congolese
joint operation. It makes your head spin.This new fighting is taking place in very remote regions - I spent
days on the back of a motorbike to get there - and what I found was
just as
devastating as anything I’ve seen in my previous five years of
reporting in Congo: Massacres, executions by gun and machete,
kidnappings, sex slaves, torture victims.So while the
conflict in some parts of eastern Congo is settling
down, there are other corners where the war rages on. This
seemingly-endless string of local battles is often what makes people
give up on the
region - new place names to learn, new rebel groups to
figure out.But don’t give up just yet.The new collaboration between Rwanda and Congo is the most important
development
in the conflict in years, and one of the main reasons the
countries are now working together is because of pressure from the
international community that intensified after last fall’s humanitarian disaster.
Sustaining that pressure is the only way to make
sure this conflict
truly turns a corner towards peace, so that good, hardworking people
like Pascal and Vestine can finally return home.See all related videos, radio broadcasts and articles
on the Pulitzer Center's "Roots of Ethnic Conflict" project pagehere. Back to top
Congolese soldiers stand guard at a ceremony marking the return home of thousands of Rwandan troops at Goma in eastern Congo, February 25, 2009. Rwandan troops began withdrawing from Congo on ...
