Democratic Republic of Congo: Crisis in Katanga Ignored

[XXPANTHAXX]

NAIROBI, 3 Jan 2006 (IRIN) - An enormous humanitarian crisis
is emerging in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Katanga
Province, with tens of thousands of people being displaced,
but so far the government and the international community are
doing little.

"Katanga is not on the political map, which is why such a
massive humanitarian crisis can go ignored," said Jason
Stearns, the International Crisis Group's senior analyst on
Central Africa, who is working on a report on Katanga to be
released in early 2006.

"The situation is as bad as Ituri and the Kivus and has the
potential of spinning out of control," Stearns said,
referring to the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu in
the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and
Ituri District in the northeast.

Katanga is in the southeast of the DRC, bordering Tanzania on
Lake Tanganyika, as well as bordering Zambia and Angola.

"The number of displaced in central and northern Katanga now
exceeds 100,000," said Anne Edgerton, head of the United
Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(OCHA) in the town of Kalemie on Lake Tanganyika. “We know of
at least 39,000 people who were recently displaced -- they do
not include 72,000 displaced earlier in 2005."

Edgerton said there might be tens of thousands more people
displaced in the north and centre of Katanga Province -
people whom aid agencies are unable to reach because of
conflict.

In mid-November, the army in the DRC quietly announced the
start of a 45-day military operation in Katanga to disarm
Mayi-Mayi militias there, but said it would not comment
further until the operation was over.

Battles have been reported between Mayi-Mayi militia groups
and soldiers from the army’s 6th military region, mostly in
central Katanga in a triangular area of 200 sq km between the
towns of Manono towards the north of the province; Mitwaba
south of it; and Pweto, to the east on the border with
northern Zambia.

Several sources said fighting is also taking place farther
west in the Upemba National Park, where Mayi-Mayi militia
groups are attacking villages along the shores of Lake
Upemba. There are reports of fighting farther north in
Katanga as well.

All the reports are sketchy, however, and in most cases aid
workers cannot access areas affected by conflict.

The humanitarian crisis

Those aid organisations that are able to work near the
conflict zone, like Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), say the
Congolese army has been stopping them from entering the
conflict zone itself.

"We are asking for access so that we can assess the
situation," Laurence Sally, the coordinator of MSF’s
emergency team in the DRC, told IRIN from Kinshasa in early
December.

MSF and some other NGOs do have access to the town of Pweto
on Lake Mweru bordering Zambia, as well as 60 km west to
areas in and around the village of Dubie.

By the end of December, between 300 and 1,000 people were
arriving in Dubie every day, said Severine Eguiluz, the head
of MSF’s mission in Katanga. The army had also allowed MSF
access to a village, Kato, about 40 km northwest of Dubie.

"But there were no people there. The villages were destroyed.
There was nothing for us to do, and the army blocked us from
going further, saying it was not safe," she said.

OCHA’s Edgerton said many of the displaced people recently
interviewed upon their arrival in Dubie said they had fled
their villages more than two months ago and had been living
in the bush.

"Their most immediate need is clothing," she said. "Many
arrived with clothes rotting off their bodies."

Most of the assistance they have been receiving has come from
locals, who themselves live on less than a US $1 a day, she
said. "They are already overburdened, hosting almost 16,000
displaced people who arrived in the area in August."

The aid organisations in Dubie and Pweto are gearing up to
provide assistance to 13,000 newly displaced people.

Although around 110 metric tonnes of food aid is on its way,
all but 30 tonnes of it have been delayed because of
transport problems, Edgerton said. "The food was brought from
Durban [in South Africa] through Zambia to Lubumbashi, but it
is now being trucked back through Zambia to Pweto because
rains have made the 400 km road [from Lubumbashi] to Dubie
impassable."

"With the vast distances and lack of infrastructure, this is
the most expensive place in the world for delivering
humanitarian assistance," she said.

The fighting

UN and NGO officials interviewed for this article did not
claim to have a complete picture of the conflict in Katanga,
but said it appeared that at least a dozen Mayi-Mayi groups
had formed an alliance under a leader named Kyungu Mutanga,
who goes by the alias Gedeon.

According to Stearns and other sources, the aim of the army's
campaign in Katanga appeared to be to capture or kill Gedeon.
As many as 5,000 to 6,000 troops of the DRC's 6th military
region were taking part in the campaign, they said.

So far, however, they do not appear to have had much success
in defeating the Mayi-Mayi militias. Stearns said the army's
main offensive was bungled, and that most of Gedeon's Mayi-
Mayi followers escaped into Upemba National Park.

A UN official said the Congolese army had a different story,
claiming to have liberated thousands of civilians from Mayi-
Mayi occupation.

"The army told us most of the Mayi-Mayi's bases have been
wiped out, but it is not giving us more information, such as
the number of militiamen it has killed or captured," the UN
source said.

He said it is more likely that the army is chasing Mayi-Mayi
groups from one area to another, and that the Mayi-Mayi are
turning on the civilian population in the process.

According to Edgerton, most of the displaced people
interviewed by OCHA said they were supportive of the army's
campaign to wipe out the Mayi-Mayi. She remained sceptical,
however, that the army would succeed. "This is an army that
has no food, no fuel and bullets," she said.

Another UN source said: "We are getting independent reports
that the army is committing human rights violations." The
OCHA-led interagency mission to the Dubie area from 15 to 17
December 2005 documented at least one case of rape by a
soldier.

According to Stearns, the Congolese army’s November campaign
had a difficult start. "The government said it sent $250,000
in cash to Katanga's 6th military region for fuel, food and
logistical support, but the money never arrived."

A UN official told a different version of events: "The money
was never sent."

Where's MONUC?

More than four decades ago, from 1960 to 1964, Katanga was
the scene of the UN’s first peacekeeping mission in Africa,
with almost 20,000 troops deployed there.

The UN’s current mission to the DRC began in 1999. Known as
MONUC, the mission includes 15,000 peacekeepers, but no more
than 300 are in Katanga, and most of them are protecting UN
assets in Kalemie and in the provincial capital, Lubumbashi.

While MONUC is providing air transport and other logistical
support to the Congolese army in Ituri and the two Kivus to
help it disarm foreign rebels and local militias, MONUC is
not providing support to the army in Katanga.

Only a handful of MONUC military observers are in towns
around the conflict area, and they are unable to observe the
fighting, according to a MONUC officer who asked not to be
identified. “We do not have [armed] escorts in Katanga, so we
are not really on the ground," he said.

One reason that MONUC is not better represented in Katanga is
that it is apparently overstretched in the DRC, partly
because the UN Security Council turned down requests by UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan to increase MONUC’s troop
strength.

Local authorities make frequent pleas to MONUC to send
troops, but observers say none of the four vice-presidents in
the DRC’s transitional central government has pushed for it.
Nor has the DRC’s president, Joseph Kabila.

Sources also say that Katanga is rarely mentioned even during
meetings of foreign diplomats in Kinshasa, including those
held by the ambassadors of the five permanent members of the
UN Security Council, plus Belgium and South Africa.

A widely held view is that the international community does
not want to be seen to be interfering in Katanga, because
Katanga is President Kabila's backyard.

Who are the Katangan Mayi-Mayi?

Northern Katanga is the birthplace of President Kabila's
father, former President Laurent Kabila, who overthrew
President Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997.

When Rwanda invaded the Kivu provinces along its border with
the DRC in 1998, Laurent Kabila sought to stem the advance of
Rwandan troops farther south into Katanga by recruiting local
farmers from his Lubakat ethnic group into civil defence
forces.

These forces had not previously existed in Katanga as such.
They appeared to model themselves on armed groups that more
commonly existed in the Kivus, called the Mayi-Mayi, whose
members used modern weapons but claimed to be protected by
magic.

After Rwanda withdrew from Katanga, these newly armed
militias began fighting rather than go back to their
farms. "Nobody said to them, 'Thanks for saving the country,
now here is your disarmament and reintegration package,’"
said Edgerton.

In 2002, after Laurent Kabila was assassinated, Joseph Kabila
reached a comprehensive peace agreement with most armed
groups in the country, but not the Katangan Mayi-Mayi. "The
Katanga Mayi-Mayi were left out because Kabila thought they
would be easier to control that way," said Stearns.

It soon became apparent that they were not.

In November 2002, fighting broke out between Kabila's army
and Mayi-Mayi at Ankoro, the town in northern Katanga where
Laurent Kabila was born. At least 100 civilians were reported
killed and 75,000 civilians displaced.

Fighting has continued ever since.

For Stearns, "The various Mayi-Mayi militias are competing
for three things: the right to extort taxes from local
populations; the right to control small-scale artisanal
mining; and the right to poach wild animals in Upemba
National Park."

"None of this is legitimate, which is also why negotiating
with the Mayi-Mayi is now so difficult," he said.

In September 2004, the governor of Katanga brought leaders of
the Katangan Mayi-Mayi to a roundtable in the town of
Kamina. "That meeting was a resounding failure," Stearns said.

In April 2005, a Mayi-Mayi commander known as Chinja-Chinja,
meaning “slaughter-slaughter� in Swahili, came to Kinshasa to
negotiate with the government but was promptly arrested on
charges of war crimes. No other Mayi-Mayi leader is known to
have travelled to visit the Kinshasa authorities since.

Instead, some of the Mayi-Mayi have grown more belligerent,
killing, in October 2005, a priest and a teacher sent by the
provincial authorities in Katanga to mediate with them.

Efforts to disarm Mayi-Mayi militiamen voluntarily have not
yet worked either. In 2005, a local "bicycle-for-weapon"
disarmament programme was launched with Kabila’s
support. "The Mayi-Mayi started fighting over the bicycles,"
Stearns said.

A diplomatic source called the programme a "smokescreen to
make the government appear to be doing something, when it was
really doing nothing."

Stearns said some high-ranking officials in Kinshasa have had
an interest in prolonging the conflict.

The diplomatic source concurred: "There are people profiting
from [the mineral] coltan and ivory. They're not making a lot
of money, but they are making more than they would if there
was peace," he said.

Which way forward?

As Stearns sees it, the army’s November 2005 operation in
Katanga may be the result of new pressures on Kabila, and
with national elections due to take place in 2006, Congo’s
president may want to be able to campaign for votes in his
home region.

Stearns says the Congolese army would only succeed in
tackling the Mayi-Mayi militias, if it deployed one of its
newly integrated and better trained brigades and it received
MONUC’s help on the ground.

Stearns said ICG supports the UN Secretary-General's rejected
recommendation of sending in a MONUC brigade of 2,590
peacekeepers, and many NGO and UN officials concur.

A MONUC official said, "Some of the armed groups are not
violent, and they would be willing to disarm if we can
provide them with protection and support." UN troops could
support the Congolese army to forcibly disarm those of the
Mayi-Mayi who resisted.

"We would quickly create a buffer between the various Mayi-
Mayi groups and the army and create conditions for relief
workers to bring in aid," the MONUC official added.

However, other officials see other options.

"Everyone seems to prefer a military solution," one UN relief
official in Katanga said, "but the Katanga Mayi-Mayi have
been neglected and their grievances need to be acknowledged."

"There's been a lot of talk about disarming and reintegrating
Mayi-Mayi fighters back into the society, but so far no one
is really doing anything," the official added.

"The transitional government has the power to negotiate an
end to the violence, and [diplomats in Kinshasa] have the
power to pressure the transitional government to negotiate."

Stearns calls for both a "good carrot-and-stick programme"
that allows the Mayi-Mayi to demobilise and integrate into
the Congolese army if they want to, and "if they don’t, then
the Congolese army, with UN support, needs to make a
coordinated military response."

Solving the Mayi-Mayi problem in Katanga, said all of IRIN’s
sources, will take tenacity, time and money.