DRC Villagers Take Up Arms Against LRA Rebels; Nkunda Rebels Split

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JOE BAVIER | DUNGU, CONGO - Jan 16 2009 15:17

Congolese villagers are forming self-defence groups to protect homes and
families from Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels.

LRA rebels have killed 567 people and displaced 115 000 in northeast
Democratic Republic of Congo's Oriental province since September, the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Friday.
Attacks surged after Ugandan forces spearheaded an anti-LRA offensive in
December.

In silence broken only by the buzz of insects and the crunch of earth
under their plastic sandals, eight men file through the cool night,
hunting rifles in hand, scanning the darkness for those who killed their
neighbours and burned their homes.

Elsewhere in the areas surrounding the town of Dungu, dozens more like
them stalk the forest, mostly farmers and internal refugees armed with
locally made guns or bows and arrows.

"This is very necessary for me, first and foremost, for the town, and
for the people who are suffering in the bush, who have done nothing and
who are dying," said Pascal Kalemba, the bottom half of his boyish face
hidden by an airline sleeping mask.

LRA rebel fighters attacked Dungu in September, as efforts to negotiate
a peace deal to end their two-decade bush war against the Ugandan
government broke down.

"They just walked straight into town. They started to burn houses and
kill people," Kalemba said.

At the time, not a single Congolese soldier was deployed in the town of
57 000 inhabitants, located near Garamba National Park, the LRA's
stronghold since it fled to Congo in 2005.

On December 14, a Ugandan-led multinational force, including Congolese
and South Sudanese soldiers, launched an offensive aiming to capture the
rebels' reclusive leader Joseph Kony.

Instead, the operation splintered the rebels into smaller groups that
are now attacking villages, slaughtering civilians, raping women and
kidnapping children for use as sex slaves and child soldiers. The UN
death toll may be conservative.

New York-based Human Rights Watch says three days of raids alone,
starting on Christmas Day, killed at least 600 people. Most were beaten
to death with clubs or hacked with machetes.

Army "runs away"

The head of Dungu's self-defence force, former chief Etienne Dalafata,
said despite the deployment of more than 3 500 government troops to the
area, villages must defend themselves.

"We've already gone on operations with the army, but when we go into the
bush they get scared and run away. They are city soldiers," he said.

Dalafata said his force enjoys the town's support and that militias have
sprung up across Congo's northern borderlands.

All of this worries Felicien Balani, president of Dungu's local civil
society association.

"Our army must make them unnecessary. They find their justification in
its ineffectiveness. If this lasts another six months or a year, they'll
start looking for better equipment, and we risk a Mai Mai phenomenon,"
he said.

Mai Mai ethnic militias sprang up across eastern Congo in the 1990s
during invasions by Rwanda and proxy rebel groups.

Like Dalafata's men, the Mai Mai initially said they took up arms to
protect their communities. But they became notorious for bloody
massacres of civilians, rape and ritual cannibalism.

Since September, the Dungu militia has taken just three LRA prisoners
from a number of clashes with the Ugandan rebels.

All, they said, were turned over to the army.

But this week a self-defence patrol in Nzope village on the eastern edge
of Garamba caught two LRA suspects. It mutilated and killed one before
handing the other over to the authorities.

In Dungu, Kalemba said he feels no hatred for these latest invaders. He
simply wants them to go home.

"Why are they persecuting us? Why?" he said.

"If it comes to a battle, we will die together." - Reuters

Source: Mail & Guardian Online
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DRC: Tables turn as rebel faction declares support for army

Thousands of people have fled the violence in eastern DRC

KINSHASA, 14 January 2009 (IRIN) - A rebel splinter group in the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has said it is ready to back joint
operations planned by the governments of DRC and Rwanda against Rwandan
Hutu insurgents based in the Kivu provinces.

The self-styled new leader of the Congrès national pour la défense du
peuple (CNDP), Desiré Kamanzi, also said he would not recognise the
outcome of ceasefire negotiations in the Kenyan capital between the DRC
government and the main CNDP wing led by renegade general Laurent
Nkunda.

Nkunda’s wing has dismissed the change of leadership, insisting it was
still in charge of the movement and that the man who mounted the
“ouster”, International Criminal Court war crimes suspect Bosco
Ntaganda, would face disciplinary proceedings.

"These Nairobi talks simply don't concern us, but we are ready to back
the two governments, who have decided to go after the FDLR," said
Kamanzi, referring to the Forces Démocratique pour la libération de
Rwanda.

"Since 4 January any decision taken previously by the deposed leader is
null and void," said Kamanzi.

“We don't recognise the Nairobi matters because the government is
dealing with a delegation we don't recognise. But we demand that a body
be instituted so that we can agree upon delegates and issues for
negotiation with the government," he added.

According to Rwanda’s army spokesman, joint military operations against
the FDLR were imminent.

"The two Force commanders [Rwanda and DRC] endorsed the plan, which
implies that its implementation takes immediate effect," explained Maj
Jill Rutaremara in the New Times, which is close to the government in
Kigali.

Rwanda’s Chief of Defence Staff, General James Kabarebe, was in Kinshasa
in early January and met DRC President Joseph Kabila and UN mediator
Olusegun Obasanjo.

Bertrand Bisimwa, spokesman for the CNDP wing still loyal to Nkunda,
said from Nairobi that conditions on the ground in eastern DRC remained
volatile.

"There are 700 heavily armed militia from the FDLR, supported by
government troops and Congolese Resistance Patriots dressed in regular
army fatigues rising up to prepare an offensive against CNDP positions”
around Kikuku, about 130km north of Goma, he said.