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A bittersweet 'peace'
Kinshasa — For the more than one million inhabitants of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo too afraid to return to their homes thanks to marauding militias, it's a bittersweet "peace."
After years of violent convulsions from the ethnic genocide in neighbouring Rwanda, warring factions in the provinces of Nord-Kivu and Sud-Kivu signed a peace accord in the regional capital Goma in January.
Yet since then more than 200 civilians have been slaughtered, and hundreds of women and girls raped by armed groups, including the Congolese army, according to Human Rights Watch Africa.
"Six months after the signing of the peace agreement, the human rights situation has seen no improvement and indeed in some areas it has deteriorated," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a researcher for the non-governmental organisation.
Now the United Nations has been forced to issue an urgent appeal, demanding the armed militias stop "their serious abuse of every possible kind" against civilians.
"Tensions still exist between the forces, which fosters a climate of fear among the civilian population, preventing the return of about one-million vulnerable people to their homes," UN Mission in DR Congo (MONUC) spokesperson Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg said.
The continuing clashes, abuse and displacement are fuelled by a quest for the region's mineral resources: coltan, a metallic ore used in mobile phone batteries and DVDs, and gold.
The fighting has also spilled about into the region's fragile eco-system, with armed gangs poaching the local wildlife, including some of the last remaining mountain gorillas.
The January deal, known as the Goma Agreement, committed the warring factions to a ceasefire, followed by a gradual disengagement of troops on the grounds before full demobilisation.
The deals' mediator, the Congolese Abbot Apollinaire Malu Malu, said on Thursday he "greatly regretted and condemned these atrocities."
"The abuses occur in out of the way places, between groups in competition with each other. They are two kilometres apart from each other, when they should be separated by at least 20 kilometres," he explained.
The main fighting has taken place in the mountainous areas of Rutshuru and Masisi, on the border with Rwanda and Uganda.
And Father Malu Malu's draft disengagement plan has not even been accepted by all the militias, including key player Laurent Nkunda, the renegade Tutsi general who heads the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), and the Federal Revolutionary Forces (FRF).
Malu Malu said that the International Facilitation Group (which comprises MONUC, the United States and the European Union) was to engage Nkunda in new talks on Thursday, despite widespread accusations that he takes his orders from Kigali.
But until the warring factions are physically separated, said Malu Malu, the one million internally displaced people dare not return to their homes in the hills.
That requires the UN peacekeepers, currently the UN's largest (17 000 strong) and most expensive (one billion dollars/about R7-billion a year), interpose themselves between the armed groups, and that demobilisation centres for the fighters are both set up and funded.
"The only reason the militias are fighting each other now is to plunder. To plunder the natural resources and to plunder the environment," concludes Father Malu Malu. — www.iol.co.za, 25 July 2008