Christmas In Congo

From the New York Times:

BUNAGANA, Congo — At the entrance to this bustling border town is a most unusual sight: a speed limit sign. In fresh red, white and blue paint, it is a rare manifestation of order in a nation better known for chaos.

Gen. Laurent Nkunda, the leader of a group of rebels, with his pet goat Betty in the mountains of Congo. His aims include the removal of President Joseph Kabila, whose power has been waning.

The seemingly innocuous signpost is emblematic of the growing might and wider ambitions of Laurent Nkunda, the renegade Congolese general and warlord who now holds part of Congo’s future in his grip.
....

But beneath the veneer lies a ruthlessness of a piece with Congo’s unbroken history of brutality. With a military campaign in October and November that was met with a feeble response from both the Congolese government and United Nations peacekeeping forces here in eastern Congo, General Nkunda has pushed the nation to its most dangerous precipice in years.

The UN forces are undermanned and under-equipped to stop the violence in Congo. You cannot send in a weak force to do a job, without giving them the means to accomplish the goal, and then blame them because they don't succeed.

The democratically-elected president of Congo, Joseph Kabila, grows weaker by the day, because his army cannot stand up to the powerful rebel army of Gen. Nkunda.

One by one, those who oppose him have felt the violent wrath of his security forces, according to human rights investigators and political analysts. A Human Rights Watch investigation found that 500 people had died and 1,000 had been detained in these crackdowns.

One of many massacres attributed to Nkunda's forces.

Both Nkunda and Kabila "recruit" boys as young as nine to fight in their armies. Sometimes, the boys are placed in front to take the first fire. According to Eric, one of the boys who was "recruited" into Nkunda's army:

“The strategy they use is this,” he explained. “When they met children on the road, they ask them to help them carry their goods.”

The boys are then taken to training camps, given guns and taught to fight, Eric said. His eyes are wide in permanent surprise, and he said he had headaches that did not respond to medicine. Loud noises terrify him.

“Too many bombs,” he explained in a soft voice.

For two years, from 13 to 15, he said he fought with General Nkunda’s troops.

“Many of us were boys,” he said. “They would send us out first, then the men.”

He lives in a shelter for boys separated from their parents by the war. In the next bunk is his friend Fabrice, a 14-year-old former Mai Mai fighter who used to do battle with General Nkunda’s forces.

“I always felt bad to kill other children, because I knew they had been forced to fight just like me,” he said.

According to Human Rights Watch:

Tens of thousands of women and girls have been raped since the war began in 1998, and a recent report from the secretary-general found that between June 2007 and June 2008, the UN recorded 5,517 cases of sexual violence against children in Ituri and North and South Kivu - 31 percent of all sexual violence victims.

From my friend Georgianne Nienaber, who spent time in Congo:

There is total lack of international will to solve this problem and now international resource interests are turning on the peacekeepers (MONUC), blaming THEM for not stopping the violence when they are undermanned and under orders to keep the peace, not wage a separate war. there are dozens of proxy militias. Until there is an international MORAL outrage...maybe churches can do this...nothing will happen

Not a happy post, is it? It's Advent in Congo, too. What kind of Christmas will it be for the Christians in Congo?