At a mountaintop market in eastern Congo, a Rwandan Hutu rebel demands cassava as bribes from children and elderly women who have climbed for hours with heavy loads — his militia still lording it over Congolese villagers despite international pressure to disarm. In the skies, a U.N. helicopter patrol spots nothing in a sweep over the remote villages of this mountainous region often preyed upon by the same Hutu militias.
| Kinda sez it all, I guess... |
Based at the small town of Walungu, peacekeepers and officials with the more than 11,000-member U.N. mission in Congo, known as MONUC, have taken on what looks like an increasingly daunting joint mission with the Congolese army: disarming Hutu militia fighters at the heart of 10 years of conflict in central Africa. The U.N. and Congolese forces risk reigniting large-scale conflict if they fail to disarm the fighters or if they generate armed resistance to their efforts. Last month, Rwanda — much tinier but far more powerful than its Western Europe-sized neighbor — threatened to invade Congo if the estimated 8,000-10,000 Hutu militia fighters still hiding in the forests there were not disarmed. Rwanda says the militia fighters include large numbers of Hutu extremists who first fled into Congo in 1994, escaping retribution for their roles in Rwanda's genocide of more than 500,000 people, mostly from the Tutsis minority. Although U.N. officials say they have found no proof of it, Rwanda claims the Hutu militias are attacking again, launching small-scale raids from longtime hideouts in eastern Congo.
| UN officials seem to have a real hard time finding proof of invasions and atrocities. Maybe they should get out more... |
Congo, in turn, accuses Rwanda of using the Hutu militia threat as a pretext for keeping financial control of resource-rich east Congo.
| I hesitate to point this out, but, for all their faults, things like that didn't happen when Belchium ran things... |
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