Congo Tribal Killings Create a New Wave of Refugees
By MARC LACEY
Published: March 6, 2005
BUNIA, Congo, March 4 - Louise Dhikpala has run for her life so many times in recent years that she has lost track of her escapes from death. The first was in 1999, when violence erupted here in the lawless Ituri region in northeastern Congo. The most recent was in January. In the intervening years, she has run and run and run.
Her husband usually ran along with her, but he was shot in the back six weeks ago as the family fled their tiny village of Kafe. The people chasing Ms. Dhikpala, ethnic fighters from a rival tribe, caught up with her husband and finished killing him with machetes. She saw them hacking him but could do nothing about it. She could only run.
Running for one's life has become an everyday matter for the people in this part of the world. Revenge killings between rival tribes, the Hema and the Lendu, have turned Ituri into one of Congo's most volatile regions.
"Entire villages have been emptied," said Modibo Traore of Mali, who is based in Bunia for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. "We don't have access to most of the people. They're hiding and we don't have any idea what is happening to them."
A peace deal has calmed the wider war in Congo, one that once drew in six foreign armies and divided the country into numerous rebel fiefs. But the violence never really stopped in this region, an area of great mineral wealth, which only encourages more fighting and killing.
The latest outbreak began in December when Lendu fighters allied with the Front of Nationalists and Integrationists began raiding villages belonging to the rival Hema and driving an estimated 70,000 people from their homes. What has aid workers here nervous is the restraint shown by the Union of Congolese Patriots, which is made up mostly of Hema; many wonder if the Hema are planning a counterattack.
For now, though, the only people standing in the way of the Lendu fighters are overstretched United Nations peacekeeping forces, who have recently staged their most aggressive raids in Ituri since the mission began in 1999.
"There has been a change in peacekeeping," said Margaret Carey, an officer in the Africa Division of the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, in a news briefing in New York on Thursday. "We do military operations, including in Ituri. Peacekeeping is robust now."
Lendu leaders have accused the United Nations forces of killing civilians, particularly through attacks from helicopters, but United Nations officials have denied the charges.
[On Saturday, a United Nations spokesman said that fighters who were women had been among the 50 people killed during a battle near Bunia on Tuesday. The spokesman said the United Nations was still investigating reports that civilians, including women and children, had been killed in the fighting.]
In Congo, the soldiers in the 16,700-strong United Nations operation were fighting not only for nine Bangladeshis killed late last month by unknown tribal fighters but also for the many civilians being driven away by the tribal strife and, if they are caught, killed - 50,000 of them since 1999, according to United Nations officials.
Each time Ms. Dhikpala has to evacuate her village, she follows the same routine. She leaps from her sleeping mat when she hears gunshots and battle cries. She wakes the children and grandchildren. Then they duck out of their hut and race for the forest.
Even in the safety of the trees, the race is not over. She does a head count to make sure all 15 children, grandchildren and in-laws have escaped. Heart pounding, she runs as if death is on her heels, she says, and it usually is.
Ms. Dhikpala, a 52-year-old grandmother, runs on her heavily calloused bare feet, with a child strapped to her back, whichever one happens to be around. There is no time to pack up possessions. The last time, in January, she looked back and saw her village burning. When she goes back, once Ituri's ethnic violence calms down again, she expects the worst.
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