UN Congo HQ Under Siege
newsday.com
Bunia, Congo -- Hundreds of panicking residents converged on the UN headquarters here yesterday, cowering in the corridors as rampaging fighters with machine guns, machetes and spears stormed up the road outside, a day after 5,000 Ugandan troops abruptly withdrew from the war-torn region.
A group of 40 United Nations peacekeepers from Uruguay took up full battle positions at windows, doors and the roof of the building, bracing for the afternoon onslaught from armed members of the Lendu ethnic tribe.
By 4:43 p.m., 11:43 a.m. in New York, machine gun fire was heard outside the compound, sending those inside diving to the floor.
"This could turn into another Rwanda," Pilo Kamaragi, a professor at a local teachers' training institute, said two hours before the fighting erupted. "This is another genocide in the making." He and others drew disturbing parallels to Rwandan ethnic killings that unfolded in 1994 before the eyes of the world. Kamaragi watched as hundreds of Lendu fighters marched down Lumumba Boulevard toward the town of Madzi-Pella three miles away -- the stronghold of their mortal enemies, the Hema.
As the Lendu fanned through the city, hunting their enemies, the UN soldiers could do nothing but protect their compound. The attack appeared to be well-coordinated, with a similar one under way nearby at the airport. "The situation is deteriorating rapidly," the base commander there said by radio.
Bunia is deep in the heart of eastern Congo, a lawless stretch of lush jungle where various ethnic groups are beginning to slaughter each other. The Ugandan pullout left a sudden power vacuum, with tens of thousands of men, women and children at the mercy of a dozen bloodthirsty militias.
Before withdrawing his troops, Ugandan Brig. Gen. Kale Kayihura had predicted a bloodbath. "The UN and other nations have been pushing us to leave as soon as possible," he said. "But they have not made any contingency for security." His troops, who were not UN forces, had arrived years ago to search for rebel Ugandans.
The UN troops left behind yesterday -- all from Uruguay -- number fewer than 400 soldiers and are in no position to prevent the large-scale ethnic cleansing that is unfolding, local residents and aid workers said. UN reinforcement is not expected until next month.
"Get the word out to the world," said Nigel Pearson of Doctors Without Borders. "This whole area is in a precarious situation."
Col. Daniel Vollot, deputy commander of the UN forces, agreed. "Does the world care what goes on in the Congo? No," he said. "We've been sending messages every day to New York this was going to happen, that we need more troops. Nothing was done." He hesitated to call what was happening in Bunia ethnic cleansing.
"That means they are organized," he said. "These are people high on drugs and alcohol who go and kill for nothing." About 500 families were camped on the grounds of the white and blue UN headquarters yesterday, seeking refuge from the roaming Lendu gangs. One man begged the UN commanders to help extricate his family from Madzi-Pella. "My wife and four children are there," said Malo Malobi, tears flowing. "They will kill them without pity." He said he had tried to flee Bunia, but there were no flights. "They will kill me because I am a Hema."
Vollot said UN forces are stationed inside the headquarters and at the airport but have not been targeted so far. The Lendu and the Hema, each with about 1,000 combatants, Vollot said, are the chief antagonists in a rivalry that carries overtones of the Tutsi-Hutu problem in neighboring Rwanda that led to the deaths of 800,000 people. In Bunia, the Hemas, traditional cattle herders and merchants, are wealthier and better educated -- favored first by the Belgian colonizers and later by the dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko.
The rivalry that began in the early 1900s and simmered for decades turned brutal in 1998 when the central governments of Congo, then Zaire, collapsed. Half a dozen countries joined the conflict in Congo, a nation the size of the United States east of the Mississippi. Uganda was one of those countries and is the last to leave after a peace agreement was signed last year.
With the sudden availability of sophisticated weapons, and leaders who stoked ethnic hatred, the Lendu-Hema conflict has become deadlier. Early last month, a Lendu militia including women and children moved into a village about 40 miles from Bunia and slaughtered more than 300 people, according to witnesses and the UN. Gusapa Lokanza, 63, who lost three children in that attack, said he doesn't understand how he escaped.
"First came the men in uniform, firing guns," said Lokanza, a Hema. "Then the women and children came with machetes to finish off those who had already fallen."
Yesterday, as he cared for a wounded son at the hospital in Madzi-Pella, Lokanza and others fled outside and hid in the bushes when fighting erupted a few hundred feet away. Killed in the attack was a Catholic priest, Raphael Ngona, who was pastor of a church in nearby Drodro. Ngona, who was killed in his bedroom, had escaped the slaughter April 3 that claimed the Lokanza children, said UN officials who buried him yesterday morning.
Balo Ndjondjo, one of those caught in the attack yesterday, lay moaning on a hospital bed later with a plastic sheet for a mattress. He said he had heard shots and ran to find his children, when Lendu fighters stopped him. "What tribe are you?" he said they asked him, but they shot him in the back before he could answer.
By 11 local time last night, gunfire had slowed to 15-minute intervals. Bursts of distant machine gun fire momentarily silenced the wailing babies inside the UN compound. |
