IRIN Feature on tension in North Kivu

Six years since the genocide in neighbouring Rwanda, tension and confusion prevail in the North Kivu province of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The misery evident in the small town of Sake, a gateway to the interior of the DRC, graphically illustrates the current situation. Sake, some 30 km west of the border town of Goma, is crammed with internally displaced people (IDPs), forced to flee consistent attacks on their homes and livelihoods. As the humanitarian community and local authorities agonise over whether tens of thousands of people living in nearby camps should risk going home or not, people live in constant fear of attack. In the surrounding bush, roving militiamen of the Rwandan Interahamwe movement, widely held responsible for the 1994 genocide, are close at hand. They regularly conduct hit-and-run raids. And in interviews with IRIN, people living in the area wonder whether their plight has been forgotten by the international community. In North Kivu where the United Nations has estimated the number of IDPs at 450,000 - the highest of any province in DRC - normal life seems to have come to a stop. Although it is one of the only provinces in the country where the majority do have access to humanitarian assistance, according to humanitarian officials, farming has virtually ground to a stop. An IRIN reporter saw crops in the area lying abandoned and many homes deserted or destroyed, their owners having fled clashes between the Interahamwe and Rwandan-backed Congolese rebels to seek shelter in the relative safety of market towns like Sake. Bernadette Mwongo, president of the Women’s Forum for Development in North Kivu told IRIN there were two main reasons people were being uprooted. “One is the fighting and violence between various militia groups and the Rwandan-backed rebels,” she said. “The other reason is poverty and the lack of basic necessities of life in the villages. In the trading centres here like Sake, they can barely survive.” A humanitarian official in the town added: “What makes the situation look gloomy is that North Kivu is fairly accessible to humanitarian agencies compared to other provinces in DRC.” This year has witnessed increased attacks on IDP camps. During an IRIN visit to Sake, people were talking about one such incident when the Interahamwe attacked an IDP camp in Sake earlier this month. “It was around 9:00 pm. We heard people talking in low voices passing the camp. When we went outside to check, they started beating people and then made some noise,” Muhindo Ruto, head of the Sake camp, recalled. “Then they started shooting at us and torching our huts. Most people died of bullet wounds. Kids and elder people were suffocating in the smoke...” The attackers moved on through the camp into town and raided its pharmacies to steal the meagre supply of medicines. Local residents and humanitarian officials estimated the deaths at 40. Fifteen people were wounded and 48 banana-leaf shelters were destroyed. But it caused 800 families to flee, most of them to the town market place and nearby open ground. It was a situation, officials said, which brought yet another humanitarian crisis that had to be managed. The incident also highlighted the debate between the Rwandan-backed Rassemblement pour la democratie (RCD)-Goma, the movement which controls this part of North Kivu Province. The movement’s intelligence and security chief, Bizima Karaha, told IRIN he felt the camp which came under attack near the market place, and another nearby large camp should be closed down. Some humanitarian agencies he added, were “suffering from camp withdrawal syndrome”. The advisor to North Kivu’s governor, Felix Musonera agreed. He said the vegetation along the Goma-Sake road was being burned to prevent ambushes. “It is very difficult to offer security to people gathered in a camp,” he said. “That is why we are saying that people should be encouraged to settle within villages if they are not able to return to their areas of origin because of insecurity.” A spokesman for the local humanitarian community, however, disagreed, saying people knew it was unsafe to attempt to go home, and that he felt it was safer for the camp residents and those assisting them to remain. In the view of a market vendor, Juliet Kabango: “Why grow crops and be told to get lost at harvest time. I’d rather go to a town like Goma or Sake where I can work as a porter and survive on a daily basis.” Other displaced people said humanitarian relief did not cover all their needs because the agencies simply did not have sufficient resources. Further north in the province, a recent humanitarian assessment mission found that recent attacks near Rutshuru and Bwito had caused 50,000 people to flee towards the town of Kanyabayonga. With the nearby town of Walikale to west of Kanyabayonga already a “no-go” area for relief agencies, the major concern is that people will flee to areas where they cannot be assisted. Save for a Congolese NGO trying to render assistance, an estimated 100,000 people in Walikale have no help. Traders returning to Sake said that in areas like Kinyane, they had seen Interahamwe militias operating freely, many selling goods they had stolen in raids. Although German NGOs have repaired some strategic roads enabling people to get to market more easily, Musonera, the adviser to the governor insisted that infrastructure repairs and humanitarian intervention alone would not resolve the crisis in the area. “We need to mobilise people to fight the Interahamwe and other bad groups so that the people can settle in their villages and produce instead of depending on handouts from the relief agencies,” he said. At a feeding centre catering for about 50 small children just 3 km outside Sake, representatives of the NGO, Action pour la rehabilitation des populations sinistrees (AREPS), find the situation growing more difficult every day. The centre has been attacked four times by marauding Interahamwe groups. The looted everything, but “a will to survive” keeps it going. The AREPS director at the centre, Masudi Burenda, said: “A whole generation in this area is slowly dying and the rest of the world seems not to care.” Days after Ms Burenda’s remarks, reports were coming in of another attack at Sake on 24 July. Officials told IRIN this week they were still trying to assess the toll, the damage and its impact on a population trying to survive against all the odds.