"From the Trampled Grass" Post IV: The Congo's frontlines
This is the fourth post in a series of reflections from Paul Ronan, Director of Advocacy for Resolve Uganda, as he travels for two months in Uganda, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Central African Republic to interview victims of LRA attacks, civil society leaders, and local officials about how LRA violence can be ended and affected communities best assisted. Click here to read his first post from Juba, Sudan; or here to read his second from Yambio, Sudan; or here to read his third from northern Uganda. For more details about the series see below.
Fr. Benoit Kinalegu can often be seen slowly strolling along the roads of Dungu, a small town in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, chatting with friends and members of his parish. But beneath his jovial demeanor lies a passionate and determined commitment to defending people in this region from the predations of LRA rebels. Fr. Kinalegu’s pleas for assistance were some of the first words we at Resolve Uganda heard after large-scale attacks in this area of DR Congo first started in late 2007, when LRA rebels decimated a Catholic mission post in the nearby town of Duru.
Late in the evening one night last week I sat down with Fr. Benoit to meet for the first time in person. Seated in Dungu’s Catholic parish center, I hoped to hear his reflections on how LRA violence is impacting surrounding communities. But it soon became apparent that Fr. Kinalegu was more interested in questioning me about why there was such an absence of international leadership to provide even basic protection from the LRA’s atrocities.
In Fr. Kinalegu’s words, I heard a theme that I was to hear over and over again during my time in the DR Congo: people here feel that the failure of the Congolese government and international community to protect them represents a negligence of their basic responsibilities on the highest order. And they are absolutely correct. Hundreds of people in this part of Congo have been massacred and even more abducted in recent months. These crimes have yet to even be acknowledged publicly by Congolese or international leaders.
For more than four years now, communities in northeastern Congo have suffered the consequences of failed efforts to stop LRA violence. The LRA first crossed into the country in late 2005, seeking a new safe haven after the civil war ended in Sudan. Their first relatively small-scale attacks here took place in early 2006, when rebel fighters retaliated against Congolese civilians after a crack squad of UN commandos attacked a camp of LRA rebels in a failed attempt to apprehend LRA second-in-command Vincent Otti.
From 2006 to 2008, during the Juba peace talks, LRA leaders used the Garamba National Park – just east of Dungu – to regroup and resupply while their representatives sat at the negotiation table. Slowly, they stashed food, trained recent abductees, and developed new operational plans, committing only sporadic attacks.
That period of relative peace ended in September of 2008. After Congolese soldiers began deploying around the Park in an effort to contain the rebel group, LRA commanders responded by unleashing a wave of attacks. In a matter of days, LRA fighters kidnapped hundreds of children, even as Kony was making promises to peace mediators that he would sign a deal to end the war.
What little hope remained for the imminent success of the Juba negotiations was completely destroyed in December of 2008. A major US-supported Ugandan military operation – codenamed “Lightning Thunder” – was launched on December 14th, but failed to capture any top commanders. Dispersed from their camps, LRA rebels rampaged through Congolese towns, killing over 600 people in coordinated massacres during Christmas week.
Since then, the violence 
has just not stopped. Recent LRA attacks show that the group has adapted to the pressure being placed on them by regional militaries and are regrouping once again. Brutal LRA atrocities against Congolese civilians are on the rise.
LRA commanders bear the ultimate responsibility for the crimes perpetrated on the Congolese people. But time and time again, regional governments – with support from the international community – have pursued half-hearted, incomplete strategies to stop the violence, even though decades of experience in northern Uganda demonstrated clearly that the LRA always retaliates by spilling the blood of innocent men, women and children.
These failures should have deepened the resolve of regional and international policymakers to get serious about developing and implementing a plan capable of attaining the apprehension of top commanders and stopping LRA violence – permanently. Sadly, this has not been the case. UN peacekeepers, aside from some more robust deployments last December, have had far less impact than they could. And the Congolese army has proven keener to abuse communities than to protect them; stories of sexual violence, forced labor, and other crimes at the hands of Congolese forces abound. And though the US-supported Ugandan military operations have yielded moderate successes in tracking down LRA fighters, they have not stopped the rebel group from abducting fresh fighters and increasing their capacity to commit new atrocities.
Several days after talking to Fr. Benoit, I traveled by bush plane to the small town of Bangadi, northwest of Dungu. Thirty years ago, Bangadi boasted an oil refinery, newly constructed buildings, and a machinery shop. Though previous instability, war and neglect had long since turned these projects to rust, the LRA brought a new level of suffering to the community when it began attacking the area in October 2008. Military forces eventually secured the town itself, but the surrounding villages are still the LRA’s domain
. Thousands of their former occupants now crowd into the town center, lacking access to their fields and homes.
While in Bangadi, I met Ngbawiso Zapaivulu. Ngbawiso is a farmer, and his flannel shirt and jeans were almost a carbon copy of what my grandfather, also a farmer, can be found wearing on many days. Like many people in Bangadi, Ngbawiso and his family are hungry. Groups of LRA lurk around their fields outside the town’s edge, and food assistance from the international community has been totally inadequate – despite US and UN support for the military operations that pushed the LRA into this area.
Last December Ngbawiso chanced a visit to his fields outside of Bangadi in order to try to collect some food. On his way there, he was ambushed by a group of LRA fighters who cut off one of his ears and his upper and lower lips. This is one of a series of attacks in which LRA has mutilated civilians’ faces in this area in recent months, exposing Congolese communities to an LRA terror technique familiar to northern Ugandans but not previously experienced here.
Knowing stories like Ngbawiso’s, it is easy to understand better the anger and frustration that people here feel. For decades, they endured notoriously corrupt leaders, suffered invasions from neighboring Sudanese and Ugandan troops, and weathered brutal civil war. After all this, their window of opportunity to rebuild their lives is being ripped from their grasp by a foreign rebel group using the blood of Congolese civilians to make statements aimed at political leaders living far away. In response, those political leaders – in Congo itself, in Uganda, in New York, and in Washington, DC – deploy strategies that fail to stop LRA violence, and often instead provoke even more of it.
Understandably, this anger and frustration sometimes boils over. In January of this year, LRA rebels attacked Dungu town and killed several people. The attack occurred just a few kilometers from a military base that houses hundreds of UN peacekeepers and Congolese soldiers. Neither force moved to stop the attack or chase after the rebels. Congolese soldiers, perhaps seeking to deflect criticism of their own inaction, even fanned rumors that the UN peacekeepers were colluding with the rebels.
Several days later, angry civilians stormed the UN compound and threw rocks at the peacekeepers. Unable to calm the crowd, the peacekeepers threw rocks back at the demonstrators, causing several minor injuries.
The scene, broken down to its core elements, is quite ugly. UN peacekeepers, instead of protecting vulnerable civilians from the LRA, are forced to instead defend themselves from the anger of those same civilians. Representatives of the national army, hiding from their own abuses and failure, mislead local leaders to avoid any responsibility. Meanwhile, the LRA continues to rampage.
The chain of responsibility for these failures and the LRA’s continued atrocities stretches far beyond the specific military leaders in Dungu. It stretches to the Congolese and UN military commanders in the country’s capital, who have failed to issue orders to ensure forces are working proactively to protect civilians. It stretches to the world powers – especially the United States – that sit on the UN Security Council and have not provided UN and regional forces with the resources needed to fulfill their responsibility to protect civilians and disarm LRA leaders.
Still, it stretches further. If we – as citizens of a country that is deeply involved in this conflict – are serious about seeing peace, we will have to recognize that the chain of responsibility doesn’t stop in New York or even in Washington DC.
It also embraces each of us, as our united political voice is key to moving our leaders and ending this conflict once and for all.
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"When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers" is a tragically familiar proverb in many African communities, alluding to the collateral damage of war, namely the innocent women and children who are often the most affected by war's evils while benefiting the least, if at all, from its spoils.
As Resolve Uganda seeks to amplify the voice of those affected by this war and effectively contribute toward sustainable peace in the region, we recognize the necessity of listening, documenting, and sharing the stories of those most affected by the LRA and whose active involvement is essential for lasting peace. Paul Ronan, our Director of Advocacy, is spending the next eight weeks traversing central Africa to listen, learn, and document as much as possible in areas most recently affected by the LRA. As he travels, he will be sending back reflections, stories, and photos from the region to our headquarters in DC so that we can in turn share them with you. We invite you to follow his journey as he shares stories "from the trampled grass."