Congo’s Militias Lure Former Rebels From Burundi

By JOSH KRON and JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
The New York Times
August 20, 2009

LUBERIZI, Congo — For Takwita Mungu, like many leftover soldiers from Burundi’s recently ended civil war, it all began with a phone call.

After seven years of bush fighting, and then giving up his gun under a new disarmament program for Burundian rebels, Private Mungu was unemployed, broke and restless. But the militia recruiter on the other end of the phone offered a glittering promise: diamonds, gold and a job fighting for the last bastion of militant Hutuism, in Congo.

“I knew right away,” said Private Mungu, 28, who had agreed to demobilize this past April but said he received neither compensation nor a job, only a shove back into the wilds of civilian life.
According to United Nations and Burundian military officials, Private Mungu is just one of hundreds of former Burundian rebel soldiers who are blazing an illicit trail across rivers and borders to fight for their brethren here in eastern Congo, worsening an already devastating conflict.

The men are joining the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or F.D.L.R., an ethnic Hutu militia based in Congo that is considered one of Africa’s most venomous rebel movements. It was also the target of the recent, joint Congo-Rwanda military offensive intended to finally bring peace to this war-racked region.

For decades, the same ethnic tensions that plunged Rwanda into genocide in 1994 have brought violence to Burundi. The country, whose demographics, economy and history mirror those of Rwanda, has been a relatively forgotten piece of the Hutu-Tutsi saga that has plagued Africa’s Great Lakes Region.

Just as the violence in Rwanda spread beyond its borders, the fighting in Burundi has spilled over into Congo, where militants and their extremist ideologies prey on villages and the minerals beneath them. While a recent peace deal in Burundi has officially ended years of rebellion and bloodshed there, it has disenfranchised many former fighters.

The way Private Mungu describes it, he was a pawn in a veteran Hutu resistance movement, which fought its way to a power-sharing agreement in Burundi in December that granted its members cabinet posts and a slice of the country’s security apparatus.

But most of the jobs went to the top rebel officers, leaving more than 10,000 — from soldiers to schoolteachers — out in the cold. The most fortunate of these received less than $100 in disarmament packages; many, like Private Mungu, say they got nothing. Some have been hired to bolster shaky political parties, and according to a June report by Human Rights Watch, several former fighters have died doing it. Congo has been another option.

Each month, about 40 new Burundian recruits arrive in Luberizi, a sleepy, palm-strewn town just across the Burundi border in Congo, said Safari Ndabachekure, the local F.D.L.R. recruiter.

Many of the Burundian rebels live under the nose of a Congolese Army base nearby. While the two sides are formally at war, politics seem to disappear in Luberizi. Government officials and militia members live side by side in poverty, passing and greeting one another when they are not in the mountains, where the bulk of fighting goes on.

Congo’s laxity with the F.D.L.R. has led Rwanda to invade twice since the mid-1990s. But in January, Congo-Rwanda relations appeared to suddenly flip from enemies to partners, as the two countries agreed to work together to wipe out the Hutu militiamen along the border. But despite the official position of Congo’s government, human rights groups say that Congolese soldiers are still supporting Hutu militiamen, who come from different nations.

Burundian militiamen have been swept into Congo’s battles before. According to United Nations agencies and human rights groups, Burundians were being lured by similar means to Laurent Nkunda, a renegade Tutsi general who wreaked havoc in eastern Congo until he was seized in January. Before that, Burundians fought for another Congolese militia, the Mai Mai. As Burundi’s war has wound down, many of the former rebel soldiers have been willing to kill for whoever pays them, regardless of ethnic allegiances.

“In Burundi, the good life is only for the big person,” said Mr. Safari, the recruiter, who arrived in Congo two years ago. Now he helps orchestrate a circuit through which new arrivals receive temporary shelter, financial assistance and a free weapon.

“The first purpose is to promote the Hutu persons,” he said. “The second is to look for money.”

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo has called the rebel migrations a destabilizing factor, and it said it was Burundian fighters who raided a prison in eastern Congo in April, freeing 220 rebels.

The flow of Burundian fighters into Congo is “definitely a concern,” said Lt. Col. Jean-Paul Dietrich, a spokesman for the United Nations peacekeeping mission, though he said it was limited to a small portion of Burundi’s former combatants.

Several former Burundian soldiers said Congo was a last resort; they do not have a burning desire to return to the bush.

“We are tired of fighting,” said Jean-Pierre Habiyaremye, 28, a former Burundian rebel who has resisted the offers to fight in Congo. “We want to form associations and build with our hands.”
But for his disarmament package, he said he was given $41 and a frying pan, while the Hutu rebels in Congo dangle promises of up to $500 cash. “With money like that,” he said, “it’s easy for them to find people.”

Note:
Josh Kron reported from Luberizi, Congo, and Jeffrey Gettleman from Nairobi, Kenya.

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