Investigates democracy and justice in Congo

...In 1994, Lake 34 n DISSENT / Winter 2007 POLITICS ABROAD Kivu was clogged with tens of thousands of corpses dumped there because the genocide graves were overflowing in western Rwanda...

...Of course the world owes Congo dearly . . . .From colonialism right up to ignoring the recent conflict, the world has failed this country...

...ARRIVING IN GOMA, I found hundreds of people huddled against the barbed-wire fence around the airport, watching as soldiers from the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (known by its French acronym, MONUC) loaded three huge cargo planes...

...With Zachary Kaufman, he is co-editor of the forthcoming book After Genocide: Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Reconciliation in Rwanda and Beyond...

...This was clear when, nine hours after arriving back in Goma on February 9, 2006, I received a phone call from Michel, a merchant in Rutshuru...

...It will be a long time before they come back now...

...There was no trouble...

...An elderly man on a farm beside Lake Kivu, several miles from Bukavu, summed up the response of many South Kivutiens, and Congolese generally: Kabila tells us that he can bring us peace...

...Since late 2004, FARDC factions have fought each other throughout eastern Congo...

...Given Congo's strategic importance, bordered by ten countries in the heart of Africa, these are not merely questions for the nation but for the Great Lakes region and the continent as a whole...

...Conflicts over citizenship and land—especially land owned by Banyamulenge "foreigners"— still dominate South Kivu...

...The Belgian colonials plundered the Congo's wealth of ivory and rubber, while millions of Congolese died on the plantations and in the construction of Belgian railways...

...Government forces and rebel groups continue to kill and maim civilians, while Nkunda's troops commit daily atrocities in North Kivu...

...Many of these Russians have worked in Congo for thirty years, since the height of the cold war struggle between the superpowers for strategic influence in Central Africa...

...In fact, bringing democracy to such countries is invariably destabilizing...

...A follow-up report by the same panel in 2003 alleged that up to eightyfive multinational companies, including De Beers and Anglo-American, were involved in the systematic looting of Congo's resources...

...Kabila's twenty-nine-yearold son Joseph succeeded him as president and began to establish closer ties with Western donors and improve prospects for political transition in Congo...

...Voter turnout across the country for the presidential and National Assembly elections in July was high—around 75 percent—and international observers reported only isolated cases of voting irregularities and violence near polling stations...

...The planes are leaving because there's another rebellion in the north," he said...

...The population later rebuilt the town out of the volcanic rock that had destroyed it...

...In October 2006, the Control Arms Campaign published findings that small arms and bullets manufactured in the United States, Russia, China, Greece, Serbia, and South Africa are being diverted through third countries into the hands of rebels in Ituri, in violation of a 2003 UN embargo on the export of small arms to Congo...

...Both the EU reforms and the ICC have so far focused on one province, Ituri...

...The ethnic tensions in the town, however, mirror those in North Kivu...

...Michel described the scene from the streets where I had walked only hours before: It was about 4 o'clock [in the afternoon], when it was still light...

...Nonetheless, the FDLR continues to attack Tutsi civilians in eastern Congo and western Rwanda...

...In December 2002, an agreement signed in Sun City South Africa, created a Congolese transitional government, comprising Kabila as president and four vice presidents, including two from rebel groups operating in eastern Congo...

...A man claiming to be from the Ugandan capital, Kampala, sat next to me...

...You can't trust anyone with a gun...

...We worry that the rebels will come back and in the meantime the government kills our people too...

...MONUC is the largest UN peacekeeping mission ever assembled, with 17,000 soldiers and police officers, operating— in a rarity for a UN mission—under a Chapter VII mandate that permits them to use force to protect civilians and UN staff...

...In eastern Congo, there is little evidence to support this claim...

...Kabila's rebel alliance disintegrated, as his association with Rwanda in particular began to hurt him politically, and Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda failed to receive the remuneration they expected for helping him topple Mobutu...

...Many Banyamulenge also do not trust Nkunda or the RCD to protect their interests by military or political means...

...Kabila made two lengthy visits to Bukavu in December 2005 and February 2006, to tell the population of South Kivu that a vote for the PPRD was a vote for peace and stability...

...0 N MY FINAL night in Rutshuru, as I sat eating in a small bar on the edge of the town, I witnessed firsthand the mechanics of the illegal resource trade...

...The air is thick with black dust and ash...

...Much of the recent violence in North and South Kivu constitutes an attempt by Nkunda and the Rwandan-sponsored RCD to shore up military and political power before the elections are over...

...Despite the grand claims of donor countries and legal officials, such judicial reforms have had little effect on the overall conflict situation in eastern Congo...

...The AFDL overran Mobutu's forces, capturing Kinshasa in May 1997...

...POLITICS ABROAD Although the July vote eventually occurred peacefully, the greater concern was always its aftermath...

...CONGO IS NOT only experiencing massive political upheaval and violence...

...They arrive on the hills with cattle and money from Rwanda...

...Joseph Kabila won the presidential election from a field of thirty-three candidates but without an outright majority, requiring a runoff in October between Kabila and his nearest rival, Bemba, one of the rebel leaders...

...In January 2001, Laurent Kabila was assassinated by one of his bodyguards...

...THE CEASE-FIRE changed the political and military landscape in eastern Congo but did not halt the violence...

...The elections and the shifting power dynamics they generate often exacerbate existing tensions...

...However, more fundamental change—addressing problems of citizenship, ethnicity, land ownership, the theft of natural resources, and the weapons trade—is required before peace is possible and political and judicial institutions can operate effectively...

...Victims of mass violence in other provinces, especially North and South Kivu and Katanga, wonder if justice will ever arrive...

...At least four overcrowded boats have sunk in these waters in 2006, each killing hundreds of people...

...The weakness of the entire Congolese judicial system led President Kabila in 2004 to refer the most serious crimes in the country to the ICC...

...The entire aviation industry of eastern Congo is a graveyard of ex-Soviet machinery: Russian pilots fly dilapidated Russian planes, bouncing between red-dirt airstrips controlled by their pock-faced compatriots...

...On November 15, 2006, Kabila was declared the winner of the presidential election, with 58 percent of the vote, a result Bemba has contested unsuccessfully in the Supreme Court...

...Bukavu, provincial capital of South Kivu, is Goma's sister town at the southern end of Lake Kivu...

...It is unclear, however, how effectively the Bunia judiciary can deal with serious human rights violations, such as the crimes committed by government troops and Ituri rebels...

...The volatility of the preelection period in Congo was clear in early February 2006, when I traveled to Rutshuru, sixty kilometers north of Goma...

...In Bunia since 2003, one of MONUC's key functions has been to assist the EU's judicial reforms by providing around-the-clock protection to all judges...

...Judges now feel they can do their job without fear of intimidation...

...They claim the ICC is focusing on Lubanga's lesser crimes to ensure a quick trial and conviction, thus giving the newly created ICC an early judicial "success...

...Women and children ran into the bush...

...I asked one man what was happening on the tarmac...

...dollars reforming the Congolese judiciary...

...We fear the government forces now as much as the rebels," said an elderly man standing in a maize field several kilometers from Rutshuru...

...A fragile peace was achieved in late 1993 but collapsed after the arrival of more than one million Hutu refugees in mid-1994, fleeing the advance of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the predominantly Tutsi rebel force that ended the genocide of Rwandan Tutsi...

...Large numbers of ex-interahamwe and other Hutu rebels—many of whom combined to form the Forces Democratiques de la Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) toward the end of the second continental war in 2000—greatly concern the RPF, the Tutsi-dominated ruling party in Rwanda...

...In July 1999, Kabila secured a cease-fire signed in Lusaka, Zambia, by Congo...

...DISSENT / Winter 2007 • 35...

...In 2002, Nyiragongo erupted, engulfing parts of Goma in lava and forcing the town's hundred thousand inhabitants to flee across the nearby border to Rwanda...

...dollars for the logistics, making the elections the most expensive in history...

...Violence in Ituri and elsewhere in the east has escalated...

...We queued for hours after walking since before dawn...

...His fear that the rebels would return stemmed from events on January 18, 2006, when dissident RCD troops led by General Laurent Nkunda, a Tutsi from North Kivu, attacked government forces and captured six towns around Rutshuru...

...Postponed six times in two years, presidential POLITICS ABROAD and National Assembly elections eventually took place in July 2006...

...As long as Congo, Africa, and the international community fail to confront the sources of conflict, however, that creativity will serve only to rebuild again and again what has been destroyed, rather than to construct a new and vibrant nation...

...The Banyamulenge are a trapped, persecuted people, originally from Rwanda and Burundi, from which many of them fled generations ago, before the colonial era, for political and economic reasons...

...We have a different philosophy and energy for justice...

...It's a great day for Congo" With the optimism, however, came anxiety, especially in the east, where distrust of politicians is rife after decades of corruption...

...In January 2006, eight Guatemalan MONUC peacekeepers were murdered in Garamba National Park, 350 kilometers north of Bunia, it is suspected by the Lord's Resistance Army, the rebel group that has terrorized northern Uganda for twenty years and, since late 2005, operated from bases in northeastern Congo...

...Rwanda is not alone in profiting hugely from this natural wealth...

...This follows a century of ruthless exploitation of people and natural resources since King Leopold II of Belgium fixed the borders of "the Congo" in 1885...

...However, many Congolese remain fearful of the foreign troops sent to protect them...

...The crammed minibus jolted along red dirt roads, past the dark hulk of Mount Nyiragongo, cutting through forests of yellowflowered acacia and banana palms...

...After several minutes' conversation, he told me that in his hotel room he had a small stash of diamonds that he wanted delivered to a merchant in Ituri province, in northeastern Congo...

...A Munyamulenge member of the National Assembly told me in Kinshasa, "Nkunda tries to rally the people around the cause of protecting the rights of the Banyamulenge, but many people don't trust him...

...We want to be able to work on our farms...

...A local human rights worker, whom I expected to support rights for minorities, instead voiced common prejudices against them: The Banyamulenge are a big problem here...

...The elections are as much for the West as 32 n DISSENT / Winter 2007 they are for the Congolese...

...At some points, Lake Kivu is narrow enough that it is possible to see Congo on one bank, lined by thick, green jungle, and Rwanda on the other, with only a stretch of steamy, gray water separating two of Africa's most volatile countries...

...As conflict rages, Congo confronts questions fraught enough during peacetime: Can a highly fragmented state of 250 ethnic groups, with a long history of violence, corruption, and extreme poverty, embrace democracy and create effective political institutions...

...Kabila's three regional allies who had joined the war in August 1998 (Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe...

...A few were killed...

...Hundreds of civilians were killed, and around seventy thousand people, mainly from the Hunde and Nande groups, were displaced to other parts of North Kivu and across the border into Uganda...

...Some of the most brutal violence in Congo has occurred in Ituri since 2003, when Hema and Lendu militias, seeking greater control over land and minerals, attacked each other's communities, killing thousands of civilians and displacing more than five hundred thousand people into Uganda and across eastern Congo...

...Such stories are legion in eastern Congo, as individual wheelers and dealers— as well as multinational corporations— profit from the theft of Congolese minerals...

...We have heard this all before, these promises of peace...

...Meanwhile, in the province of South Kivu, members of the interahamwe (Rwandan Hutu militias trained to kill Tutsi during the genocide), Mobutu's army, and the local population that had adopted the anti-Tutsi rhetoric of North Kivu killed thousands of South Kivu Tutsi, known as Banyamulenge...

...The RCD refused to sign the agreement...

...Furthermore, the international community continues to actively support the violence...

...This move has helped increase the effectiveness of the Bunia judiciary...

...They take jobs and land and they get posts in the government . . . .There are many minorities here in South Kivu, so I don't know why we must always talk about protecting the Banyamulenge . .Are the Banyamulenge really even a minority...

...Can Kabila give us all this...

...The West's emphasis on democracy and justice has so far failed to address these central causes of conflict...

...The PPRD is forming alliances with minor parties, including the Union des Democrates Mobutistes (UDEMO), led by one of Mobutu's sons, Francois, ahead of the coming Senate and provincial elections...

...Can we believe anyone when it's the same voices telling us peace will come...

...We've poured resources into this country and now we can't miss this opportunity...

...and Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda...

...Another rebellion" could be the title of the last decade of greed and ethnic hatred in eastern Congo, involving a host of local, regional, and international actors...

...Thousands of Hutu refugees were still armed and, with the help of Congolese Hutu, began killing local Tutsi, thus transporting the ideology of the Rwandan genocide to Zaire...

...They have never wanted to integrate in South Kivu ....The focus on the Banyamulenge is a form of discrimination, pure and simple...

...Regional solutions that address the role of foreign governments and rebels, especially from Uganda and Rwanda, in Congolese conflict are crucial to achieving peace and stability...

...Because the Tutsi minority constitutes a tiny voting bloc across Congo, a major concern for Nkunda is the impact the elections will have on Tutsi representation in the national and regional governments and therefore Tutsi influence in Congo generally...

...South Kivu suffers from antagonisms between "indigenous" Congolese and those whom they consider "foreign," particularly the minority Banyamulenge, who live mainly in the high plateaus of the province...

...Uncertainty also surrounds the makeup of the Congolese Parliament after Kabila's Partie du Peuple pour la Reconstruction et la Democratic (PPRD) failed to win an absolute majority in the National Assembly...

...In July 1994, Mount Nyiragongo erupted, spewing lava into the camps...

...Consequently, many Banyamulenge leaders are negotiating new political alliances, including with Kabila's PPRD...

...Kabila installed himself as president and renamed the country the Democratic Republic of Congo...

...A deal in early 1993 between Mobutu and Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, which allowed Banyarwanda (particularly Hutu) to take over territories around the towns of Walikale and Masisi in western North Kivu, sparked interethnic violence that has since continued across eastern Congo...

...Maybe they will never come back...

...THE FINAL LEG of my journey took me down Lake Kivu to Bukavu, weaving between tiny island villages encircled by banana palms...

...The international community's desire to bring democracy to Congo does not directly confront the problems of ethnicity and avarice...

...Most eastern Congolese feel neglected by their leaders in Kinshasa, many of whom, given the region's seemingly perpetual violence, would like to forget it altogether...

...DISSENT / Winter 2007 29 POLITICS ABROAD After Belgium granted the Congo independence in 1960, national leaders inherited a fragile country...

...I gently declined, and the man disappeared into the darkness...

...Human rights groups often argue that holding perpetrators accountable for their crimes helps deter future criminals and thus contributes to general peace and stability...

...With approximately ten thousand fighters operating in North Kivu and around three thousand in South Kivu, the FDLR is too small and disorganized to pose a serious regional threat...

...Capitalizing on the state's weakness, General Joseph-Desire Mobutu seized control of the Congo in 1965, declared himself president, and in 1971 renamed the country Zaire...

...Many observers expected Tshisekedi's supporters to disrupt the polls...

...The people running were those who had stayed behind after the attacks in January...

...A further issue for both the ICC and the EU is that neither has so far extended its legal work beyond Ituri...

...The report implicated several high-ranking Rwandan and Ugandan political and military officials in the illicit trade of minerals...

...He told me that three hours earlier Nkunda's troops came out of their camps in the hills and attacked the town, killing several civilians...

...The violence also serves Kabila's purposes, as anti-Tutsi sentiment fomented by Nkunda's attacks has increased his support among non-Banyarwanda...

...PHIL CLARK is a postdoctoral fellow at the Transitional Justice Institute, University of Ulster...

...Nothing has been done to hold perpetrators of these economic crimes accountable and to stop the trade of Congolese minerals on Western markets...

...He drove the Zairian population into abject poverty, while manipulating issues of nationality and ethnicity, especially between indigenous Congolese and Banyarwanda, in order to divide and rule...

...In the 1930s and 1940s, the colonials forcibly moved hundreds of thousands of Banyarwanda (people of Rwandan descent) to North Kivu and Katanga to fulfill a demand for cheap labor...

...The [military and political] officials didn't interfere with us...

...On the day of the elections, a North Kivu farmer told me on the phone from Goma, "The people are very excited to be voting for the first time...

...We arrived to find Rutshuru filled with troops from the Forces Armees de la Republique Democratique du Congo (FARDC), the government forces comprising former rebels who, under the terms of the Sun City agreement, have been integrated from groups that have spent years fighting each other, including former vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba's Mouvement pour la Liberation du Congo (MLC) and the RCD...

...We want food, clean water and clothing for our families and to send our children to school...

...Can individuals responsible for committing atrocities be held accountable...

...The international community, which ignored the plight of the hundreds of thousands of Tutsi being butchered, responded by pouring humanitarian aid into the refugee camps, in the process strengthening many of the genocidaires...

...Wedged between volcanic Mount Nyiragongo and Lake Kivu, Goma is a moonscape of craggy, black rock...

...DISSENT / Winter 2007 n 33 POLITICS ABROAD Chris Aberi, the state prosecutor in Bunia, told me, "We have a different working spirit [in the judicial sector] in Ituri now because of the EU's involvement here...

...Fueling distrust and fear, many of the electoral candidates are leaders of rebel groups still busy fighting each other...

...They see him as part of the problem, part of the reason the fighting continues...

...In the last decade, around three million Congolese have been killed by violence between government and rebel forces from seven African countries and by conflict-related disease and deprivation...

...Three key developments brought me back to eastern Congo in early 2006 after several years away: rapidly changing patterns of violence in the region, the buildup to Congo's historic first elections since independence, and new attempts to bring perpetrators of mass crimes to justice...

...He is the author of a forthcoming report, "Doing Justice during Conflict: the International Criminal Court, Transitional Justice and Reconciliation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda," Open Society Justice Initiative...

...The ICC has charged Lubanga with three counts of war crimes: enlisting children under the age of fifteen years, conscripting them to the armed forces of the UPC, and using them to participate actively in hostilities...

...renewed efforts are also underway to bring perpetrators of mass crimes to justice...

...After two years of investigations, in March 2006 the ICC transferred to The Hague its first-ever suspect, Thomas Lubanga, leader of the Hema-dominated Union des Patriotes Congolais (UPC), a rebel group accused of committing mass atrocities in Ituri...

...The recently-built Mango Airlines branch stands beside the abandoned Congo Airways office, buried to within a few feet of its roof, both surrounded by rusty skeletons of destroyed warehouses...

...Congo was soon plunged into a second continental war...

...In contrast to Goma's moonscape, Bukavu is built on bougainvillea-lined hills, with eucalyptus trees running down to the water's edge...

...The agreement provided for a two-year transition, during which the government would disarm and integrate all warring parties and prepare for national elections...

...As long as the West ignores this arms trade, conflict in Congo and across Africa will rage on...

...Rwanda also supports RCD as a means to control the mineral-rich eastern provinces...

...In the process, they have committed atrocities against civilians, including mass murder and rape...

...GOMA, PROVINCIAL capital of North Kivu and the second-largest town in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), lies at the heart of the world's most destructive conflict since the Second World War...

...Today, Goma is an equatorial Atlantis, halfsubmerged in hardened lava...

...Sometimes the plane flew so low that it seemed it would hit the trees...

...The protracted voting period means Congo will probably be without an effective government until the middle of 2007...

...THE CURRENT SITUATION in Congo shows that bringing democracy and justice to war-torn countries is often more meaningful for the givers than for the recipients...

...That the Banyamulenge— like the Tutsi minority in North Kivu—will lose much of their local and national political influence after the elections causes them great concern...

...Although the arrest of Lubanga highlights the plight of the thousands of child soldiers in Congo, many Congolese are angry that the ICC has not charged Lubanga with more serious crimes, including the mass murder, rape, mutilation, and torture for which the UPC is notorious...

...He was willing DISSENT / Winter 2007 n 31 POLITICS ABROAD to pay a hefty sum for the mission, and a foreign researcher, he said, was the perfect courier...

...And can democracy and justice contribute to a stable, vibrant nation in the long term...

...Now we can help get Congo back on its feet...

...Bunia is now stable for the first time in many years, due mainly to the presence of thousands of MONUC troops in the town...

...MONUC's reputation among the population in eastern Congo has improved in the last eighteen months, as it has often successfully separated belligerents and restored order, if only for short periods...

...Two days after the first round of election results was announced, Kabila's and Bemba's forces battled each other in the streets of Kinshasa, until MONUC and EU troops drove them apart...

...Combatants committed rape, mutilation, and cannibalism, instilling fear throughout the civilian population In mid-February 2006, I flew from Goma to Bunia, the largest town in Ituri, in a twinengine, sixteen-seater Russian plane that the hot, swirling winds over the jungle tossed about like a child's balloon...

...Polls for the Senate and provincial governors and deputies are slated for December 2006 and January 2007, respectively...

...Rwanda has two primary motivations for its continued presence in the country: ethnicity and greed...

...Recently, the replacement of many South African, Moroccan, and Uruguayan MONUC soldiers—those most regularly accused of committing crimes—with Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Nepalese, and Guatemalan peacekeepers has helped improve MONUC's image...

...As the international community is learning much too late in Iraq, organizing elections is not a panacea to the ills of societies wracked by mass violence and corrupt political institutions...

...Many Rwandan and Congolese Tutsi interpreted this as divine retribution against the Hutu...

...They started shooting at a hotel in the main street, because there was a rumor that a meeting of [non-Banyarwanda] community leaders was going on there...

...Since Sun City, the prospect of elections has fueled mass violence across eastern Congo...

...In 2002, a UN Expert Panel published a report detailing the pillage of resources by armed groups operating throughout eastern Congo...

...Since July 2003, the EU has spent more than forty million U.S...

...The EU sent troops to reinforce MONUC and increase security in the lead-up to the vote...

...As Congolese go to the ballot boxes, ethnic antagonisms fester and the plunder of national resources, from which the Congolese population sees little benefit, continues...

...Even the volcano, though, could not stop the violence...

...Bolstering hopes for justice, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in June 2004 launched investigations into crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide in Congo...

...Many of them soon returned to Goma, where lava still steamed in the streets...

...The population lives and works above the lava-line, in the upper stories of buildings damaged by the volcano and new buildings constructed on the surface...

...After so many years of war, we are desperate for peace here...

...Kabila's former allies remained in Congo and plundered the country's mineral wealth, often through rebel proxies such as the Rwandan-created Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratic (RCD), which attacked Goma, Bukavu, and Uvira, the largest towns in the Kivus, in August 1998...

...They were firing at anyone . . . .People were running with their belongings on their heads . . . . Some people were hurt...

...pLANNING FOR Congo's elections has been a huge undertaking, involving registering twenty-six million voters in a country the size of Western Europe, with only five hundred kilometers of paved roads and almost no electricity...

...The conflict-ridden east therefore drives the national economy...

...People were very calm...

...We've waited years and endured so much to get to this point...

...Focusing Kinshasa's attention, though, is the fact that eastern Congo possesses some of the most abundant natural resources on earth, including gold, diamonds, copper, cobalt, tin, and 80 percent of the world's coltan (the primary mineral used in the manufacture of mobile phones...

...In August and September 1996, a Banyamulenge uprising, backed primarily by the Rwandan government and supported by Burun30 n DISSENT / Winter 2007 di and Uganda—which all had grievances against Mobutu and were deeply concerned by the growing insecurity in eastern Zaire—led to the formation of the Alliance des Forces Democratiques pour la Liberation du Congo/Zaire (AFDL), whose spokesman was LaurentDesire Kabila...

...The attack highlighted the regional dimension of violence in Congo, with fighting flowing across national borders...

...An EU official in Kinshasa told me, "These elections absolutely must go ahead and they must go ahead peacefully and fairly...

...Military analysts in Nairobi told me in July that in the previous eighteen months a new "cattle corridor" of small arms has opened from north and northeast Africa—particularly Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia—flowing through central countries such as Sudan and Congo and westward into Nigeria and Cote d'Ivoire...

...The population that rebuilt Goma out of the same volcanic rock that destroyed it displayed the resilience and ingenuity of the Congolese people...

...The international community, led by the UN and the European Union (EU), provided nearly five hundred million U.S...

...In the territory of Walungu of South Kivu alone, it is estimated that twelve thousand women, mostly Banyarwanda, have been raped since 2002...

...We hear many people have been killed...

...I don't know...

...Furthermore, one of the leading opposition candidates, Etienne Tshisekedi, a longtime critic of Mobutu and both Kabilas, boycotted the elections, accusing the government of deliberate delays in the buildup...

...Mobutu, supported by the West as a bulwark against communism in Central Africa, created a vast kleptocracy, amassing personal wealth and bankrupting the state...

...The UN and EU proclaimed the elections a remarkable success...

...diplomats everywhere exhaled audibly...

...That most of the planes also date from that era explains why air crashes in eastern Congo are extremely common...

...Holding elections and prosecuting perpetrators of mass crimes are laudable goals...

...The EU has funded the purchase of new judicial offices and equipment and provided training and salaries for investigators and magistrates...

...During the first five years of MONUC's operation, beginning in 1999, its troops were implicated in crimes against civilians, including the rape of Congolese women and children...

...MONUC's protection has helped greatly as well...