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For Tutsis of Eastern Congo, Protector, Exploiter or Both?
Renegade Gen. Laurent Nkunda says he is protecting eastern Congo's minority Tutsis, but U.N. officials accuse him of creating a humanitarian crisis in the war-devastated region.
(By Stephanie Mccrummen -- The Washington Post)
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Among Kabila's anti-Mobutu forces at the time was a young, Rwandan-trained intelligence officer named Laurent Nkunda, a Tutsi who had lost members of his family in ethnic clashes.
After the Rwandan invasion, anti-Tutsi sentiment ran high. One politician gave a speech urging Congolese people to "exterminate the vermin," referring to Tutsis. And Kabila, after overthrowing Mobutu, turned on his Rwandan backers, arming the genocidal Hutu militiamen to fight them.
One of the century's bloodiest wars followed, with nine African nations eventually engaged in a mad scramble for eastern Congo's abundant mineral riches. Some researchers have estimated that at least 4 million people died during the war years, mostly from disease, hunger and the collapse of human services associated with the fighting.
Although a peace agreement was signed in 2004, militia groups have continued to plague eastern Congo, including at least 6,000 Rwandan Hutu militiamen who were never disarmed.
By now, some of them have blended into village life, starting farms and marrying Congolese women. Others, however, have remained organized under genocidal leaders in the thick eastern forests, living off whatever they can pillage from the local residents they routinely terrorize.
"The root causes of the wars in eastern Congo have never been solved," said Jason Stearns, an analyst with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. "The problem of the Tutsis and of the Rwandan Hutus has not been addressed."
The continued presence of the Hutu militias provided Nkunda with a cause.
In 2005, the general refused an order by the Congolese army to deploy to another area of the country and officially became a renegade.
His argument: The Tutsis of eastern Congo needed his protection.
For a while, Nkunda had the support of Rwanda, which considered his forces a necessary bulwark against Hutu militiamen. Though Rwanda says it no longer supports him, its sympathy for Nkunda's activities borders on justification.
"Rwanda cannot establish a relationship with such a person, but we can understand why Nkunda is Nkunda," Rwandan Foreign Minister Charles Murigande said in an interview. "We can understand his argument."
Armed with a sense of righteousness fortified by visiting American evangelical Christian groups, Nkunda has in recent months been carrying out attacks against village after village.
