Rebels Press Young Men to Join Fight in Congo

Government Side Boosted by Angola As Conflict Festers

KIBATI, Congo, Nov. 12 -- In the past few days, a new category of displaced people has begun arriving at this muddy, sprawling camp in the green hills of eastern Congo: young men who say they are running from rebels who bang down their doors at night and force them to join their cause.

"I ran away with about 20 others my age," said Christophe Maombi, 27, who fled his rebel-held village of Rugari when he said rebels tried to march him into the bush. "There are so many weapons there. If they see a young boy, they just give him a weapon and tell him to fight."

Rebel leaders dismissed the accusations as "propaganda" from pro-government militiamen.

The young men who have fled, however, said a campaign of forced recruitment has begun in a swath of territory that rebels seized two weeks ago in a major offensive that sent the ragtag Congolese army into a humiliating retreat to this area just north of the provincial city of Goma.

Since then, Congolese President Joseph Kabila has refused to negotiate directly with the rebel leader, renegade Gen. Laurent Nkunda, a cultish figure known here simply as "The Chairman" who has vowed to fight all the way to Kinshasa, the capital.

Now it seems both sides are beefing up their forces however they can.

On Wednesday, Angola announced that it was sending troops to Congo to help Kabila, raising fears that the fighting could spawn a wider conflict similar to the one that devastated the region from 1998 to 2002. That fighting eventually involved more than six countries in a mad scramble for diamonds, gold, copper, tin and other minerals and came to be called Africa's World War.

At the moment, less than a quarter-mile separates government soldiers from the rebels along a gravel road leading out of this town, a stretch of banana trees and bushes where soldiers loiter in front of abandoned houses and lie in the grass with rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

Fighting broke out Tuesday night between the two sides, an hour or two of machine-gun fire and bomb blasts, according to locals. In the morning, the bodies of two government soldiers lay across the road on the rebel side like gruesome roadblocks.

"If they come again, we'll beat them, as usual," boasted a rebel posted nearby.

The rebels, meanwhile, are consolidating control over their new territory, setting up local administrations and holding "sensitization meetings" with villagers.

At one session Friday in Rugari, the rebel administrator called on all men ages 15 to 40 to join the rebel army, said Maombi and two other men who attended and eventually fled.