Is Irish aid indirectly helping to fund the slaughter in the Congo? Declan Walsh reports from Bunia
Bunia, northeastern Congo's capital, is famous for its villains. During last month's battle, drug-crazed militiamen butchered women and children in the streets. Some child soldiers led the atrocities. In a few cases cannibal fighters cut out their enemies' hearts and ate them.
Less famous are Bunia's quiet heroes. Early on a Sunday morning, two of them swung their hoes furiously into the chocolate-orange soil, hacking open a narrow grave. Sweat streaming downs their faces, Dieudonne and Montana paused to rest. Across town, an emergency force of French soldiers was landing at the airport. By their feet lay the latest victim of violence, a naked corpse sprawled in the corner of a beanfield. The air was heavy with chlorine and the whiff of rotting flesh.
The dead man had been shot and hacked to death. With a grunt, they twisted the man's arms into a black plastic shroud and heaved him into the grave, the 475th body buried by the local Red Cross in exactly one month. As often, his name was unknown.
They had seen it all, said Dieudonne, a former teacher: corpses with their heads hacked off, burned alive, slit from neck to stomach, eaten by both animal and human. "One man was bound with rope and had his heart removed," he said with a shrug.
At the height of the killing, packs of roaming dogs fed off the decaying corpses scattered on the streets. Sometimes pigs and ducks joined in. Bunia became a city of sated dogs. "But some got sick and died. Then we had to bury them too," he said, a grim smile crossing his face.
The unpaid Red Cross volunteers brave death, as well as cleaning up its mess. Four of their colleagues have been murdered, two in the previous month. "If we don't do this, who will?" said Montana. "But yes, it is a terrible job. We have had to develop hearts of stone." Of all the mini-wars tearing the Democratic Republic of Congo apart, the conflict in the northeastern Ituri district is the most intensely hate-filled.
For four years militia from the rival Hema and Lendu tribes have attacked one another. The violence is inflicted with maximum prejudice - at first with traditional spears, machetes and poison-tipped arrrows, more recently with AK-47 submachineguns.
The French-led rapid reaction force aims to halt the ethnic slaughter. It started deploying three weeks ago and, so far, the results appear impressive. Although only half of the 1,500 troops have landed, they have already established control of the volatile town.
Ragged local fighters, swinging battered AK-47s, used to bullying and stealing for a living, now find themselves faced with patrols of well-equipped French soldiers. On Tuesday, two drunken rebels opened fire on French soldiers; within minutes, they were shot dead. The following day, the French declared Bunia a weapons-free zone and the local Hema militia were sent packing to camps outside town.
"We're on the right track," said Col Gerard Dubois, spokesman for the international force.
But is this really success? The French-led mission, which ends in just two months' time, has modest goals. It is confined to Bunia town, with its airport, UN installation and thousands of frightened refugees. But Ituri's worst atrocities - where entire villages have been razed, and hundreds slaughtered - take place in the hills and vales of the surrounding countryside. There, the violence rages unchecked.
"Limited objectives have produced limited success. From the beginning we knew it would make little difference," says Francois Grignon, analyst with the International Crisis Group.
The mission has also put Ireland's indirect role under scrutiny. By donating millions of euro every year to Uganda - which is fanning the fighting - is Irish aid helping to fuel the slaughter? Last month's massacre in Bunia made international news, but it surprised nobody in Ituri. The Hema-Lendu conflict has been tripping forward for four years now, and at least 50,000 people have died in a stream of spectacular massacres. Nearly all were ignored by the outside world.
For example, last September, an estimated 1,200 people were slaughtered in Nyankunde village, close to Bunia. Over one month, drug-crazed fighters torched houses, disembowelled pregnant women and hacked hospital patients in their beds.
Cannibalism has added a dark twist to the brutality. During an attack on Mambasa village last December, combatants from the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) faction forced family members to cook body parts of slain relatives, then eat them. In Bunia, a Belgian priest saw a Lendu fighter sporting a kidney around his neck.
Around the same time, two UN military observers, a Jordanian major and a Malawian captain, were abducted in Mongbwalu, a gold mining centre to the west. When their corpses were recovered five days later, colleagues found they had been tortured, shot and their sexual organs were cut off.
But it was another UN disaster that finally sparked western interest in Ituri. During the battle for Bunia, 700 Uruguayan peacekeepers stayed at base while the cries of slaughter rang out around them. Their numbers and narrow mandate dictated so, they said.
The embarrassment made a mockery of the UN mission to Congo, and prompted the French-led deployment, which is authorised by the UN but organised by the EU. In contrast with the Uruguayans, the French have orders to shoot to kill if necessary.
The Ituri bloodbath is much more than a tribal conflict. The Hema and Lendu, sometimes compared to Rwanda's Tutsis and Hutus, lived together in peace for generations. Village elders quickly resolved occasional clashes over land or power. But when Uganda invaded Congo in 1998, guns and greed entered the equation.
Ugandan officers armed the Hema at first, then the Lendu, in a shameless drive to cement their hold on power. For some, the goal was Congo's fabled natural wealth. In every direction from Bunia, riches lie buried under the ground. To the west is the world's largest gold reserve, the Kilo-Moto. Further out, towards Kisangani, diamonds. To the east, under Lake Albert and the Semliki River valley, quantities of untapped oil. A Canadian-British firm, Heritage Oil, has already signed an exploration agreement with the Ugandan and Congolese governments.
A number of UN reports on the illegal exploitation of the Congo have fingered senior Ugandan officials - including the former army chief of staff and the President's family - as wartime looters. This stained record has sparked a debate about Ireland's relationship with the Ugandan government.
Ireland is donating about €32 million annually in aid to Uganda, most of it through President Yoweri Museveni's government. This week John O'Shea of Goal, a long-time Museveni critic, told an Oireachtas committee they money must be cut off.
The Irish government, he says, "is so desperate for success in Africa that it is prepared to use international aid as a brush to sweep the excesses of these tyrants under the carpet". Irish officials in Uganda counter that safeguards ensure aid money is spent on reducing poverty and not guns. But analysts agree with O'Shea that donors must demand immediate changes. "Donors should send the message that this is not acceptable. The pressure should be heavy and sustained. There is no other way," says Francois Grignon of ICG. While the Ugandan army officially pulled out of Congo last month, he added, it is still covertly supporting four armed factions, both Hema and Lendu.
For now, Ituri's fragile hopes for peace lie with the French. Although Bunia has apparently been demilitarised, killing, rape and abduction continue on the town's doorstep. On Thursday morning, aid worker Dr Nigel Pearson was driving a young boy with a gunshot wound to hospital.
Speaking from his car, he said the shooting took place just two kilometres from the airport where French troops are camped. "A lot of terrible things are happening outside town, but we can hardly leave our compound," he said.
In September, the French will hand over to 3,800 Bangladeshi soldiers. If they have a strong enough mandate, the mission could bring peace to Ituri and set an example for unravelling the entire war, says Grignon.
"The international community has a chance to make a difference. Ituri is a first step to see how it can work."