Ituri conflict

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Ituri Conflict
Part of the Second Congo War
Tche Refugees Camp, Ituri
Date 1999– (as of 2006) Location Democratic Republic of the Congo Result Ongoing violence
Combatants
Lendu tribe, Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI)	Hema tribe, Uganda, Union of Congolese Patriots, RCD-K
Commanders
Etienne Lona (FNI)	James Kazini (UDPF)
Casualties
Civilians killed: 60,000 (estimation as of Nov. 2006)[1]

The Ituri conflict was a conflict between the agriculturalist Lendu and pastoralist Hema ethnic groups in the Ituri region of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which lasted from 1999 to 2006. The conflict become vastly complicated by the presence of various armed groups who participated in the Second Congo War, the large amount of small arms in the region, a scramble for the area's abundant natural resources, and the ethnic tensions of the surrounding region. The Lendu were largely led by the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI) while the Hema were led by the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC). More than 50,000 people were killed in the conflict and hundreds of thousands forced from their homes.

Contents 1 Background 2 Course of the conflict 2.1 UPDF's Ituri province created 2.2 Temporary cessation of hostilities 2.3 Renewed fighting 2.4 Ethnic tension and rivalry 2.5 Child soldiers 2.6 Forced labour 2.7 MONUC losses 2.8 Foreign collusion 2.9 May agreement (2006) 3 Aftermath 4 Notes 5 External links

[edit] Background

Ethnic tension between the Lendu and Hema trace back to colonial days. The Belgian colonialists favored the Hema, resulting in education and wealth disparities between the two. This divergence continued into modern times. Despite this, the two peoples have, for the most part, lived together peacefully, practicing extensive intermarriage. While the northern Hema speak Lendu, the southern Hema continue to speak Hema.

The Hema and Lendu also have longstanding grievances about land issues, that erupted into conflict on at least three previous occasions in 1972, 1985 and 1996. Much of the animosity revolves around the 1973 land use law, which allows people to buy land they do not inhabit, and then force the residents to leave two years later when ownership can no longer be legally contested. Unscrupulous use of the law forced families to leave their homes because they were unaware it had been bought by someone else. Some Hema were apparently attempting to take land from Lendu using this tactic in 1999.

The 1994 Rwandan genocide sent psychological shockwaves throughout the Great Lakes region. The murder of 800 000 people on the basis of ethnicity served to make people even more aware of their tribal and linguistic affiliation. The subsequent influx of Hutu refugees into the region, which led to the First Congo War served as further emphasis. However, it was not until the Second Congo War, which began in 1998, that the situation between the Hema and Lendu reached the level of regional conflict. Much of the northern DRC, including Orientale province, was occupied and under the nominal control of the invading Uganda People's Defense Force (UPDF) and the Ugandan-backed Kisangani faction of the rebel Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD-K) under the leadership of Ernest Wamba dia Wamba. The widespread conflict was accompanied by an influx of assault rifles and other firearms. While land disputes used to be fought with bows and arrows, the easy availability of small arms vastly increased the destructiveness of the fighting.

[edit] Course of the conflict

[edit] UPDF's Ituri province created

In June 1999, James Kazini, the commander of UPDF forces in the DRC, ignored the protests of the RCD-K leadership and created a new “province” of Ituri out of eastern Orientale province. He then named a Hema to be the new governor. This apparently convinced the Lendu that Uganda and the RCD-K were backing the Hema against them, and violence erupted between the two groups. The UPDF did little to stop the fighting and, in some cases, aided the Hema. However, even as the fighting intensified the UPDF continued to train both Hema and Lendu. Reports indicate that Lendu trainees refused to join the RCD-K and instead set up ethnically-based militias.

[edit] Temporary cessation of hostilities

The fighting did not begin to slow until the RCD-K named a neutral replacement to head the provincial government in late 1999. In the months prior approximately 200,000 people were displaced from their homes and 7,000 were killed in the fighting. An unknown number died of conflict-related disease and malnutrition, but mortality rates as high as fifteen percent were recorded during two measles outbreaks in the affected regions.

[edit] Renewed fighting

The fighting flared again in 2001 after the UPDF replaced the governor with a Hema appointee. The RCD-K appointed governor was moved to Kampala and held by the Ugandan government without explanation. Throughout this period, the RCD-K had an internal power struggle that resulted in the splitting of the organization into the RCD-K of Wamba dia Wamba and the RCD-Mouvement de Libération (RCD-ML) of Mbusa Nyamwisi, which has prominent Hema in its leadership. Wamba dia Wamba returned to Bunia to denounce a proposed merger of the three major Ugandan-backed rebel groups, the RCD-K, the RCD-ML and Movement for the Liberation of Congo, as a Ugandan imposition. The quick collapse of Wamba dia Wamba's military base without Ugandan support is most probably a direct result of a perceived pro-Lendu stance.

[edit] Ethnic tension and rivalry

The increased intensity of the violence is also the result of a 'borrowing' of ethnic ideology from the Hutu-Tutsi standoff. Human Rights Watch reported that the Lendu began thinking of themselves as kin to the Hutu, while the Hema identify themselves with the Tutsi. While there is little basis to this new formation of identity, it vastly increases the imagined stakes of the conflict.

[edit] Child soldiers

For the next several years, even as the Second Congo War wound to an official end, a low level conflict continued in Ituri, with tens of thousands more killed. Half of the milita members are under the age of 18 and some are as young as eight. The continued conflict has been blamed both on the lack of any real authority in the region, which has become a patchwork of areas claimed by armed militias, and the competition among the various armed groups for control of natural resources in the area. In response, the United Nations directed its MONUC peacekeepers to carry out aggressive disarmament exercises against local militias.

[edit] Forced labour

The conflict has also seen the abduction and enslavement of civilians by armed troops. On October 16, 2006, Human Rights Watch stated that the DRC government needs to investigate and prosecute members of the DRC army who participated in the abduction of civilians and their use as forced labour and called to end the practice. The whereabouts of nine civilians abducted on September 17 and 20 civilians abducted on August 11 remains unknown. ^[1]

[edit] MONUC losses

This new policy may have prompted the Lendu Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI) and Union of Congolese Patriots militias to murder nine MONUC peacekeepers near the town of Kafe in February 2005, the largest single UN loss since the Rwandan Genocide. In response, MONUC forces assaulted a FNI stronghold, killing fifty. On 1 April 2005, MONUC reported that less than half of the 15,000 militia members had disarmed by a deadline set by the United Nations. UN peacekeeper Col. Hussein Mahmoud stated that MONUC would now aggressively and forcibly disarm the remaining militias.

[edit] Foreign collusion

Human Rights Watch has documented links that AngloGold Ashanti, a subsidiary of mining conglomerate Anglo American, among others, formed with the FNI. Payments were made to facilitate mining operations near the town of Mongbwalu, and gold was smuggled through Uganda to Europe and beyond. The benefits of this gold trade are shared by the companies and armed militias, whose use of murder, torture and rape in the course of conflict is well documented. Following the release of the HRW report in June 2005, leading Swiss gold refiner Metalor Technologies agreed to stop buying gold from Uganda.

On October 17, 2006, an Amnesty International, Oxfam and International Action Network on Small Arms joint-research effort in Ituri found US, Russian, Chinese, South African, and Greek bullets. The researchers stated that: “this is just one example of how lax arms controls fuel conflict and suffering worldwide. UN arms embargoes are like dams against tidal waves.” The research was conducted during September out of samples of arms and ammunition recovered since the UN arms embargo of 2003. ^[2]

[edit] May agreement (2006)

In April 2006, one Nepalese peacekeeper was killed and seven were taken hostage by the FNI. MONUC has confirmed that 7 of its peacekeepers were captured in an area 100 km east of Bunia, in the disputed northeastern region of Ituri. In May 2006, the FNI released the seven Nepalese peacekeepers. On October 9, 2006, MONUC reported that 12 FNI militias were killed in clashes with DRC army forces. MONUC spokesman Leocadio Salmeron stated that “no population movements have been observed” as a result of the fighting. ^[3]

[edit] Aftermath

On October 11, 2006, as part of the agreement which lead to the release of the Nepalese peacekeepers and following a ministerial decree signed on October 2, DRC Defence Minister Adolphe Onusumba announced that FNI leader Peter Karim and MRC leader Martin Ngudjolo were both appointed to the rank Colonel in the DRC army, commanding 3,000 troops each. ^[4]

On October 30, an officer, alleged to have been drunk, shot and killed two election officials in the town of Fataki, which provoked a riot. He was sentenced to death the next day. ^[5] On November 24, DRC's military prosecutor announced that three mass graves, containing the bodies of about 30 people, were discovered in Bavi, Ituri. The commander of the battalion stationed in the town and a Captain in charge of maintaining discipline were arrested. ^[6]

Probably in November 2006, the Ituri Patriotic Resistance Front was the last of the three militias involved in the conflict to agree to a deal by which up to 5,000 fighters are going to release hundreds of child soldiers and disarm in exchange for an amnesty.^[7]

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Focus on Hema-Lendu conflict, IRIN, 15 November 1999
• Backgrounder, Human Rights Watch, 2001
• Web Special on Ituri in Eastern DRC, IRIN, December 2002
• “Covered in Blood': Ethnically Targeted Violence in Northern DR Congo”, Human Rights Watch, July 8, 2003
• Ituri conflict linked to illegal exploitation of natural resources, IRIN, 3 September 2004
• UN troops killed 50 militiamen in self-defence, Annan says, IRIN, 4 March 2005
• D.R. Congo: Gold Fuels Massive Human Rights Atrocities, HRW, 2 June 2005
• Nothing New in Ituri: the violence continues (PDF), report by Médecins Sans Frontières, 1 August 2005