Global Policy Forum

By Ian Fisher

It takes nearly nine hours to get here from the next big town, in a boat that leaks its slow way through swampland and walls of jungle with few hints of human life. But then, there it is: a war rarely seen up close, and getting worse. Dogs gnaw through new graves. Rebel soldiers, the winners of a battle here just days ago, hold up shredded posters of Congo's pudgy president, Laurent Kabila. They seem surprised — even a little afraid — at the amount of weaponry they captured after five days of fighting: hundreds of machine guns, mortars, rocket launchers, mounds of newly bought ammunition that showed, with little doubt, that Mr. Kabila meant business.

"If we knew all these guns were here we would never have dared to attack them," said Rugaza Ndayisenga, who at only 28 is a commander here for the rebel group, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo.

For more than two years, a complicated war has been fought in hidden places like this. In Congo, the third-largest country in area in Africa, it is a scramble for political power as much as for its bounteous diamonds, gold, timber and coffee. It is sometimes called Africa's World War I because the troops of at least seven nations are battling here, along with three fractious rebel groups and countless militias.

The fighting has gone on despite a peace accord signed in August 1999 by all the major parties — even though that accord has checked the war's intensity. But in recent months violence has surged, here in the northwest along the Ubangi River, as well as in Congo's far eastern reaches next to Rwanda and Uganda. The number of refugees is soaring. United Nations officials say Mr. Kabila is attacking more by air, and rebel officials say his ground attacks involve far more weaponry, like the large cache captured here.

Soon the stakes may grow yet greater, in a way that could unravel the few surviving strands of the peace accord and make the United Nations' hope of stationing peacekeepers in Congo even less likely. A few days ago, Jean-Pierre Bemba, the rebel leader in í‰quateur Province, issued a challenge to Mr. Kabila and major Western nations that pushed the accord with more vigor than any of those who signed it. He wants Mr. Kabila to declare whether he will abide by the peace accord, signed in Lusaka, Zambia. If not, he says he will not feel constrained by it either.

"We are at a turning point," Mr. Bemba, a 38-year-old businessman- turned-rebel, said this week in Gbadolite, his headquarters. "Is Lusaka alive still or not? That is the question." Mr. Bemba's target is specific, and gaining it would probably intensify the fighting: He wants to close down the airport at Mbandaka, the last major city along the Congo River before the capital, Kinshasa. He contends that Mr. Kabila is using the airport there to initiate bombing raids, a violation of the Lusaka accord, even as Mr. Kabila says he will honor other parts of the accord.

"Lusaka is a package," Mr. Bemba insisted. "You must take all of Lusaka. You can't say to a woman, `I take your head; I leave your heart.' " It is not certain whether Mr. Bemba is capable militarily of closing the airport. Nor is it clear if his major sponsor, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, would give his approval given that Mr. Museveni's own friends, the United States and many European nations, would probably hold him responsible for such a departure from the Lusaka accord. But, at a minimum, Mr. Bemba's challenge may finally add some clarity to the status of the accord signed in Lusaka.

On paper, the accord calls for a cease-fire, disarmament of militias, negotiations among Congolese political leaders and a withdrawal of all foreign forces. Uganda and Rwanda are fighting on the side of the rebels; Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia on Mr. Kabila's side. Burundi has had troops there, though only to protect its border, it says.

Almost none of the agreement has been fulfilled. So no one with a stake in Congo — warring parties or outside nations eager for stability in central Africa — can say whether it is moving toward peace or further from it.

Aid agency officials say the confusion has made their job especially hard because rich nations are reluctant to give money without the guarantee of a peace accord. And suffering has grown with the uptick in fighting. Along the Ubangi, an estimated 30,000 to 80,000 people have fled their homes. In eastern Congo, where an ethnic war tied tightly to the larger war is growing worse, relief officials estimate that there are 750,000 refugees, compared with at most 200,000 a year ago.

"Humanitarian needs and suffering of the people will continue whether Lusaka works or not," Charles Petrie, the top United Nations aid official in Congo, said this week in a visit to Gbadolite. Without the accord in place, he said, "it does make it a lot more difficult because we are in a logic of greater conflict."

Experts say all sides have violated the accord in one way or another. For example, Rwanda and Uganda, nominally allies, fought three times in Kisangani, most recently this summer, killing hundreds of civilians. Rwanda has since pledged to pull back about 125 miles from the front lines. Uganda recalled about 5,000 soldiers, roughly half its Congo force, this summer.

Each nation had its own reasons for moving closer to the spirit of the Lusaka accord. Like Mr. Bemba with his ultimatum, Rwanda and Uganda seem to want their behavior to highlight what they say are Mr. Kabila's greater violations. Many experts blame Mr. Kabila for violating the accord in an almost systematically confusing way. He has rejected the internationally appointed mediator to the conflict.

He agreed only last month, under great pressure, to allow peacekeepers to be stationed on territory he holds. In July, he made no pretense about beginning an offensive against Mr. Bemba, aimed at pushing him beyond the positions all sides agreed on last year. United Nations officials and other experts, however, do not hold Mr. Bemba blameless in various rounds of fighting in í‰quateur Province.

Mr. Kabila's offensive started well for him, deep in the jungles around the Ubangi River along the border of the neighboring country to the west, the Congo Republic. He pushed Mr. Bemba's forces from Imese, 50 miles south of here on the Ubangi, to just outside Libenge, 125 miles north of here. That put Mr. Kabila within striking range of Mr. Bemba's base, Gbadolite (also the hometown of Mobutu Sese Seko, the longtime dictator whom Mr. Kabila overthrew in 1997).

But the fighting turned on Aug. 10, when Mr. Bemba's forces blew up a hulking ferry fitted with big guns on the Ubangi near the village of Mawiya. He says the attack killed 800 government soldiers. There is no way to verify whether the number, though the smell of charred flesh is still strong inside the battered ship's hull.

The battle for Dongo — a strategic town on the route to Gbadolite — began the week of Sept. 3. After five days of fighting, Mr. Kabila's soldiers fled, leaving behind more weapons than the rebels had expected. Mr. Bemba said more than 30 of his soldiers were killed, and more than 50 of Mr. Kabila's.

People in Dongo said that as government soldiers fled, they rounded up civilians suspected of collaborating with the rebels and executed them — mostly by slashing their throats in a small house where the floor is still covered with blood. Papulu Wenda, 42, said he found the body of his older brother, Jano, 46, in a pile of bodies. The dead, 47 in all, were buried in two mass graves. "Kabila's soldiers came, and they wanted to kill the people of Dongo," Mr. Wenda said. "I don't understand it."

Even though they won the battle, the rebel soldiers here said government MIG fighter jets still drop bombs on them once a day. The bombs, they said, toppled several houses — including one with a caved- in roof and crumbling walls aside one of many piles of captured ammunition. One commander, Luc Murhunzi, 33, sat next to the ammunition and contemplated the war's near future. He said he did not think Mr. Kabila's plans included observing the Lusaka accord. "He's using warships," he said. "He's using planes. He's arming himself. This shows he is looking for a military solution."