September 23-29, 2000
As the UN wonders whether to send peacekeepers to Congo, this is what they will face. His name was Kabwanga Makengo. Born Lubumbashi, June 3rd 1980. Private, 2nd Brigade of the army of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Catholic. Unmarried. The photograph shows a baby face startled by the camera.
Makengo's muddied—or bloodied—identity card lay in the trench where he is buried, next to a smashed anti-aircraft gun. When the rebels of the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) took this tiny trading post on the Ubangi river on September 7th, they put the 34 dead government soldiers in the trenches and covered them over.
This war has suddenly become more serious. Usually, self-preservation overcomes valour, and towns and villages fall without a fight. But at Dongo the battle lasted five days. Two days after surrendering, the government commander committed suicide.
Two years ago, Rwanda flew its troops across Congo to attack the capital, Kinshasa, and overthrow President Laurent Kabila—the man Rwanda had put into power in 1997. The Rwandans and their Ugandan allies also launched an anti-Kabila rebellion in eastern Congo. The attack on the capital failed when Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia sent troops to defend Mr Kabila. The rebel movement in the east split, with Uganda and Rwanda backing different sides.
Uganda launched a third rebel movement, the MLC, in northern Congo, training its soldiers, supplying fuel, ammunition and weapons, and manning the heavy artillery. As a result the MLC has had considerable success, pushing southwards and westwards towards the capital. It claims to be retaking territory lost to Mr Kabila's forces since a peace agreement was signed in Lusaka a year ago; but neither side is in the mood for peace.
According to the attackers, Dongo was heavily defended by 3,000-4,000 troops. They had dug a system of trenches and, on the promontory overlooking the river, had installed four Korean-made anti-aircraft guns pointing at the forest. (Most African armies use such guns against infantry forces.) After the battle, the trenches were carpeted with thousands of spent cartridges. Nearby was a huge stockpile of weapons and ammunition.
Madeleine Albright, the American secretary of state, once called this Africa's first world war. It is nothing like that. The armies—with the exception of the Congolese government's—are small, none of them over 20,000 strong, and they are spread out over a sparsely-populated area the size of Western Europe, much of it covered in jungle. Since there are no passable roads in Congo, this war is fought by air and water. The aim is to control the airstrips attached to small towns, and the rivers which are the main transport routes. Every gun, bullet and drop of fuel must be flown in from Uganda and then taken by river to Dongo, or wherever the next target may be. The troops move by dug-out canoe or walk the forest paths.
Victory at Dongo has given the MLC rebels a huge boost, even though—reluctant as they are to admit it—the battle was won by Ugandan artillery. They have captured a treasure-trove of weapons and about 20 prisoners, who will be "re-educated" and turned into MLC fighters.
The rebels can now move on to the junction of the Ubangi and Congo rivers to cut off the town of Mbandaka and, more important, its airport, a base for bombers that have been giving the MLC problems. From there, the rebels could float down the river to Kinshasa. But that would be going further than the territory the MLC held when the Lusaka agreement was signed last year.
The next few weeks will decide whether that peace agreement lives or dies. At present, it looks fatally wounded. The Ugandans may decide, once they have regained the territory lost since July last year, that it would be wiser to pause and give Mr Kabila a chance to negotiate.
Jean-Pierre Bemba, the MLC leader, stresses that he is committed to the Lusaka agreement. But he will not be drawn on whether he will stop fighting when the lost territory is reclaimed. He says it is up to Mr Kabila to show his commitment to peace by allowing a national conference to go ahead and permitting the deployment of UN peacekeepers.
Mr Kabila has been ambiguous. He has rejected the agreed mediator, Ketumile Masire, the former president of Botswana, and now wants the whole Lusaka agreement renegotiated. He is unlikely to accept the MLC's advances without reacting. There are already signs of panic in his army.
Evidence of that can be found in Dongo. At the back of a low hill, in a small brick-built house, a brown-black trail of blood leads from a back room to a patch of recently dug earth in front of the house. According to one survivor, Popo Mulebe, Mr Kabila's soldiers found him and about 50 other civilians from the village hiding in the forest nearby. They were kept in the house for a few days and then told to dig a pit to bury the bodies of soldiers killed in the fighting. That done, the soldiers took them, 12 on one day and 34 on another, shot them in the house and dragged their bodies to the pit. Some of the women are still missing.
