Congo :: essays research papers

terrible Battle Defines congou teas Warlike Peace                At the southern extreme of a ragged front line that winds 1,400 miles across Congo lies a ferry, drear pink and half-submerged in the muddy Luvua River. Facing it on a produce ramp stand the burned-out husks of 33 military vehicles -- armored personnel office carriers, trucks, an ambulance -- waiting in a line that never moved forwarfared. sealed syringes lie underfoot, amid charred tires and a trampled note that a fleeing Congolese junior incumbent left behind"Attaque," reads the neat cursive French. besides by the sentence Rwandan forces approached Pweto on Dec. 3, the Congolese government troops was in no placement to attack. It was in panicked retreat, leaving a tableau of ruin on the riverbank and opening a rare window on a war usually fought out of sight.In two months of back-and-forth fighting present in the southeastern corner of Con go, all the elements that make this countrys 21/2-year-old war such a dangerous puzzle came into play foreign armies, cultural militia groups, remote terrain and villages utterly emptied of civilians who, from the safety of refugee camps in a attached country, repeat matter-of-fact accounts of massacres. This is the "situation on the ground" that has kept the U.N. security system Council from dispatching 5,500 peacekeepers to monitor a cease-fire that appears to exist only if on paper.This lightly populated, mostly forested stretch between Lake Tanganyika and Lake Mweru had been one of the few corners of Congo where both sides had essentially honored a peace agreement sign(a) 18 months ago. The Lusaka Accord, named for the Zambian capital where it was signed, was meant to arrest the cycle of chuck out and retreat that has marked a sprawling conflict that pits the Congolese army and allied troops from Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia against an assortment of rebel forces b olstered by Rwandan and Ugandan troops.But Congolese President Laurent Kabila, who signed the Lusaka pact in a moment of military disadvantage, has swept it aside whenever he spied what looked like a military opening. Last spring, his forces pushed back rebels sponsored by Uganda in Congos far northwest, only to lose the same ground months later. And on Oct. 15, Kabilas armies launched a massive polish on Rwandan-held positions in the southeast, striking 100 miles north of Pweto at the township of Pepa. Six weeks later, just as happened in the northwest, Kabilas forces once again disordered far more than they gained.