A Thousand Sisters

by Lisa Shannon

  In July 1994, a flood of refugees came to these forests from Rwanda. Eric describes that time: “Three big, big, big camps were set up three kilometers from the park. The United Nations High Commission on Refugees helped facilitate them, in cooperation with the government. Not only did they come and stay in camps, they started cutting down trees in villages. Poaching activities increased; they were cutting trees from the park to make charcoal. Those people were looking for stuff in villages, like bananas or sticks or something. At first, they would say, ‘Please help, I am a refugee.’ Second, ‘Do you have some work? You can pay me a banana.’ Sometimes they would steal. Most were respectful. We had respect for refugees. They were here under UN law.

  “The camps remained for one and a half years.

  “We knew them only as refugees under the UN structure, not as anything else. Then, in 1996, Kabila came with the Rwandan Army to fight President Mobutu and to chase refugees from the camps. The soldiers said, ‘Those are not refugees. It’s Interahamwe, those who killed in Rwanda.’ We were confused: Are they refugees or Interahamwe?

  “The camps were in our village, so when they were chased, we were chased together. It was nine in the morning. I was in my village, home with my parents, when we heard ‘Ta, Ta, Ta, Ta.’ Bullets. We took what we could—little bags. I put mine on my back, my parents got theirs, and we went in the direction of the park, thinking we’d hide out in there. But when we went that way, we heard bombing ahead of us in the forest. We said, ‘No, no, no. We’ll die there.’

  “We went north, along the border of the park without knowing where we were going. Somewhere. We were tired. It was a whole day walking. It was getting dark. By that time, we were not with refugees. Everybody was saving himself. If we went in the park, they would be bombing. If we went down to the village, they would be fighting. We said, ‘We’ll stay here. If we get killed here, we accept it.’

  “The next day, the fighting continued. We knew they were hunting refugees and soldiers, not Zairians, so three friends and I decided to try going home. When we arrived in our village, there were plenty of soldiers. We met some of them who said ‘You. Stop.’

  “We put our hands up. ‘We are Zairians.’

  “They said, ‘Where are you going?’

  “We told them, ‘We are going home to get something for our families.’

  “A Rwandan soldier asked us to show where we lived, to show them the key. They made us open the door. They said, ‘Tell your family they can come back here. We are not against Zairians. We are against Interahamwe and Mobutu soldiers.’

  “That evening we returned to the forest and told everyone we could to come back home. Many people were killed, though. They said, ‘I’m Zairian, I’m Zairian!’ and the soldiers said, ‘No, you look like Interahamwe. We will kill you.’

  “In my village, nine guys were killed by the men of Rwanda or Kabila.”

  “Did you see the Rwandan refugees again?” I ask.

  “They were gone.”

  It’s a stunning thought. For a year and half, two million refugees were camped out in Congo. Then, overnight, they were gone. “You have no idea where they went?”

  “I heard on the radio they were killed or something.”

  THE CEMENT VISITOR’S CENTER at the park entrance displays a plaque that reads UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE. Inside, the place is empty except for a few plastic chairs, the static video looping on a monitor in the corner, and two souvenirs for sale: one T-shirt and one book. I buy the book.

  I walk into a room filled with skulls piled up to my chest: They’re the skulls of gorillas, elephants, and antelope, all killed by poachers and militia. According to Eric, 450 elephants were killed between 1998 and 2003. The park’s gorilla population has been cut in half since the war started, from 260 to the 130 remaining today.

  “The Second War, the RCD war, was more destructive,” Eric tells me. “Many people were killed, not because they were Interahamwe or soldiers, but just because they were businessmen. You know, you would be killed because you had studied. It was like an operation to remove anyone who could have any influence.”

  Eric is quiet for a moment. “Yeah. So many people died.”

  He continues: “Since that time, insecurity began inside the park. Our access was very difficult because of many scenarios: looting in the park, people passing through the park and saying that refugees now are in the forest. [The refugees are] not well located, they need food; they are killing people, looting mines. Then they started attacking rangers in the park, even killing them, and going to surrounding villages to rape, loot, kill and return to the forest.

  “Our work went very, very . . . down. We were looted, lost many things. We were afraid, a bit stressed. We developed a kind of cohabitation. When you knew there was a new commandant in the area, you could see him and try to make friendship to avoid any problem.

  “Once, I went with two journalists to collect information on coltan mining. Theoretically, the RCD wasn’t there. But everyone there was in Rwandan formation.”

  The Rwandan army in charge of a coltan mining site? Hmmm.

  Whenever I speak to groups about Congo, some keen person in the back of the room always raises their hand and asks, “So who’s making money off of all this?”

  The Democratic Republic of the Congo is among the most mineral-rich countries on the planet. It has vast stores of more than 1,100 minerals, including diamonds, gold, copper, tin, cobalt, tungsten, and 15-20 percent of the world’s tantalum, otherwise known as coltan, an essential semiconductor used in electronics like cell phones, laptops, video games, and digital cameras.

  The United Nations has accused every nation involved in the conflict of using the war as a cover for looting. According to some estimates, armed groups make around US$185 million a year from the illegal trading of Congo’s minerals. Countries like Rwanda have made hundreds of millions of dollars off of their Congo plunder. (For instance, Rwanda’s primary tin mine produces about five tons per month. Yet over a six-month period, Rwanda reports 2,679 tons in tin exports.) According to UN reports, when Rwanda seized control of eastern Congo in the late 1990s, they smuggled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of coltan, cassiterite, and diamonds into Rwanda. The New York Times quotes one Rwandan government official as saying, “I used to see generals at the airport coming back from Congo with suitcases full of cash.”

  Eric continues his story. “The RCD were in control of the airport as well. They arrested me and the journalists and took us to the airport. We paid six hundred dollars, but they didn’t release us. They kept us in a small room. My wife called a partner in Kigali. The partner called London, who called the embassy in Kinshasa. The embassy called the UN. The next day, the UN came to release us.”

  “Has anyone been attacked or killed in the communities you serve?” I ask him.

  Eric smiles broadly, presumably at the naiveté of the question, and answers. “Thousands of times.”

  In January 2001, Laurent Kabila was assassinated. His son, Joseph Kabila, took over as President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While the conflict technically ended in 2003, and many countries’ soldiers or their proxy militias returned home, the Interahamwe remain in the park. Appropriately, locals throughout South Kivu still refer to them as the Interahamwe, given their unbroken, fifteen-year campaign of killing together. “Officially—theoretically—the fighting finished,” Eric says. “But behind the scenes, other things are done. Our park rangers were allowed to get back their guns so they could take control of the park like before. At some points, park rangers meet Interahamwe in the park. Park rangers are armed. Interahamwe are armed. They are enemies. So they open fire on each other. It’s a military thing. There’s going to be a fight.”

  “How many park guards have been killed by Interahamwe?” I ask.

  “Six.”

  “Have you ever met Interahamwe?” I press him.

  “Two years ago. I was studying for my degree in rural development. I did research
on coltan mining in the west highland section of the park in 2005. I had hiked three hours to reach the mining site where the villagers, the miners, have a camp. I had a questionnaire. I was talking to miners, collecting data, when suddenly I saw men coming with guns. They didn’t have soldier uniforms; they were just civilians with guns.

  “The miners said, ‘Don’t worry, they are Interahamwe. We have to pay some taxes.’

  “I asked them if that was who collects taxes here. They said, ‘Sometimes, yes.’

  “The Interahamwe asked the miners about me, saying ‘Who is this one?’

  “‘He is a student from Bukavu,’ they answered.

  “And the Interahamwe asked me, ‘Are you meeting park rangers here? Are you some kind of official?’

  “I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m a student. I’m confused . . .’

  “They said, ‘You don’t need to know, just ask the miners.’

  “I was afraid, but fortunately I was presented like a student. They collected money and they went. The Interahamwe were not violent, they were not pressuring the community. It was like it was not the first time, like they have an arrangement. After they went, I asked the Congolese, ‘Why do those people come here? What is the linkage?’

  “‘This mining camp belongs to them,’ they told me. ‘We have an arrangement to give them a percentage of income from the mines we dig here.’

  “I asked, ‘How do you do that?’

  “They said, ‘There are mining sites that are ours and mining sites that are theirs. Their mining sites, we just dig. Say, for example, we have ten kilos. We divide down the middle—they get five, we get five. But at our mining site, we just pay taxes to them.’

  “‘How much?’ I asked.

  “‘It depends, but we can negotiate.’

  “‘How do you negotiate?’

  “‘We negotiate like . . . We hide some quantities. For example, if we dig a hundred kilos, we show ten kilos and pay like ten dollars. But we don’t want you to ask us about that.’

  “‘Yes,’ I said, ‘But I’m just a student getting information.’

  “‘Where will you bring this information?’”

  Eric smiles at this point. “I told them, ‘Just to school.’”

  MILITIAS CONTROL MINING TERRITORIES. They mine and export the minerals themselves or they “tax” the locals who do the work for them. Everyone seems to be in on the action: Corrupt government officials who orchestrate shady contracts; foreign militias; foreign governments who back militias; the Congolese army; the Mai Mai and other homegrown militias; and of course, the Interahamwe, who control the majority of mines in South Kivu.

  The New York Times will later run a report on an operation run by a renegade Congolese army brigade that controls a remote, mineral-rich area. The brigade, journalist Lydia Polgreen writes, is the “master of every hilltop as far as the eye can see.” Unchallenged, they employ locals at ultralow wages to mine and lug loads of ore via remote forest trails to the nearest road, where the goods are trucked to a stretch of road that serves as a landing strip for Soviet-era cargo planes that fly the minerals to Goma or out of Congo.

  How much does a guy make if he carves out his own slice of this pie? One official estimates that this operation makes US$300,000 to US$600,000 in “taxes” alone. This operation is estimated to be worth as much as US$80 million a year.

  The goods are illegally exported to countries like Rwanda or Uganda and are in turn shipped to processing plants, primarily in Asia. Eventually, large corporations buy them and distribute these “conflict riches” around the world in the form of our favorite consumer goods: diamond engagement rings, Sony PlayStations, sleek new MacBook Airs, or our ever-precious CrackBerries.

  But rebel groups can only control the minerals if they control the territory. And they can only control the territory if they control the people. And there is one age-old way to control the people: terror. As one Harvard researcher puts it, there seems to be a “competition among armed groups to be the most brutal.”

  As we continue on, Eric recounts story after story of conflict in the area. Their office attacked and looted. In 2004, Nkunda’s militia came to his home. “They attacked my home, with my wife and three kids. They said, ‘Nkunda’s people sent word for Eric.’”

  “They know you by name?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Most of them were working at the airport and around. They demanded US$10,000, saying otherwise you are killed. They found my wife. She had all our money on her, hidden under her clothes. After pushing her, they found the money. While they were counting and distributing the money, she escaped through their legs and hid.

  “All these women were raped. I don’t like to remember. Fortunately, we were saved. Everyone hid us by saying, ‘I don’t know where he is.’ I hid two weeks in one house. I saved my passport, car, and family. Everything else was gone. I saw myself dying, you know. After that, I moved to Bukavu.”

  These days, Eric commutes to the park.

  I ask him, “What is the solution?”

  “Interahamwe are the priority of priorities. They constitute the center of the problem. You know, Lisa, it is easy to say, ‘This is a Congolese problem.’ But the Interahamwe were brought here by the UN.”

  They were brought here by the UN. We gave them bananas.

  I ask him, “Do you think about giving up the work? It’s so dangerous.”

  “My country has lost five million people. I’m not better than them. I’ve been doing this work since I was twenty years old. I’ve worked in hard conditions, poverty, whatever, I don’t see what can stop me. I know what environment is. I have to assist my community.”

  “Are you scared?” I ask.

  “I can find a solution at any time. I was attacked at home, in my village, so I moved my family to Bukavu. If I go there and they arrest me, I can negotiate. I can a find solution to any problem, if I’m not killed.”

  He smiles. “Yeah, if I’m not killed. If I die supporting my community, I go well.”

  And I pat myself on the back for recycling.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sugarcane

  LITTLE HEADS BOB and weave their way through the manicured tea plantation, heading in our direction, as Eric gets out of the SUV to guide us to the Pygmy village on the edge of Kahuzi Biega National Park.

  Children emerge. Yep, they’re short. But they don’t seem that short, especially when they’re standing next to each other. We follow a long, winding path to a collection of small, crumbling mud huts some might call a village, standing like an island in the middle of a sea of scraggly tea bushes. Men and women track me, intrigued. Eric has been visiting this village since he was a child, so I am welcomed and ushered into a tiny round hut made of straw and sticks. As men pack into the space, I’m introduced to the chief, who is dressed in pleated pants and a grungy T-shirt. At first we speak in generalities about the impact of war on the village: looting, rape, and the budding sense of security post-elections. The chief is blunt, “If you have sugarcane, you can leave it for us.”

  Gimme a little sugar, huh? As in, cash please.

  “I don’t have any sugarcane,” I tell him.

  Most people would stop there. Eric is far too polite to imply a donation is expected, so I’m free to do as I please, even offend. Maybe it’s the clean forest air, but I’m feeling emboldened, so I add, “I could give you sugarcane, but then I would be taking your dignity. I believe in self-sufficiency.”

  Uh-oh. They are soooo not impressed.

  The chief signals an abrupt end to our meeting. I emerge from the hut to find the village women sitting on the ground, glaring at me. Who knew? A little travel tip, apparently lost in some early 1990s printing of Lonely Planet Zaire: When visiting Pygmies, never refuse the ritual love-offering of sugarcane.

  I ask Eric to find an older woman who might remember life in the forest. Within a few minutes, two women settle together onto a small bench on the periphery of the village. Sifa, fifty, and Cecile, sixty, each have a
scar running from their foreheads to the center of their noses. I turn on the video camera, then I ask about it, “You both have a mark here?”

  “It is for beauty,” Sifa says in a gruff voice. She launches in, “Life was wild. We didn’t have food. We were living just like animals. The white man named Adrien conducted us out of the forest. He promised to put us in better conditions. We came here, where we are not as comfortable as we were expecting.”

  Sifa is one decidedly salty lady. She rages against the white-man machine with a long list of grievances, clapping her hands in time with each item, almost rhythmically. “We have no farms. Nowhere to cultivate. We still live like wildlife. We have no source of income, no animals. He didn’t give us a place to stay because the houses are not enough for all of us. He didn’t keep his promise because we don’t have our own village. We cannot live with Bantu people because they cannot accept the mixture. We spend our days here. To get food, we work on Zairian farms. We have no other people we rely on. We are not protected in our houses. We need money to start small businesses to get animals for husbandry. Look at the way we are skinny,” she says, pushing up her sleeves, grasping her thin arms. “It’s because we have a wild life. Poverty.”

  I love Sifa’s sassy, direct approach. “We also have the problem of clothes,” she says. “We thank Eric’s organization so much for thought of our children’s education. We are grateful the park has given small jobs to our husbands. But that’s not enough. Up until now, we women are still idle. We would like to start small businesses, just like other women around. Like in Kavumu, women go to sell. We also need to go for supplies to sell like other people. We would be very happy to be active like other women in Kavumu or Bukavu.”