by James Steel
‘OK, they don’t control Kivu so they might as well get some money off you for it, right?’
Fang clearly doesn’t want to be drawn into detail on money but nods. ‘Yes, we are talking very significant sums here. China is already the largest investor in the Democratic Republic of Congo with a nine billion dollar deal and we have been able to leverage this to give us more influence.’
Alex nods; he can well imagine what ‘influence’ billions of dollars of hard cash could get you amongst Kinshasa’s famously rapacious elites.
Fang continues to justify the project. ‘Actually the deal is not that unusual if you look around at the land purchases that are going on at the moment. UAE has bought six thousand square miles of southern Sudan, South Africa has bought a huge area of Republic of Congo, Daiwoo Logistics tried to buy half the agricultural land in Madagascar …’
‘Is that the one where the government was overthrown because of it?’
Fang nods, unfazed by Alex’s implied scepticism about his own project. ‘Yes, but that was different. No one in the rest of Congo cares about what happens in Kivu; when you go to Kinshasa there is nothing on the TV or in the papers about it.’
‘Hmm.’ Alex is still not reassured – the more he begins to get to grips with the project the more he can see problems with it.
Fang continues, ‘So your role would be to …’
Alex holds up a hand to stop the tide of enthusiasm. ‘Hang on, who said anything about me actually being involved? This is a huge and very risky project and I am very comfortable at the moment. I’m not looking to take on any new work.’
Fang is momentarily checked and nods. ‘OK, I can see that this is a highly unusual project that will take a while for you to absorb.’ Then he just storms on anyway. ‘The role of the military partner in the consortium would be to neutralise the FDLR.’
Alex feels he has made his point and that he can continue the discussion on a hypothetical basis. ‘The Hutus?’
‘Yes. After they conducted the Rwandan genocide in 1994 against the Tutsis they were driven out by the returning Tutsi army in exile and a million Hutu refugees fled across the border to Kivu.’
‘And have destabilised the province ever since.’
‘Yes. The genocide was twenty years ago now but their leadership have successfully maintained their ideology of Hutu power and indoctrinated a new generation of fighters. Their continued presence means that there are about thirty armed groups in Kivu but the FDLR is the main cause of the instability that breeds the others. Defeat them and the other militias would agree to negotiate; there would be no need for them to exist if a strong authority was established.’
‘So it’s a bit like Israel having the SS sitting on its border?’
‘Yes, the Hutus killed eight hundred thousand civilians in a hundred days with machetes so Rwanda’s government doesn’t feel comfortable with them there. They will be our partners in the consortium.’ Fang’s mind is racing ahead already. ‘How long would it take to set up a Battlegroup operation to deal with them?’
Alex takes a deep breath and considers the issue for a moment. ‘Well, for the sort of air mobile strike warfare you would need, you would want to start the campaign at the beginning of the dry season in May, so next year, that would be thirteen months.’
‘Is that long enough set-up time?’
‘Yes, that would be fine.’
Fang makes a note on his iPad.
Alex continues, ‘But look, President Kagame is safe now, isn’t he? Why does he need to be involved with all this?’ He’s aware of the Rwandan leader’s reputation for ruthless efficiency and running the country with an iron grip.
‘Well, yes and no. The FDLR is not capable of reinvading Rwanda right now but he is still a Tutsi in charge of a country that is eighty-five per cent Hutu. If he were assassinated like the last president in 1994 then the whole thing would start again. He is not the sort of guy who is prepared to have that level of threat right on his border.’
‘So are you saying that the Rwandan military are on board on the project?’
Fang looks momentarily uncomfortable.
‘This is a very delicate area.’ He clears his throat. ‘As I think you know, the Rwandans were involved in atrocities when they were in Kivu that attracted …’
One of the BlackBerries in front of him rings. He cuts off in mid-flow and answers it aggressively in Chinese and then starts listening with occasional grunts. He gets up and walks over to the window and looks out over the rose garden. He suddenly lets forth a tirade of angry instructions, jabbing his free hand into the air.
Joseph wrestles the goat to the ground and holds its head down.
He then faces the dilemma of how to hold both his rifle and the goat. The goat’s string has snapped; he looks back and forth between the two. Should he hitch his rifle on his chest and hold the goat on his shoulders?
Eventually he settles on dragging it by a horn in one hand with his rifle in the other. He sets off down the path in the maize field, back towards the village where he can hear shouting, screaming and gunshots as the hungry FDLR troops set about the civilians.
There is the noise of a struggle going on ahead. As he comes through the maize he sees Lieutenant Karuta wrestling with the woman on the ground. She is putting up a fierce resistance. The goat bleats and Karuta looks up, his face puffy and angry with frustrated lust. Joseph stands and stares at him.
Karuta rolls off the woman and grabs his rifle off the ground and points it at her. She lies on her back looking up at them, eyes wide in terror.
‘Cover her!’ he orders Joseph, who holds his rifle by its pistol grip and the goat in the other hand. She stares at the muzzle just above her face as Karuta pulls out a knife, gets hold of her feet and quickly slits her hamstrings. She screams in agony.
He puts the knife away and straightens his uniform. ‘Come on, she’ll keep for dessert. Let’s have dinner first.’ He walks off down the path towards the village.
When they get back there the lieutenant organises the looting of food and three women are tied to trees. He sends out a patrol under the command of Corporal Habiyakare, another old génocidaire. They are to scout around the small valley to check that the mai-mai have gone. Meanwhile the men slaughter the goat and start cooking it whilst eating foufou and drinking the farmers’ home-brewed beer from gourds.
An hour later the patrol returns, dragging a thirteen-year-old boy with them. He is barefoot, wears shorts and a ragged tee shirt, is crying and looks terrified.
Corporal Habiyakare reports back. ‘Lieutenant Karuta, we have captured a prisoner!’
Karuta’s eyes are already reddened from drinking; he is in a boisterous mood.
‘Bring the prisoner over here, we will interrogate him!’
The boy is dragged into the middle of the village and stripped to his red underpants. His belt is used to tie his elbows behind his back so tightly that his chest sticks out painfully. Karuta sits on a wonky wooden chair in front of him but the boy falls over in tears. The men gather round and laugh and clap as they drink the beer.
The corporal drags the boy to his feet.
‘What is the charge against the prisoner?’ asks the lieutenant.
‘Sir, we found him hiding in the woods, spying on our soldiers. He was armed with this axe.’
‘What have you got to say for yourself?’
The boy sniffles and mutters, ‘I was chopping wood.’
‘You were chopping wood! You think I am a fucking idiot! You are a spy!’
‘No! Not spy!’
‘You were spying on my men!’
‘No, not …’
‘Shut up!’
‘No spy …’
‘Shut up! You are a spy! You work for Rwanda! Look at his feet, he is a Rwandan!’
The crowd pushes forward and looks at the boy’s feet; none of the younger soldiers has ever been to Rwanda so they accept the older génocidaire’s word.
‘Not Rwandan!’
the boy screams in a high-pitched shriek.
‘You will admit it! Beat him!’ The lieutenant gestures to the crowd of men who push the boy to the ground and start kicking him. Others run off and pull supple branches off trees, then run back in, push through the crowd and start whipping the boy.
He curls up in a ball but his hands are behind his back and the blows rain down all over him.
‘You are a Rwandan spy! Confess!’
He cannot speak under the torrent of blows; raw red and pink gashes open up all over his dark skin from the slashing branches.
A soldier pushes the others back and jumps on him, his Wellington boots landing on his hip with a heavy thud. The man springs off laughing and others take running jumps onto the boy.
‘OK, OK!’ Lieutenant Karuta waves his hand: laughing, the men back off.
The boy lies still, covered with dust, his pants wet with urine.
‘OK, come on.’ Karuta shakes his head, grinning at the enthusiasm of his men. ‘On your feet, boy.’
The boy doesn’t move.
‘Get him on his feet.’ He gestures to Corporal Habiyakare, who gets hold of the belt holding his elbows together and yanks him up. The boy stirs and sways on his feet.
‘Over here, heh.’ Karuta points casually to the ground at the edge of the cleared area between two huts.
The boy senses something bad and starts struggling. Habiyakare tries to drag him backwards by the belt but the boy becomes desperate so the corporal kicks his legs out from under him and pulls him along by the belt. The boy shrieks with pain and fear in a high-pitched cracked voice.
Lieutenant Karuta walks ahead with his Kalashnikov and the crowd of men follow, grinning in anticipation.
‘Here!’ Karuta points to a spot on the ground and the corporal throws the boy forward and jumps out of the way.
In one smooth action the lieutenant hefts his assault rifle by its pistol grip so that the weapon is held upright in his right hand. He cocks it with a flourish with his left and then fires a long burst at point-blank range into the boy. His body bounces on the ground and a red mist appears over it briefly.
The men give a huge roar of approval and Karuta turns and brandishes his weapon with a broad grin.
He starts call and response, shouting, ‘Hutu power!’
‘Hutu power!’ the men respond, raising their guns in the air and punching out the words with their fists.
‘Free Rwanda!’
‘Free Rwanda!’
Chapter Four
‘Come on, we’ve got to hurry up.’
Sophie can hear the tetchiness in her voice. Nicolas, as ever, takes it in his stride, nods obediently and pushes the Land Cruiser on faster.
It’s four o’clock and the vaccines in the back are getting warmer by the minute. Their medical technician recommended that they get them to the clinic by late afternoon or else they would be ruined and the whole inoculation event would have to be reorganised. It will be a big waste of money and effort and a loss of face for the charity in the local community if they can’t deliver on their promises. Sophie hates not getting things right. At least the tension is making her forget her carsickness; she sits forward and swigs nervously from her water bottle.
They’re pretty sure they are on the right road. It is winding down the hill into the Bilati valley and they can now see the river far away in the bottom, a fast-flowing upland torrent.
They come down onto a flat saddle of land where another road joins theirs before dipping down into the valley. All around is lush green grassland but up ahead Nicolas spots a checkpoint, a striped pole across the road next to a dilapidated single-storey building.
‘Hmm,’ says Natalie in annoyance. ‘That’s not on the map.’
‘Bugger,’ mutters Sophie.
Yet more hassle. She has spent a lot of time getting the paperwork in place for the journey. Government officials demand documents for everything: they are rarely paid and make their living from bribes. She pulls her document wallet out of the glove box and flicks through it again. The key document, their blue permit à voyager issued by the Chief of Traffic Police in Goma, is on the top, pristine and triple-stamped.
Sophie is keyed up now. One last barrier and they can get there just in time. Several hundred kids live healthier lives – how can you argue with that?
As they drive up towards the barrier they can see government FARDC soldiers standing inside sandbagged positions on either side of it. This is the last outpost of their control before the militia-dominated land beyond and they are very nervy, assault rifles held across their chests and fingers on triggers. They are questioning the driver of a battered Daihatsu minivan, ordering his passengers out and poking around in their woven plastic sacks stuffed with vegetables and bananas.
As they wait in line Sophie asks Nicolas in French, ‘What brigade are they?’
Nicolas peers at their shoulder flashes.
‘Orange is 17th Brigade.’
‘Is that good or bad?’ She knows that the different units have different temperaments depending on which militia they come from and which colonel runs them.
Nicolas replies quietly, ‘Well, they used to be CNDP. They were a good army – Tutsi like me, and they defeated the FARDC whenever they fought them. But then they did a deal with the government and became the 17th Brigade with Congolese officers. After six months they shot up a UN base in protest because their officers had stolen their wages,’ he pauses and then finishes with a shrug and, ‘c’est la magie du Congo.’
Sophie frowns. ‘Great.’
‘Just take it easy, remember the training,’ Natalie says cautiously from the backseat. ‘Don’t make eye contact, keep your voice down, just be sweet. Maybe we’ll have to pay a bribe to get through.’
‘OK, all right!’ Sophie holds up a hand to cut her off. Natalie is really getting on her nerves. ‘We don’t pay for access, it’s our policy.’
Natalie falls silent, the soldiers wave the minivan through and they drive up to the barrier.
Gabriel makes his way past the soldiers and heads down the hillside to Pangi market.
He is torn between turning round and getting out of there immediately and his belief that he can make a killing and return to Eve with a stack of cash. He could use it to try and fix up her hut or buy her something for the baby or maybe get her that sewing machine she wants.
Pangi is a typical Kivu village, a group of palm-leaf and wooden huts in the bottom of a steep valley strung out along the banks of a small, fast-flowing river. All around are rugged hills topped with bright green forest, spotted with patches of white mist; it’s cold and overcast. Meadows and small fields of maize, beans and cassava cut into the woods on the lower slopes.
As he pushes the tshkudu onto the flat ground he keeps his head down but his eyes flick back and forth taking in little details, gauging the atmosphere. It’s ten o’clock and the market is busy, people have been cut off by the FDLR troops for months and have come in from the bush to stock up on food and consumer items. He will have to move fast to find a pitch and set out his wares. All his money is invested in his stock and he has got to get it out in front of his customers quickly before they spend the tiny reserves of cash they have.
A crowd of a couple of hundred people are milling around in a grassy area in the middle of the village, women in their brightly patterned pagne and men in an assortment of jackets and tee shirts, cast-offs from the West. Around the edge of the area women squat behind their goods, carefully laid out on banana leaves on the ground: piles of bush fruits, mangoes, blood oranges, cassava tubers, chickens tied up by the legs and silently awaiting their fate, lumps of bush meat covered in fur and some monkey flesh with little black hands sticking out. Protein is scarce as all the cattle and goats have been killed or driven off by the FDLR. People pick over the goods and pay for it warily with filthy Congolese franc notes.
Gabriel is worried, his eyes and ears taking in danger signals. The scene is unusually quiet, there is none of
the usual chatter of a market and there are no children around – normally a village is teeming with them. People’s body language is tense and fearful; no one makes eye contact with each other. Heads constantly flick about looking for trouble, shooting sullen glances at the soldiers. The FDLR may have been driven off but the government FARDC troops are no better. The soldiers swagger around in groups with their rifles, occasionally taking some goods without paying and eyeing up women. The people live in patches like this between outbursts of fighting and flights into the forest. They are angry about their lives but powerless. The atmosphere is one of suppressed violence, like petrol vapour hanging in the air.
Gabriel scans the crowd; the grey sacks hang off his tshkudu, bulging with wares. A pair of soldiers stand at the side of the market with their rifle butts resting on their hips, heads flicking around in a predatory manner.
He is looking for an empty patch of ground to set up his stall. He spent a lot of time making a lightweight folding table from bamboo that he can display his goods on, rather than having them on the ground. He is sure this will draw the customers in.
As he scans around he accidentally catches the eye of one of the soldiers. He ducks his head immediately but the man has seen him and thrusts his jaw forwards aggressively, drawing his finger across his throat in a slitting gesture. Gabriel turns his head and moves away towards the other side of the market.
The soldier follows him and shouts, ‘Hey you! Where is your permit to trade?’
Gabriel freezes, turns and hurriedly goes into his most placatory mode, ducking his head into his shoulders and keeping his eyes averted. ‘Pardon, Monsieur Le Directeur, would you be interested in this small box of cigarettes?’ He holds out the packet.
This is bad; people are turning round and looking at them.
‘I said, where is your permit to trade? Are you deaf?’
The soldier snatches the cigarettes and stuffs them in the front of his combat jacket, his eyes dancing greedily over Gabriel’s sacks.
‘Ah, Monsieur Le Directeur …’
‘Hey, you sound Hunde! Are you Hunde?’
