Kimya II: A Newer, More Quiet Raping in the Congo

In 1996, I was sitting with twenty thousand grieving women in a stadium in Tuzla, Bosnia. The women were holding photographs of husbands, fathers, brothers, sons and boyfriends who had been disappeared a year earlier in a place called Srebrenica, a UN enclave where Bosnian refugees had turned over their protection to UN peacekeepers who stood passively as ten thousand of their men were marched off to be slaughtered. I will never forget the wailing of the women in that stadium as they cried out, demanding the international community explain how they could have allowed this horror to take place.

It is now thirteen years later and I am in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo, where, this time, UN peacekeepers (MONUC) are not passively standing by and watching the massacres, but are actually supporting the perpetrators.

For nearly 12 years an invisible war has ravaged this beloved, beleaguered country. Over five million dead, hundreds of thousands of women and girls raped and sexually tortured in the most unimaginable ways, 800 internally displaced since January 2009 and close to 350,000 forced to flee to neighboring countries. This violence is fueled by the world's need for minerals most recently due to the economic crisis it is Gold. Congo, the sixth most mineral rich country in Africa, has become the stage for a regional war fueled by economic interests.

In January, military operations were launched in North Kivu. The so-called goal of this military plan was to arrest the rebel leader Laurent Nkunda and neutralize his troops, the CNDP, the former Rwandan Hutu militia, the FDLR, as well as other armed militias. Even though public spin on this operation touted its success (UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon famously celebrated it in a February speech in Goma), the statistics bare another horrific story. Since the operation began, a thousand women and children have been raped each month in North Kivu, massacres have ravaged villages, displacing entire communities, and new, even more horrific tortures of women have surfaced (including the lighting of fuel in women's vaginas). There has been no accountability for these horrific crimes, no justice, hardly a mention in the world press. Hospitals like Heal Africa in Goma are overflowing with the raped children and women.

Now on the heels of catastrophe, rather than learning something, the UN has joined with the FARDC (the Congolese army) to create an even more disastrous plan: Kimya II. This operation reads like a chapter from some psychotic science fiction novel. The plan is to bring together former enemy militias -- FARDC, PARECO (Mai Mai), and CNDP -- without reason, without training, without investigation into former war crimes, without stepping back and considering what steps must be taken to integrate former enemy militias into one unified body. In essence, the war criminals who were responsible for raping, destroying and terrorizing Bukavu in 2004 are now being charged with protecting it -- not unlike, say, hiring the Nazis to protect Warsaw after World War II.

The most terrifying aspect of this most recent operation is that MONUC is officially facilitating it by offering logistical support. What this means is that the international community is supporting this operation. A high-ranking MONUC official told me off the record that when the Security Council was in Goma a month ago he asked them "Are you saying you support Kimya II? Does this mean you are supporting war criminals and rapists as commanders of this operation?" When one of the members of the council balked, he produced a black list of war criminals with their charges and evidence of their crimes. Security Council members gave the list to President Kabila, but none of the commanders were removed and the operation moved forward.

As this rag-tag group of starving soldiers spread out into the forests and villages of South Kivu in preparation for Operation Kimya II the massacres have already begun. The FDLR as usual is revenge-raping women in the forests, villages are being set on fire. At least 463 cases of reported rape in the last 3 months, more than half the number in 2008. A three-year-old girl was raped so brutally recently that she died on her way to the Panzi Hospital. All of her sisters, aged 12, 14 and 17, have also been raped. Imagine what it will be like when Operation Kimya II actually begins in South Kivu? When these hungry soldiers, thrown together from various militias, and led by war criminals and rapists are unleashed on the civilian population in the forests, where no one is watching, and where there is no means of protection. The mind boggles.

No one I have spoken to anywhere in the Congo believes this operation will be anything but catastrophic, and this includes foot soldiers in MONUC who are meant to implement the operation, on up to high-ranking officials in the organization. Yet not a single world leader or Congolese leader or international government, or member of the Security Council is stopping it or offering a viable alternative that protects the civilian population rather than destroying it. As five Episcopal Bishops from Bukavu recently wrote in a joint statement: "Elected Deputies and Senators seem like they don't care. They can't agree on anything and so they endlessly discuss rather than taking action. The dysfunctional judiciary encourages criminality and "popular" justice. All this is done in front of parliamentarians who do nothing. We have one important question. Do the authorities take time to evaluate the operation before starting it? The Kimya II operation seems like it will give birth to a much more devastating and all encompassing war. "

Despite these cries, the war continues because the Western world is hungry for Congo's minerals. They push for a military "solution," knowing well that they are doomed in the Congo. Despite a powerful, emerging women's movement, despite the work of brave doctors giving their lives to perform day-long operations on the raped bodies of women, despite local activists and survivors of rape working with their hearts to change the situation and wake up the world to a war that has destroyed their country, the Congo still doesn't register in our consciousness.

It turns out that Kimya means "sssh," quiet, invisible in Swahili. Ironic.

Will we as humanity raise our voices before it's too late and prevent the next round of massacres in the Congo?

Eve Ensler is a writer and activist. She is the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls.

Comments

[PresidentRobertBooth]

***I think you're turning your own argument upside down, here. I don't excuse anything of what is happening in Congo, "not to be held accountable for..." All people are to be held responsible for their own actions.

But your own argument, stating that these people are unable to live together because they belong to different tribes, is, in my eyes, not holding people accountable for the atrocities they make themselves guilty of. That's excusing them. ("Of course they abuse each other, they belong to different tribes".)***

Not at all. The tribal argument holds them to account. As opposed to the Western post-colonial guilt mindset that it cannot possibly be Africans themselves that are raping and killing due to inter-tribal hatred. It MUST be some sort of Western conspiracy. The rapes for example of opposing tribes cannot possibly be Western caused. Those have to be based on ethnic hatred and humilation, plus opportunism.

[Shirley Fisk]

6/20/09
1:23pm
Milford, CT

What a nightmare to be female in the middle of this disaster.
How do you think we can help them?

[neesy08]

1.How in the world can anybody rape a child?

2. And why does the worlkd keep allowing these atrocities to occur?

3. Why is the media not covering this? I no longer listen to the Caylee Anthony story. It has been given far too much air time. Jst like that Holloway girl. I turned it off.

4. Which comes to my next complaint: Wy do we not give these atrocities the same coverage we give these white girls who are missing. Even the two reporters in N Korea are not being given the coverage that the Anthony, Holloway, and McClain stories have received. Why is that?

[DrJulienArbor]

Children... including infants... are raped and killed all the time, it happens everywhere, and it has happened throughout history. Part of the reason that this continues is because people would prefer to believe that it doesn't happen... and that the people that commit these crimes are somehow stereotypically identified i.e. Mr. Stranger Danger or the obviously "psychotic" mother such as Andrea Yates. This is not the case and these crimes are also committed by "upstanding" citizens of every demographic. There is no such thing as a profile for someone who sexually abuses or murders children.

As far as the media not covering it... why would they if people like yourself turn it off? The media covers stories that are backed by advertising dollars and if you turn off those stories... the advertisers are not getting their money's worth. If you want these stories covered... then stop turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to them!

This also happens every single day in the U.S.... many of the cases never make it to court or they are encouraged to accept monetary settlements so that there is no publicity for them... rape kits are left unprocessed so that crime statistics can be kept low... victims are harassed and even blamed themselves for the crimes against them... and more often than not they are left to fend for themselves without support from anyone.

They are traumatized by the initial events and then traumatized by the system!

[urfree2speak]

I am a child of Africa...at least that blood flows thru my veins, when you hear or read about these things .........you have to believe in a higher power. I sit calmly at a computer and type and women and children are being raped and tortured., thousands of miles away. Away from all of the amenities and luxury we take for granted in these United States Of America. Ultimately deep in my heart, I know that no one .....regardless of what has happened to them or what they strive for can EVER allow themselves to sink so LOW as to do these atrocities.My people kill and slaughter themselves everyday in this country as well...ignorance ans apathy seems to be the order of the day in whole communities across this Great and awesome country. I openly weep.....often because of this, but I still maintain some hope, thank you for this article.

[Stokes]

(Inspired to write)'
"Nato was bought and established by the few wealthy who also control the governments. They wish to control and stave off the emmancipators for relief. Their crime is to furnish the world with a false sense of relief while it anticipates a victory for world wide leadership. Amongst the poor and financially handicapped will they siphon out the last breath of humanity claiming that it is their humane policy to relieve the pain by removing the population."
This Luciferic rampage that is transversing around the globe can only be stopped by pleas to a Higher Power, which regardless of what name you give it, is Love. God bless and keep safe all of the humanitarian workers who are working so hard to help the abused. Our lack of participation is mainly because we are not educated or informed in detail of these abuses. The only thing I can do now, at 80 years of age, is to pray for the oppressed.

[iblogleft]

Isn't imperialist free-market capitalism grand. Great story, we hear far too little about emerging nations.

[gayleg]

Will we as humanity raise our voices before it's too late and prevent the next round of massacres in the Congo?

Raise our voices how? What do you want us to do?

[LillianB]

Last comment, continued:

The reasons the world does not interfere in the Congo situation, deciding not to act against what happens, may very well be rooted in two prejudiced mindsets: Western imperialism ("they're only Africans") and Eastern misogyni ("they're only women"). When the victims in question are indeed African women, the down end of both ladders of value, and the resources being fought for are of use to all rich countries with the power to interfere (through the UN), it's very very tempting to suggest the following: That there is an unspoken world agreement that the minerals of Congo are of higher value than the people of Congo. To end what's happening, we all have to speak up on not accepting this premise. People are always of a higher value than dead material resources. The world has to punish the perpetrators and to protect the victims. Or this blood bath will escalate, hard as it is to see escalation is even possible.

It's easy to forget the following: Politics are personal. Politics are about peoples' lives. International politics as well as and sometimes even more than domestic politics. Politics are about morals, and watching other people becoming victims, not doing a thing to stop it, is as immoral as it gets.

We're humans. We should act and be human.

[LillianB]

Reading the comments to this article, I want to state the obvious, as I register it's not obvious to all:

Going to war is ALWAYS about power. It can be about economic power or political power (in many instances, the same thing). It can be about keeping power, increasing power or keeping power from decreasing (defending power). But power ALWAYS is what one really fights for, whether there's a conflict over resources or borders or who's to be head of state or whatever.

To win the public opinion in a conflict (and to motivate troops to fight), one needs an enemy. And to make someone an enemy, one has to de-humanize the enemy. Rape is a technique to do so. If the enemy women aren't "really human", raping them is "acceptable". If the enemy men are monstrous rapists, they are dehumanized, and you can kill them, that's acceptable, too. And so the propaganda turns into prejudices proving themselves to be "true", prophecies becoming real life facts, and a conflict escalates.

That does not make war crimes acceptable. Rather the opposite: War crimes never end wars, they always give both parties reason to rage and to fight on. Which is why the world has to stop it. We have international laws, international courts and an international police force (the UN peacekeepers) to prevent and punish such war crimes. For some reason, the war crimes in Congo aren't punished.

[LadyXoc]

The UN peacekeepers have been the focus of complaints almost everywhere they've been sent. The UN agencies are riddled with corruption. I know we're all supposed to wax pious about how the UN istands for peace, but it's about time we faced the fact that the UN is straddling a nice piece of NY real estate and is way, way off it's stated mission. Maybe we need to start over, again.

[IGNSTHMD]

you wanna help, get educated about what is happening and where there is need.

[pmorlan]

This just breaks my heart but it also fires up my anger. I don't know what the most effective thing we can do but I'm going to start by sending an email to the White House to ask them why they aren't protesting this plan. Then I'm going to work on a piece to post on my blog. Next week I'll call my Senator (McConnell) and ask him what he's going to do about this. What else can we do? Any suggestions?

[ahuffreader]

Every war is a war against women.

[LillianB]

You're right, but it's even bigger than that. Every war is a war against humanity.

[Catothemuchyounger]

Maybe so. But how do you propose to stop things like this, without fighting a war to do it? I am sure that, over time, after who knows how much suffering over the years, this kind of thing will burn out where it is presently occurring. But if you want to stop it now, you need to go in there with massive force. You need to fight a war there.

[MissPerceptions]

Memories of "King Leopold's Ghost" by Adam Hochschild keep coming up for me right now. I bawled my eyes out after reading that book. As difficult as it was to read, I wholeheartedly recommend it.
I just have to ask. WHEN WILL AFRICA MATTER? I repeat, WHEN WILL AFRICA MATTER?
I have been to AFRICA. AFRICA is part of me. The people of AFRICA are part of me. Whether or not we choose to acknowledge it, AFRICA is part of us all. It's where we come from.
IT IS PART OF US.
Part of us is being raped. Part of us is being killed. And part of us (some of us) just does not care.
Can we not feel it?
Will we ever wake up?
Or are we all just TOO DAMN NUMB?

[LillianB]

Too many people see this as too abstract to care about. You don't. I don't. I am not a member of any religion, but I religiously believe in humanism. That all people have the same value. That all of us are brothers and sisters on earth. That an attack against one of us is an attack against all of us, and that we all have a duty to act human against other humans.

Not interfering in what's happening in Congo is immoral. Allowing atrocities to happen is participating in a war crime.

I have seen what's happening in Congo being referred to as "femicide". A systematic extermination of women, using rape as a weapon. I think we should all start using that term. And we should all remember a woman's life is as valuable as a man's. An African's life is as valuable as an American's. We're human, and killing and abusing other humans should never be abstract.

[PresidentRobertBooth]

***Are the only talking points you have discredited colonial nonsense from the late 60's and 70's? I honestly haven't heard garbage like that since the early 80's and then it was being put forward by someone whose understanding of the continent came from a brief perusal of headlines in the Daily Telegraph.

It's quite amusing to see stuff like this as it takes me back a couple of decades but at the same time it's quite disturbing that there are people out there who actually still believe it.
"Well the natives never could get along old boy, need to split them into their tribes and then let them go at each other with sticks on the border".***

You can deny it all you want. But these tribes in Africa have consistently shown they are willing to exterminate each other. Keeping them in the same country or straddling borders is a murderous situation that cannot be allowed to continue. Unfortunately, yours is a mindset common in the West where Africans are not to be held accountable for any of their own actions. There's always some diabolical neo-colonial plot going on apparently. I don't deny that foreign interests in the resources of that region aggrevates the situation, but tribal reasons are the main cause.

[Garioch]

Written as only someone who has never lived on the continent or taken any serious interest in it could. There are multiple areas on the continent where various ethnic groups exist co operatively. Prior to colonial times all available indications are that the Hutu's, Tutsi and Twa did; in fact there is a theory that the Hutu and Tutsi were the same people separated by their colonial rulers. Whether this is fact or not they certainly avoided the conflict seen between them now. There is no intrinsic reason that African ethnic groups cannot co exist and indeed they do in many instances. To say that they cannot is lazy racism and ignorance.

[LillianB]

I think you're turning your own argument upside down, here. I don't excuse anything of what is happening in Congo, "not to be held accountable for..." All people are to be held responsible for their own actions.

But your own argument, stating that these people are unable to live together because they belong to different tribes, is, in my eyes, not holding people accountable for the atrocities they make themselves guilty of. That's excusing them. ("Of course they abuse each other, they belong to different tribes".)

Sure, tribal identity is used as an excuse for this kind of monstrous actions. In wars, national identity and tribal identity always define "enemy" and "friend". It's how autorities keep autority. Power. That does not allow or excuse rape/slaughtering of civilians/­mutilation for life. These actions are atrocities. No matter who do them, no matter under which set of circumstances. And the world should not allow atrocities to continue under the name of war.

There's a name to this: War crimes. We have international laws (the Geneva convention) and international courts (the war crime tribunal in Hague) to deal with this kind of thing, and we have a world police (the UN) whose job is to stop these crimes and to punish the perpetrators. In Congo, neither of these mechanisms is taken into use. And THAT is a crime too, a crime the world makes itself guilty of. The victims are the civilians of Congo. Women and children, but men, too.