Confusion Reigns on Congo's Front Line
The moment the truck pulled into town, the whole village began to sprint. Into the road dashed old men in threadbare sport coats, teenage boys with mismatched flip-flops and 7-year-olds with protruding bellybuttons who should have been in school. They all swarmed the truck, hoisting cabbages, carrots, kebabs, papayas and toasted ears of corn they hoped to sell, yelling "Gari ! Gari!" Truck! Truck!
A group of rebel soldiers lounged nearby, most with assault rifles, one incongruously carrying a spear. Just up the road, a captain from the Congolese Army, with whom the rebels have declared a tenuous cease-fire, sat atop a mound of biscuit wrappers and cigarette butts, studiously reading a paperback titled "The Way to Happiness."
A certain sense of desperation -- and weirdness -- seems to be creeping across eastern Congo as more territory slips into a jumbled world between government and rebel control.
Most of the fighting has stopped, and on Tuesday the rebels agreed to vacate certain areas to allow aid workers unfettered access to the thousands of needy Congolese. But it seems that the longer the instability continues -- it has been about three weeks since the rebels began a major offensive, casting this whole region into crisis mode -- the more dysfunctional and confusing life here gets.
A group of rebel soldiers lounged nearby, most with assault rifles, one incongruously carrying a spear. Just up the road, a captain from the Congolese Army, with whom the rebels have declared a tenuous cease-fire, sat atop a mound of biscuit wrappers and cigarette butts, studiously reading a paperback titled "The Way to Happiness."
A certain sense of desperation -- and weirdness -- seems to be creeping across eastern Congo as more territory slips into a jumbled world between government and rebel control.
Most of the fighting has stopped, and on Tuesday the rebels agreed to vacate certain areas to allow aid workers unfettered access to the thousands of needy Congolese. But it seems that the longer the instability continues -- it has been about three weeks since the rebels began a major offensive, casting this whole region into crisis mode -- the more dysfunctional and confusing life here gets.
