Congo Barbaric violence in the Congo has finally prompted the internationalcommunity to act. Declan Walsh describes the actions - and attitudes - in Bunia
Baraka Asiye is 15 but his small black eyes have the deadened gloss of a killer. Sitting astride a stolen motorcycle he is barely big enough to ride, he swung an AK-47 casually over his back and boasted of how many heads he has taken.
"I don't know how many Lendus I have killed," he said. "Some of them I shot, others I killed by hand with a knife". By way of explanation, he added: "They are not good people. They are the enemy."
Child soldiers swagger improbably up the rutted main street of Bunia, the tense, fearful northeastern Congolese town where the United Nations hopes to restore peace.
The UN deployment is belated, but may not be too late. Between three and four million people have died in the Congo's war since 1998 but western interest has been minimal. But this month's vicious battle for Bunia finally brought a spark of recognition.
Fighting between the rival Hema and Lendu tribes left over 400 people dead in an orgy of killing. By local standards the bloodshed was not unique - entire villages have were quietly annihilated last year - but it happened just yards away from 700 UN troops, who did nothing to stop it. Now, finally, the world is intervening.
Fears of a repeat of the 1994 Rwandan genocide awoke sleepy international attention, as well as reports of gory cannibalism. Some fighters believe that eating an enemy's heart, kidney or sexual organs brings magical powers.
Benoit Tshikala discovered a friend's body on the roadside on May 12th. His throat had been slit, his stomach cut open, and his heart removed. "I had heard of that before but never seen it. I am still traumatised," said Mr Tshikala, slowly shaking his head.
At the height of hostilities one Lendu soldier paraded around the town with a kidney strapped to his chest.
The UN peacekeepers will be led by France but include troops from Britain, Belgium, Germany, Spain and Italy. Ireland may also send troops, making it the second such mission to Congo since the 1960s.
For now the UN has only a fingerhold on security in Bunia. Armoured vehicles manned by Uruguayan troops thunder along the road from the headquarters to the airport. But true control lies with the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), the volatile and ruthless Hema militia that seized control two weeks ago.
In a meeting room, UPC secretary general Daniel Litsha described his group as "Congolese nationalists" who only sought "peace, reconciliation and the unity of our country." But on the streets of Bunia outside, the evidence suggested otherwise.
Yesterday's announcement has raised fears that the ousted Lendu militia will attempt to seize control of Bunia in advance of any muscular French deployment. The UPC has intensified a campaign of intimidation against the few remaining Lendu. Some have been assassinated at night; others have found bullets in front of their front doors. In the past few days a spate of anonymous letters have been sent warning "enemies" to leave within 48 hours. Nearly all have gone.
Yesterday morning a UN vehicle was followed at close distance by a pick-up full of gunmen and mounted with a machine gun. "It was clear intimidation," said UN spokeswoman Isabelle Abric.
UN troops also found and exploded six "jumping" mines - ones that spring into the air and explode at chest height - on the edge of the airstrip, expected to be the flashpoint for any outbreak of fighting.
In the crammed airport terminal, hundreds of desperate people sat on their bags, hoping for flights out. Many said they had been waiting for two or three weeks but few had the $60 fare to fly by cargo plane to Beni, 150 kilometres to the south. "We want to get a flight out, to anywhere," said one man.
"If there was a spirit of forgiveness this war could end," said Tranquillen Mbula, a machine worker at a nearby gold mine. "But for now it's just about vengeance." In front of the town Catholic church, a mound of freshly turned earth in a bean field marked a mass grave. During hostilities three Lendu militiamen burst into a church hall where terrified civilians had been sheltering. They singled out the Hema and opened fire. Twenty-two people died in the attack.
Jean-Edouard Dhena Ndjango emerged from a nearby room afterwards to find his mother shot in the head and his four-year-old son with his stomach slit open. Where were the UN peacekeepers cowering in their base at the time, he asked angrily.
"This observation mission is useless. You can't observe when people are killing one another and then count the bodies afterwards." Fr Jan Mol, provincial superior of the White Fathers missionaries, said: "Up to now we see nothing on Ituri in the international media. If 600 people are killed here, you see nothing. One person dies in Afghanistan, and it gets quarter of an hour."
A local radio station is shamelessly kindling the hostilities. Bunia's Radio Candip has acted as a mouthpiece for Hema propaganda; this week it declared that anyone sheltering in UN camps would be considered an "enemy".
Rwanda and Uganda, who have covertly supported the rival Hema and Lendu groups, are also quietly manipulating the conflict. Both countries have supported opposing sides as part of a bitter rival between their presidents that has at times threatened to break out into open war.
Elements such as the church killings and the radio broadcasts have raised comparisons with Rwanda's 1994 genocide. Then, Hutu militiamen killed up to 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. But analysts say that an all-out slaughter is unlikely in Ituri, for now at least.
"This is not a state-led genocide," said Francois Grignon of the International Crisis Group. "But you have two militia groups committting acts of genocide. And for both the extermination of the other is the only solution."