Warlord

He stretches out his arms and says with a note of wonder in his voice, ‘In Operation Tiananmen we are going to set up a new country and bring order out of anarchy!’

Alex looks at him quizzically. ‘Is that Tiananmen as in Square?’

‘Yes, it means “the mandate of heaven”.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s the ancient Confucian right to rule, the basic authority that any government has to have in order to form a country. And you are going to establish it, Mr Devereux. It is our new vision for the world.’

Gabriel Mwamba is twenty-one and in love.

He is an itinerant salesman, pushing his tshkudu cargo-scooter uphill along a narrow track through the forest, breathing hard and sweating, beads of it stand out in his black, wiry hair like little pearls. The tendons across his shoulders and neck stand out and feel like red-hot wires.

He has covered thirty miles in two days over the hills; today he started out at 4am. To dull the pain he is thinking about Eve and how he is going to impress her when he gets back to the refugee camp where she lives. He is an ugly man and knows it, so he realises he has to compensate for it in other ways – he will be a successful businessman.

When he met Eve last year he liked the look of her, small and stocky with good firm breasts and smooth skin. When he heard of her rejection by her husband because of her albino baby, he knew she was the one for him. A fellow outcast. She looked so sad and he just wanted to put a smile on her face.

His own features have been carelessly assembled: his jaw is too big, he has tombstone teeth, puffed-out cheeks and heavy eyebrows. His body looks odd, composed of a series of bulges: a large head, powerful shoulders, protruding stomach and bulging calf muscles. It’s all out of proportion with his short legs, a broad trunk and long arms. Because he knows he looks unusual his face has an anxious, eager-to-please look that irritates people and leads them to be crueller to him than they would otherwise be. However, Gabriel is an optimist with big plans and he never gives up.

He has been reading a French translation of a self-help book – I Can Make You a Millionaire! – written by an American business guru. He has absorbed a lot about spotting opportunities in the market and is sure he is onto one now. Market intelligence is key to these breakthroughs and he listens to his battered transistor radio once a day (to preserve the batteries, which are expensive) to catch the main radio bulletin from Radio Okapi, the UN radio station that broadcasts throughout Kivu.

The local Pakistani UN commander was on the bulletin talking in very bad French about the success of their recent operation against the FDLR and how they had opened up the road into the village of Pangi and installed a Joint Protection Team to allow the market to be held there on Saturday.

Immediately Gabriel knew this was his opportunity. He got together all his money and bought a load of consumer goods off another trader who hadn’t heard the news and was selling them cheap. Pangi had been inaccessible for months so they would be crying out for what he had to offer, and that meant profit. As the self-help book put it: ‘Adversity is spelt OPPORTUNITY!’ It’s a big investment but he is going to make a killing.

The tshkudu he pushes is loaded up with old USAID sacks containing cheap Chinese-manufactured goods: soap, matches, batteries, condoms, combs, print dresses, needles and thread, some tins of tuna (way past their sell-by date), boxes of smuggled Ugandan Supermatch cigarettes and six umbrellas in a bundle. He also has sacks of charcoal from the charcoal trading network throughout the province – he is following one of their secret paths through the woods.

It is heading downhill now into Pangi. The tshkudu is heavy and tugging at his grip. It’s six feet long and made of planks – he built it himself. He hauls back on the handlebars to prevent it from running away from him, digging the toes of his flip-flops into the mud. The trail comes out of the trees and onto a dirt road leading to the village, where he passes the local massacre memorial. The date and number of people killed are scorched with a poker onto a wooden board nailed to a tree: 20 July 1999, 187 people. He doesn’t give it a second look; every village has one from the war.

He is looking to the future and full of hope. At the moment he is a small-time trader, but one day he will graduate to be one of les grosses légumes – the big vegetables, the businessmen in the regional capitals of Goma or Bukavu, running an internet café or a trucking company.

A jolt of fear goes through Gabriel and he stops daydreaming. His step falters and he wants to run away but they have seen him already and to show fear would invite an attack. Three soldiers with Kalashnikovs are lounging at the side of the road on a log, smoking and staring at him through their sunglasses. Like everyone in Kivu, Gabriel is well practised at avoiding attention from the police or the army: his head drops, his eyes look at the ground and his body seems to halve in size as he pushes the tshkudu towards them.

The UN commander said there would be a Joint Protection Team in place but there don’t seem to be any Pakistani soldiers around. That the three men are wearing the plain, dark green uniform of the government army, the FARDC, is bad enough, but what makes them even more of a threat is that they have the distinctive blue shoulder flashes of the 64th Brigade. The Congolese army is made up of militia groups that have been integrated into it over the years and the 64th Brigade is a former mai-mai group, a tribal militia of the Shi people in South Kivu.

Gabriel is terrified of them because he is a Hunde, a member of the Rwandan tribe brought into the province by the Belgians during the colonial era as cheap labour. They are hated by the ‘originaires’, the indigenous Congolese peoples.

If he can just get past this group then he can blend into the market, do his business and sneak out with the crowd at the end of the day. His eyes are wide with fear but he keeps them lowered as he passes the soldiers. Their heads turn and they watch him intently.

Sophie Cecil-Black is feeling carsick and frazzled.

The white Land Cruiser swings round another switchback on the dirt road up the hill and her head swoons horribly.

They’ve been doing this since six o’clock this morning and it’s early afternoon now. Up three thousand feet from Goma to Masisi and then down three thousand feet into the Oso valley and then up another three thousand feet to here.

God, one more swing and I am going to puke.

Saliva pours into her mouth but she tenses her throat muscles and forces the vomit back down.

She looks out of the window. Everywhere around her are stunning views out over rugged hills covered with grassland and small fields. It reminds her of a family holiday to Switzerland in the summer, but she is not in the mood to appreciate the beauty now.

Sophie is thirty-one, six foot tall and slim with straight brown hair, a striking face and a strident manner. Some men think she is very beautiful, others think she is very ugly. It’s the Cecil-Black nose that makes the difference: secretly she used to want to file down the prominent bridge of it when she was a teenager but she has learned to live with it now. She wears a tight green GAP tee shirt, hipster jeans and green Croc shoes.

The Cecil-Blacks are a branch of the Cecil family who ran the British government from the time of Elizabeth I. Sophie went to Benenden, her father is a stockbroker and her mother is very concerned that she is over thirty and not married. Sophie couldn’t care less about that: she knows she is called to higher things and has been doing her best to break the mould of being a safe, Home Counties girl ever since she refused to join the Brownies aged seven. She has a first in PPE from Oxford, a Masters in Development Economics from the School of Oriental and African Studies and an ethnic tattoo across the small of her back.

She is now a project manager with an American humanitarian aid charity, Hope Street, which has a large presence in Kivu and specialises in work with street kids, schooling and training them but she also does general humanitarian work. She leads a team of fifteen people based in Goma, where they have a large training facility.

One of her team, Natalie Zielinski, is sitting in the backseat. She doesn’t get carsick. She’s a small, bubbly Texan with brown, frizzy hair in a bob that never quite works. Sophie likes her optimism, but sometimes finds her irritating.

Nicolas, their Congolese driver, is a slim, self-effacing young man, very glad to have such a cushy job driving for an NGO, it’s a lot easier and safer than the backbreaking life of the peasants in the bush. He is quiet and calm with the soft manner of a lot of Congolese men. He drives smoothly but even that can’t iron out the constant bumping from side to side on the dirt road and those horrible lurching turns.

They started so early because they need to get a load of vaccines to a remote clinic before they go off in the heat. Several thousand dollars worth of polio, hepatitis, measles and other vaccines are packed into coolboxes in the back of the jeep. Once they get them to the clinic at Tshabura they can go into the solar-powered fridge and will be fine for the big vaccination day that they have set up later that week. The clinic is at the head of the Bilati valley and local field workers have spread the word around the farms and villages there, as well as advertising it on Radio Okapi. They are expecting two hundred children to be brought in to be inoculated.

The other reason they started at six is that Tshabura is on the edge of the area under the nominal control of the UN forces. The security situation in Kivu is always volatile; they listen to the radio every morning for the UN security update, like a weather forecast. At the moment their route is Condition Bravo – some caution is warranted, no immediate threat but follow normal security procedures. Condition Echo means evacuate urgently to save your life but it doesn’t happen often. Lawlessness is just part of everyday life in Kivu and Sophie has become used to the daily list of rapes, muggings and burglaries, as well as keeping track of which roads are closed due to militia activity.

After a prolonged security assessment and unsuccessful wrangling with the UN to do the delivery by helicopter, Sophie got fed up with waiting and decided that they could race there in the daytime, get to the clinic, stay overnight in their compound and then race back the next day. White NGO workers are generally safe in Kivu, apart from the usual hassling for bribes from the police and army, but she doesn’t want to be out on the roads after dark when armed groups roam at will.

All these factors are weighing on her mind and she’s also irate because they are behind schedule. They had a puncture on a track that had been washed out by heavy rain and then lost an hour getting over the river at Pinga where a truck had got a wheel stuck in a hole in the old metal bridge.

The car at last comes to the top of the hill and Nicolas pulls up so Natalie can look around the surrounding area and check the map. She scans either side of the jeep and all she can see are lines of green hills in bright sunshine receding into the distance. It is completely quiet but for the noise of a breeze buffeting the car.

‘Daniel Boone would get lost out here,’ she mutters, as she looks back and forth between the map and the view. ‘One hill begins to look much the same as another.’ The map has proved inaccurate already that day and there are no signposts anywhere.

‘Look, can we just get on with it, please,’ Sophie snaps.

‘OK, OK,’ Natalie says cheerfully. ‘We’re on the right route.’

Chapter Three

Alex is struggling to get a grip on the scale of the project that Fang has just outlined.

He stops being relaxed and sits forward, the fingers of one hand pressed to his temple.

‘Hang on; the Congolese government is going to lease you Kivu Province?’

Fang nods confidently. ‘Yes, just like the British government leased Hong Kong from China for ninety-nine years.’

‘OK. How many people live there?’

‘Well, that is a good question actually. No one really knows because surveys are from before the war, but we think about six million.’

‘Six million people?’ Alex looks incredulous but Fang looks back at him unfazed.

‘Yes.’

Alex shakes his head. ‘Why is the government going to do that?’

‘Well, Kivu is actually an embarrassment to the government in Kinshasa. The President promised to bring peace to the country when he got elected but he has failed to end the fighting, or deliver on any of his other Cinq Chantiers policies.

‘The government has no control there. I mean, look at the distances: Congo is the size of western Europe and trying to run Kivu from Kinshasa is like trying to run Turkey from London. Plus there are no road or rail links between the two areas.

‘The government had to get the Rwandan army in to try and defeat the FDLR but that failed. Now they throw their hands up and say it is a Rwandan problem and the Rwandans do the same back to them. No one takes responsibility for it so the whole problem just festers on and will never get solved. I mean, the whole of Congo is just …’ Fang waves his arms around trying to communicate the depth of the exasperation he feels about the country ‘…completely dysfunctional, the country makes no sense. The only reason it exists is as the area of land that Stanley was able to stake out.’

He begins ticking points off on his fingers: ‘The country makes absolutely no sense on a geographic, economic, linguistic or ethnic level. There are over two hundred different ethnic groups in it and the Belgians practised divide and rule policies that exacerbated the differences between them. The only things they have in common are music, Primus beer and suffering.’

Alex is nodding in agreement with this. He has had some dealings with the place and is aware of its legendary chaos.

‘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.