Warlord. James Steel

pagne is soaked in urine and the wetness has spread up through the cloth and into the waist of her tee shirt. She has no more clean clothes to wear; she has gone through all the ones given to her by her family in the two weeks since the rape. She feels dirty and uncomfortable, she is wet when she lies down to sleep at night and she is wet when she wakes up in the morning. The smell of sour piss is the constant companion in her life now.

      Her rape was violent, involving four men and the barrel of a rifle; the metal foresight cut her deeply. It is part of the practice of warfare in Kivu province, an attempt to destroy women and smash the society they traditionally hold together. It has left her with a fistula, a tear in the wall of her vagina into her bladder so that urine constantly seeps out.

      Her family look after her but their patience is finite – many victims of rape are rejected by their husbands and thrown out of their houses. She feels lucky that her family has not done that. She is broken and ruined and knows that it is her fault. Eve’s head sinks lower and she shuffles away from Beatrice.

      Where is my baby?

      The thought recurs in her mind at least once a minute.

      The two women are squatting on the ground on a low rise overlooking the refugee camp, rows and rows of palm-leaf shelters, covered in white plastic sheeting in a sea of dark brown mud. It is morning, with a cold, grey overcast sky, there is dew on the ground and people’s breath smokes. They hear the chopping of wood, a babble of voices, the hawking and spitting of old men. It smells of mud, shit and wood smoke from the cooking fires.

      People are packed into the view everywhere, clothed in a clashing kaleidoscope of patterns: red, yellow, blue, green, tartans, stripes, every possible combination of brash local styles and Western cast-offs.

      Women wash naked children as they stand in battered metal bowls, making them blow their noses into their fingers and then deftly flicking away the snot. Older people stand around in groups with their arms folded and talk quietly, the men dressed in tattered old suit jackets to try to maintain some dignity. They look gloomily at what their lives have become: forced by the endemic warfare from their home villages into the camps, they cannot work and have no control over their destiny.

      Everywhere there are kids, running around the shacks, playing, laughing and chattering. For them this is normal life, it’s what they have grown up with. They are dressed in rags, adult tee shirts that are stained and ripped and drag in the mud. All are barefoot, their feet and ankles covered in purple ulcers from cuts that weep pus. It is a noisy, hectic, dirty place to live.

      Worst of all though is the fear. They have food from the UNHCR and other NGOs but they have no law and order and the constant uncertainty is etched in deep worry lines on people’s faces. Militia groups can wander in from the bush at any time, just as the Kudu Noir did with Eve.

      They have no protection from them. The Congolese army, the FARDC, all are as bad as the militias, which is what they were before they were put into another uniform and then not paid by the central government. As former President Mobutu famously said to those generals who asked him for salaries: ‘You have rifles, why are you asking me for money?’

      Rape is another one of the FARDC’s specialities. As for the police, the PNC, they don’t get out this far into the bush; they stay in the towns and anyway are just unpaid bandits who live on bribes.

      When the Kudu Noir had finished with her, Eve couldn’t walk. She crawled under the piece of corrugated iron that had been her front door to hide. It did then provide some protection for her; to cover their tracks the Kudu Noir fired a white phosphorous mortar over where they had been – the airburst shell split the night with a white flash and showered burning pieces of felt soaked in the chemical. The ground around her was covered in an impossibly bright light that spewed white smoke. Wherever the pieces touched huts they burst into flame. Peering out from under the metal sheet she could see figures running around lit by orange flames and the banana palm leaves on the edge of the camp twisting in the heat.

      Her hut was burnt to cinders and with it all her possessions: a short-handled hoe for tilling her vegetable patch, a plastic basin for washing, a metal cooking pot, two pieces of pagne cloth, a comb, a small piece of soap, some dried cassava, three cooking utensils, a candle stub, a tee shirt. That was it, that was her life.

      Eve gets up and moves painfully away from her sister. She thinks about her boyfriend Gabriel: what will he say when he gets back from his trading trip? Will he reject her like her husband?

      She rubs her forehead as if she has a terrible headache.

      Where is my baby?

      Fang stops shouting into his BlackBerry, hangs up and returns to his armchair, facing Alex as if nothing has happened.

      He shakes his head. ‘I have a steel shipment on a freighter getting into Port Sudan and the harbour master is a pain in the ass. We pay him too much already and he wants more – we go to Mombasa if he don’t like it.’

      Alex feels slightly bemused by this but doesn’t show it. ‘You were saying about the Rwandan involvement in the project?’

      ‘Yes, it’s delicate because they carried out massacres in Kivu when they invaded it in the main war between 1997 and 2003. So the people there hate them and they can’t send troops back in on a permanent basis. That was a big part of the international treaty at the end of the main war, that all the eight countries involved would get their troops out of Congo.’ He shrugs. ‘There are no good guys in Kivu. So now they have to try this.’

      ‘So what is “this”?’

      ‘Well, they have agreed to provide logistical support for the military operation from Rwanda. Because of the international pressure they have been under in the past and their activities in Kivu, the Congolese would not accept them just sending troops into Kivu on a long-term basis. They have been very clear about this in our negotiations.

      ‘We are envisaging a large Battlegroup operation that cannot just appear in Kivu – it will have to be established in secret in Rwanda first and have a supply chain running through there to the Kenyan ports.’

      Alex nods. His military mind is attracted by the idea; it sounds feasible. Suddenly he stops himself.

      What the hell are you doing? This is not something you are going to get involved in.

      He throws out more objections to try to rubbish the plan.

      ‘OK, but what about the UN? I mean, they have substantial forces in Kivu and they are not just going to say OK to this sort of deal. It is unprecedented in modern times; the US will go mad on the Security Council. They can’t just let China grab a chunk of the middle of Africa.’

      He looks at Fang in exasperation, sure that he has found a way to stop the flow of smooth certainty.

      Fang nods to acknowledge the point but continues undaunted.

      ‘Yes, you are right, there are about five thousand UN troops there but the Congolese government won’t tell the UN in advance of the deal. In terms of the UN troops, they are allowed into a country only at the invitation of that country’s government, they don’t invade places. The Congolese president will simply withdraw their invitation as part of the lease agreement and they will be confined to base and then have to leave. It will just be presented as a fait accompli and there is nothing that the UN or the US will be able to do about it. If a sovereign state decides to lease some of its territory then it can do it.

      ‘You are right though – they won’t like it. But China and Russia will veto any action that the US want to take through the Security Council. The Americans don’t have any troops anywhere near the area; there is nothing they can do about it. The Congolese President will issue a decree and sign the province over to us and then it is Year Zero for the Republic of Kivu. We’ll have free range to start again and build a new country.’ He shrugs. ‘Although we may keep some UN troops on to continue policing work – we will see how it goes because they could be useful. No one in Kivu is very keen on them. They have been there since 2003 and they haven’t stopped the fighting. They stop it blowing up into