ShareThisHe is known as the Terminator, a ruthless military commander, accused of massacres and wanted by the International Criminal Court for conscripting child soldiers and for other war crimes.
Congolese rebel commander Bosco Ntaganda has been denounced as one of the worst war criminals in central Africa. Yet, in a bizarre turn of events, two governments in the war-torn region -- Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo -- are gambling on him as their best hope for peace.
It's a controversial strategy. Critics say the rebel commander is a warlord who cannot be trusted to bring stability to the region. But after his dramatic rise to power in the past month, the fate of millions of people could be in his hands.
Last month, the chances for peace in eastern Congo were suddenly boosted when Rwandan troops arrested the rebel leader Laurent Nkunda. There was widespread praise for the arrest, which seemed to remove a major obstacle to peace, since Nkunda's followers had rampaged across the region and forced more than 250,000 people to abandon their homes.
But the rebel leader was immediately replaced by his former chief of staff, Ntaganda, who had apparently launched a coup against his boss.
Ntaganda has now become the deputy commander of a joint military offensive by Rwanda and Congo. At least 5,000 Rwandan troops have poured into eastern Congo to pursue thousands of Rwandan Hutu militiamen, who sought shelter in Congo after their involvement in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Ntaganda has promised to integrate his rebels into the Congolese military. But when a ceremony was held last week to issue uniforms to the rebels and begin their integration into the military, only a few dozen of his men showed up. The ceremony had to be postponed a day because some of his forces refused to participate. Diplomats boycotted the event because of Ntaganda's status as an accused war criminal.
"The ceremony was largely for show," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a researcher in eastern Congo for Human Rights Watch, an independent rights group that has documented abuses in the region. "Only 30 to 40 rebels showed up. So far the process is not working very well. The rebel units are still largely independent."
Ntaganda was involved in a massacre of civilians as recently as Nov. 4 in the town of Kiwanja, in eastern Congo, according to Human Rights Watch. It says an estimated 150 civilians were killed by rebel forces under Ntaganda's command -- one of the worst massacres in the region in years.
"He has killed civilians in their hundreds and possibly their thousands," Van Woudenberg said in a phone interview from Goma, in eastern Congo.
"His list of abuses is atrocious, but it's all being forgotten now. They're celebrating him as a partner for peace. You're not going to get peace and stability with Bosco Ntaganda because he continues to participate in horrific massacres."
At the ceremony last week, and at an event on Jan. 16, Congolese Cabinet ministers sat next to Ntaganda and made no effort to detain him, despite the arrest warrant against him, she noted. "They're violating all of their international obligations."
Congolese President Joseph Kabila has promised that the Rwandan troops in the military offensive will return home by the end of this month. The United Nations has been providing support to the military operation, but it has announced that it cannot support the campaign as long as Ntaganda holds such a high rank in it.
More than 5 million people are estimated to have died in a decade of fighting in Congo and the resulting humanitarian disasters in the region.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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