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LONDON (AlertNet)&${esc.hash}39; Spiralling violence in southeastern Congo&${esc.hash}39;s &${esc.hash}39;triangle of death&${esc.hash}39; has forced tens of thousands to flee their homes and threatens to disrupt national elections, as government troops and armed groups fight over copper profits and tribal loyalties.
The government urgently needs to reform the army, eradicate militias and rein in corruption in Katanga province, or the bloodshed will get worse as politicians stir up ethnic violence in the run-up to polls set for March, says a report by Brussels-based thinktank International Crisis Group.
&${esc.hash}39;Katanga is the heartland of national politics and the nation&${esc.hash}39;s potentially richest province, but it has been ignored by the international community,&${esc.hash}39; Jason Stearns, Crisis Group&${esc.hash}39;s senior analyst for Africa, said in a statement.
The province is one of the most violent yet neglected areas of Democratic Republic of Congo, where almost four million people died during six years of war and its aftermath.
Crisis Group describes Katanga as Congo&${esc.hash}39;s &${esc.hash}39;forgotten crisis&${esc.hash}39; and says overlapping conflicts by a plethora of armed groups in the province are manipulated by Kinshasa-based politicians eager to keep control of lucrative copper and cobalt mines.
The violence in Katanga is driven by tensions between the region&${esc.hash}39;s north and south, between natives and perceived outsiders, and between the national army and the Mai Mai, ex-government militias who have run amok.
Crisis Group says violence in the so-called &${esc.hash}39;triangle of death&${esc.hash}39; between the towns of Mitwaba, Manono and Pweto, close to the borders with Tanzania and Zambia, has forced some 49,000 people from their homes since November 2005, when the government began a crackdown on local Mai Mai commander G&${esc.hash}39;deon Kyungu.
About 70,000 were already displaced in the area, the report says. Some 280,000 people are displaced in the whole province.
ELEPHANT TUSKSThere is also fighting between the militias. Stearns told AlertNet: &${esc.hash}39;Sometimes it&${esc.hash}39;s about something as banal as poaching rights from Upemba National Park. There&${esc.hash}39;s ivory, fur, poaching for eating.&${esc.hash}39;
Evaluating the impact on civilians is hard, with few aid agencies present to verify army reports.
&${esc.hash}39;Access is very difficult,&${esc.hash}39; Stearns said. &${esc.hash}39;There&${esc.hash}39;s a blackout of information.&${esc.hash}39;
Katanga, the home province of President Joseph Kabila, has a long history of unrest, much of it provoked by wealth in mines which once produced 50 to 80 percent of the national budget.
Crisis Group says the government, international donors and foreign companies must crack down on corruption to stop it undermining elections.
It also says the U.N. Mission in Congo, MONUC, needs more troops in Katanga, and the government must do its best to stamp out ethnic hate speech.
The United Nations has nearly 17,000 soldiers and police in Congo following a war which began in 1998 and officially ended in 2003.
But there are just 100 U.N. soldiers in Katanga, which is the size of France.
Congo&${esc.hash}39;s war and its aftermath have killed almost four million people, mostly from hunger and disease exacerbated by fighting, according to aid agency International Rescue Committee.
BIKES FOR GUNSMai Mai militia were originally set up by Kabila&${esc.hash}39;s father, former President Laurent Kabila, to stop the advance of Rwandan-backed forces in 1998.
Since the end of the war, the militias &${esc.hash}39; who number between 5,000 and 8,000 &${esc.hash}39; have turned to intimidating civilians and extorting money.
Pasteur Ngoy Mulunda, once a close associate of Laurent Kabila, started an initiative to encourage Mai Mai fighters to swap guns for bicycles, but the rebels ended up fighting over the bicycles and there was no sign of disarmament.
Crisis Group&${esc.hash}39;s report says disarmament is an issue for the National Demobilisation and Reintegration Commission, not groups like Mulunda&${esc.hash}39;s.
Another strand in the complex web of conflicts involves rivalries between the north and south of the province. The north is primarily agricultural, and looked down on by people in the south, where most of the mineral resources are.
Crisis Group says Congolese politicians have played up ethnic tensions between native Katangans and the Luba tribe, who arrived from neighbouring provinces during the colonial mining boom of the early twentieth century and ended up controlling many of the province&${esc.hash}39;s businesses.
When Laurent Kabila, a Luba from northern Katanga, seized power in 1997, he filled the top ranks of the security forces with officers from the north, creating resentment among southerners, who felt deprived of the wealth concentrated in their region.
The Luba have been the target of ethnic cleansing in the past. Purges in 1992 and 1993 killed more than 5,000 people and displaced some 1.3 million, Crisis Group says.
Crisis Group&${esc.hash}39;s Africa programme director, Suliman Bado, says Katanga&${esc.hash}39;s problems should take centre stage.
&${esc.hash}39;It is far past time to address these problems and allow real development and democratic accountability to take root,&${esc.hash}39; he said in a statement. &${esc.hash}39;Waiting until after the elections has matters the wrong way around.&${esc.hash}39;
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