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Viewing cable 06KINSHASA452, OFDA VISIT TO SOUTH KIVU

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Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
06KINSHASA452 2006-03-16 12:55 2011-08-25 00:00 UNCLASSIFIED Embassy Kinshasa
VZCZCXRO0899
RR RUEHDU RUEHGI RUEHJO RUEHMR
DE RUEHKI #0452/01 0751255
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 161255Z MAR 06
FM AMEMBASSY KINSHASA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 3460
INFO RUEHXR/RWANDA COLLECTIVE
RUCNSAD/SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY
RUEHRO/USMISSION UN ROME
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 KINSHASA 000452 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
AIDAC 
 
C O R R E C T E D  C O P Y (DISREGARD KINSHASA 444) 
 
AID/W FOR DCHA/OFDA- MMARX, CGOTTSCHALK, MSHIRLEY 
AID/W FOR DCHA/FFP- TANDERSON, NCOX, TMCRAE 
AID/W FOR DCHA/OTI- RJENKINS, KHUBER 
AID/W FOR AFR- KO'DONNELL, JBORNS 
NAIROBI FOR USAID/OFDA/ARO- JMYER,ADWYER 
NAIROBI FOR USAID/FFP- DSUTHER, ADEPREZ 
ROME FOR USUN FODAG- RNEWBERG 
GENEVA FOR NKYLOH 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: EAID PHUM PREF KPKO CG
SUBJECT: OFDA VISIT TO SOUTH KIVU 
 
 
------- 
Summary 
------- 
 
1. (U) This is the first of two communications reporting 
observations made by the USAID/OFDA DRC team during a 
three-week visit to eastern DRC in February 2006. 
Discussed here is the team's visit to South Kivu province 
in early February. Traveling  first to Kitutu, in southern 
South Kivu, the USAID/OFDA team observed that the 
International Rescue Committee (IRC) was providing a 
valuable, life-saving service through its program of 
assistance to local health structures in the provision of 
primary health care. As this part of IRC's program 
appeared to be less developed than others, USAID/OFDA 
expressed a desire to see Kitutu given more attention in 
the future.  Since the area is still plagued by violence 
associated with the movements of armed groups of Mai Mai, 
FDLR and now a vigilante civilian protection militia, it 
was clear that this part of South Kivu would have to be 
considered as remaining in the "emergency" phase for at 
least another year.  Following Kitutu, the team traveled 
to Baraka and Fizi, also in southern South Kivu, bordering 
Lake Tanganyika, to assess changes in the humanitarian 
situation resulting from three months of "facilitated 
repatriation" of Congolese refugees formally housed in 
refugee camps in Tanzania.   Reintegration appeared to be 
going relatively well for those refugees who had arrived 
after UNHCR had opened offices in Baraka, but the lack of 
support for all the "spontaneous" returns that had 
occurred before that was reported as creating tension in 
the communities.  Humanitarian actors who had been working 
with local populations before the arrival of UNHCR told 
the team that the lack of coordination of activities had 
now become a serious problem.  The USAID/OFDA-sponsored 
food security project implemented by Action Against Hunger 
(AAH) had experienced severe setbacks as a result of a 10- 
month drought in the area during 2005, but was found to 
have significantly contributed to the effort to facilitate 
refugees' return and reintegration.  In Bukavu, the team 
was told that military operations directed against FDLR 
elements had caused new population displacements in the 
Mwenga/Kamituga and Bunyakiri areas, but that details were 
not yet available since humanitarians had largely 
evacuated these areas, as suggested to them by MONUC, so 
as not to be in the middle of the fighting.  End summary. 
 
------ 
Kitutu 
------ 
 
2.  (U) On February 1, a USAID/OFDA team composed of 
Disaster Operations Specialist (DOS) Michelle Shirley 
(Washington), Senior Program Officer Jay Nash (Kinshasa) 
and Program Officer Victor Bushamuka (Kinshasa) traveled 
to southern South Kivu to assess the impact of USAID/OFDA- 
funded activities in the area.  The team first visited 
Kitutu, 230 kilometers (km) southwest of Bukavu, where 
USAID/OFDA partner the IRC has been providing emergency 
support to the primary health care system. 
 
3. (U) The town of Kitutu was still under Mai Mai control 
at the time of the OFDA team's visit. Local authorities 
were anxiously awaiting the arrival of "regular" FARDC 
troops to replace the Mai Mai, who are officially now part 
of the new national army, have not yet received any formal 
induction or retraining.  Although some parts of South 
Kivu have stabilized since the installation of the 
transitional government in June 2003, Kitutu has not seen 
dramatic change.  The area remains extremely isolated, at 
the end of a barely passable road from Bukavu which passes 
first through Mwenga and Kamituga.  The road once 
continued southward all the way to Kasongo, in Maniema 
province, but Kitutu has been completely cut off from 
population centers to the south since the beginning of the 
war. Only motorcycles can manage the stretch of this road 
from Kamituga to Kitutu. 
 
 
KINSHASA 00000452  002 OF 005 
 
 
4. (U) Kitutu town was occupied by Rwandan RPF forces 
during much of the 1998-2003 Congo-Rwanda war, and local 
priests report seeing a great deal of very brutal violence 
during and since that time.  Currently, residents of 
Kitutu, and the many displaced persons from other villages 
in the area who now live there, can travel out of town 
only a few kilometers without running the risk of 
encountering either active FDLR elements or gangs of 
unfriendly Mai Mai who will, at a minimum, rob the 
civilians.  Often they also commit acts of violence, 
including beatings and rape.  In recent months, residents 
of villages in the Kalole area southeast of Kitutu began 
resisting the Mai Mai presence by forming a new vigilante 
group called "Raia Mutomboki", which is Swahili for 
"citizen in revolt".  The group, which took on several Mai 
Mai strongholds brandishing machetes and wearing no 
clothes at all, was surprisingly successful in pushing the 
Mai Mai out of the area. 
 
5. (U) The OFDA team found IRC to be providing a valuable 
service in supporting the local health structures, who are 
completely cut off from any other outside support, but 
nevertheless felt that this part of the IRC project was 
considerably less developed and had received significantly 
less attention than the corresponding efforts in Kamituga 
and Mwenga, which were both visited in previous trips to 
the area.  There are no resident expatriates to oversee 
the program, and supervision visits from Bukavu appear to 
have become relatively few and far between.  Though this 
is no doubt partially due to the isolation of Kitutu, OFDA 
Reps asked IRC to work quickly to address the situation. 
 
6. (U) It was clear to the USAID/OFDA team that the Kitutu 
Health Zone should be considered to be in an emergency 
phase, both because of the security situation and the 
relatively low degree of attention it has received from 
the humanitarian community to date. The community seemed 
extremely grateful for the IRC intervention, and the 
health workers told the OFDA reps flatly that without IRC, 
there would be virtually no health care at all in the 
Kitutu Health Zone. The team felt that OFDA would need to 
continue its support to the area for at least the next six 
months and perhaps considerably longer, depending on the 
ability of government troops to bring peace and stability 
to the area. 
 
7. (U) The local health staff impressed the USAID/OFDA 
team as being remarkably dedicated professionals living in 
a very difficult and remote part of the province.  Kitutu 
used to be part of the Mwenga health zone, but was 
designated to be its own health zone as part of a country- 
wide restructuring of the health system last year.  There 
were no doctors and no hospital before, but now there are 
two young doctors assigned to the zone, and the central 
health center of Kitutu has been converted into a small 
hospital.  IRC is assisting the local staff to renovate 
this health center and to construct a maternity ward. 
 
8. (U) In contrast to their generally positive view of 
IRC, local officials were less than enthusiastic with 
regard to the food-security interventions of USAID/OFDA's 
other partner in the area:  Food for the Hungry 
International (FHI).  They complained that FHI did not 
maintain a presence in Kitutu, and that the seeds that had 
been delivered had not been well synchronized with the 
agricultural season and thus had not produced well. 
USAID/OFDA reps raised this issue with FHI headquarters in 
Bukavu upon return from Kitutu, but found that FHI's 
records suggest that seeds were distributed at exactly the 
right moment.  Nevertheless, FHI assured the team that 
they would conduct a detailed assessment of the results of 
the project in Kitutu and deliver a full report by the end 
of March.  As health officials were reporting an increase 
in the number of cases of malnutrition arriving at health 
centers, USAID/OFDA will ask that FHI explore the 
territory's experience with fish farming and perhaps, 
security permitting and assuming a continuation of the 
program, suggest that might be included in future 
 
KINSHASA 00000452  003 OF 005 
 
 
proposals. 
 
----------- 
Baraka-Fizi 
----------- 
 
9. (U) Following the Kitutu visit, the OFDA team returned 
to southern South Kivu to assess changes in the situation 
in the Baraka-Fizi area since OFDA Rep's visit to that 
area in December 2005.  With the large number of 
spontaneous returnees from Tanzania over the past year, 
especially the recent "facilitated return" program which 
UNHCR began in October 2005, Fizi and Baraka had clearly 
returned to life, with each day bringing progress in the 
return to pre-war normalcy.  OFDA Rep estimates Fizi as 
having already roughly twice as many people as it did just 
two months ago.  Security has not been a problem in the 
area lately, even from the Dunia-led Mai Mai group camped 
out on the Ubwari Peninsula, and humanitarians are now 
regularly accessing areas south of the peninsula by road. 
 
10. (U) USAID/OFDA partner AAH has been implementing 
projects designed to increase food security in the area 
through support to fishing villages and agricultural 
activities since 2001.  For several years, the program was 
limited, for reason of continuing insecurity, to the strip 
of land between Lake Tanganyika and the mountains which 
lead up to the High Plateau.  In the last two years, 
however, AAH has been increasingly able to reach people 
trying to farm further inland.  The general area, and 
particularly Fizi, is famous for being particularly 
fertile and having high agricultural potential.  In 2005, 
AAH supported 39 village agricultural groups comprised of 
35 families each.  The project covered an area 154 
kilometers long from Makobola (just south of Uvira) to 
Kazimia (on Lake Tanganyika south of the Ubwari 
peninsula).  About 65% of the beneficiaries of the program 
are returnees, who, having come back before the start of 
the UNHCR facilitated transportation program, are 
considered "spontaneous" returnees.  It is estimated that 
20% of the total population of the area chose to remain 
throughout the war and never fled to Tanzania. 
 
11. (U) The team found that AAH's efforts had indeed 
contributed significantly in facilitating the return of 
the Congolese refugees who had fled to Tanzania by 
increasing the amount of food available.  Unfortunately, a 
serious drought beginning in February 2005 and lasting 
until December caused the loss of most of the bean crop 
and much of the corn harvest, particularly in areas close 
to the lake.  Farmers who respected the normal 
agricultural schedule and planted in September lost most 
of their crops due to the late arrival of the seasonal 
rains.  Nevertheless, the team saw peanuts growing in 
abundance, and corn that had been planted late had 
survived and was ready for harvest.  Furthermore, it is 
clear that the general food security situation would have 
been much worse had there been no program in place at all 
when the large number of refugees started arriving in 
regular shiploads.  Fizi, which is inland and located at a 
higher altitude, did not experience the drought as 
seriously, and crops there had done well.  AAH still had 
significant amounts of seeds available that they intended 
to distribute in March for the beginning of the "short" 
agricultural season. 
 
12. (U) UNHCR-facilitated repatriation of the 152,000 
Congolese refugees registered by UNHCR in Tanzania by 
twice-a-week boats is ongoing at an average 1000 persons a 
week.  Overall, the program appeared to be running 
reasonably well, with returnees receiving non-food kits, 
seeds, agricultural tools and a 3-month one-time food 
ration upon arrival at transit camps in Baraka and Kazimia 
before being transported to selected drop-off sites closer 
to their home villages.  Families judged to be 
particularly vulnerable are also receiving tin roofing, 
wood, and technical support to assist them in building new 
houses.  One the trip, the USAID/OFDA team saw numerous 
 
KINSHASA 00000452  004 OF 005 
 
 
families constructing small houses with materials supplied 
by Norwegian Refugee Council, ACTED or Tear Fund. 
 
13. (U) One weakness of the program is that because of 
poor road conditions in the area, UNHCR's drop-off points 
are in many cases still far from the villages which are 
the returnees' destinations.  Because some of the 
returnees will still have to walk as many as 150 
kilometers after being dropped off, a significant 
percentage reportedly prefer to sell their food and non- 
food packages rather than take the whole load with them. 
Another weakness is that, again, due to non-existent 
infrastructure, health centers which provide returnees 
with the 6-months of free health care to which they are 
entitled, are often located far from the actual home 
villages. 
 
14. (U) A problem cited by international NGOs who were 
working in the area before the arrival of UNHCR complain 
that UNHCR has not been readily sharing information with 
them as to the eventual destinations of the new arrivals, 
and has generally not made much of an effort to make sure 
its activities are well-coordinated with those who already 
had programs in the area.  Coordination is particularly 
important at the present time because the beginning of the 
UNHCR facilitated return and the additional funding now 
available through UNHCR have attracted many new INGOs and 
NGOs to the area.  The more experienced NGOs complain that 
the many of the newer actors try to work without having a 
base in the area and without knowing the area well, which 
leads to duplication of efforts or the disturbance of 
existing programs.  Caritas/Uvira, for example, hurriedly 
distributed seeds in some communities without first 
consulting with other actors to see if seed distributions 
had already occurred in those villages or were already 
planned by someone else.  UNOCHA opened an office in 
Baraka in July 2005, but to date has had limited success 
in getting the various actors in the various sectors to 
come together to discuss their plans in coordination 
meetings. 
 
15. (U) Another problem that "old" international NGOs are 
experiencing is that with the arrival of UNHCR and its 
partners, the intended beneficiaries of some of their 
programs are "not available" to participate in programs 
planned to increase food security.  AAH reports, for 
instance, that rather than plant and cultivate, returnees 
spend their time running between the various offices which 
provide assistance of one type or another to make sure 
they are on any lists of intended recipients.  In 
addition, AAH has found this group of beneficiaries to be 
difficult to work with in general, since, after years of 
living in refugee camps where everything was provided free 
- including food, education, health care, shelter, etc. - 
by external actors, they have a particularly strong sense 
of entitlement to all types of assistance and little 
inclination to want to participate in programs where the 
assistance requires effort on their part. 
 
16. (U) Finally, the most serious problem for the moment 
seems to be that few of those refugees who returned before 
UNHCR set up an office in Baraka in mid-2005, have 
received any assistance at all, though they have documents 
showing that they also came also from the UNHCR-run camps 
in Tanzania.  According to NGOs working in the area, this 
discrepancy in assistance is creating tension between the 
groups.  Upon return to Kinshasa, OFDA reps raised this 
question with the head of UNHCR in DRC, who said he was 
unaware of this situation and would investigate it 
personally and subsequently provide more information. 
 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
Military offensives directed against FDLR strongholds 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
17, (U) Although the OFDA team did not spend much time in 
Bukavu, the South Kivu capital, various humanitarian 
actors there, including UNOCHA, expressed concern about 
 
KINSHASA 00000452  005 OF 005 
 
 
ongoing FARDC offensives against the Rwandan FDLR 
elements, particularly in the Mwenga-Kamituga area.  MONUC 
had reportedly asked the FARDC to wait until it had 
completed a rotation of its peacekeeping troops and would 
be in a better position to assist with logistics, but the 
FARDC proceeded anyway, largely, many observers believe, 
with the political objective of showing both Rwanda and 
the populations of the Kivus that it was taking a hard 
line against the FDLR. 
 
18. (U) As of February 26, MONUC has again lent logistic 
support to FARDC anti-FDLR efforts, and the Bunyakiri area 
has been added to the list of operational zones.  A week 
prior to this new campaign, MONUC had advised humanitarian 
organizations to pull their personnel from the field for 
the duration.  Most, including USAID/OFDA partners IRC (in 
Mwenga and Kamituga) and IMC (in Bunyakiri, Kalonge and 
Hombo) complied with this suggestion, and now have their 
staffs on standby in Bukavu.  Though UNOCHA/Bukavu has 
reports of the displacement of as many as 10,000 to 12,000 
families in the Bunyakiri-Kalonge area, the figures are 
impossible to confirm since military activity has just 
been completed  and the area remains to unsafe for 
humanitarians to visit. 
MEECE