Growing glimmer of hope that bloody Congolese conflict might end
She is almost certain that a bloodthirsty militia murdered her husband. But she considers herself lucky because she and her three children have survived.
Neema is a victim of the Congolese war. Since rebels launched a campaign in 1998 to oust Laurent Kabila, the late president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, up to 3m people have died from violence or war-related famine and disease.
In the east of this vast country at least 2,600 people are dying a day as a result of the war.
Early last year, Neema's village in the Bunyakiri district of South Kivu was attacked by the Rwandan army, bent on revenge. The soldiers accused the villagers of giving support to the Mayi Mayi, a group of loosely linked tribal militias fighting Rwanda's occupation of eastern Congo.
The Rwandan soldiers burned down their houses and killed any men who tried to resist. Corralled with the other women of the village, Neema was repeatedly raped.
A few weeks later the Mayi Mayi attacked, marauding through the village, hacking to death and shooting people who got in their way.
Neema said: "They came into our house and just used their machetes on my uncle and my grandmother. My husband and I managed to get away and we ran while the Mayi Mayi chased us. By the time I got out of the village I had lost my husband. They must have caught him."
For seven months Neema and her two young sons hid in a nearby forest with 30 fellow villagers. They were attacked three more times by the Mayi Mayi and the Interahamwe, the extremist Hutus who carried out Rwanda's 1994 genocide, killing up to 1m Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days.
In the last attack, the Mayi Mayi captured Neema and forced her to be a sex slave. "Every day I would be raped, sometimes by many men," she said.
Neema escaped in October when the Mayi Mayi went on another pillaging spree. She fled to an ill-equipped hospital in Panzi, outside the town of Bukavu. In May she gave birth to a baby girl, Rebecca, the product of rape.
Neema's story is the story of Congo. The cripplingly corrupt government in Kinshasa, Congo's avaricious neighbours and foreign and internal militias whose ranks are full of killers and rapists all competing for a slice of the country's huge mineral wealth have taken it in turns to unleash unimaginable brutality on the Congolese people.
The country is totally bankrupt. The infrastructure has collapsed. The vast majority of the Congolese people are reliant on subsistence agriculture. But because of the militia groups ravaging the countryside few are able to cultivate their farms.
What little food is left is often stolen by soldiers. Millions of people who have fled their homes are putting additional strain on areas where limited sustenance is available. As a result aid agencies estimate that 16m people are at risk of starvation.
Last week, for the first time in many years, there was a glimmer of hope for the Congo. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo (who took over from his assassinated father in January last year), signed a deal in Pretoria that could end the war.
Rwanda agreed to pull its forces out of Congo within 90 days and the Kinshasa government pledged over the same period to disarm and repatriate the Interahamwe and other Hutu groups it is accused of supporting.
But analysts, UN officials and many Congolese say the Pretoria proposals are unrealistic. Persuading the Rwandans to leave the diamond mines, the most plausible explanation for their continued presence, is asking for a miracle. But a miracle is what the country needs. (Daily Telegraph, London)
- Adrian Blomfield
