Word: goma
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Congo is the land Rwanda left behind. At the border, the road turns from asphalt to mud and grit. Rwandan officials are famous for their incorruptibility, but Congolese immigration shook me down. Beyond lies the city of Goma, a sprawl of tin- and grass-roofed huts and refugee camps...
...late November, MONUC raised the threat level in Goma to 4 out of 5. Escorts of humanitarian convoys continued across North Kivu, but hundreds of soldiers had been pulled back to the city from 43 bases across the region, and patrols were largely limited to Goma and its immediate environs. The U.N. Security Council also granted MONUC 3,000 extra troops. Still, the force remained chronically overstretched. "Congo is the size of Western Europe, without roads," Doss says. Before he received his reinforcements, Doss had 10,000 soldiers in North and South Kivu protecting a combined population of 10 million...
...after entering Congo, I headed north toward the fighting. By 7 a.m., Goma's streets were jammed with blue helmets and white armored vehicles. The traffic ended abruptly on the edge of town. In the next four days, I did not see a single peacekeeping operation or, aside from two supply convoys, even a U.N. vehicle more than 500 yards (450 m) from a MONUC base...
...Last October, the Tutsi rebel group of General Laurent Nkunda - initially formed in 2003 to fight the remnant Hutu genocidaires - advanced to within sight of the main eastern city of Goma and threatened to take the country. With the U.N.'s 17,000 soldiers outnumbered and overwhelmed by the sheer size and difficulty of the terrain it was meant to police - Congo is as big as Western Europe, without the roads - and the poorly paid and ill-disciplined national army disintegrating, little seemed to stand in Nkunda's way. That sounded alarm bells around the world. As well as displacing...
Nkunda is still in his hinterland, along the Rwandan border in eastern Congo. But the Tutsi rebel leader has doubled his territory in the last few weeks, precipitating a humanitarian crisis involving a million refugees. And with his forces closing in on the regional capital Goma and facing a collapsing national army and a weak and isolated President, his threat to take the Congolese capital Kinshasa is suddenly one to take seriously. Nkunda's decision to hold a rally and press conference on Nov. 22 in Rutshuru, newly captured by his forces, was a chance to discover what kind...