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Congo's jungle terrorists disband

Rory Carroll— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

ONE OF Africa's most-feared militias has crumbled and now faces the wrath of the population it terrorised. The mayi-mayi, warrior-mystics who have ravaged the Democratic Republic of Congo for 10 years, are surrendering in droves.

Exhausted and hungry, in recent weeks entire units have emerged from the jungles of one of their last redoubts, Katanga province, to lay down weapons and plead forgiveness.

Other armed groups still prowl volatile eastern provinces, but the end of the mayi-mayi in Katanga is a significant boost to stability and should open the countryside to aid agencies tackling one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

The Congolese army and U.N. troops swept through their strongholds and splintered the once mighty militia into ragged bands to prepare the country for an election scheduled for July 30. The campaign has been controversial and the U.N. has launched an investigation.

However flawed, the offensive has broken the mayi-mayi.

Hundreds of guerrillas have flooded demobilisation centres in remote towns, performing elaborate and emotional ceremonies as they remove amulets credited with magical powers. Some wept, others looked resigned, as they handed over bracelets and pouches which supposedly rendered them invisible and bullet-proof.

It is an ignominious demise for what was hailed as a patriotic force at the outset of the 1998-2003 war, a murderous affair involving six foreign armies and myriad homegrown groups which left four million dead, mostly from hunger and disease. To repel Rwandan and Ugandan troops President Laurent Kabila turned to tribes of hunters and farmers loosely known as the mayi-mayi. With cursory training and AK-47 assault rifles, the militia had some success, bolstering a widespread belief that its fighters had magical powers.

Foreign forces withdrew with in 2003, but the mayi-mayi, missed out in the transitional government's carve-up of power and spoils. Alienated from its former sponsors in the capital, Kinshasa, the militia laid waste swaths of eastern Congo for three years, displacing hundreds of thousands and making a mockery of the supposed peace.

Now the worm has turned. Lacking popular support, political allies and a driving ideology, the militia crumbled when confronted by Congolese troops. A key turning point was the surrender in May of the most influential warlord, Kyungu Mutanga, better known as Gedeon. Claiming to have communed with the ghost of his late mentor, Laurent Kabila, Gedeon ordered his 150 followers, many of them child-soldiers, to hand over amulets and charms along with their weapons.

Many of those who surrendered, in effect, have been abandoned. Stories of sporadic reprisals near Mitwaba were confirmed by Ngoyi Ilundu, 30, who, with her mayi-mayi husband and 11 children, walked 340 km south to the relative safety of Likasi.

Some have sought refuge in the provincial capital, Lubumbashi, its paved roads, shops and Internet cafes a different world from the forests they grew up in. "There is a risk here in town that there could be retribution against us, but in the bush it's worse, I can't return to my village because of the repercussions," said Diedonne Kaloe, 59, a former machine-gunner who has sought refuge here.

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