Dwellers on the Threshold

Liberated from a violent rebel group, the people of Boga still live on the thin line between heartbreak and hope.

BOGA, Congo - Past the campfire, Michele Kisembo could see the outlines of the men and their guns. But by then it was too late. Kisembo and his fellow villagers had come here to celebrate. Now they were surrounded.

A shot rang out. Kisembo was hit in the knee and went down. He crawled into the shadows and tried to become invisible.

"But then I saw them shoot my nephew," Kisembo says. "It killed him immediately. Then they fired another shot that killed the old man."

While the rest of the villagers fled, Kisembo lay motionless. The rebels helped themselves to all the food, drink and whatever else was left behind.

Now in a stark hospital room back in his village of Boga, Kisembo rubs his bandaged knee. He got away with his life, but nothing else.

The irony is not lost on him -- they were attacked that night by the same rebels that

On three separate occasions from late August to early September, Boga -- a village of 22,000 people just 35 kilometers from the Ugandan border -- has been occupied by one of the half-dozen rebel groups operating in the Ituri district of eastern Congo.

For more than six years an intricate and intensely violent web of conflict has been spun here involving clashes between native Congolese forces, foreign national armies, their local proxies and ethnic militias.

Beyond political or ideological aims, the undisputed common thread here is the Congo's rich supply of natural resources: diamonds, gold and a mineral called coltan, which is used to make capacitors used in cellular phones and other electronic equipment.

The fights often have begun for other reasons, but they eventually snake back to the struggle for profit and control.

Villages like Boga are often caught in the crossfire, used as an easy source of supplies and manpower for armed gangs in the region.

Some of the rebel groups demobilized and were integrated into the national army after a power-sharing deal with the government was struck in 2001.

But the violence in Boga is clear evidence that the problems are far from solved. Most of the town fled to the countryside when the rebels moved in.

It took Sengelese Special Forces, part of the U.N. peacekeeping operations here, to push the rebels out again. When villagers starting returning, they found their community hollowed out by looting and destruction.

"When I first saw the hospital," says Dr. Charles Banoba, "I just wanted to weep. They took everything. The sick have still been coming, but I have nothing to treat them with."

Nearby, in a cold, concrete room with filthy walls, 20-year-old Mbavuzi Mahrini recovers from a miscarriage she had at home. She is so weak she can barely move. Dr. Banoba strokes her forehead -- it's all the comfort he can give, because retreating rebels stole all his medicines.

"The only reason this woman is here now," says Dr. Banoba, " is because her family brought a mattress for her. They [the rebels] even took all of those," he says, gesturing to the other bare wooden slat beds.

At the Anglican church nearby, Assistant Pastor Fautin Rugambwa shows me the bullet holes in the window.

"Why did they shoot the church?" I ask.

"I think it's about destroying everything. There is a lot of anger," he says.

He also shows me where they trashed the church's administrative office, looking for money. Papers, books and hymnals are scattered everywhere.

Inside the church, Pastor Katabuka Byaruhanga tells me how his congregation, once 3,000 strong, has fallen to just 100 since the rebels were forced out.

"People are still scared," he says. "The rebels are only 30 kilometers away."

But while they may still be afraid, many were still committed enough to return to Boga to register to vote in the

"We had hoped to register aournd 14,000 voters in the area," said Calvin Byakunaga, regional director for the Congo Independent Elections Commission. "But what we have now is close to 8,500. All of those returned to register after the town was cleared of the rebels."

That's a pretty strong indicator of the villagers' collective sense of civic duty, local leaders feel -- whether they stay in Boga or not. It's a small sign of hope in a place ravaged by violence.

But it's the potential for future violence that has Boga's village chieftain still worried. He's concerned that the Congolese troops are not as well armed as U.N. forces -- and that they often go for long periods without being paid. It's not a strong guarantee that they'll be around when they're needed.

"We feel better," he says, "that the army is here. But that's not enough. We need U.N. forces to also return."

In Boga, he intimates, the people's fear, like the rebel group, is never far away.

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