Kidnapped by one side, maimed by the other: One teenager’s ordeal in Congo war

livemint.com:

GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo—The pain that seared through Innocent Bizimana’s body was almost impossible to describe. Looking down his lanky frame, the 18-year-old saw his left leg torn to pieces, his foot askew, hanging on by shreds of flesh and skin. His lower right leg was perforated by shrapnel from the shell that had just exploded in front of him.

Scattered around Bizimana lay the remains of three older members of the militia that had kidnapped him in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo last fall and forced him to join their ranks. “I was the only one who survived," said Bizimana, slumped on a government hospital bed in the city of Goma on Congo’s border with Rwanda eight weeks after the explosion, his left leg now amputated halfway down the thigh. An array of silver metal screws held together the shattered bones of his right shin.

This month, politicians from around the globe gathered in Congo’s smaller neighbor Rwanda to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the country’s 1994 genocide. Among them was Bill Clinton, who has counted it among the failures of his presidency. French President Emmanuel Macron in a video message acknowledged that France lacked the political will to stop the massacres, which began when ethnic Hutus blamed Tutsis for shooting down a plane carrying Rwanda’s Hutu president.

More than 800,000 men, women and children, most of them Tutsis, were killed in a government-orchestrated campaign. Less known is what is happening across the border, in eastern Congo, where people like Bizimana, who was 17 when he was abducted, still fall prey to the horrors that began three decades ago. When the Rwandan Patriotic Front, led by now-president Paul Kagame, took control in July 1994 and effectively