NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF: Dinner With a Warlord

A HILLTOP IN EASTERN CONGO

One hint that this would be an unusual interview came when the warlord walked in wearing a button reading “Rebels For Christ.”

Then when I reached to sip the café au lait that the guerrilla leaders offered me in their jungle redoubt, they looked reproachful and quickly bowed their heads and said grace.

I’m taking a student and a teacher along on a reporting trip to Africa, and we wanted to look at how civil wars tear countries apart and block the continent’s economic development. So we rented a jeep and drove past the last checkpoints outside the city of Goma, and then jounced along a tortuous dirt road into the hills.

We traveled through gorgeous green hills and forests, thatch-roof villages and mist-shrouded canyons. Government is only a rumor here, for the capital is 1,200 miles away and has no control in the east and offers no services. There is no postal service, no national health or education system, no authority to rein in the ultimate boss in the third world: a man with a gun.....

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/06/nicholas-d-kristof-dinner-with-warlord.html