Attacks like the one in Blukwa in September are all too common in the northeastern Ituri region of the D.R.C., along the border with Uganda. Since June, fighting between two local tribes, the Hema and the Lendu, has left some 5,000 people dead and over 150,000 displaced. In the absence of any central power, law and order has collapsed. The resulting chaos has turned this potentially wealthy land into a living hell. The Ituri region is one of the most densely populated in Congo.
Villages cling to crumbling dirt roads that cut through lush forests and farmland.
Barefoot children play with homemade toys and men herd cattle to market. Lendu farmers arrived in the mountainous area around 400 years ago, Hema pastoralists some 200 years later. Whatever the balance, there is little dispute that the Hema are richer. They inherited the area's large cattle ranches at independence and they dominate local commerce. The two tribes have clashed periodically since the early 1900s and relations have deteriorated over the past few years as wealthy Hema landowners grabbed land from Lendu.