that is because in addition to being surrounded by rebel

groups, Goma also sits at the base of an active volcano.

Even from the land up, this area is just in a constant

state of

That woman's shirt says Vagina Warrior.

Goma's the capitol city of the North Kivu Province of the

Democratic Republic of Congo, and is situation in one of the

world's worst geopolitical neighborhoods.

To the southeast, there's the Rwandan border, which largely

consists of mountain jungles through which scores of Hutu

militants passed in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide,

fleeing the revenge of President Paul Kagame's newly

elected Tutsi government for their role in the massacre.

This armed migration directly contributed to the escalation

of the First and Second Congo Wars, in which an estimated 5

million people lost their lives.

It was also through this transportation corridor that

the Lord's Resistance Army, led by the infamous Joseph

Kony, crossed the border from Uganda and drove deep into the

heart of the Congo.

While "Kony 2012" drew a lot of criticism for being less

than diligent when it came to framing the quote unquote

"facts" the documentary cited, what it did reveal is that the

best way to reach jungle-bound dissidents wasn't through

social media, but through good, old fashioned

psychological operations--

mostly in the tried and true forms of leaflet drops and

radio broadcasts.

-We don't benefit anything if we lie to you.

We want to make sure you see the facts.

And I'm sure you're going to decide to enter the DDR

process voluntarily.

THOMAS MORTON: So when the United Nations extended an

invitation to embed with their operation in several locations

across the country, our team gladly accepted.

IAN ROWE: DDR is the Desarmement, Demobilization,

Repatriation, Reinsertion, and Reintegration Program.

The focus of the program is on foreign commands that are

operating in the Congo.

There's national reintegration programs which take over and

facilitate their reinsertion into their

communities of origin.

The main approach that DDRRR has for trying to convince

voluntary surrenders for subsequent repatriation is by

radio sensitization.

This involves using radio messages over FM networks.

THOMAS MORTON: FM Uruguay 106.7.

Siempre presente only the hits.

All rock, no talk.

-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

IAN ROWE: There's messages calling for them to lay down

their weapons and return home.

It lets them know that it is still possible to go home.

THOMAS MORTON: Um-hm.

IAN ROWE: Hope is not lost.

Their families will be waiting for them and there's programs

that will help them reinsert into their society.

-This is one of our camps, the transit camp.

And in this camp, we feed them three times a day.

We provide them lodging, not this best one that you may

think about, because we want to keep that temporarily so

that they can go back to their country.

We also give them access to telephone so that they can

call their friends, relatives, and loved ones.

-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

-Now, I will like to invite Mr. [INAUDIBLE]

to address the ceremony.

THOMAS MORTON: Oh, that's cool.

I guess it's supposed to represent peace of some sort,

but it kind of looks like one of those evil war birds from

Pink Floyd's The Wall.

So we're out on MONUSCO Base, the far eastern side, right on

the border with Rwanda and Uganda.

There's a whole bunch of rebel groups that kind of mix and

merge and cross borders and take over this place.

It's a real mess.

The one most people know about, the Lord's Resistance

Army, or LRA, are kind of the most notorious for their

tactics, for using child soldiers, for abducting

people, for setting entire churches

full of folks on fire.

There's another group called the M23, and are actually

officially about 20 or 40 kilometers outside the city

center, but we've heard closer to 10.

These wars have been going on since the '90s in different

little spurts.

It's basically a permanent state of war for

the Congolese people.

It just varies, who they're fighting, at any one given

time of the day.

And so we're going to go with a little patrol, hopefully not

get shot at.

-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

THOMAS MORTON: We got into Goma this morning.

We just hooked up with a troop of Uruguay and UN soldiers who

are going to give us a little tour of the city--

see what a town that's basically spent 20 years at

siege of rebel warfare looks like

Besides the fragmented Lord's Resistance Army, the

Democratic Republic of Congo is also home to militant

groups such as the Mai-Mai, the Raia Mutomboki, and the

Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.

But the greatest threat to regional stability could very

well be a group known as M23.

Led by Bosco Ntaganda, affectionately known by his

troops as the Terminator, M23 mostly consists of Congolese

Tutsis who defected from the army last April after alleging

that the government in Kinshasa had violated peace

accords signed on March 23, 2009, in which members of the

now defunct CNDP were be absorbed into the country's

regular army, the FRDC.

The battle between M23 and government troops has raged so

wildly that the United Nations has been forced to divert

troops and resources sorely needed elsewhere in the

country in order to get the government in Kinshasa a

fighting chance.

This, in turn, has created a security vacuum in which many

of the armed groups in the area have rushed in to fill

while reigniting the cycle of old tribal conflicts that were

never really stamped out in the first place.

These ethnic and geopolitical tensions are, in turn,

exacerbating an already raging fight between local militias

to control the illicit mining of cassiterite, wolframite,

and coltan, minerals essential to the manufacturing of

everything from smartphones to jet engines to airbags.

Complicating matters further, it is widely believed that M23

is receiving aid from the governments

of Rwanda and Uganda.

And it has been reported that the FDRC has approached the

Hutu Mai-Mai for aid in fighting the largely Tutsi

M23, background information largely omitted when President

Obama ordered 100 US Special Forces to support regional

powers in their search for our favorite madman of Facebook.

BARACK OBAMA: And when the Lord's Resistance Army, led by

Joseph Kony, continued its atrocities in Central Africa,

I ordered a small number of American advisers to help

Uganda and its neighbors pursue the LRA.

THOMAS MORTON: So I'm not a big fan of the UN, in general.

The track record has been spotty for

all the 65, 67 years.

They're famous for bringing the sex trade.

It's basically anywhere they set up shop.

As our team's tank patrol policed the streets of Goma's

poorest neighborhoods, as well as power plants, airstrips,

and crossroads--

the kind of places a rebel army would likely attack--

it became clear the UN troops were not preparing for a

jungle assault, but for a potential attack by M23 on

Goma itself.

So obviously, the UN's here, on what they describe as a

peacekeeping mission.

They're supposed to mediate between all the different

rebel groups and end the factions of army.

There's different sections.

The Congolese army, the Rwandan army, and the Ugandan

armies do come in here.

So it's supposed to be, basically, the babysitter, the

grown-ups here.

At the time, you're in a tank and they're soldiers.

Little boy's like it, but it makes it feel kind of a little

weird, like you're in an occupying army.

I can't help but notice we've only really been in town.

And it's kind of weird just to do a city patrol.

It's almost more like you're policing the local population

than on the lookout for rebel groups.

Maybe there's something to be said for trying to convince

locals not to go take up arms with M23.

In the weeks that followed our initial visit to Goma,

skirmishes between M23, Congolese troops, and the UN

increased with regularity at strategic locations

surrounding the city, with rebels even beginning to

attack food, fuel, and supply convoys into town.

Later, the UN invited our team to visit a camp in Goma set up

to house rebel combatants who had recent surrendered to both

the UN and FDRC.

IAN ROWE: When escapees do come out, they're typically,

at the moment, received by a community member that they

perhaps cross in the road, or in the jungle, on their route,

or something like that, and brought to the FRDC or to our

military camp, where they'll be kept in our transit camp

for maximum a week, within in which time they'll be

processed in terms of getting their information, details,

start doing the tracing for their families.

We make contact with the Amnesty Commission in Uganda.

And our counterparts in Entebbe-Kampala will meet us

at the airport and we'll do a hand-over, after which they'll

be reintegrated via whatever systems Uganda has in place.

-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

IAN ROWE: From the women that have been abducted and kept as

bush wives, oftentimes the reason that they're released

is because they've been slowing down the LRA group

that they're associated with.

And so the fighters in the group made the decision that,

for the purposes of allowing them to be more rapid moving,

they would release these women and children.

THOMAS MORTON: Now, when you say bush wives, that's a

polite way of saying, like, sex slave, basically.

IAN ROWE: Yes.

These are women that have been abducted and used for sex as

porters, all these most negative kind of uses that you

could enumerate.

THOMAS MORTON: Built on the ruins of a home previously

belonging to deposed Congolese dictator Joseph Mobutu, the

camp was split along ethnic and administrative lines with

only a chain-link fence separating Hutu and Tutsi

fighters, who out in the bush had been spilling each other's

blood by the bucket for decades.

The camp in Goma's indicative of the DRC's confusing

geopolitical turmoil.

Combatants staying at the campus must first surrender

and hand over their weapons to UN or government troops, after

which they are processed and held for 72 hours.

A portion of the residents are from Rwanda, from which they

fled to the DRC, joined a militia, became hired guns,

and now want to return home.

Other campers are Congolese who fought with local Hutu and

Tutsi militias before surrendering.

But there is also a contingent of Rwandan farmers who pose as

ex-rebels in order to hitch a free ride with the UN back

across the boarder.

To determine their status and surmise their identities and

countries of origin, they're quizzed on local facts and

subjected to fingerprinting and retinal scans.

The camp is an element of a UN program designed to transform

rebels into civilians, reintegrating them back into

society, or what's left of it.

As the camp's public information officer, Sam

Howard, gave us a walking tour of the side of the camp where

some M23 fighters were housed, it became apparent that no one

from the UN wanted to talk to our team about the confusing

three-way battle raging between the M23 mutineers, the

UN, and the FDRC.

They were, however, more than happy to discuss other arm

groups that are now less active, such as Joseph Kony

and his LRA fighters--

just not the real rebels standing next to us.