In a remote corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo, armed militias are burning villages. Scores of people have been killed, and over 100,000 have been displaced. It’s often hard to tell what’s going on in distant parts of the world. But by using satellite data, we can monitor this conflict in almost real time and detect flare-ups that may indicate violence is starting to spread. What we’re seeing doesn’t look good. This was the scene in western Uganda in February: waves of refugees fleeing violence in the D.R.C. and crossing Lake Albert. “At the height there were between five and a half and six thousand people coming across per day.” Andrew Harper was on the shore. “They grabbed everything that they owned, which was basically nothing, and they brought it with them on the boat. All these very clear signs were indicative that whole areas had been basically cleansed.” The refugees said that armed men had burned houses, forcing entire villages to flee across the lake, most to the town of Sebagoro. Many came from here, in Ituri Province. But the scale of the violence was unclear. So we analyzed aerial data. NASA satellites captured the locations of active fires every day, and many were burning on the days that people fled. Now, most were probably forest fires, not acts of violence. So we used OpenStreetMap data to pinpoint populated areas and obtained new high-resolution satellite pictures of those villages. They tell a clear story. Here’s one village photographed before the violence began, and the same village on Feb. 17. Nearly every structure is burned. This pattern emerged in village after village, all along the lake shore. Humanitarian groups estimate that more than 2,000 homes have been destroyed. Now, while satellite data gives us a clearer picture of the unrest, Ituri’s history helps us understand why the violence has suddenly erupted at this time. In the early 2000s, two communities, the Hema and the Lendu, were involved in a bloody conflict. More than 50,000 people were killed before peace was restored. “Why this currently is happening now is fairly suspicious. These communities were reconciling. Relationships had improved.” Stearns says that this time, it’s not ethnic tensions, but political motivations that are most likely driving the conflict. “The country has been in a period of political turmoil as President Joseph Kabila fights for his political survival. It is one of, unfortunately, many, many different, often interlocking conflicts.” More recently, the violence in Ituri has spread inland. “The situation has escalated, with figures of displacement basically doubling in a week.” Our reporting suggests that after the lakeshore villagers fled, the violence spilled over this mountain ridge, driving people westward, many toward the town of Bunia. “Up to 100,000 people are displaced in the Ituri province. This is probably not a very good sign.” So, while it’s unclear what’s stoking this violence, it’s troubling how suddenly it flared. And for the many displaced, who knows when, or even if, they’ll be able to return home?