← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Eendracht Maakt Mag
Thread ID: 7033 | Posts: 8 | Started: 2003-05-31
2003-05-31 16:33 | User Profile
Congo death toll: 2,500 per day No end in sight for deadliest conflict since WW II
Diplomat sees `a type of genocide going on here'
FINBARR O'REILLY SPECIAL TO THE STAR
KINSHASAââ¬âWhen a barge laden with aid supplies left here during a rare moment of optimism last year, two doves were thrown into the air to symbolize a long-awaited peace in the troubled heart of Africa.
One dove refused to fly. The other plunged into the filthy waters of the Congo River where, its feathers coated in oil, it slowly drowned.
It was yet another ill omen for the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has seen countless failed attempts to end Africa's biggest conflict.
For nearly five years, the sprawling regional war being waged in the former Zaire has drifted in and out of world view, grabbing occasional headlines only after a spate of heavy fighting, a massacre, the murder of a president or a volcanic eruption.
Most battles are fought in remote areas, their victims unrecorded, while all sides race to export minerals to make jewelry or the latest technological gadgets for rich nations.
But violence, hunger and disease are blamed for between 3.3 million and 4.7 million deaths, making this the deadliest conflict since World War II, according to a recent report by the New York-based International Rescue Committee.
"We'll never know how many have died because the bodies have disappeared ââ¬â whole villages and tribes have disappeared," says a senior diplomat here in the capital.
"There's a type of genocide going on here and the international community is still quiet. It is such a complex, kaleidoscopic thing that it is difficult for the Western mind to grasp the intricacies of the African issues involved."
Cannibalism, tribal clashes and the presence of traditional warriors who believe magic water can stop bullets only enhance the haunting portrait of Congo painted a century ago in Joseph Conrad's classic novel, Heart Of Darkness.
The vast territory has rarely enjoyed peace or stability since Belgium's King Leopold II carved out a private central African empire that became a byword for greed and brutality.
Mobutu Sese Seko seized power after a hasty independence in 1960 and his kleptocratic rule lasted nearly four decades.
A chaotic country the size of western Europe, Congo is now split into personal fiefdoms loosely controlled by various rebel factions, countless groups of roving armed bandits and a government unable to regain its grasp on nationhood.
The main belligerents claim to be fighting for the "reunification" of their country, but tribal and national interests have taken precedence and the net result for most of Congo's 60 million people is more poverty and extreme suffering.
For Agnes, a 20-year-old woman in the eastern lakeside town of Bukavu, every kick from the child in her belly is a dull reminder of the night armed men burst into her village home in the forest and raped her until she fell unconscious.
"It is a child of evil, but it is also partly my blood, so I don't know what to do," she whispers, explaining she was a virgin before the attack. "It torments me."
Another 15 women, huddled under a nearby tree at a help centre, are so distraught that they occasionally vomit at the thought of their experiences ââ¬â experiences that form a terrifying pattern of mass rape used as a weapon of war.
"I can't think of anywhere else where the situation is as bad as it is here," says one Western aid worker in Bukavu.
"Forget Afghanistan under the Taliban. Eastern Congo is probably the worst place in the world to be a woman. And the thing is, very little is being done to change that."
The region was plunged into anarchy when thousands of Hutu extremists, known as Interahamwe, fled into Congo's wilds after committing the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Rwanda and an allied Congolese rebel army pursued them, triggering a war that has steadily mushroomed. The sheer number of factions has dampened hopes for peace.
The cycle of violence includes traditional Mai-Mai warriors, fighting against the rebels of the Rwandan-backed Rally for Congolese Democracy, which nominally controls one-third of the mineral-rich state.
"Rape is frequently used against women to punish husbands suspected of collaborating with the Mai-Mai," according to the Canadian organization Rights & Democracy.
"Some combatants are said to have boasted about having infected the women they raped with AIDS."
Up to 60 per cent of the soldiers and militia fighters in eastern Congo are thought to be infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS, pointing to future catastrophe for the rape victims and their country.
In the remote gold-mining town of Shabunda, local people reckon 80 per cent of the women have been raped. Others have had their genitals mutilated with sticks, knives, razors or guns.
The predators follow a pattern. They attack at night or target women collecting food, water or firewood from fields.
Women and girls are kidnapped as sex slaves and forced to cook, do laundry and transport looted goods.
The war in Africa's third-largest country began when rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda invaded in 1998 to hunt down Rwanda's genocidal killers.
Uganda and Rwanda started off as allies, but turned on each other. Their armies have clashed several times in Congo and the two countries support opposing factions battling for control of the country's enormous riches.
Dubbed "Africa's First World War," the conflict has polarized the region, pitting Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and various rival rebel groups against the government and allies Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia.
Unfinished civil wars in Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and Angola have played out on Congo's soil, while local feuds and tribal enmities fuel ethnic violence in the northeast.
A 1999 peace deal froze the armies in place but failed to stop the fighting or the looting of Congo's wealth of natural resources, including gold, diamonds, timber and coltan, a mineral used in laptops, cellphones and stealth bombers.
Most foreign troops have pulled out, but leaders from all sides in Congo's war are still accused by the United Nations of plundering resources while the population suffers.
Diamonds are Congo's biggest source of export earnings, officially worth $240 million in 2000 and $225 million (all figures U.S.) in 2001, according to government figures.
But twice that amount is smuggled out illegally through porous borders by corrupt officials, criminal networks and rebels, according to a report by Partnership Africa Canada, an Ottawa-based group.
"People are becoming poorer, while others ââ¬â entrepreneurs, thieves and killers ââ¬â are becoming richer," it said.
There have been countless peace accords ââ¬â the most recent signed this month ââ¬â and occasional glimmers of hope.
But advances toward a lasting peace are threatened by the volatile situation in the northeastern province of Ituri, where recent ethnic massacres have brought echoes of Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
Bloody clashes between Hema and Lendu tribes around the northeastern town of Bunia have killed hundreds of civilians in recent weeks.
The United Nations Mission in Congo is woefully understaffed, with only about 4,400 troops thinly spread across the country and unwilling to venture into the most troubled areas.
Member nations are reluctant to get involved in such a complex war and the U.N. is hampered by its status as an observer mission with no mandate to interfere when fighting erupts.
Congolese civilians have little respect for U.N. personnel, often throwing rocks at their gleaming white SUVs and referring to them as "tourists" for their fat wallets.
France's offer to lead a more robust foreign presence in Ituri may be tempered by the recent news that two U.N. military observers were "savagely killed" near Bunia, according to U.N. spokesman Hamdoun Toure.
While the world waits to act, the death toll continues to rise in a war with an estimated 2,500 fatalities per day.
Massacres are common, but most of the war's fatalities are from malnutrition and lack of access to basic health care in a country with virtually no infrastructure, where crops have been abandoned and the economy has collapsed, along with what little health care existed before the war.
"I am fighting for Congo," says Jackson, a 16-year-old soldier who has been fighting with Ugandan-backed rebels in northern Congo for three years.
But when asked what he or his country has gained from the war, he shrugs and replies, "I don't know."
[url=http://www.thestar.ca/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1052251651689&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724]http://www.thestar.ca/NASApp/cs/ContentSer...ol=968350060724[/url]
2003-05-31 16:52 | User Profile
One dove refused to fly. The other plunged into the filthy waters of the Congo River where, its feathers coated in oil, it slowly drowned.
If there ever was an image that captures the essence, the thing Africa has become (or is simply returning to), this would have to be it, without a doubt.
Oh well, let's just send them another $12 billion, whine about racism and it'll all take care of itself. :thd:
2003-05-31 16:53 | User Profile
Did American blacks come from the area of modern Congo and thus deserved the term "Congoids"? Is this the material the US is supposed to turn into "productive members of society", along with the descendants of human-sacrificing aztecs?
2003-05-31 17:00 | User Profile
Originally posted by madrussian@May 31 2003, 10:53 Did American blacks come from the area of modern Congo and thus deserved the term "Congoids"?
The term "Congoid" is a racial designation for all West African Negroids. American Negroids are Congoids from West Africa.
** Is this the material the US is supposed to turn into "productive members of society", along with the descendants of human-sacrificing aztecs?**
Apprently yes :( .
2003-05-31 17:02 | User Profile
This is a task more monumental than the kommies hoping to create the new historical essense, the Soviet Man (at least kommies had some higher-IQ and cultured material to work with). :lol:
2003-05-31 19:12 | User Profile
Congo should threaten Israel. That would certainly get the U.S. over there to maintain the peace and spend lots of American $$.
2003-05-31 20:13 | User Profile
Wait... did you edit this article, Prodigal Son? It seems to be missing the part inherent to all reports on Africa that explains how the whole problem was created by white racism.
2003-05-31 21:35 | User Profile
The black slaves of America largely came from the Congo basin. Other sources were East Africa and the Gulf of Guinea. But generally the African American homeland is most likely to be Zaire or the Republic of Congo.