The Heart of Darkness
For almost nineteen years I have been watching the humanitarian disaster that is now called the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, too lengthy to explain why. It is a country of roughly sixty million people, encompassing a territory roughly equivalent to Western Europe. The people of the Congo have suffered an estimated four million deaths since the six sided "civil war" flared up again in 1998 after refugees and armed forces spilled over from the Rwandan genocide.
The people of the Congo are subject to the very worst of African suffering, poverty, dictatorship, privation, disease, complete lawlessness, and the presence of six different armed forces at times who prey upon the local peoples stealing their food and resources, killing their men, raping their women, and kidnapping their children to serve as soldiers. This has all focused primarily in the northeast of the country, where there are significant gold, diamond, and other mining interests.
The UN has sent in a token peacekeeping force of 17,000. Undertrained, underfunded, and underequipped, this UN presence spends most of its time in force protection holding off attacks on their own bases.
Imagine living in an undeveloped village where people are dying from starvation and disease, and every few months armed gangs wash across your home like waves of destruction, taking your meager resources, killing your men, raping your women as an act of ethnic violence, conscripting your children....
There is no more infrastructure, no roads, no communications, no farms, nothing. Just roving bands of armed men, 12-25 years old, who do anything they want. Anything that crosses their mind.
Reports of young girls being held as sex slaves for the armed men are exceedingly common.
And all of this takes place completely unnoticed, completely forgotten.
The BBC is reporting today that an estimated 38,000 people are dying a month as a result of the civil war right now. And, quite frankly, the civil war is relatively quiet.
The DRC is perhaps the worst remnant of colonialism. I don't know why I'm writing this. Maybe it's just because I have this image in my head of the horror of Africa at the point of a gun, seeing these guys coming like roving bands from the middle ages sweeping down on defensless villages, raping, pillaging, killing.
Maybe it's just a wistful sadness that the deaths of four million Africans seems to be beneath mention.
The people of the Congo are subject to the very worst of African suffering, poverty, dictatorship, privation, disease, complete lawlessness, and the presence of six different armed forces at times who prey upon the local peoples stealing their food and resources, killing their men, raping their women, and kidnapping their children to serve as soldiers. This has all focused primarily in the northeast of the country, where there are significant gold, diamond, and other mining interests.
The UN has sent in a token peacekeeping force of 17,000. Undertrained, underfunded, and underequipped, this UN presence spends most of its time in force protection holding off attacks on their own bases.
Imagine living in an undeveloped village where people are dying from starvation and disease, and every few months armed gangs wash across your home like waves of destruction, taking your meager resources, killing your men, raping your women as an act of ethnic violence, conscripting your children....
There is no more infrastructure, no roads, no communications, no farms, nothing. Just roving bands of armed men, 12-25 years old, who do anything they want. Anything that crosses their mind.
Reports of young girls being held as sex slaves for the armed men are exceedingly common.
And all of this takes place completely unnoticed, completely forgotten.
The BBC is reporting today that an estimated 38,000 people are dying a month as a result of the civil war right now. And, quite frankly, the civil war is relatively quiet.
The DRC is perhaps the worst remnant of colonialism. I don't know why I'm writing this. Maybe it's just because I have this image in my head of the horror of Africa at the point of a gun, seeing these guys coming like roving bands from the middle ages sweeping down on defensless villages, raping, pillaging, killing.
Maybe it's just a wistful sadness that the deaths of four million Africans seems to be beneath mention.
posted by mikevotes at
8:16 AM
6 Comments:
great piece mike. this is probably the bloodiest conflict in the world today but is thoroughly ignored. i wonder if its anything to do with companies who make money out of the mines and the diamonds, whether it is becuase there is no oil or if it is to do with which countries are selling them guns?
By
michael the tubthumper, at 9:26 AM
I think it is. Much like some of the militias around the world, columbia for example some of the groups are backed by mining interests.
Remember, that's what Dennis Thatcher was claiming he was doing with that planeload of mercenaries who were actually going to overthrow equatorial Guinea.
I also think that coverage is hampered by the fact that this is taking place on so broad a scale in ten thousand villages.
And, no reporter in his right mind would venture out into that countryside. Every once in a while ther's a BBC article out of Kinshasa and that's about it.
Mike
By
mikevotes, at 10:47 AM
speaking of that phenomena - have you ever read a book called 'scoop' by evelyn waugh??
By
michael the tubthumper, at 10:58 AM
No.
By
mikevotes, at 11:35 AM
Thanks for writing this, Mike. The DRC happens to be where my father is from (and still lives) and you're right, it's a hot mess...
By
JReid, at 12:37 PM
Really, Joy, I'd be really curious as to what he's saying. I know it really depends on where he is, I'm guessing he's not up in the eastern mining country where the worst of this is going down, but still....
This country is of tremendous fascination to me, and there is so little written about it.
Mike
By
mikevotes, at 4:42 PM
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