Congo Civil War Heats Up Again

[earth_as_one]

Back in 2003, when our news was busy making us scared of Iraq, a genocidal war had been waging in the Democratic Republic of Congo for five years. Most of us were unaware of the devastation, as most of us were far more concerned about Iraq's non-existant WMDs and links to the events of 9/11. ThE DRC civil war killed hundreds of thousands of people directly and displaced millions. Several million people died of disease and starvation as a direct consequence of the fighting. The war never really came to an end and has been simmering ever since.

Lately this conflict has begun to heat up again. The people suffering are crying out for international intervention to prevent yet another genocidal slaughter. Is anyone listening?

Congo refugees plead to world: "Protect us"

Sun 2 Nov 2008, 13:56 GMT

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By Hez Holland
KIBATI, Congo (Reuters) - Hungry, frightened Congolese refugees pleaded for protection from marauding fighters on Sunday while foreign governments discussed aid but hesitated over sending more troops.
European, U.S. and U.N. envoys have criss-crosssd the Great Lakes region trying to prevent a newly resurgent Tutsi rebellion in the eastern Congolese borderlands from escalating into a rerun of Democratic Republic of Congo's 1998-2003 war.

After a weekend diplomatic shuttle that took them to Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania, the French and British foreign ministers called for more international aid to Congo's North Kivu province, where an offensive by rebel general Laurent Nkunda has displaced tens of thousands of people.
A ceasefire by Nkunda appeared to be holding on Sunday.
At Kibati, north of the provincial capital Goma, refugees among 70,000 people sheltering there said they were desperate for protection and would welcome troops from Europe to bolster the 17,000 U.N. peacekeepers already deployed in Congo.
"We want to return to our village, but only if there is security. I have not eaten for six days," said one elderly woman, Rgwasa Nyakaruhije. "We would be very happy if they sent in a European Union force."
Around her, displaced civilians huddled in groups in the muddy grass, some under umbrellas or parasols.
"The urgent need for food, water, shelter and care must be covered through international mobilisation and the securing of routes to allow aid to reach all North Kivu," the French and British ministers, Bernard Kouchner and David Miliband, said in a joint statement after their visit.
But they stopped short of announcing a deployment of European Union troops to Congo. France, which holds the rotating EU presidency, had mooted the proposal earlier in the week but encountered resistance from some member states.
Instead, they recommended reinforcing the United Nations peacekeeping force in Congo, already the biggest in the world but badly stretched across a nation the size of Western Europe.
"The U.N. is not providing any security. If the French soldiers came, they would be very welcome," said Zainabo Bunyurura, 40, who fled to Kibati from her home in Kibumba when the rebels attacked.
She said they burned down her house.
The U.N. says Congo's army has also killed and looted.
Max Hadorn, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Congo, said restoring security was paramount.
"For us, it's less a question of being able to mobilise aid but rather of being able to enter different zones with security guaranteed," he told Reuters.
TUTSI AND HUTU INSURGENTS
An estimated one million people have been forced from their homes in North Kivu by two years of violence that has persisted despite the end of the 1998-2003 war in the vast, former Belgian colony, which is rich in copper, cobalt, gold and diamonds.
Kouchner and Miliband backed political solutions, including a regional summit that could be held next week to bring together the Congolese and Rwandan presidents, Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagame, to discuss the conflict on their borders. Both Congo and Rwanda have accused each other of backing rival rebel groups.
The two presidents have signalled they are ready to take part in talks on ending intertwined insurgencies in Congo that trace their origin back to Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
Less clear is what participation will be given to renegade Tutsi General Nkunda, whose recent offensive on Goma has rekindled the ethnic fault lines that traverse eastern Congo.
Nkunda, who says his four-year-old bush rebellion aims to defend east Congolese Tutsis, says he is ready to talk to the government but wants a neutral mediator. He had abandoned a previous January peace deal, calling it government-imposed.
He accuses Kabila's army of backing Rwandan Hutu rebels operating in east Congo who took part in the 1994 genocide killings in Rwanda of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Kabila's government denies this and has in turn accused Tutsi-led Rwanda of backing Nkunda, a charge denied by Kigali.
Foreign governments are pressing Kabila and Kagame to revive a November deal signed in Nairobi under which both pledged to take steps to end the rival Tutsi and Hutu rebellions.
Anti-corruption campaign group Global Witness says the armed factions in North Kivu, including Congo's army, are using the province's cassiterite (tin ore), gold and coltan to gain profits and perpetuate the violence, abetted by willing buyers.
"For as long as there are buyers who are willing to trade, directly or indirectly, with groups responsible for grave human rights abuses, there is no incentive for these groups to lay down their arms," Global Witness director Patrick Alley said.

News | Africa - Reuters.com

For people interested in the history of this conflict:

A chronology of key events: 1200s - Rise of Kongo empire, centred in modern northern Angola and including extreme western Congo and territories round lakes Kisale and Upemba in central Katanga (now Shaba)....


...2001 May - US refugee agency says the war has killed 2.5 million people, directly or indirectly, since August 1998. Later, a UN panel says the warring parties are deliberately prolonging the conflict to plunder gold, diamonds, timber and coltan, used in the making of mobile phones...

BBC NEWS | Africa | Country profiles | Timeline: Democratic Republic of Congo

 

[earth_as_one]

The situation in May 2003:

Congo's War, the UN's Shame

By Cynthia Scharf

Wall Street Journal
May 2, 2003
With the world's gaze still fixed on Iraq, a far more deadly war rages on in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Weekly death tolls in the DRC are greater than the total number of civilian casualties in "Operation Iraqi Freedom." More than three million civilians have perished here in less than five years, making Congo the world's deadliest conflict of the last half century. Despite such suffering, Congo, unlike Iraq, receives virtually no media attention. Congo's catastrophic war does not appear in America's strategic line of sight; its millions of victims receive barely more than a backward glance from an international community transfixed by the war on terrorism.
It is time to readjust our gaze, and to take a hard look at the calamity in Congo, where warfare has derailed prospects for peace, stability and prosperity throughout the whole of Central Africa. Congo's entrenched violence, despite numerous peace accords and an on-site UN presence (known by its French acronym, MONUC), raises serious questions about the role of the international community in addressing the threat posed by failed states not only in Africa, but the world over.
Since the war began in 1998, more than a half-dozen African armies and numerous rebel proxy groups have fought in Congo in ever-shifting alliances, shamelessly plundering the country's mineral wealth to fill their own coffers. At once a civil war and an international conflict played out within its borders, the war in Congo is a complex affair with lethal humanitarian consequences. Nowhere in the world, save perhaps for Somalia and South Sudan, is the gap between humanitarian needs and available resources so wide--and so deadly.
The present conflict in Congo has its roots in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which the international community failed to prevent despite clear advance warning given to the UN Security Council. The long-term consequences of that failure, which resulted in the murder of up to 800,000 Rwandans, are being played out today in Congo. Four years after the genocide, Rwanda invaded DRC in pursuit of thousands of fugitive Hutu-power genocidaires who posed a threat to its security. Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe, and Namibia followed suit with their own agendas, turning Congo into the battleground for a vicious continental war. Had the international community acted swiftly and forcefully to halt the Rwandan genocide, one can imagine a far different scenario today in Congo and throughout the Great Lakes region as a whole. The lesson here is clear: Forceful and timely international intervention to protect civilian lives under threat can help stop a cycle of violence from spinning out of control, and thus prevent the kind of devastating long-term consequences we see in DRC today. Regrettably, the UN mission in Congo (MONUC) has yet to heed this lesson.
Sent to DRC in 1999 to monitor a mythical cease-fire, MONUC has spent the last four years repatriating some 200 Rwandan Hutu genocidaires. What the UN has systematically failed to do, however, in Congo--as in Bosnia before it--is to protect the lives of civilians threatened by imminent violence. And yet this is precisely the peacemaking role that most people around the world--certainly most Congolese as well as most Bosnians--expect of the UN. Time and again, however, the UN has failed to deliver this most vital peacekeeping function.
Recent events are a case in point. Earlier this month, hundreds of Congolese civilians were slaughtered in an ethnic-inspired massacre in the northeastern region of Ituri, long known to be the war's epicenter. Where was MONUC during what one UN official called "the worst single atrocity since the start of the war"? Thousands of miles away in central Congo, far from the crucible of the conflict. Out of a total MONUC force of 5,500 personnel, a grand total of eight troops (unarmed at that) were then in Ituri, where civilians are most at risk and the UN's presence is most needed. "This is absolutely unbelievable, especially when we know that a few troops at the right time in the right place do have a deterrent effect," said Veronique Aubert, an Amnesty International researcher who recently visited the area. So what exactly is MONUC doing in Congo if not saving the lives of those who desperately need protection? Many on the ground ask the same question. "MONUC are not providing safety or security for the civilian population, nor are they enforcing any cease-fire, so what exactly is their point is unclear," said Geoff Prescott, CEO of Merlin, a British-based NGO that is one of the largest international medical relief groups working in Congo. "At best they are ineffective, at worst they are a conscience salve providing an excuse to keep DRC off the international agenda." Which brings us to the heart of the matter. MONUC represents the international community's will--or lack thereof--in Congo. Thus far it has received more in the way of lip service than resources. MONUC is a paper tiger because key UN Security Council members--namely the U.S.--perceive no strategic interest in Congo and thus evince no desire to invest the political and financial capital needed to create an effective UN presence....

Congo's War, The UN's Shame - Global Policy Forum - Security Council

BTW, between May 2001 and the March 2003 US led invasion, the Hussein regime was responsible for 0 deaths despite propaganda induced perceptions to the contrary:
Life Under Saddam Hussein: Past Repression and Atrocities by Saddam Hussein's Regime
The above US government website attributes only 143 deaths to the Hussein regime since 9/11.

Is anyone here willing to admit their support for the US led invasion of Iraq was a mistake and a result of pro-Iraq war propaganda?

 

[Walter]

Did this war ever stop? I believe it started as soon as the Belgians left and that was in 1960.

 

[gopher]

No oil - otherwise Bush who have been interested ...

 

[earth_as_one]

The war has been going on since the slave trading days.

I can't help but notice the silence of all the people who supported invading Iraq for "humanitarian reasons".