(Chicago Sun-Times) Wake up world! Wake up America! Wake up Illinois and, damn it, wake up Chicago! There are several holocausts taking place right now in Africa. Put down your burgers, fries and apple pie, chicken, ribs and sweet potato pie, turn off your televisions, radios, cell phones and please pick up a newspaper or a keyboard and become educated about what is happening in Africa. America’s ignorance and apathy toward the “Dark Continent” must stop if we are to hold ourselves out to be a moral nation.
Millions of Africans, including women and children, have been killed by deadly conflict in Sudan (2.5 million), Rwanda (1 million), Burundi (300,000), Liberia (250,000), Sierra Leone (75,000) and Uganda (40,000). Besides these huge fatalities, warfare also has affected democratization and human, social and economic development; has led to the breakdown of the rule of law and allowed the catastrophic effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic to wreak havoc on Africa’s human architecture.
Nowhere is the scourge of killing and anarchy more apparent than in the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire. Since 1998, about 4 million people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Africa’s largest war involving eight African countries and egged on by a host of others with economic interests in the mineral-rich state, the second largest country in Africa and nearly 10 times the size of Texas.
Today, African men, women and children are being massacred; sadistically and ritually tortured, and systematically raped. People’s bodies are being disemboweled and body parts taken for fetishes or for ritualistic cannibalism. The perpetrators of beheadings have placed heads on sticks to line village streets.
The history and geopolitical dynamics of the war in Congo are complex and multifaceted. A simple Internet search or trip to the local library will reveal volumes of information. While there is certainly a causal connection between the current crises and the country’s legacy of being the private possession of King Leopold II of Belgium — whose agents murdered 10 million Congolese — and a Belgium colony until 1960, the conflict is really a by-product of your garden variety of conflict causes in Africa, including: perpetual authoritarianism; violent regime change; ethnic strife; competition over political and economic power, especially natural resources; foreign exploitation and intervention; persistent insecurity; rapid corruption; acute poverty, and sheer evil.
The United Nations mission in Congo is the largest in the world, boasting nearly 16,700 military personnel from more than 50 countries, 17 of which are from Africa. Nevertheless, to be truly effective at restoring peace and security to the country, at least 3,000 more troops are needed along with hundreds of millions of dollars.
While the U.N. has had some success in brokering a weak peace agreement among the warring factions and hunting, arresting and killing rebels, it lacks the human and resource capacity to be truly effective — not to mention that the “rape for prostitution” scandals have permanently damaged its reputation. U.N. forces from France, Morocco, Russia, Ukraine, Uruguay and Canada, among others, are alleged to have raped and even made pornographic videos and pictures of their abuse and exploitation of girls and women.
