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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
The Congo's descent into a vortex of murder and destruction is the globe's worst human crisis. But as he travels in Africa this week, the president will ignore it.
Jul 4, 2003 | Salvatore Bulamuzi lost five children in Bunia while the United States was liberating Iraq, and it did not make the news. He lost his parents as well -- all killed in the Congolese war, where tribal militias fight for land rich in timber and diamonds, and Dantesque horrors of macheted infants, murderous 14-year-olds and HIV-laced rapes are so common as to be unremarkable.
In that context, Bulamuzi's story is not remarkable, either. News reports and interviews with those who live in the Congo or have recently left suggest that he is but one person adrift on a sea of madness. In the eastern part of Congo there is a town run by children, an uncontrollable army playing soldiers with Kalashnikovs. In the city of Bunia, men machete men, and underground there are diamonds and bones. At night the women hide in the forest because it is safer than in their homes, but they desperately hush their infants lest the noise bring looters who rape and sometimes kill.
"I am convinced now ... that the lives of Congolese people no longer mean anything to anybody," Bulamuzi told an Amnesty International representative at the start of the Iraqi war.
As harsh as the assessment seems, any evaluation of U.S. foreign policy or United Nations policy in the Democratic Republic of Congo suggests that he is right. The statistics of the war there are staggering: More than 3.3 million lives lost in five years, and more civilian deaths in one week than in the Iraqi war to date, according to research conducted by the International Rescue Committee included in a recent report issued by Watchlist, an international coalition of nongovernmental organizations focused on children in armed conflict. It is the deadliest conflict since World War II, and although a South African peace plan has been discussed, few are optimistic it will work.
"We believe that human suffering in Africa creates moral responsibilities for people everywhere," President Bush said in a speech last week. But while the U.S. fights the war on terror, it has been 9/11 there for years -- and few seem to care. On a five-day trip beginning Monday, Bush travels to five countries -- Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda and Nigeria -- to focus on HIV/AIDS, democracy, security and trade. But despite his stated concern for human suffering in Africa, he will not be going to the Congo.
In a series of interviews, experts on U.S. Africa policy suggested many reasons for this apparent oversight. Some see the crisis as so nearly impossible to solve that it would be political quicksand for Bush. In part because there is so little news coverage of the region, there is little public awareness, and so little public pressure for Bush to act. Others suggest that it represents Western racism, or the enormous cultural distance between Washington and the tropical forests of Central Africa.
Certainly these are not new phenomena. This is a place "of massacres, of blessings," Joseph Conrad wrote of the Belgian Congo in "Heart of Darkness." Later in that masterpiece, there was a more visceral description: "The horror, the horror!" One hundred and one years later, we are all part Kurtz. In a land cursed with an abundance of gold, diamonds and the minerals used in the high-tech industry, we are mystified by the chaos and repelled by it, even as we reap enormous economic benefits from it.
"The world is looting the dead body of the Congo," says Didier Gondola, who was born in the country and is the author of "The History of Congo."
On paper, at least, the U.S. government is concerned. According to the USAID Web site, U.S. national interests in the Congo are: "promotion of a democratic transition and sustainable economic growth in a country key to the stability and prosperity of all of central Africa; conflict reduction in a country where warfare still destabilizes vast regions and leads to a humanitarian emergency affecting millions of Congolese; and amelioration of health and environmental issues of significance to the Congolese, the United States, and the global community." But total U.S. humanitarian aid to the Congo has been slashed by over a third, from $98 million in budget year 2001 to $62 million in budget year 2002.
"[The Bush administration] has been clear that they're not going to concern themselves past a point with conflicts that don't threaten us," says Philip Gourevitch, author of "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families," a haunting account of the 1994 Rwanda genocide. "In the case of Iraq, when they [the Bush administration] want to get involved they amplify the threat, but in a case like Congo, they'll point to the lack of threat to justify non-involvement."
Even among many human rights experts, there is a striking lack of outrage -- but for far different reasons. Gondola says that he has passed through that state and come out on the other side of it: resignation. "I am beyond outrage," he explains. "When you're beyond that, you get a little bit calmer, and you look at things without your heart. If I were to be more involved, I could have a heart attack."
