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12/14/2004:

"In the Democratic Republic of Congo, yesterday's victims have become today's aggressors"

A deadly reversal

by George Monbiot
I hope that newspapers do not represent public opinion. If they do, it means that we consider the Home Secretary's love affair more important than the resumption of the most deadly conflict since the second world war. On Sunday, the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), already responsible for 3.8 million deaths, started again. If you missed it, you're in good company.
The Rwandan army appears to have crossed back into north-eastern DRC. Rival factions of the Congolese army - some of them loyal to Rwanda - have started fighting each other. As usual, it's the civilians who are being killed - and raped and tortured and forced to flee into the forest. Last week, before the fighting resumed, the International Rescue Committee reported that over 1,000 people a day are still dying from disease and malnutrition caused by the last conflict. Nearly half of them are children under five.

Rwanda has already invaded the DRC (or Zaire, as it used to be called), twice. In both cases it appeared to have justification. The Interahamwe militias who had killed 800,000 Rwandans fled there after the genocide in 1994. They were sheltered first by President Mobutu, then by President Kabila. They wanted to reinvade Rwanda and resume the genocide.

But after moving into the eastern DRC for the second time, in 1998, Rwanda more or less forgot about the genocidaires. It had found something more interesting: minerals. Better armed than the other forces in the region, the Rwandan army concentrated on seeking to monopolise the trade in diamonds and coltan. By 1999, according to a report for the UN security council, 80% of the Rwandan military budget - around $320m a year - was coming from minerals stolen from the DRC.

The six African armies that had been drawn into the conflict, their proxy militias and the government of the DRC started fighting a monumental turf war over the mines. Millions of people fled their homes. Thousands were captured and forced to mine or to work as prostitutes. Rwanda's operation was by far the most efficient. It was controlled directly from the capital, Kigali, according to Amnesty International. Even after 2002, when the armies officially withdrew, the Rwandan government left its men in the eastern DRC to continue running the mines. The latest invasion appears to be a thinly-disguised attempt to deal with the militias which threaten its lucrative business.

Though we are rightly exercised about the atrocities in Darfur, it is hard to find anyone who gives a damn about the Congo.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk