45,000 Die Each Month in Congo- But What Do We Care?

A UN report released this week says that 45,000 people die each month in the Democratic Republic of Congo due to the lingering effects of a war that was supposed to have ended five years ago. It's the most devastating loss of life due to war since WWII. Most of the dead are non-combatants, civilians caught up in the conflict. Half of these who account for the dead are children. But what do we care...



A UN report released this week says that 45,000 people die each month in the Democratic Republic of Congo due to the lingering effects of a war that was supposed to have ended five years ago. It's the most devastating loss of life due to war since WWII. Most of the dead are non-combatants, civilians caught up in the conflict. Half of these who account for the dead are children.

As one news report states:

"Congo's monthly death rate of 2.2 deaths for each 1,000 people — essentially unchanged from the last survey in 2004 — is nearly 60% higher than the average for sub-Saharan Africa, according to the study by IRC and Australia's Burnet Institute, which researches epidemiological disease."

The causes of death? Mostly disease and malnutrition--the aftershocks of a forgotten war, woefully ignored by both Clinton and Bush White Houses, that claimed some 4 million lives. Altogether, in the near decade long conflict that has now settled into a simmering status quo of sporadic violence in lawless regions, the death toll is thought to stand at 5.4 million lives. There are more UN peacekeepers in the Congo, a massive country in sheer size, than anywhere else in the world. But the resources needed to make them effective, on say a scale as done in Afghanistan or Iraq, is non-existent. So the beaten down giant of a fractured nation lurches from one conflict to the next, with the civilian populace caught in the middle, enduring mass displacement, starvation and disease.

Since before there was such a thing as a "blog," I wrote numerous news articles on the war dating back to at least 1998. I watched as what should have been the victorious overthrow of the Western backed dictator Mobutu Sesse Soku turned into chaos and then an utter nightmare, with its seeds ominously linked to the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. I noticed how the mainstream news media failed to focus on the conflict, even as it thretaened to turn into a full continental power struggle, drawing in several nations, with even Libya and South Africa on the brink of joining the melee. When Ted Koppel's Nightline did decide to cover the story, he actually apologised, for not having done it sooner. Some three years after the war had begun, a major American news agency had finally dedicated a weeklong series to the devastating war in Congo. It was so little, so late, but still many were thankful. Unfortunately, that first episode aired on Sept. 10th, 2001. The events of the following Tuesday made certain the woes of the Congo would be buried and forgotten again, as American lives and the Mideast became all consuming.

The war in Congo in fact would end, ironically enough, when the many countries and factions found their sources of Western weapons drying up with the coming "War on Terror." They negotiated their own peace, but left the country in utter shambles. Imagine if after WWII, there had been no Marshall Plan, and the many Axis fighters had splintered into factions that could rape, pillage and plunder at will. Imagine if all the sides in the Yugoslavian conflict had been armed, and left to their own destructive devices. Imagine a broken and fractured Iraq, where every leader with a gun wants his own fiefdom, but a hundred times worse. That only begins to sum up the modern day problems in Congo.

And yet, I haven't seen anyone declare a "War on Poverty" for the Congo. I haven't seen massive debt relief for the DRC accumulated under Mobutu, in the same way Iraq's debt accrued under Saddam Hussein was forgiven. There's little talk of the DRC on the nightly news, or by pundits of the conservative or so-called "liberal" media. People who march against war in US cities aren't marching much for peace in the Congo. Aren't many actors and actresses wearing END CONGO WAR! buttons. There's no major peace plan launched in Annapolis to solve Congo's crises, which in a decade have taken infinitely more lives than over sixty years of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And I haven't heard a single question put to any presidential candidate in either party regarding what ideas they might have to bring some resolution to the Congo's lengthy and disastrous conflict. It's amazing to think that over 5 million human lives could be snuffed out due to war, and hardly seem to make a ripple or sound in this increasingly connected and globalised world I keep hearing about.

Every once in a while the DRC makes it back into the headlines, when there's something so graphic and horrendous it titilates the Western pornographic gaze--be it tales of cannibalism or mass rape in Eastern Congo--and fulfills our racial fascination with "Darkest Africa." But unlike Darfur, for some reason, the Congo never stays long in the press. And as much as I at times grit my teeth at the "Save Africa" ONE crusaders who cry "poor Africa" without ever seeming to see our own neoliberal, weapons sales, post-colonial role in varied crises, a little attention and focus on the DRC might be a good thing. So every once in a while, when something like this report comes out, I type out a blog as a reminder to myself and others.

Because I figure some of us have to care...

More on the Congo:

Africa Action- DRC

Democracy for Congo

Congo: Plunder and Submission

The War on Women

Do Something!

Friends of the Congo

Congo Global Action Network

Standing With Our Sisters- Benefit for Rape Survivors of Eastern Congo

Panzi Hospital of Bukavu

50 Years is Enough

V-Day