The World’s Deadliest Conflict Part 2: the people of Eastern Congo

From a media point of view, the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (see part 1) doesn’t qualify for much coverage. It lacks the drama and heavy fighting to lure in the camera crews.

In fact, most people are killed from what the war has brought about – a food shortage and poor health conditions.

Outsiders might attribute this to African poverty, not any particular war. This is both inaccurate and inhumane. In the case of the Congo, the least we can do is know.

The victims of Congo

Zamuda Sikujuwa is a 53-year old woman from Doshu in Eastern Congo. One day Tutsi rebels came to her house demanding US dollars.

When her husband couldn’t produce even local currency they put a gun to his head and shot him. When her two children started crying, they shot them too.

The seven rebels then raped Zamuda until she lost consciousness. They shoved a rifle up her tearing her insides apart. After two operations, she still has trouble walking.

This has happened to thousands of women in Eastern Congo. Some have objects stuffed inside them and even bullets shot into their vagina. Others are taken as sex slaves.

If a woman is gang raped by three of four soldiers, they are almost certain to contract AIDS.

And the physical scars are only part of it. The mental and social trauma of such an ordeal rarely leaves them.

Even if they could trust men again, the threat of AIDS means victims are often rejected as outcasts by their husbands, families and communities who see them as ‘unclean’. They are left alone to live in fear and financial hardship.

The rapists very rarely get convicted as they simply pay off the police or judges if it ever gets reported (many rapes are now being perpetrated by civilian men as well).

There are several organisations that help rape victims in Eastern Congo. They provide care and counselling for women so they can return home. Some families accept them; others don’t.

For those rejected, the organisations try to teach them sewing and handicraft skills so they can look after themselves financially. Otherwise many of them end up beggars on the street.

Rape has become a vicious weapon in the Congo war. Yet it’s only one part of the chaos.

Property rights are meaningless. Militia have torched villages, looted businesses and robbed people of their cattle and land.

Millions have been driven from their homes leaving behind their life possessions. Some are lucky enough to make it to aid camps. Others just start over in another village.

Usually treatable illnesses have become weapons of mass destruction due to the lack of functioning hospitals, equipment and decent infrastructure. On some roads it takes four or five days to cover 80km (50 miles).

And then there are the killings. People are burned alive, hacked to death, beheaded, or simply shot.

Only last month, a Human Rights Watch report revealed that in December, the Lord’s Resistance Army (a militia group fighting Uganda’s government) massacred 321 Congolese and abducted 250 – including over 80 boys and girls to be soldiers and sex slaves.

The toll is tragic. All up, 1,250 Congolese die every day from war-related causes – mainly disease and malnutrition that wouldn’t exist in peace time. Millions more suffer ongoing misery.

The security situation has improved in the last year, but as shown by December’s massacre, not enough to maintain any semblance of control.

In a country the size of Western Europe, the 20,000-strong UN force is only capable of protecting key towns, roads and mines.

And they only get limited help from the Congolese military, who due to unreliable government wages, end up robbing and even killing the people they are supposed to protect.

Aid agencies there are overwhelmed by the problem and are extremely under-funded (the DR Congo is low on international donors’ lists).

The abysmal road conditions and requirement to travel with armed security makes moving aid supplies difficult. Three weeks ago 8 Red Cross workers were kidnapped by militia, although they were released a week later.

As the ‘heart’ of Africa, the DR Congo is still fundamentally broken, cursed by its size and lucrative mineral resources.

As many African leaders have said, for Africa to be fixed, DR Congo must be fixed. It’s a big undertaking for Africa, and the world.

A new decade offers hope for peace, but so did the last.

By The Casual Truth

Photo/Beatrice Petit – Two women had their lips and ears cut off by the LRA in December’s massacre as a message that anyone who heard or spoke about the LRA would be similarly punished.