The Congo

What's all this about?

The BBC article describes that mysterious exodus of tens of thousands of refugees from a Congolese refugee camp. A twelve vechile UN convoy bearing medicine expected to treat the destitute refugees, but found a near ghost camp. These poor, displaced Congolese are caught in the middle of a civil and resource wars. The nation has been enthralled in violence and war since the mid nineties. It was always a rebel force versus the government. During the first Congo war, it was then rebel leader, Laurent Kabila(a proxy of Rwanda and Uganda) versus then cheif executive of the country, Mobutu Sese Seko (who came to power via a coup in 1965 and ruled the country as a tryant). Laurent Kabila was big chief for a minute and in 2001 succummed to an assassin's bullet (his own bodyguard apparently). Ten days later, his son, Joseph Kabila took over as president. Now, the son of a supposed freedom fighter fights against another supposed freedom fighter, Laurent Nkunda, an elite rebel leader in the country.

Admittingly(my favorite word as of late), I really don't pay much attention to news from this part of the world as I do the Middle East or China. As a black man with African roots at some point in my lineage, it is quite shameful that I neglect what's has happened and is currently happening there. One reason is the origin of these conflicts are quite complex to understand. It seems the mainstream media loves to chalk it up as those crazy, wild Africans hacking and slashing each other to death over tribal cirucumstances or fueds centries old. Yet, they rarely explore the economic factors behind these conflicts (which is probably the root cause) or show that these conflicts were born out of colonist and neoconlonist agendas from extenal nations. Not

I seem to always go off on some radical, leftist tangent, but its important to put these issue in some proper context instead of those crazy Africans. It seems they're fighting for basic human dignity and restorting to exteme barbery to secure what we in the West are given by default.

As for where the refugees disappeared to, I really don't know. The article infers that they fled fearing a clashes between the rebels and government backed troops. The aid workers discovered another camp that was flattened. I suppose the refugees feared they'd suffer a similar fate and fled for some kind of green pasture in that battered nation. The act of fledding is just as dangerous as staying. The men are cut down , women raped, multiated and killed, children, raped(both male and female), sold into slavery or turned into a child solder. War is hell.