Congo Civil War still killing, 6 years after truce

[Fraggle Rocker]

According to a Washington Post article on January 23, the death toll of the Congo civil war is still rising and has now reached 5.4 million, more than 8% of the country's population. This makes it the deadliest war since the end of WWII ushered in an unprecedented era of world peace. Only the civil wars in China and Korea killed more than one million people, but neither of them reached two million. The figure for WWII is typically estimated at sixty million.

A peace agreement was reached between the Congolese government and rebel forces in 2002, but sporadic fighting continues. This has prevented the rebuilding of the civil infrastructure. As a result, 700,000 people died between January 2006 and April 2007, according to a report by the International Rescue Committee. Only about 3,000 of these were violent deaths. The rest were due to the disease and malnutrition caused by the postwar instability. This figure was calculated by determining the death rate in an equivalent population in a similar African country at peace. The same methodology was used in the calculation for WWII, when as many people died indirectly from suffering as directly from combat, primarily in the USSR.

The biggest killers are preventable or treatable maladies such as malaria, diarrhea and respiratory illness, which the shortage of medical care has exacerbated in the chaos of the postwar environment.

The dysfunctional infrastructure impeded the statistical study itself, providing a glimpse into the problems the Congo government faces in trying to take care of its hapless people. The IRC chose villages at random by computer to gather statistical data. To reach one village, the research team had to travel five hours by four-wheel-drive, then one hour by boat, and finally on foot uphill for two hours.

 

[otheadp]

It's been 24 hours and no replies to this thread yet.

Now let's see what happens when I say this.... PALESTINE!

 

[otheadp]

I just noticed that little gem from the OP:

As a result, 700,000 people died between January 2006 and April 2007 [...]
Only about 3,000 of these were violent deaths. The rest were due to the disease and malnutrition caused by the postwar instability.

Sevenhundred thousand people died in 15 months, who would have otherwise survived had they had some food, first-aid kits, and some tents. That is all.

How much international aid have these people received? As per CIA's world factbook link, $1.8 billion in 2005.

Compare that to the $7.7 billion the "palestinians" receive every single year, and they don't have anything even remotely close as the situation in Congo (or Sudan, or many other places around the world).

World - what the fuck is wrong with you? You've gotta stop (1) throwing away money on a useless investment, and (2) divert it to it's actually needed. Don't you care about the hundreds of thousands of lives you could have saved? What the fuck??

 

[15ofthe19]

It's been 24 hours and no replies to this thread yet.

Now let's see what happens when I say this.... PALESTINE!

What can be said about Africa? While there are success stories like Botswana, they are overshadowed by the apocalyptic situations in Zimbabwe, or the Congo. And while the horrors and injustice of colonialism are never far from the front of the line in any discussion about Africa, was it really worse than this?

Is the freedom worth the suffering?

 

[S.A.M.]

Hey, Africa makes for a great arms market and food dumping and cotton dumping garbage can.

Don't shake the status quo.

 

[John99]

Arent they killing eachother with AK47s?

Food dumping? Sending hungry people food is dumping??? Thats a new one. And the cotton dumping...cant forget that. God damn that evil cotton

 

[15ofthe19]

Hey, Africa makes for a great arms market and food dumping and cotton dumping garbage can.

Don't shake the status quo.

The laziness of your attempt to participate in this thread is overwhelming. You post three links, one from '05, one from '02, and finally one from '00, and predictably they are not even remotely on point about the Congolese civil war, but rather more ham-handed attempts to smear the U.S. for trying to help.

The one thing that your links did remind me of though was the old saying "Beggars can't be choosers.." Which should have a suffix saying "Unless you're a starving African afraid of American Voodoo Corn....".

Sadly, that's why these situations wont likely improve anytime soon. Animistic religions and tribal beliefs trump the will to live in their world, and it will probably lead to their demise. Pitiful, indeed.

 

[John99]

Send me all the free GM food you want.

 

[15ofthe19]

Send me all the free GM food you want.

You find a man in the desert dying of thirst, so you offer him a drink from your cantine, and he says "I can only drink water from a well blessed by the Shaman of my tribe...".

Well, good luck with that, dead guy.

 

[S.A.M.]

The laziness of your attempt to participate in this thread is overwhelming. You post three links, one from '05, one from '02, and finally one from '00, and predictably they are not even remotely on point about the Congolese civil war, but rather more ham-handed attempts to smear the U.S. for trying to help.

The one thing that your links did remind me of though was the old saying "Beggars can't be choosers.." Which should have a suffix saying "Unless you're a starving African afraid of American Voodoo Corn....".

Sadly, that's why these situations wont likely improve anytime soon. Animistic religions and tribal beliefs trump the will to live in their world, and it will probably lead to their demise. Pitiful, indeed.

Especially when Americans are happy to let their government use any means necessary to support their lifestyles.

Several multi-national mining companies have rarely if ever been mentioned in any human rights report. One is Barrick Gold, who operates in the town of Watsa, northwest of the town of Bunia, located in the most violent corner of the Congo. The Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF) controlled the mines intermittently during the war. Officials in Bunia claim that Barrick executives flew into the region, with UPDF and RPF (Rwanda Patriotic Front) escorts, to survey and inspect their mining interests (6).

George H.W. Bush served as a paid advisor for Barrick Gold. Barrick directors include: Brian Mulroney, former PM of Canada; Edward Neys, former U.S. ambassador to Canada and chairman of the private PR firm Burston-Marsteller; former U.S. Senator Howard Baker; J. Trevor Eyton, a member of the Canadian Senate; and Vernon Jordan, one of Bill Clinton’s lawyers (7).

Barrick Gold is one of the client companies of Andrew Young’s Goodworks International lobbying firm. Andrew Young is the former Mayor of Atlanta, and a key organizer of the U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council. Young was chosen by President Clinton to chair the Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund in October 1994. Goodworks’ clients—or business partners in some cases—include Coke, Chevron-Texaco, Monsanto, and the governments of Angola and Nigeria (note weapons transfers from Nigeria cited below). Young is a director of Cox Communications and Archers Daniels Midland—the “supermarket to the world” and National Public Radio sponsor whose directors include Brian Mulroney (Barrick) and G. Allen Andreas, a member of the European Advisory Board of The Carlyle Group.

Barrick Gold’s mining partners have included Adastra Mining—formerly named America Mineral Fields (AMFI, AMX, other names), formerly based in Hope, Arkansas, Bill Clinton’s hometown. Adastra had close ties with Lazare Kaplan International Inc., the largest diamond brokerage firm in the U.S., whose president, Maurice Tempelsman, has been an advisor on African Affairs to the U.S. Government and has been the U.S. Honorary Consul General of the Congo since 1977 (8).

Maurice Tempelsman accompanied Bill Clinton during his African tour in 1998, and he sails with the Clintons off Martha’s Vineyard. He serves on the International Advisory Council of the American Stock Exchange, and is a director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, a
”scientific” front for his offshore diamond mining—raking the seabed into oblivion.

Adastra also purchased a diamond concession on the Congolese-Angolan border from the Belgian mercenary firm International Defense and Security (1998), and currently has cobalt and copper concessions in Congo’s Katanga (Shaba) province (9). Adastra is a member of the Corporate Council on Africa, along with Goodworks, Halliburton, Chevron-Texaco, Northrop Grumman, GE, Boeing, Raytheon, Bechtel and SAIC—the latter two being secretive intelligence and defense entities involved in classified and supra-governmental “black” projects.

In April 1997, Jean-Ramon Boulle, a co-founder of Adastra (then AMFI), received a $1 billion dollar deal for mines in the Congo at Kolwezi (cobalt) and Kipushi (zinc) from Laurent Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Zaire (ADFL) before they were even officially in power. The ADFL were even allowed to use Boulle’s private jet (10). Meanwhile, directors of Adastra are also former directors of Anglo-American (11). Other Clinton-connected founders of Adastra include Michael McMurrough and Robert Friedland—both involved in shady, criminal, offshore businesses in Indonesia, Africa, Burma and the Americas (12).

Link

And btw, what makes you think the food dumping or cotton dumping has stopped?
The laws are still the same, for the US at least, inspite of international concerns.

As for the arms trade, the link was to show why there was a civil war in the first place.

Bechtel, a U.S. aerospace & construction company, provided satellite maps of reconnaissance photos of Mobutu’s troops for the ADFL invasion of Congo in 1996; they also created infrared maps of the Congo’s mineral deposits (22). The Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), led by Paul Kagame, the current Rwandan President graduate of the U.S. Army officers school at Fort Leavenworth, used Bechtel’s NASA maps to locate Rwandan Hutu civilians that fled the cataclysm in Rwanda in 1994. An estimated 800,000 refugees were hunted down and killed in the Congo’s forests (23). Bechtel’s friends in high places include former Secretary of State George Shultz (Board of Directors), former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger (Bechtel Counsel) and retired U.S.M.C. general Jack Sheehan (Senior Vice President), who is also a member of the Defense Policy Board at the Pentagon (24). Riley P. Bechtel is on the Board of J.P. Morgan (25). Bechtel’s Nexant Company is the prime contractor on the Uganda-Kenya pipeline project, believed to ultimately facilitate petroleum transport out of the Semliki Basin of Lake Albert.

At present the US plays their usual game of imposing sanctions and easing sanctions. More likely they supply the arms from surrounding nonembargo areas anyway.

nvestigations of illegal weapons sales to Rwanda last year, in violation of the U.N. arms embargo on the region, have been hampered by the Rwandan government’s refusal to provide a list of serial numbers of the 5000 AK-47s delivered there. The shipping country, Bulgaria, also refused to provide serial numbers, and would only confirm that the weapons were sold legally to a non-embargo country, Nigeria, en route to Rwanda and DRC. The governments of Uganda, Congo, South Africa and Equatorial Guinea—a major U.S. petroleum protectorate—are equally culpable in supporting the clandestine arms sales to the region (33).

 

[John99]

You find a man in the desert dying of thirst, so you offer him a drink from your cantine, and he says "I can only drink water from a well blessed by the Shaman of my tribe...".

Well, good luck with that, dead guy.

People have so much fun with conspiracy theories, its just so exciting. People are dying and starving to death but lets not let that stand in the way.

I am becoming convinced that doing good is not really possible.

 

[John99]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvMj5LuT5hk

 

[otheadp]

People have so much fun with conspiracy theories, its just so exciting. People are dying and starving to death but lets not let that stand in the way.

I am becoming convinced that doing good is not really possible.

One of the biggest reasons why these people need western help is because they are so damn primitive and superstitious. When 80% of them prefer the witch doctor over western medicine, no wonder they're dying like flies. They're too stupid (yes I said stupid) for their own good.

And we have this irrelevant fool here with the khutzpah to lecture the west for trying to help.

The impatient and rightly irritated western citizen should say "you don't want it? Then go fuck yourself and keep dying. I don't need this shit".

And aren't there enough poor people in the west that need this aid anyway?

 

[S.A.M.]

One of the biggest reasons why these people need western help is because they are so damn primitive and superstitious. When 80% of them prefer the witch doctor over western medicine, no wonder they're dying like flies. They're too stupid (yes I said stupid) for their own good.

And we have this irrelevant fool here with the khutzpah to lecture the west for trying to help.

The impatient and rightly irritated western citizen should say "you don't want it? Then go fuck yourself and keep dying. I don't need this shit".

And aren't there enough poor people in the west that need this aid anyway?

:bravo:

Is the white man's burden terribly heavy?

 

[John99]

One of the biggest reasons why these people need western help is because they are so damn primitive and superstitious. When 80% of them prefer the witch doctor over western medicine, no wonder they're dying like flies. They're too stupid (yes I said stupid) for their own good.

And aren't there enough poor people in the west that need this aid anyway?

Hey didnt they create AIDS that way? Ignorance is a killer.

Yeah, there are millions of poor, hungry, starving people in Western countries.

 

[HGVonGalten]

Do you get more replies if you say Palestine? I'm assuming yes? Aw nevermind, of course you would. I retract the previous statement your honor.

-HGVonGalten

It's been 24 hours and no replies to this thread yet.

Now let's see what happens when I say this.... PALESTINE!

 

[John99]

:bravo:

Is the white man's burden terribly heavy?

Yes, there are millions of poor, hungry, starving white people. Does that excite you?

 

[HGVonGalten]

In Che Guevara's "Congo Diaries" he eventually left out of frustration for the reason that the locals wouldn't go into battle without "Pomba" (sp?) it's a concoction by the witch doctor that makes one more "bulletproof". I don't think it's ignorance, based on this to say that the folks are primitive and superstitious. By the way, Guevara was of the opinion that the "Pomba" potion did NOT make them bulletproof.

-HGVonGalten

Hey didnt they create AIDS that way? Ignorance is a killer.

Yeah, there are millions of poor, hungry, starving people in Western countries.

 

[15ofthe19]

Hey didnt they create AIDS that way? Ignorance is a killer.

Yeah, there are millions of poor, hungry, starving people in Western countries.

I don't about millions, but certainly too many to ignore. But that's for another thread, I think.

It's another part of the world suffering from the bends. Transitional government would be better than this mess.

 

[John99]

There is over 4 million in U.S alone.