Africa's
First World War
gets little press





Posted: December 20th, 2001

Recently a country with less than a quarter of the population of the U.S.A. has suffered a death toll equivalent to the suicide hijackings of September 11th every 36 hours for twenty-two months straight. This country is the...        ...DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO. These high mortality rates are the result of a complex and international civil war that has raged in the region since August 1998. The apalling lack of media coverage has kept this disaster largely hidden from the public eye.

'In June 2000, the International Rescue Committee released a report on mortality in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo for the 22 months beginning with the resumption of fighting in August 1998. Using normal baseline mortality rates, the report estimated that 1.7 million deaths occurred in excess of the number normally expected.' ("Mortality in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo : Results from Eleven Mortality Surveys" - 24-page report released April, 2001 by the International Rescue Committtee) "...We all know the amount of effort for peace being put into Northern Ireland and Israel," said David Lammy, a Labor Party member of the British Parliament who recently toured Congo. "It just staggers one, with so many countries involved, that the international community has been silent in bringing this to a conclusion...." ("Aid Failing to Reach 1 Million in Congo" By Karl Vick Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, August 15, 2001; Page A09 ) "If it has not happened already, any month now the war in eastern Congo will likely exceed the Cambodian conflict as the most deadly war to occur anywhere in the world since World War II," said Les Roberts, director of health policy for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), who has twice conducted mortality surveys in the war zone. The latest survey, carried out in March, estimated that the war caused as many as 2.5 million deaths, many from diseases that would have been treated but for the fighting. "The attention and resources spent on the victims of this war are shockingly paltry by any measure," Roberts said. (Ibid.) '...the war in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo is killing an average of 2,600 civilians per day.' "Loss of Life Averages 2600 People Per Day" in Eastern Congo by Mulegwa Zihindula General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, July 14th, 2001 'The outside world shares much of the blame for the plight of Congo and its neighbors: European colonists divided the continent up into nations that rarely bore a relation to geographic or ethnic boundaries. During the cold war, the superpowers picked their proxies, overlooking corruption and abuse of ordinary people. 'Today, at a minimum, the West is often accused of lacking the imagination to find solutions in Africa. At worst, the United States in particular is accused of keeping the Congo war going by failing to strongly condemn its allies, Rwanda and Uganda, who entered Congo in August 1998, hiding behind rebel forces that they financed.' (CHAOS IN CONGO - A primer. New York Times On the Web, February 6th, 2000, by Ian Fisher, Norimitsu Onishi)

'In 2000, donor response to the DRC was weak. The UN consolidated appeal – one indicator of funding levels among many – had a shortfall of nearly 40%. In 1999 donor governments gave just $8 per person in the DRC, while providing $207 per person in response to the UN appeal for the former Yugoslavia. While it is clear that both regions have significant needs, there is little commitment to universal entitlement to humanitarian assistance. 'The international community is essentially ignoring what has been deemed 'Africa's first world war.' The DRC remains a forgotten emergency. Falling outside of the media spotlight, and experiencing persistent shortfalls in pledged humanitarian aid, the population of the DRC has been largely abandoned to struggle for their own survival.' (OXFAM report - A Forgotten War – A Forgotten Emergency: The Democratic Republic of Congo, December 2000) 'Fighting has largely ceased along the frontlines in Congo... 'But fighting has continued in the interior, as rebels clash with "Mai Mai" militia groups loyal to the government and a diverse range of gunmen roaming Congo's vast wilderness. 'The largest rebel group in the Congo, the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy, battled militia groups in eastern Congo last week in the fiercest fighting in months.' ("Funds could scupper Congo talks" CNN.COM October 12, 2001 Posted: 10:37 AM EDT [1437 GMT] ) 'The painful fact remains, though, that a lasting solution to years of conflict still appears a long way off. ' ("Kabila says peace on track" BBC NEWS Online By the BBC's Grant Ferrett in Philadelphia, November 1st, 2001) * With all due respect to the victims of September 11th, I have seen no announcements of any kind whatsover that the suffering of the people in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been postponed on account of the 'War on Terrorism'. Aside from the immense toll on human life, the greatest tragedy of this war is what I perceive to be a suspicious lack of media coverage. To verify that I am not just suffering from some kind of paranoid delusion, I present an overview of a simple experiment that I performed on the Internet involving two search strings... "war on terrorism" and "war in the congo" I entered these search strings on numerous search engines (directory-based and 'webcrawlers') including in-site search engines of several major Western media sites. Originally, I intended to publish the results of this survey but I have now decided against it since some of these search engines were kind enough to give our website a fairly good ranking in search results for some common keywords. And as the saying goes, I do not wish to 'bite the hand that feeds me'.

Wayne Madsen Report on Covert U.S. Defense Intelligence operations in Eastern DRC - A Brief Introduction... Following the Rwandan invasion of Zaire (DRC) in 1996, U.S. embassy officials in Zaire, Uganda and Rwanda as well as operatives from the DIA and the CIA began covert operations in Eastern Zaire near the border with Rwanda. They contacted rebels against the government in Zaire and watched movements of Hutu refugees. They were admittedly involved in these actions to 'represent American interests'. American 'private military contractors' (PMCs) who have long been well established in other parts of Africa were also on the scene training Rwandan troops. These PMCs escape congressional investigations that government military bodies might otherwise be subjected to. Consistent reports began to emerge of a U.S. military base constructed near the Rwandan border with Zaire. This was followed by reports of American troops seen fighting in the region. This was subsequently followed by numerous other reports of American military training, deployment of helicopter gunships and American mercenaries actually participating in ethnic cleansing of Hutu refugees in eastern Zaire. American aerial spy technology played a significant role in facilitating these atrocities (Oso river massacre). This same spy technology (spy planes and satellite tech) escorted Kabila's rebel troops safely throughout their advance on Kinshasa. Soon after Kabila became president of Zaire, now known as The Democratic Republic of Congo, it was perceived that he was no longer serving American interests and, more specifically, American mining interests. As a result, U.S. Defense Intelligence and Special Forces once again became involved in a second invasion of the DRC in an attempt to overthrow Kabila. This time, however, it became more apparent that American involvement was fueling both sides of the war... READ THE ENTIRE MADSEN REPORT (The U.N. Ba-N'Daw report named United States as one of the leading buyers of illegal resources culled from the DRC under the cover of war. These resouces include columbite-tantalite or 'coltan', a primary component in computer microchips, printed circuit boards, cellphones and certain video game consoles. 80% of the world's supply of coltan is found in the DRC.)

BUT... I will say that the results were astonishing. In all cases, the results listed for the search string 'war on terrorism' for the last 3 months outnumbered the results listed for the search string 'war in the congo' for the LAST FIVE YEARS. In some cases the results for 'war on terrorism' in the last 3 months outnumbered the results for 'war in the congo' in the last five years by a ratio of 80,000 to 1. Major Canadian newspapers were, to my utter amazement, the worst. I say 'amazement' because I have always pictured Canada to be the friendlier, more tolerant, 'little brother' of the big bad ol' U.S. of A. Not so. One search engine in particular which touted itself as the pre-eminent search engine of the Canadian press (all major Canadian newspapers and newswires) came up with zero results for the search string 'war in the congo' for the PAST FIVE YEARS. The search strings 'war in congo' and 'war in the democratic republic of congo' faired no better. On the other hand, this same search engine produced 5037 results for 'war on terrorism' for the past 3 months. I should mention here that in all the searches, the string 'war in the democratic republic of congo' produced even fewer results than 'war in the congo'. The Globe and Mail (oh well let's burn a few bridges) is Canada's oldest major national newspaper. Its on-line version has an in-site search engine which, on November 9th, 2001, the day I conducted this survey, produced 150 documents for 'war on terrorism'. However it came up with zero documents for 'war in the congo', 'war in the democratic republic of congo' and 'war in congo'. Finally, as an act of desperation, I entered just the word 'congo'. It produced 18 documents. Of these 18 documents, 9 were simply a business section page giving a rundown of the foreign exchange. 'Congo' was one of the countries listed. Of the other nine, only one mentioned 'civil war' which did not appear in the same sentence as 'Congo'. This article was primarily about a backlog of refugee applicants at the U.S. - Canada border as a result of the September 11th tragedies. No mention was made of the humanitarian disaster in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the immense loss of human life or widespread suffering of the Congolese. Also, out of the remaining 9 articles, one was entirely about the 'war' in Afghanistan. In this article, a scanty reference was made concerning Tony Blair's statement that U.N. committments to Africa (Congo, Sierra Leone) should not be compromised to help Afghanistan. All in all, it seems Canadian news is somewhat willing (when necessary) to speak of the Democratic Republic of Congo, but it steers well clear of any mention of war or suffering going on there. It should be remembered that 'web-crawler' search engines, such as Google, are simply dealing with what's 'out there' (presumably). However media outlets which are specifically in the business of bringing us the news are highly accountable for the amount of attention given to any one particular subject. If the IRC is willing to risk life and limb to get in the Congo and get hard data on mortality rates attributed to the civil war, they should be published. And they should be published frequently enough (this is the real issue) that the international community gives due respect. At the very least, Western media sources should have the courage to denounce the IRC data as a fraud (which it is not), but they do not even do this. Instead, they sit on the fence, keep their mouths shut and hope that no one will notice. The handling of this situation clearly constitutes a filtering of the news that is inexcusable. On a more diabolical level, this kind of media filtering channels attention and desperately needed donations of the international community away from the DRC and towards more 'worthy' victims as defined by 'the official story'.

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Sources and Links

Deadly Legacy: U.S. Arms to Africa and the Congo War

OXFAM report: A Forgotten War � A Forgotten Emergency: The Democratic Republic of Congo

The International Rescue Committee Report (2.5 million dead since August 1998)