DRC: The Seamless Borders of Genocide
If everything in this world is, indeed, shaped by the dual principle of the yin and yang, then the internal workings of genocide are of no exemption. Paradoxically the hard, rigid brutality of genocide is shaped with the soft, malleable flexibility that allows it to stretch and grow beyond the limitations of its unbending blade. Genocide’s bloodbath is so deep that the borders of genocide leak uncontrollably into red rivers that are like veins connecting all nations to drink from its murky waters. Genocide wears down borders until every nation is a slave to its misery. Within this context, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) current genocide did not start there, and it will most certainly not end there. While colonialism carved Africa with new blades of conquest, genocide uses those old blades to clumsily re-carve beyond recognition. The result has been catastrophic. Since 1998 more than 3.4 million people have been killed, with an additional 2.25 million displaced. What is almost as shocking is that these numbers have solicited a deadly silence from mainstream media. If numbers really drove the ratings, then one would think 3.4 million dead is a number that shouldn’t be ignored. Instead, the conflict in the DRC is viewed as another “tribal” clash in Africa, rather than what it really is: an international battle with many governments and multi-national companies contributing heavily to genocide, without ever getting their own fingerprints on this crime scene against humanity.
Like many African nations, the DRC is an ethnically rich and diverse melting pot, boasting over 250 ethnic groups. The original inhabitants were the Pygmies whom, like most indigenous populations around the world, were either killed or displaced. In the case of the DRC, it was the Bantus who expelled the indigenous Pygmies. Other migratory patterns brought in many more ethnic groups, one of which came from various areas of Sudan including another genocidal hotbed, Darfur. The Kongo Empire of the 15th century was one of the most powerful dynasties in world history. The elites of this empire quickly lost their power when they allowed the grasp of the European slave trade to remove its most beautiful natural resource- human beings.
The major ethnic groups of the DRC are the Kongo, Bantu, Mongo, Luba, Anamongo and Mangbetu-Azande. However, the area that is experiencing the most conflict is in the Kivu province located on the Eastern side of the country, an area where Hutus and Tutsis make up a substantial part of the population. They are also joined with several other ethnic groups, most notably the Nande and the Shi. This ethnic diversity is not the primary reason for the war, simply because ethnic and racial conflict has never been powerful enough alone to drive genocide. Of course, our world is riddled with examples that show us how racial and ethnic conflict can drive genocide to freakish extremes. Yet, behind the chaos of bigotry lies agendas that are brilliantly exploited to perpetuate Machiavelli’s divide and conquer rule that allows plunderers to enrich themselves by exploiting our weaknesses. The genocide in the DRC has roots in compounded reasons including: the domestic and international corrupt political leaders, greedy business interests, its rich natural resources, conflict in neighboring countries and the artificial nip and tuck of colonialism.
The DRC’s history is largely shaped by genocidal forces. The precursor to the current genocide in the DRC is trumped by an even bigger one spread by Belgium’s King Leopold II. King Leopold’s murderous reign wiped out over half the population of what was ironically known as the Congo Free State, despite the fact it was profoundly unrelated to anything remotely free. From 1835 to 1909, Leopold claimed absolute ownership of the Congo and subsequently appropriated every type of mineral wealth the colony had to offer. Like most colonial regimes, he exploited and enslaved the existing population. What was unusual, even to the barbarism of other colonialists, was Leopold’s brutal systematic campaign to exterminate the Congolese people. His brutality is estimated to have massacred tens of millions of people existing under his colonial rule. Like most oppressors, Leopold’s reign fabricated the positive reputation of being dubbed the King Builder because he constructed so many buildings in Belgium. The underbelly of that gleaming reputation is that the King built those buildings from the bones of murdered Africans. This grave footnote of his bloody legacy is akin to how President George Washington built the power and wealth of the colonies by massacring or enslaving entire races. Fast forward to President Harry Truman who systematically wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki so that the United States could win the war against the enemy even if it meant losing the war against inhumanity. The bigger the genocide, the wealthier the nation becomes that perpetuated the transgression from the shadows. Leopold’s darker legacy is well-hidden because so many power hungry leaders have (literal) skeletons in their own closets.
Like many dark angels that sweep into the night carrying the power to end life, the Belgians left abruptly, relinquishing their political rights to the people whose bones were sucked to the marrow by the vacuumed mouth of colonialism. The Belgians gave the Congolese political independence on paper, but economic independence was still hidden as meticulously as money in a Swiss account. After razing the DRC, the Belgians didn’t even bother to throw a towel for the rigorous cleanup that created havoc on the psychology of an exploited people. They left this African nation unprepared, traumatized and, as a result, ready for a fall that was to bring them even deeper into anarchy. Today, the gash is so wide open that every type of local and international criminal has came into this nation to finish Leopold’s genocide of Africa.
When the DRC gained independence in 1960, the west competed against the Soviets to shape the DRC into western political ideals. The U.S. helped overthrow Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in 1960 because they opposed his nationalism and feared he’d align himself with the Soviets. Instead, they backed Mobuto Sese Seko who helped CIA operatives dispose of Lumumba. With the U.S. providing hundreds of millions of dollars in arms, Mobuto quickly established himself as a dictator. When the Cold War ended, the west left many African nations, whose loyalties they bought for their own ends, with leaders who sold out their countries in exchange for perceived rewards. These western-owned African leaders are no different than those African rulers who sold their subjects to European slavers. Nations like the DRC had to deal with the consequences of being whored and thrown away by yet another foreign power-the U.S. Like any whore used by the unaccountability of humans, she was left with a lot of scars that did not heal. Instead those scars blistered into a disease that is destroying itself through suicidal elements.
During Mobutu’s reign, anti-government alliances spread through the Kivu province. In the midst of growing anti-government rebellion, an influx of Rwandan refugees came into the DRC whom, in turn, were followed by hunters who saw an international border as an inconsequential obstacle to stop them from exporting mass-murder over from Rwanda. One of these hunters were the Hutus who were fresh from the Rwandan genocide where they butchered close to one million Tutsis. The Hutus quickly created their own militia in the DRC, known as the Interahamwe. Unfortunately the Hutus were not the only militia guilty of war offenses, as rebel groups flourished on all sides, thus further destabilizing the government.
To add even more complications when trying to figure out sides, the DRC also had animosity against another Tutsi population, known as the Banyamulenge, who immigrated into the DRC hundreds of years ago. The Banyamulenge have a reputation as being successful citizens of the DRC and are known to have supported Mobutu and because they were a wealthy enclave, Mobutu returned the support. This was viewed by the Congolese as an insult to prefer a group of immigrants who had been there a shorter time than the original inhabitants. Of course, preferential treatment is conditional in politics because soon after, Mobutu relinquished the citizenship of all of the Banyamulenge. This left the Banyamulenge without a home and without protection. They were now open for age old resentments to be acted out against them. Mobutu’s shifting loyalties also drove him to openly support the Rwanda’s Hutus during the height of their extermination of Tutsis. Mobutu’s corruption finally opened the country up to the vulnerabilities of numerous rebellions, until he was challenged by one of those rebellions.
The brutal Mobuto regime outgrew the control of its American sponsors and, as a result, Mobuto was overthrown and replaced by Laurent Kabila in 1997, whose regime was supported through military training by the Clinton administration. The honeymoon between Kabila and the U.S. was short lived as the DRC fell deeper into the brewing conflict that exploded into a Civil War that has cost millions of lives. Laurent Kabila was initially supported by Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi -countries that soon became his enemies.
The weakening of borders also allowed outside African nations to come in and exploit the DRC’s fate. The government is supported by Zimbabwe,Angola, Namibia and Chad while the rebels are supported by Uganda and Burundi and Rwanda. The DRC views Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda armies as foreign occupation forces who have no business in deciding the fate of the DRC. The rebel groups feel that if they are going to be signaled out for being foreigners interfering in DRC’s policies, then pro-government occupying forces from Zimbabwe, Angola, and Namibia should also stay out of the DRC’s decision-making process.
Oppression never stays contained as long as it is given freedom to spread under the laws of mayhem. The refugee problem alone will cause more upheaval. For instance, the Republic of Congo already has over 58,000 refugees from the DRC. At the dismay of many groups, Sudan also extended its treacherous scorched earth policy into eastern Congo. This is why this war is known as the African World War. Ultimately, there are too many power brokers in one nation and all of them have equally violated as many human rights laws as there are to break. Uganda’s rebels agitated the conflict because the effects of Uganda’s own internal problems were seeping into the Congo. Hutus from Burundi also harbored envy against the Tutsi, whom they felt dominated power. The rift over the Congo exploded in 1998 when Laurent Kabila attempted to remove Rwanda’s military groups that heavily protected groups like the Tutsis. President Kabila has accused the Tutsis of interfering with his government and ordered them out of the country. In turn, the Tutsis criticized Kabila’s support of the Hutus. Yet, there have even been rumors that Hutu and Tutsi groups have formed small alliances. The fact that anyone is angry at any alliance that is formed in an atmosphere where coalitions change so quickly, contributing to utter confusion, seems fruitless. Kabila quickly learned the limits of playing too many sides when he was assassinated in 2001. After which, he was replaced by his son President Joseph Kabila.
Because genocide kills our world by slowly spreading, it is not a coincidence that all the nations bordering the DRC are experiencing civil unrest within their own respective countries. By coming into the DRC, they brought along seasoned violence from their own nations and added it onto areas where their armies marched forth. The killings may diminish, but if the root of genocide is not confronted, the satanic ghost of treachery will find other places to possess. The Rwandan genocide gives us a hard look of what happens not only when genocide isn’t recognized but also when its aftermath isn’t healed. Lack of post-healing genocide only means the disease will lay temporarily dormant until it finds another fertile place to sterilize the potential for human life.
All African countries combined still are not enough to compete for world attention as one nation is in the Gulf. How many more African nations must fall to genocide before the world intervenes in a meaningful way? It seems that African people have to suffer so much more than the rest of the world for us to intervene. The U.S. Constitution once called African Americans 3/5 of a person. Evidentially, that belief was never removed from our human constitution because it takes more African genocides to equal one atrocity visited to a non-African nation.
Paradoxically, the unnatural deaths of the Congolese were inadvertently made possible by some of the most natural resources of the earth, including water, diamonds and coltan. It is not oil that makes the DRC wealthy, but its diverse reserves which include a resource we use everyday in our technology based society in such products such as computers, laptops and cell phones known as coltan. This hard to find commodity is found in the eastern region, which is coincidentally the heart of the conflict.
Coltan is a metallic substance which is short for Columbite-tantalite. Upon processing, coltan becomes a powdery heat -resistant material called metallic tantalum which stores electrical charge. This mined substance controls the current flow in cell phone circuit boards.Coltan is smuggled like drugs by all participating warring parties to all paying outsiders. Wall Street financial reports showed that the technology boom brought the cost of coltan from $65 per kilogram all the way up to $600 per kilogram.
Even though coltan is found in other countries, the global demand for this resource coupled with the fact that the DRC is amongst the top 5 nations in the world with possession of coltan reserves has made competition brutal. Of course, top corporations deny getting this resource illegally, but the chain of global trade has many spiked links that are ignored. One of the most infamous cases of the denial of corporate accountability in fueling the flames of conflict in order to obtain natural resources for profit, is the case of the illegal Iraqi War for the purpose of the removal of oil. Extracting rare resources has always come at the expense of extracting the civilians.
Ironically we use coltan to help drive our information age, yet are clueless as to what human sacrifices help us get that information. This means that the very computer I am using to write this article is being powered by the blood of genocide. This means that we are more angry when our cell phones’ reception is unclear than we are angry when we find out what sacrificial human rites are made just so we can call and find out if where we are to meet one another for drinks and dinner at 6 p.m. versus 7 p.m. Clearly, international responsibility for the genocide in DRC must be a higher factor, if we are to continue our dependency on coltan.
The greedy competition for minerals has exploited the ethnic division to the point where alliances shift and change like the sand. There is no such thing as honor and loyalty with those who worship at the feet of unchecked power. Like any government, today’s friend becomes tomorrow’s enemy and, like most rebels groups, various militia leaders who are trying to be recognized as powerful will promiscuously sleep in any political bed that benefits their rise. The ones who get caught in the crossfire of this fickle alliance system are the civilians.
Despite the myriad ethnic conflicts dividing DRC, the one thing that is amalgamating the country is the indiscriminate use of rape as a weapon of war. Rape in the DRC doesn’t differentiate in age, for infants to elders are equally in danger. Incidents of rape in the DRC are amongst the most grotesque in the world. One of the most disturbing cases, which I have ever heard of, was the forcing of young men to rape their own mothers. The psychological chain of events that follows something this horrendous damages the sanctity of family, which in turn destroys a nation. On a deeper scale, this means that African women who are responsible for birthing the world are being torn down in ways that are unimaginable. Well-documented cases of torture and mutilations could not be made up by even the most brilliant horror writer. I can enumerate even more brutalities, but are we so numb that the only way we feel for the victims of genocide is if they stand naked on the auction blocks of the world desperately trying to convince us of which atrocity is gory enough for us to finally act? Every African woman raped is not only ravaged by her assailants, but also by the international community who deems her pain as less than that of an animal. The rape of women mirrors the rape of Africa itself. The sophisticated wealthy class of internationals would be horrified if their wives, mothers and daughters were visited by armies of men waiting to rip apart the womb of one of their women.
Congo’s conflict has global roots, stretching into many countries and regions of the world, including the U.S., Europe, Middle East and surrounding African nations. Congolese genocide is a prime example of how many players it takes for a crime against humanity to occur.
Everything that is acquired in lands where the soil is over-fertilized from dead bodies inevitably corrupt the acquirer. The Civil War in the DRC has been used by opportunists of many countries who have taken advantage of the chaos by exploiting the nation’s natural resources. Wealthy businessmen from New York to Tel Aviv have all taken their turn in raping the voluptuous natural resources of the DRC until genocide screams out that there is nothing more left to ravage. For instance, from the seemingly innocent mercantile aspect, many Lebanese diamond traders who have well-entrenched connections in DRC’s diamond trade have been tied to funding terrorist groups such as Hezballah. In other words, illegal and unethical activities attract other people and governments who follow the same philosophy: to fund their respective interests by any means necessary.
Although some of the world’s worst events are visiting the African continent with a vengeance, let us not conceit ourselves into allowing our subconscious racism to equate barbaric acts of genocide with African nations. Let us not forget that some of the worst genocides in world history came from non-African people. Africans are as capable of genocide as non-Africans. My concern is not to argue whether Africans are more or less humanitarian and incorruptible; my argument is more concerned with where we, as a world community, place our concern.
Exterminating Africans has been the status quo for centuries. What better way to continue this racist pogrom then to have other Africans, trained in self hate, to extinguish their own brothers and sisters. When slavery in the States proved too controversial, the government had set in motion the destruction of African identity in the Americas until that identity was so lost that Black on Black violence was a mark of a true slave. Masters, in other words, do not have to do any work, especially the work it takes to destroy a people. Trained soldiers from the oppressed group do the work for the plantation owner while the plantation owner quips at the barbaric acts they set in motion.
If we are to judge the worldwide exploitation by the powerful, then sadly the DRC is a logical result of our world’s corruption, greed, and bigotry, which blatantly takes without replacing. As a result, the most discriminated people on earth are reminding us that cause and effect is paid by those who have nothing to give but their lives. The borderless power of genocide seems to be visiting the entire continent of Africa to some degree. From AIDS to poverty, the devastation visiting the African continent is deep. Judging how the world has historically exploited Africa, it does not take me elaborating that the place most paying for the greedy of the few is paid in full by the continent that enriches the world with resources and people. Since genocide is a crime against humanity, it is logical to conclude that humanity, itself, is responsible for any human-made disaster.
Before the term genocide was coined in 1944 by legal scholar Raphael Lemkin, the Holocaust was recognized as "a crime that has no name." Part of the challenge of being able to do battle against any enemy is to call it forth by name. Today, Lemkin would be sorely disappointed that with the body of scholarship we have surrounding the definition of genocide; we are as greedy as those during WWII to apply this charge against nations who are in clear violation of human rights. We still act as if genocide is a concept rather than a reality that demands action. After the Holocaust, the world community rallied around the phrase, “Never again.” Did we mean “never again’ only toward our Jewish brothers and sisters? Seemingly so, because “never again” has happened again and again and again.
Because genocide’s aim is to kill humanity, even the perpetuator of the act will eventually kill itself. There is no place for destruction to go but downward where it can no longer see the light, let alone see oneself in the dark abyss. The seamless border of genocide means that this African World War will affect borders that cross oceans and continents. Our interconnectedness means that since Africa was the cradle of humanity, then it will also become the death of humanity if we do not rise in its defense, which really means in our defense.