[allAfrica.com] [US-Africa_Business_Summit_Registration] Visitors Have Been Key to Congo's Pain The Monitor (Kampala) OPINION June 5, 2003 Posted to the web June 5, 2003 By J.b. Kabagambe Kampala A genocide is feared in the DR Congo's Ituri province and the UN has just authorised the deployment of a French-led international intervention force but this country's troubles can be traced to its relationship with outsiders: I shuddered when I read Will Ross' article, "Fleeing D.R.C With Tales Of Horror" (The Monitor 22 May). The author stated in part, "Allegations of cannibalism and mass murder are coming from Congolese civilians of the Hema ethnic group who have fled across the border into western Uganda. It is impossible to verify some of the more extreme claims, for example that the ethnic Lendu militia have eaten the hearts of Hema victims or worn their intestines as a grisly head dress". To say that I was horrified by this tale of savage ethnic cleansing is an understatement. I could not believe that such ghastly barbarism could occur in this millennium. But before condemning the Lendu as crazy, I remembered that not so long ago, Ugandans were equally horrified to find pictures of what Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army rebels had done to victims in northern Uganda. The LRA amputated arms and limbs from victims, and cooked them. I also remember the hell-fire carnage at Kanungu where approximately 1,000 people were brutally burnt to death by cult leader Mr Kibwetere and company, in an apocalyptic horror that shocked the world. Reflecting on these horrendous atrocities, I realised that these are not isolated incidents. Gruesome images from the Rwanda genocide are still fresh in our minds (those who did not follow the events in Rwanda could watch the movie 100 Days to get a bitter taste of the pill. In West Africa, Foday Sankoh's atrocities in Sierra Leone shocked everyone when they were exposed in the award-winning documentary Cry Freetown. Back to the man-eating Lendu militia, I still cannot resist the temptation to call them crazy. On reflection, though, and recalling the immortal words in the play Betrayal in the City, "... when the general madness of an entire nation disturbs a solitary mind, it is not enough to say the man is mad". Well, since it is not enough to simply dismiss the Lendu as mad, considering everything else that has happened in Congo, I suggest we take a look at the broader causes of the Congo debacle. The Congo's problem has its genesis from two mutually reinforcing factors: wealth and foreign intervention. When you study the historical epoch in which the Congo Free State was born, the whole problem becomes self-explanatory. The Congo Free State was born in an era when Africa was parcelled out like a birthday cake by the imperial European powers. Congo was as a result, scrambled for, and "won" by King Leopold of Belgium, having "beaten" the other powers in a cut-throat, winner-take-all, law-of-the- jungle contest, dubbed, "The Scramble for Africa". That was not only the birth of the Congo Free State, but also the beginning of its problems. From the outset, King Leopold was ruthless in plundering the vast resources of Congo. But that was not before, enslaving the Congolese in their own homeland, subjecting them to forced labour and meting out harsh inhuman treatment on those who dared not to do his bidding. Studies show that by the end of Belgian colonisation, about 10 million Congolese had been killed. Note the pattern between the two mutually reinforcing factors that explain the plight of the Congolese. You have the vast wealth of the Congo, beckoning foreign intervention, and the Congolese bearing the brunt of it. At the end of Belgian colonisation enter Mr Patrice Lumumba, the first and only democratically elected leader of the Congo. Sadly, democracy was killed in its infancy when Mr Lumumba was assassinated (before even serving two years as a Prime Minister) with the help of the CIA (America's Central Intelligence Agency). He died because in the cold war that ensued then, Mr Lumumba was thought to be leaning to the Soviet Union and not the USA. Big mistake! Enter Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wazabanga, a true client of the US White House, Mobutu's despotic leadership in Congo (then renamed Zaire) was significant for ensuring that Congo did not "fall into the hands" of the Soviets (remember the Venezuelan revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevera had tried to help Laurent Desire Kabila (RIP) liberate Congo after Lumumba's death) Mobutu's (mis)rule also served the West by making sure it had a free reign in not only plundering Congo, but also acting as a conduit for arming Dr Jonas Savimbi's UNITA (National Union for the total Independence of Angola). By the end of the cold war, Mobutu had outlived his usefulness to the Western Block, but that was not before he had set the stage for a turning point in Congo, that has since had dangerous repercussions. As the renowned scholar Rene Lemarchand put it in his paper "Patterns of State collapse and national reconstruction in Central Africa, 1999" "The cancer that ate Mobutu's state, like the one in his body, had its logic from within, albeit its impetus came from outside". As the saying goes, the rest is history. Rwanda and Uganda intervened in Congo for their own reasons only to give Angola, Zimbabwe, Chad and Namibia an excuse to join them. It is however interesting to note that as a major catastrophe was unfolding in Congo, the U.S was arming all the countries that were involved in what came to be known as, "Africa's first World War". The direct consequence, has been the above countries in turn, arming the local ethnic militia groups under the guise of "Empowering the Congolese!" But that was not before stashing a way a bit of coltan, timber, gold and diamonds, from here and there, in the Congo. Talk of "forward linkages" resulting from the US arming regional powers, and they in turn, arming ethnic militia groups. Unfortunately, with tribal hatred in the mix, the situation could not possibly get worse. The writer is a Kampala-based lawyer   =============================================================================   Copyright © 2003 The Monitor. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). =============================================================================