Here’s an article on coltan from October 2002:
Canadian companies criticized for mining operations in Congo
From the OP cite:
UN Peacekeepers don’t do squat but get killed by the warring factions when their compounds get overrun. The UN may have approved FORCES (Multi-National Rapid Reaction Force) to go in to stop this, but UN Peacekeepers are castrated by policy and “mandates”.
Man this shit is depressing.
I am just speechless. Man, they can’t even defend themselves…
Excellent post, GoHeels.
I’ve got a penpal who spent time as part of UN forces in one of the world’s hotspots. He said that one of the most prized “trophies” that the locals could collect was the blue beret worn by a Peacekeeper. The preferred method of gathering said beret was by killing the person who owned it. He said he’d have felt safer if they simply worn a bullseye.
The only hypothetical solution to these kinds of problems I’ve ever been able to come up with is as follows:
1.) The US goes in, kicks the crap out of everyone.
2.) The Brits follow behind to keep order.
3.) The French help the locals set up a democratic government.
4.) The Germans and Japanese provide technological assistance in rebuilding the shattered nation.
5.) The rest of the world contributes money, food, medical supplies, and whatever else the newly liberated nation needs.
My reasons for doing it this way is that the US is really good at blowing crap up, not so good at handling the after effects, the British seem to be pretty good at maintaining order, the French are more likely to be trusted in setting up the government than the US is by the locals, and since people tend to get “oogey” at the thought of German and Japanese soldiers running around their country, and the Germans and Japanese are really good at building things it makes sense to have them aiding the locals in a way which doesn’t seem threatening. The beauty of this is idea is that it gets most of the major powers involved (can’t figure out what to do with the Russians and the Chinese), so they’re not screaming that one side’s being fascist or that the other side’s supporting evil. Of course, there’s no way in hell that this could ever work. The US would complain that they’re the ones doing the dying, the Brits would complain that the US isn’t doing a good job killing the bad guys before moving on, the French would complain that the Brits weren’t doing enough to stop the looting, the Germans and Japanese would complain that the French are hampering their efforts are rebuilding the country. And on and on.
I would agree with you, I think that’s part of my problem. I would hope the people that would “expect” us to go help in the Congo also supported the war in Iraq (if they consider ending that regime a legitimate gripe.) If not, then I don’t see how anyone who was anti-Iraq-liberation could say we were somehow morally obliged to go help in the Congo. (I’m not speaking of the OP directly, because I have no ideas of his personal view, but just in general.)
It seems like everytime they send troops somewhere to “help” we end up just being more hated than we were before. Please help us United States/Now get your ugly, commercialized capitalist selves out of our country. I for one would have no objection to troops being sent there, as long as the people in the region (or a good portion of them) specifically wanted for that assistance. I don’t know enough about the story to know if that is the case.
Personally, I don’t mind that the United States isn’t stepping into this one – the U.S. is not the world’s policeman, and shouldn’t act like it.
What chaps my hide is when the U.S. does something equally crap-headed (such as invading Iraq), and then uses the “we’re the world’s policeman” excuse to justify the actions.
Whoops, sorry, grammer Notzees don’t get me. Specifically wanted for == specifically wanted or asked for. I confess, I’ve been drinking! :o
Perfectly all right, in. When one lives in Houston, there is no other rational response.
Africa simply makes me heartsick. What can possibly be done? It seems to be a continent-wide experiment in misery, malice, and hunger. Where to even begin? Which vile and reptilian regime do we topple first? If we poured half our national GNP into Africa, would it even make a dent?
“What is to be done?”
My thesis is that a complete breakdown of civil order is worse than all but the worst dictatorships. I think it takes something closer to a Pol Pot than a Saddam Hussein to be worse than a situation like this.
In short, I think that if the US is going to militarily intervene anywhere for humanitarian reasons (which seems to be our remaining justification for Iraq), this is exactly the sort of situation where we should intervene - because almost anything we could do by simply moving in and taking over for awhile would surely make things better. Unlike Iraq, where there are possible outcomes of our intervention that make Saddam’s rule look like the milk of human kindness by comparison, as the events in the Congo illustrate.
Congo is the depths, but one thing that is somewhat hopeful in other countries is the number of local, community groups that are trying to turn things around. There’s still plenty of misery to go around, but we don’t usually hear about the kinds of things the people themselves are doing to get up out of it.
A friend of mine volunteered in Niger and she said that the kind of community organization she saw was nothing like the kind you hear about on the news.
Not if we keep exacting debt servicing well in excess of the countries’ ability to pay 
This is going to sound heartless, but does anyone get the feeling that sub-Saharan Africa is melting down and almost needs to? AIDS, war lords, cannibalism, blood diamonds, genocide, rape, mutilation, corruption and nearly every other disease, crime and atrocity imaginable infest the region. There are times when it seems like the best thing to do is to step back and let the mayhem run its course.
Then you hear about children being fucking eaten and you want to kill every damned adult male in the region.
Military intervention is the only solution. The UN is decorative. I’m bloody tired of America playing world cop and being bashed for it (the current administration not withstanding). From what I understand, there is a mountain of tantalum in Australia. Just what this suffering region needs to happen, have a principal resource get its cash value washed out.
The shadow of evil cast over the dark continent is one of the most tragic and insane conundrums the global community currently faces. No good deed goes unpunished (i.e., Somalia) and yet to do nothing is utterly appalling. I see no alternative to going in, taking names and kicking a whole lotta ass. This is one of the most damnably disgusting situations I can think of. If global might cannot protect innocent children from being eaten, then we all need to hang our heads in shame.
This shit makes Iraq look like a walk in the park.
Signed,
One really unhappy Zenster
We are the world’s policeman and we have a moral obligation to go into the Congo and stop this. We failed to stop the slaughter in Rwanda in 1994 and we cannot do so again.
I’m with you, Zenster, but I’m still uncertain. I should hate to send anybodys children on a fool’s errand, however merciful the intent.
Screw Saddam, he’s a piker. Want to meet a real civilized monster, look up Leopold II, King of Belgium (as in Belgian Congo). I won’t tell you because you wouldn’t believe me. And I wouldn’t blame you a bit.
This is probably an act of self-immolation on my part. I will be denounced as heartless and deeply cynical. I’m neither, really, but I’m also not terribly optimistic about human nature.
I don’t think there’s a damn thing we can, or even should, do about the collapse of Africa - even though its problems to a great degree stem from a colonial history that annihilated an existing (highly imperfect) order while failing to replace it with anything remotely sturdy, or good.
The slaughter will stop when enough people are dead. And not one moment sooner. What’s enough? We don’t know. In the case of the United States, we resolved our own contradictions with about 625,000 dead - roughly 2% of our population then, or 5.5 million today. The great powers of Europe managed to learn to live with one another only after roughly 75,000,000 were dead (combined WWI & II, which I suspect in future generations will be considered one war with a 21-year cease-fire).
I do not understand why we think that other countries, other regions, will manage with less. Humans generally only learn from their own mistakes, not others’, and even then we learn badly.
Ultimately, the only solution that might work would be a massive recolonisation of the region. It would be difficult, exhorbitant, and take a generation or two. And in the end, we would likely be at least as hated for having tried it as we are now for doing nothing.
I have no optimism about Iraq, either, but at least there we have a strategic reason, ugly as it may be: Hatred is worth it when keeping the world’s economy going, without which many of us posting now would be dead. But there aren’t that many parts of the world in that degree of disorder and of that fundamental economic importance.
I find this particularly horrible because I’ve visited the area, in 1993. Not Bunia itself, which was a hellhole even then, but the Ituri forest, where I spent a week at tropical forest research project near Epulu (and went on a net-hunt with 20 pygmies).
Even then, the area was anarchic, with little control by the national government. (Then run as a kleptocracy by the U.S.'s good friend Mobutu. I have a 1,000,000-zaire note with Mobutu’s picture on it, which at the time would buy you one bottle of beer at the local store.) I had to fly in via a missionary-run air service from Nairobi, because there was no service from Kinshasha, and it would have been too dangerous to go that way anyway.
The whole region was sliding back into the previous century. The roads, buildings and other infrastructure the Belgians had built hadn’t been maintained since they left, and were crumbling into ruins.
Personally, I’d like to see global-level intervention, there and in other African (and other) trouble spots, by the U.N. with strong support by the U.S. and other military powers, and with participation of regional powers like Nigeria and South Africa. I doubt much effective will be done, however.
I have to disagree with those who say “nothing can be done.” Outside intervention has helped in places like Bosnia - provided it’s been firm enough. But half-assed measures, as the U.S. undertook in Somalia, are bound to fail.
I’d have been supportive of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, if the real reason had been the liberation of its people from an oppressive regime - and if the administration had then set out to do something about abominations like the Ituri as well.
This post has been violeted by the violater.
sorry, I had to do that
The monstrousness of human beings never ceases to break my heart, even though it long ago ceased to surprise me.
No, you didn’t.