the world’s second largest rainforest. It is a land rich in natural resources, including diamonds, gold, cobalt and coltan (an essential component of mobile phone chips).
What is going on there?
A decade-long war in the east of the country between national, local and rebel groups motivated by a combination of racial hatred, power and greed. So far it has claimed the lives of an estimated 5 million civilians, mostly through disease and starvation, making it the most deadly conflict since World War II. The humanitarian crisis accompanying this still-rising death toll is one of the most serious in the world at the time of writing: hundreds of thousands have been uprooted from their homes and forced into the jungle or inadequate refugee camps where aid and food are scarce, child soldiers are forced to fight by all sides, and rape and sexual violence, unprecedented in scale and brutality, is commonly used as a tactic of terror. The UN and various charities are doing what they can, but many have criticised the international community for not doing enough to intervene and bring an end to the suffering.
How did the war start?
The war has its roots in the aftermath of the conflict in neighbouring Rwanda in 1994. This was a civil war between two ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi, which left an estimated 1 million dead in 100 days (April-July 1994). Most of these were Tutsis, killed in a systematic genocide at the hands of Hutu militias. However, Tutsi forces (the Rwandan Patriotic Front) ended up victorious and overthrew the Hutu regime. Fearing retaliatory genocide, around a million Hutus (many of them genocidaires—those who had committed the genocide) fled the country into Congo, which was at the time called Zaire.
What happened then?
The first Congo War, from 1996-7. The Hutu militias (Interahamwe), aided for political reasons by the weakening US-backed dictatorship of President Mobutu, started attacking Congolese Tutsis (Banyamulenge) in the states of North and South Kivu in the east. The Tutsis fought back with the support of Rwanda (which feared an invasion from the Hutus), Uganda and Angola, under the leadership of Laurent-Désiré Kabila, a long-time opponent of Mobutu (but not himself a Tutsi). The war culminated in Kabila marching on the capital Kinshasa, deposing Mobutu, declaring himself president and renaming the country the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo).
Then what?
In 1998, Kabila asked Rwandan and Ugandan military forces to leave the country as it was creating tensions and making him look weak. This left the Congolese Tutsis vulnerable, and they formed a well-armed rebel group, the RCD (Rally for Congolese Democracy), backed by Rwandan and Ugandan forces who, having just left the Congo, now invaded to support them. Uganda also set up another rebel group, the MLC (Movement for the Liberation of the Congo), which operated in the north of the country. The Rwandan government claimed it was intervening to prevent a genocide against the Tutsis that Kabila was organising; however, it is equally possible that territorial aspirations in eastern Congo were a motivating factor. In response, President Kabila enlisted the help of Hutu extremists to expel the occupying forces, as well as military support from Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia (and later Chad, Sudan and Libya). The resulting ‘Great War of Africa’ was fought partly over the Congo’s natural and mineral resources, many of which were plundered by neighbouring countries such as Uganda. The war had no outright victor and ended officially when a transitional government was installed in 2003. In 2006 Joseph Kabila (son of Laurent-Désiré, who was assassinated in 2001) was declared president in a democratic election, although his government was ineffective in the lawless east, where the fighting continued and has never really stopped. A UN peacekeeping mission, MONUC, was set up in 2000 and is still firmly embedded in the Congo. It is the most expensive UN mission in history, but its 17,000 personnel are limited in their ability to control and contain the situation.
Which groups are fighting there still?
The current situation is very complicated, due to the many breakaway groups and rival militias that have formed in the last decade. There are three main factions: the ill-disciplined and poorly paid Congolese national army, or FARDC; the Hutu extremist FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), many of whom carried out the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and who finance themselves by illegal mining; and the Rwandan-sponsored CNDP (National Congress for the Defence of the People). This Tutsi rebel group fought against both the FARDC and the FDLR until January 2009, when President Kabila, realising that they could not be defeated, made a deal with Rwanda in a rare instance of co-operation between the two countries. He allowed the Rwandan army to enter the country to fight the FDLR directly, in exchange for the arrest in Rwanda of the CNDP leader Laurent Nkunda (’the Butcher of Kisangani’). The new CNDP leader Bosco Ntaganda, also known as ‘the Terminator’, has agreed to integrate his forces into the Congolese army, although at the time of writing they appear to retain a degree of autonomy. Both Nkunda and Ntaganda have been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. Besides these, there are Hutu splinter groups such as the Rastas, ‘a mysterious gang of dreadlocked fugitives who live deep in the forest, wear shiny tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys and are notorious for burning babies, kidnapping women and literally chopping up anybody who gets in their way’ (New York Times), and also the Mai-Mai, locally formed militias who believe they possess magical powers and fight, often naked and smeared in oil, against all of the above groups, especially the CNDP.
According to UN reports, Angolan troops are also present, co-operating with the government forces, while 2008 saw the arrival of Ugandan and South Sudanese armies as well. Their aim was to crush the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a cannibalistic cult who have been fighting the Ugandan government for 20 years and are now terrorising north-eastern Congo. Their leader, Joseph Kony, claims to be a spirit medium and a messenger of God. He too has been indicted by the ICC, and if arrested and brought to trial he will face 21 charges of war crimes and 12 charges of crimes against humanity.
Is this the worst suffering the Congo has ever seen?
Possibly not. From 1885-1908 the country was acquired by King Leopold II of Belgium, who looted its resources and enslaved its people. During this period, half the population (around 10 million people) were wiped out as a direct result of colonial exploitation. The unnamed African country in Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness (serialised 1899; first published 1902) is generally thought to be the Congo of this period.
‘It is the only war I have ever known where the worse things get, the more they are ignored.’
MARTIN BELL, British UNICEF Ambassador
What does it mean?
A ‘credit crunch’ is a financial crisis in which banks refuse to issue credit, i.e. lend any money, to other banks. Where they will lend, for example on mortgages or credit cards, they raise interest rates; this makes it expensive to borrow money, which slows economic growth. The term is often used to refer to the global economic downturn that started in 2007, though the tightening of credit itself was only part (albeit a crucial part) of the wider economic catastrophe.
What caused it?
The credit crunch actually had its roots in a credit binge, an unprecedented borrowing spree in the US and Western Europe from 2003-7. In 2001, interest rates were set low to let the markets recover from the effects of two disasters: 9/11, and the
bursting
