Meanwhile, Elsewhere ...

The following two articles are meant to remind us that while conflict still rages on in Gaza, there are other parts of the world where all Hell has been breaking loose for quite a while now ... and no one is apparently paying attention.

********************

Here's the first article, about what's been happening in Congo (one more example of those resource wars 'a coming, folks):

Imperial Clash on the Congo Resource Front
By Kenneth Anderson

The recently intensified conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo is a proxy war intended to stifle Sino-Congolese economic cooperation and promised "mining reform." Western media remain complicit in the operation by perpetuating the narrative charade of "ethnic tension."

"For there is, in our own time, an absolute taboo among the corporate news media and the political class against mentioning anything to do with the strategic and economic reasons for war."

-- Robert Newman

On its face, the recent New York Times story, Congo's Riches, Looted by Renegade Troops, is an excellent journalist endeavour. Richly detailed and well drawn, the story drills down into the strife and hardship of life surrounding the operations of a single, "illegal" mining operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, run by the enigmatic commander of a "renegade brigade of army troops." Readers are informed that the renegade commander, Colonel Matumo, runs his operation "like a mafia," where the rightful owners of the mining concessions, "British and South African investors," fear to tread. There is truth in this story, which is exactly why it serves so well as a tool of disinformation. But it a very small truth. Though the story attempts to pass itself off as a definitive study of illegal Congo mining, as implied by the overwrought headline, it is anything but that. Indeed, as an explanation of Congolese conflict, the story of Colonel Matumo is equivalent in kind to studying the life of a family facing home foreclosure and presenting it as an understanding of the financial collapse on Wall Street. The two are related, but in no way does the smaller story impart any understanding of the far larger, devastating morass.

Without reference at all to any larger context, readers are left with the impression that Congo's terrible strife, especially the recent escalation of hostilities, are a chaotic jumble of localized squabbles over eastern Congo's rich mineral wealth, while ethnic tension and enmity between Hutu and Tutsi fuel the fighting on an orthogonal trajectory of years-long tribal conflict. Much of what consumers of western media see regarding the fighting in Congo follows these narratives, while occasionally offering to say that "Congo's riches fuel its war." Beyond the immediate militias that are using mineral extraction to fund their operations, what is never said is just who else, exactly, are those enjoying the vast riches beyond the borders of Congo. Knowing that those vital industrial minerals coming out of Congo don't just magically appear in cell phones, computers, turbine jet engines, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and the diamond cartels of Antwerp, it is self-evident that something more, much more, is going on in the dark heart of Africa.

Congo has experienced a long arc of exploitation and abuse and the hands of western colonial power precisely because the subsoil of the eastern provinces is one of the riches repositories of minerals on the planet. Though stories of abuse by King Leopold II and his various agents are legion, Congo's more recent history has seen the country as a central front between western interests and oppositional forces, all seeking to exploit the contents of Congolese soil. And so it was when Congo won its independence from Belgium on June 30, 1960. Within six months, Congo's first democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was dead and in the trunk of a CIA agent's car. Lumumba had been making the usual and always disturbing noises about social programs and land reform, two phrases that immediately strike fear of "communism" into the hearts of western powers, who only hear that their decades-long ways of doing business might come to a shuddering halt under the yoke of popular, democratic reform. But as history informs us, it remains usually the case that the those attempting to alter the entrenched status quo are the ones likely to be brought to a shuddering halt.

The eventual installation of a deferential and appropriately militaristic General Joseph Mobutu, (ne: Mobutu Sese Seko), ensured that Congo's brief flirtation with democracy and its associated dangers would not soon be revived. With US and European backing, the notoriously kleptocratic Mobutu held the reigns for more than thirty years, while western business had nearly free and entirely unregulated access to Congolese resources. Finally, his embarrassing existence outweighed his strategic importance in a post-Soviet era, and Mobutu was dispatched in a Rwanda-Uganda backed coup in 1997. The deep reason for this is a vision of balkanization of Congo territory, as expressed in 1996 by Walter Kansteiner, a man who would go on to become Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs in the Bush administration and who now sits on the board of Sierra Rutile Limited, a titanium mining company with a storied history of "corporate exploitation" in Africa. Setting a model for post-colonial corporate exploitation of African resources, Sierra Rulite "maintains its own private armed reaction force."

(Keep reading ...)

********************

The second article concerns Zimbabwe, where a severe cholera epidemic has been underway while it's corrupted and inept Mugabe government keeps on witholding food, water and medicine in order to make money while hoping its political opponents get to die - along with all those countless citizen-victims of this failed nation:

What to do about Zimbabwe?
By Cernig

The UN says Zimbabwe's government is hiding the full scale of its cholera epidemic. Original video from the UK's Sky News.

Nicole Belle sent me a link today about a report by Physicians for Human Rights on the horror story Zimbabwe has become:

PHR found that the Mugabe government has withheld food aid, seed, and fertilizer to rural provinces in order to starve political opponents; that the regime nationalized and then withheld routine support for municipal water and sewer systems from cities that elected political opponents; that the health care infrastructure and the economy itself is nearing utter collapse; corruption is the rule not the exception; and that the regime brutally silences critics to cover its crimes, profound corruption and incompetence (see report here).

“While we were there,” Frank Donaghue, CEO of Physicians for Human Rights told Religion Dispatches, “human rights activists were imprisoned and tortured.”

“People think that the most compelling problem is cholera,” he said (and indeed, the cholera outbreak has been widely reported). But, adds Donaghue, it is also a symptom of more profound underlying problems. “The issue is the collapse of the government, the economy, and the health system” he said. “Human waste is running down the streets. Kids are playing in it. The sewage system is in such bad repair that you get sewage in tap water.”

and added:

This could so easily be a big foreign policy headache for Obama, too easily reminiscent of the Clinton policy in Rwanda -- with Hillary Clinton at State...

And it wouldn't hurt progressives to get out ahead on this

Nicole's correct. But what to do? I just don't see the US being able to act alone or cobble together another Coalition of the Willing without the UN's blessing. Mugabe is as nutz as the neocons would like us to think Ahmadinejad is and has the military's backing - sanctions and political pressure likely won't do a thing. Zimbabwe has only 30,000 of an army and an almost non-existent airforce so intervention by force would be a "cakewalk"...in the primary (invasion) phase...

But then there's the many short and long term drawbacks of yet another invasion and occupation to consider. South Africa's support and basing agreements would be essential. There would certainly be an insurgency of some kind. Accusations of colonialism and imperialist invasions would echo and probably rightly so. The US and others are still not set up for nation-building. The UK already has military contingency plans in place but has said clearly it won't go it alone for these very reasons.

The best bet, to my mind, would be a UN-mandated relief effort, protected by a UN-mandated force - which would have to include African troops. That's likely inadequate to the problem, but it's what's feasible in both short and long terms and a bit of help is better than no help at all.

The situation is certainly dire enough that PHR is asking for UN intervention.

Control of Zimbabwe's shattered health system should be handed over to the United Nations, an independent doctors group has demanded.

As the official death toll from the country's cholera epidemic yesterday topped 2,000, Physicians for Human Rights said government corruption was killing innocent people. The international doctors' group also called for President Robert Mugabe to be investigated by the International Criminal Court at the launch of a report titled Health in Ruins – A Man-made Disaster in Zimbabwe.

Is Zimbabwe a justified cause for a UN-approved coalition empowered under the Responsibility to Protect principles as ratified at the 2001 ICISS summit and recognized under UN Security Council Resolution 1674 (2006)? This resolution technically commits Security Council members to intervene in situations like this (if they are deemed to qualify as "genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity").

(Keep reading ...)