The Great Dying Goes Unreported

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trenchsol 1/1/2009 7:40:02 PM

Once I tried to understand who is fighting in Congo and what for. Soon got lost in number of factions with no clear political goals. I think that there existed two mutually opposed factions that both had "national unity" in name... I guess that it is difficult to comment on Congo, so it receives less attention.

So, it is Tutsi against Hutu, again, but there seems to be other parties in conflict. I guess it could be called multilateral.

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jak267 1/2/2009 12:38:11 AM

Terrorism in Iraq wasn't "crushed." It stopped because the Sunni Terrorists finally realized that they couldn't win with George Bush as President and changed sides. Meanwhile the Iranians pressured the Shia Terrorists to wait until after the US left.

But that means that we are paying the Murderers of American Soldiers - and it means that Terrorists everywhere know that no matter what they do, no matter how many Americans or civilians they murder, they can always switch sides at the last minute.

The Sunni Terrorists should have been exterminated and the remaining Sunnis shipped out of Iraq - or at least into the desert.

Of course, they never would have become Terrorists in the first place if they hadn't known that American Liberals and the Western News Media were on their side - two other groups that should be exterminated.

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WarNerd 1/2/2009 12:39:32 PM

It's not that difficult to understand if you just stop believing their press releases about their goals. They are all just criminal gangs in it for the money.

The gangs can be divided into 3 types based on their primary source of income.

First you have the nomads, who just loot an area and then move on to the next. These are the largest and dominate the news. These include the official government and major opposition groups. Most offensive actions are actually raids into the territory of a rival, and peter out as soon as the troops have more loot than they can comfortably carry.

Then there are the resource based gangs that control specific geographic locations with valuable resources that can be sold, like diamonds and tantalum. These gangs also handle most of the smuggling. These gangs are generally the smallest, but have the highest per capita income, and are the best equipped and lead. They prefer to avoid fighting and are seldom in the news (it's bad for business).

Lastly, there are the refugee based gangs/guerrillas. These gangs are based in camps set up by international donors for conflict refugee from neighboring nations. These gangs keep the local population under tight control so that they cannot leave and so the flow of donations that can be looted continues. These gangs are mostly in the news because of they attack the ruling factions in their old country, which then threaten to follow them back into Congo to destroy their bases if the Congo government does not. The Congo government is not interested in doing this because of the cost and lack of potential loot, but cannot allow the foreign governments to invade because they would probably just keep what they can occupy.

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Dek 1/4/2009 11:12:18 AM

Is anyone else outraged by the language of this fellow. I hope so. This is the exact attitude and language that is the basis of all the conflicts were discussing in this article. That aside the insurgency in Iraq is quelled and the cost in coalition lives have been relatively low. What is disconcerting to me is the cost in material and the over extension of our military power. As Mr. Dunnigan points out in his books, we used money instead of lives to win because the US has the resource's to do this. Did we spend and borrow too much, are our forces spread too thin and will we get an end result thats worth it after all this expenditure. Of course most of the media here in the states don't approach this issue from such a pragmatic angle, but is it their fault or is it that most of their customers wont consume if there are no drama laden heart string stories.

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trenchsol 1/6/2009 11:21:11 AM

So, WarNerd, you are saying that those are just gangs without political agenda, or just having some political agenda as excuse for looting. And, the government is a part of it. That kind of thing often ends when some radical political option raises to restore order. There are no radical Muslims in Congo, so are we to expect communists to start taking over control of Congo ?

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