The West is neither callous enough to sit by and watch while Congo subdivides itself (and by its neighbors), nor is the West willing to launch any sort of Marshall Plan to bring Congo back together. The result? More of the same. The end won't be pretty and it won't come fast. But no matter -- we'll continue to print a large area of a single color in the heart of Africa and insist that it is a nation-state.

spent some time in Zimbabwe, while not the Congo, DRC, Zaire, its the same song, different verse. Nothing is going to change. The ethics of business, family and government are such that corruption, and tribal warfare, along with the rampant AIDS epidemic ensure that a descent into anarchy is surely going to happen. The result will be a recolonization of the area 20 - 30 years from now. This time it will not be Europeans but India or some other Southern Asian group. Until then, stay the hell out.

Rich, Why would India or some other Southern Asian group want to colonise Africa? I think that as long as the West can still get raw materials out of Africa, it will keep its troops at home. It will be bloody, but it might get solved which has got to be better in the long run than more of the same. I can't help thinking that the same thing should have been allowed to happen in other parts of the globe, former Yugoslavia springs to mind

I don't necessarly think that any government will make a overt effort to recolonize southern Africa. However there will be a population vacumn in that area that will be filled by an area that has population pressure. While I don't think southern asia will escape the AIDS epidemic, that area will probably recover faster. AIDS related population implosion is a much under studied problem. At least in the public literature. Not only will there be a loss from AIDS directly, but from loss of medical care, hunger, and deaths related to constant low grade warfare. The infrastructure of the area is deteroriating rapidly which will reach a critical rate, then kitty bar the door. As far as production of minerals from the area, with the exception of S. A., the production levels are already falling. Some of the mining companies are reporting AIDS rates 50%. With out the best of medication, AIDS can be fatal in as little as 5 years. Typically the last 2-3 years the victim is to sick to work at heavy labor. This means that you may have a turn over rate of 20 to 30 percent a year. This rate will cause low production because it takes a minimum of two years for a miner to become skilled enough to be fully productive. Look up what happen in Europe following the Black Death. It took 150 years to regain population levels of 1347, the year the plague struck. Sorry this is a soapbox subject with me. Rich