Rape War In The Congo

NYT:

While rape has always been a weapon of war, researchers say they fear that Congo’s problem has metastasized into a wider social phenomenon.“It’s gone beyond the conflict,” said Alexandra Bilak, who has studied various armed groups around Bukavu, on the shores of Lake Kivu. She said that the number of women abused and even killed by their husbands seemed to be going up and that brutality toward women had become “almost normal.” Malteser International, a European aid organization that runs health clinics in eastern Congo, estimates that it will treat 8,000 sexual violence cases this year, compared with 6,338 last year. The organization said that in one town, Shabunda, 70 percent of the women reported being sexually brutalized.At Panzi Hospital, where Dr. Mukwege performs as many as six rape-related surgeries a day, bed after bed is filled with women lying on their backs, staring at the ceiling, with colostomy bags hanging next to them because of all the internal damage.

“I still have pain and feel chills,” said Kasindi Wabulasa, a patient who was raped in February by five men. The men held an AK-47 rifle to her husband’s chest and made him watch, telling him that if he closed his eyes, they would shoot him. When they were finished, Ms. Wabulasa said, they shot him anyway.In almost all the reported cases, the culprits are described as young men with guns, and in the deceptively beautiful hills here, there is no shortage of them: poorly paid and often mutinous government soldiers; homegrown militias called the Mai-Mai who slick themselves with oil before marching into battle; members of paramilitary groups originally from Uganda and Rwanda who have destabilized this area over the past 10 years in a quest for gold and all the other riches that can be extracted from Congo’s exploited soil.The attacks go on despite the presence of the largest United Nations peacekeeping force in the world, with more than 17,000 troops.

Few seem to be spared. Dr. Mukwege said his oldest patient was 75, his youngest 3.

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I cannot begin to wrap my head around what is unfolding in the Congo at this point given the dozens of factions and agendas among armed groups, neighbors and multinational corporations (though one day I hope to).What I do understand is the horrible price of missing American leadership, in this case, the circa 1994 Rwandan genocide ghosts of inaction and obstruction, exacting a high cost on the African continent once again (not to mention the dreadful consequences of European colonialism).  America cannot be everywhere, and certainly neither can the UN, but given the disgraceful role the US played in obstructing other nations from acting to stem the killing by Hutu Power, we should have a special interest in what our ignorance and evil has accomplished.  Not to mention the fact we let the killers go free (while feeding, clothing and protecting them when they fled the scene of the crime), and they’ve been terrorizing millions of people ever since, quite successfully I might add.The current violence in some of the Congo makes me ask two questions that have implications far beyond this hellish zone of human suffering:

1. What are the long-term consequences on societies and cultures of such widespread breakdowns in morality and family as described in the above article?  Am I wrong to surmise this is the first time in modern history such an environment has not only been cleaved out of the dying heart of a failing state but has thrived for more than a decade, with no end in sight?

2. Thinkers from Robert Sowell to Ralph Peters have speculated on the future of African societies and cultures in the aftermath of full-fledged system crashes like this, exacerbated by the onslaught of AIDS, ravenous resource hungry neighbors, cheap automatic weapons, climate change and international myopia (i.e. the $500 million dollar election fiasco from last year). 

Their line of thinking compares similar events in Europe after the Black Death and WW2, as well as modern-day China, in asking if such an African renaissance is possible.  What could be the factors that could bring about such an emergence from the abyss?  Is Thomas PM Barnett right in saying, first the economics, then the political, then the security, in the context of growing Chinese and Indian interests in the region?  Is it African entrepreneurship, the proverbial triumph of the “cheetah” over the “hippo?”  Will it be AFRICOM and patient, expansive American strategy for developing states and building relationships? Is it all of them and then some?