Congo suffering world's deadliest humanitarian crisis, 38,000 dead monthly

[Thom Little]

War-ravaged Congo is suffering the world's deadliest humanitarian crisis, with 38,000 people dying each month mostly from easily treatable diseases, according to a study published Friday in Britain's leading medical journal.

Nearly 4 million died between 1998-2004 alone -- the indirect result of years of ruinous fighting that has brought on a stunning collapse of public health services, the study published in the Lancet said.

The majority of deaths were due to disease rather than violence, but war has cut off or reduced access to health services for millions of people in the impoverished, Europe-sized nation.

Though major fighting ended in 2002, the situation remains dire, particularly in eastern Congo, because of continued insecurity, poor access to health care and inadequate international aid.

"Rich donor nations are miserably failing the people of (Congo), even though every few months the mortality equivalent of two southeast Asian tsunamis plows through its territory," the study said.


http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/international/news/20060107p2g00m0in005000c.html

[GrumpyGreg]

1. Their leaders are failing the poor people,not the rich nations.

[mom cat]

2. Actually, its both.

The tragedy is that the actions of neither are likely to improve.

[ismnotwasm]

3. It's a horror

I started looking up some history and some stats. Mind-numbing.

[wickerwoman]

9. When the rich nations assassinate their leaders,

I think it's fair to spread the blame a bit wider.

Patrice Lumumba anyone?

[K-W]

4. "What's Behind the Killing in Central Africa?"

http://www.counterpunch.org/fagen06182003.html

But the Congo war--including this latest episode, is about far more than ethnicity or regional politics.

It's the legacy of brutal Belgian colonial rule, the Cold War and U.S. and European imperialism--all aimed at controlling the Congo's massive mineral wealth.


The articles a little old, but it gives a backround of the conflict.

[Kagemusha]

7. The legacy of European imperialism is African imperialism.

IMHO.

[applegrove]

5. Great that the USA helped kidnap and kill that populust leader in

the early 1960s. (he was kinda like a Chavez)Excellent that democracy was put off in Zaire for 30 years.

Assholes!:sarcasm:

[VegasWolf]

6. How did Bush screw this one up. nt

:sarcasm:

[Auntie Bush]

8. The same way he screws EVERYTHING up! No sarcasm!

He'll find a way hook or by CROOK to make it 100 times worse. Count on it! He got a good lesson from Katrina. He sees just how effective ignorance (ignore ance) is.

[Toots]

17. Which Bush are you referring?

I suspect some blame can be laid all the way back to Prescott Bush and Georgie Porgie is acting in true Bush fashion..

[ramapo]

10. Isn't it amazing?

All the attention Teri Shiavo got? Those good Republicans trying to save her life. The countless hours of spew from the mouths of cable commentators...

All the energy that went into the absurd "War Against Christmas" "controversy.

But the horrors in the third-world continue. A thousand+ die needlessly each day just in the Congo. We hardly notice and nobody really cares.

It's not just the rightwingers...we're all guilty....

[Cobalt Violet]

11. If only they had oil in the ground.

We would gone in there already.

[Clara T]

14. World's largest reserves of black gold are in the Congo

Coltan

Guns, Money and Cell Phones
By Kristi Essick
The Industry Standard Magazine
Issue Date: Jun 11 2001

The demand for cell phones and computer chips is helping fuel a bloody civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The substance for sale wasn't cocaine or top-grade opium. It was an ore called Columbite-tantalite - coltan for short - one of the world's most sought-after materials. Refine coltan and you get a highly heat-resistant metal powder called tantalum. It sells for $100 a pound, and it's becoming increasingly vital to modern life. For the high-tech industry, tantalum is magic dust, a key component in everything from mobile phones made by Nokia (NOK) and Ericsson and computer chips from Intel (INTC) to Sony (SNE) stereos and VCRs.

<snip>

Worth its Weight in Gold

Coltan - which is found in 3 billion-year-old soils, like those in the Rift Valley region of middle Africa, western Australia and central Asia - has become a critical raw material in high-tech manufacturing. The tantalum extracted from the ore is used mainly to make tantalum capacitors, tiny components that manage the flow of current in electronic devices. Many semiconductors also use a thin layer of tantalum as a protective barrier between other metal coatings. The metal, which is also found in other minerals and can be extracted as a byproduct of tin refining, is used in the airline, chemical, pharmaceutical and automotive industries as well.

The market for the material is huge. Last year, about 6.6 million pounds of tantalum was used around the world, 60 percent finding its way into the electronics industry, where it can be found in products like mobile phones, computers, game consoles and camcorders. (The United States is the largest consumer of tantalum in the world, accounting for 40 percent of global demand.)

<snip>

The demand for coltan is not going away. As global consumers continue to crave the newest cell phone and the latest computer, high-tech companies will continue to pay top dollar for tantalum capacitors, and their suppliers will continue to take tantalum from wherever it is available. Whether an unregulated industry can effectively police itself based on good faith and written assurances is questionable. But one thing is sure: The links between the cell phones and computers we use every day and the devastation taking place now in the Congo can no longer be ignored.

http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/Africa/Articles/TheStandardColtan.asp

[Harper_is_Bush]

12. Who cares? 12 people died in a mine fer krissake.

Forget the Congo...we want to know every little detail about that coal mine.

Interviews with people who know people who are related to people who died.

All the medical news about the one survivor.

Expert anecdotes about death by carbon monoxide.

Stories about old mine accidents.

CONGO??? You must be kidding!

[brentspeak]

13. I have an Encyclopedia Britannica "Book Of The Year" from 1971

In it, they describe and show pictures of the famine and disease in the Congo, as well as other African nations.

That was in 1971, and not a single thing seems to have changed.

[Clara T]

15. Congo, Democratic Republic: Cell phones, forest destruction and death

Congo, Democratic Republic: Cell phones, forest destruction and death

Could anyone imagine that cell phones are tainted with the blood of 3.2 million deaths since 1998? Also, that the same thing happens with some children's video games? And that mega-technologies contribute to forest depredation and spoliation of the rich natural resources of paradoxically impoverished peoples?

In the case of these new high techs, it is Coltan that is at stake --the minerals columbium and tantalite, or Coltan for short. Tantalite is a rare, hard and dense metal, very resistant to corrosion and high temperatures and is an excellent electricity and heat conductor. It is used in the microchips of cell phone batteries to prolong duration of the charge, making this business flourish. Provisions for 2004 foresee sales of 1,000 million units. To these properties are added that its extraction does not entail heavy costs --it is obtained by digging in the mud-- and that it is easily sold, enabling the companies involved in the business to obtain juicy dividends.

Even though Coltan is extracted in Brazil, Thailand and much of it from Australia --the prime producer of Coltan on a world level-- it is in Africa where 80% of the world reserves are to be found. Within this continent, the Democratic Republic of Congo concentrates over 80% of the deposits, where 10,000 miners toil daily in the province of Kivu (eastern Congo), a territory that has been occupied since 1998 by the armies of Rwanda and Uganda. A series of companies has been set up in the zone, associated to large transnational capital, local governments and military forces (both state and "guerrilla") in a dispute over the control of the region for the extraction of Coltan and other minerals. The United Nations has not hesitated to state that this strategic mineral is funding a war that the former United States Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright called "the first African world war" (and we understand by world wars, those in which the great powers share out the world), and is one of its causes.

In August 1998, the Congolese Union for Democracy (Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie-RCD), launched a rebellion in the city of Goma, supported by the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA). Since then, in a struggle in which, behind the myth of ethnic rivalries, are hidden the old colonial powers that continue to ransack the wealth of post-Colonial Africa, the war has been rife between two, loosely defined parties. On the one hand the RDC and the Governments of Rwanda and Uganda, supported by the United States, relying on the military bases such as that built in Rwanda by the United States company Brown & Root, a branch of Halliburton, where Rwandese forces are trained and logistic support is provided to their troops in the DRC, together with United States combat helicopters and spy satellites. The other party is made up of the Democratic Republic of Congo (led by one of Kabila's sons, after his father was assassinated by the Rwandese), Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/69/Congo.html

[roguevalley]

16. Africa is going to be either a continent of motherless children or

a very, very silent place.

[TheGunslinger]

18. How much oil under Congo's soil?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

20. I believe the scientific term for the amount of oil there...

...is a "metric fuckton."

[NIGHT TRIPPER]

22. HAAHH Good ONE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!n/t

[Ezlivin]

19. One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.

Joseph Stalin said it and he's a better American now than he's ever been.

[HuffleClaw]

21. *yawn*

but seriously, if they only had OIL ! (oh, and if only they were WHITE) bush would be rallying the 'international community' as we speak.

[K-W]

25. They do have oil, and other resources, thats why there is war.

The tribes and groups fight over the land to see who will get to sell out their resources to the developed nations and which developed nations will get the privilege.

There is no money to be made in helping the people of the congo, only in controlling its resources, and as always the west will have a much easier time taking those resources if there are less people living on them, so there is literally a financial disincentive to helping them.

[GinaMaria]

23. also from the article

Most deaths reported were due to "preventable and easily treatable diseases," the study said. Malaria, diarrhea, respiratory infections and malnutrition topped the list.

[UrbScotty]

24. But Bush is pro-life!

Don't you understand?

:sarcasm:

[greiner3]

26. This was one of the countries;

dim bulb should have invaded and overthrew the leader. Too bad they don't have a lot of oil!

[K-W]

27. They do have oil, and speaking of the US overowing thier leader:

As I mentioned in post #4

http://www.counterpunch.org/fagen06182003.html

Congo's elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered a few months by Belgian agents just months after taking office--with the active support of the CIA. Lumumba was assassinated because he advocated independence from the U.S. in foreign policy--and opposed the continued domination of the country by Western political and economic interests.

After Lumumba's death, the CIA installed the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled Congo for 32 years, killing uncounted thousands and stealing an estimated $5 billion. Mobutu--who renamed the country Zaire--was always faithful to his masters in Washington, who rewarded him for being a Cold War ally against Moscow-backed "communism."



As far as the Congo's oil:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/cg.html

Any good source of info about the Congo will tell you about its vast natural resources including petroleum. This is why there has been war in the Congo. Right now the major powers in the world are more interested with securing control of those resources than whether or not there are people dying.

[ismnotwasm]

28. Then the CIA website of the area is particularly ironic

Don't you think? It was one of the places I went to when I went for infomation. Site full of cold facts and very little human nuance. But what do I expect?

The whole situation is so ugly, it's hard to look at. But ignoring it makes it even worse.

[Clara T]

30. It's primarily genocide to feed the need for Coltan

though of course there is more to it than that. But the number one reason for this resource war in the Congo is for the most valued and coveted resource in the world at the moment-Coltan.

Coltan is used for all sorts of high tech gadgets such as laptpops, satellites and mostly cellphones. It is one of the if not the hottest items in the worldwide black market.

This is a war fueled by Western greed and lust for convenience. The children are sold into slavery and prostitution, women raped etc.... as people are pushed off lands that are their birthright. Factions are then pitted against one another, internal strife is programmed and sponsored by the TNC's and the press misnames it a civil war or regional conflict.

Sound familiar?

[Boojatta]

29. What's a solution?

Send nothing but money?

Send in troops to somehow end the conflict? How could troops end the conflict without becoming simply another faction in the conflict?

Help everyone who doesn't want to be involved in the conflict to relocate to some other part of Africa?

Pick a side and just strengthen the defenses of that side?

Pick a side and increase the offensive military power of that side?

[Clara T]

31. kick for info

Noone else covers Africa