perfidy

The Boston Globe has a long article today on the (Democratic Republic of the)Congo's recent turn of the corner from hopeless morass of civil war and atrocity to tattered but hopeful region. In light of our recent discussions of Africa and the best way to give aid to nations that need it, it is worth remembering that many problems African nations face aren't entirely of their own making, but are the partial artifacts of centuries of colonial action.

Don't get me wrong. I got over my imperial-white-people guilt years ago, and I'm not about to lay all Africa's problems at the feet of honkie Europeans. More than just being fatuous, that line of thinking absolves troubled African nations from any responsibility for their own troubles. No. The fucking of Africa was and always has been a collaborative effort between wealthy nations and individuals and unscrupulous (or merely tragically unwise) agents within Africa.

Witness the article's history of the Democractic Republic of the Congo. After the Belgians buggered out, leaving a collapsed national infrastructure, national rule passed briefly to an ineffectual president and then to Mobutu Sese Seko, who raped the country for his own ends for 32 years. The Belgians aren't responsible for Seko, not directly, but the destabilizing effects of postcolonialism, as in many other nations, created the conditions which allowed a monster like Seko to seize power. And in a nation so rich in resources and poor in local organizations that can manage them, massive corruption is a given.

The DRC has a long, long road back from chaos to nation, but at least the press now feels comfortable sounding some hopeful notes. Shockingly, considering our recent discussions of aid to Africa, there are only two international aid organizations operating in the entire country. The UN still "controls" swaths of the east, in that they maintain armed outposts that they dare not venture outside of, and the Congolese army in the words of one of its organizers is "pathetic... with nothing to eat, nothing to wear, and almost no training. [But] they are getting better."

Where are the Red Cross and the Red Crescent? Where is Doctors Without Borders? The DRC is probably years away from being stable enough to admit the Peace Corps and similar groups, but it looks like they are on the verge of getting their shit together for the first time in, well... ever. Hopefully our guys will get there before the professional terrorists do.

[wik] Does this remind anyone else of some sort of crazy new-era domino theory/containment game? Have we left one Cold War (which might have been better termed a Proxy War anyway) behind, only to become embroiled in another? The developed world is desperate to stabilize places like Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, the DRC, and most of Eastern Africa in order to stave off the encroachment of terrorist organizations that take root in the backcountry and then prove harder to kill off than Florida roaches in August. In that way, Iraq is still not like Vietnam, since the libervasion there was for other (but arguably) related ends than the spread of Islamist terrorism. But maybe the war in Afghanistan, maybe that one, is like Vietnam, or more aptly like Korea. Remember, I am Special Minister of Crazy Ideas That Just Might Be True.)