Congo - The Forgotten War

The news is full of talk about the impending crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan. The author of these words is pessimistic about the what The United Nations will do to stop all out genocide erupting. Tony Blair and George Bush bleat on about the need to supply troops to the troubled region, knowing full well that their own countries cannot oblige, as they are stretched to the limit in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soundbites abound that "another Rwanda or another Srebrenica cannot be allowed to happen"... It will be allowed to happen, just like another war, which killed more people than any other conflict since the Second World War.

The Second Congo War, which finished only two years ago in 2004, has already been forgotten - consigned to the dustbin of time. Or maybe western politicians don't mention it because to speak of the war only highlights the fact they did nothing to stop genocide on a massive scale. 3,800,000 Congoese were killed. 3,800,000. The number is so huge, yet the footmark this war has made in history is so small.

Everyone knows about the Vietnam war, but many would be amazed to know that more people were killed in just four years in Congo, than there were killed in twenty years of conflict in Vietnam. The majority of people asked would know about Pol Pot and the genocide in Cambodia. Most wouldn't know that twice as many were killed in Congo during four years of bloodshed. All Europeans with a television know about the horrors of the Bosnian War, do they know that forty times as many Congoese were killed during a largely unreported conflict? For every one man who died in The Falklands War, nearly four thousand were killed in Congo.

The author of these words cannot explain how the horrors of Congo have been so easily swept under the carpet by the international community. Sadly he believes that in the future, the holocaust to come in Darfur will be given similar treatment, forgotten by a world that doesn't care enough.