{"id":139,"date":"2005-12-25T17:52:57","date_gmt":"2005-12-25T17:52:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucefinley.com\/africa\/two-us-senators-want-their-country-to-get-more-involved-to-help-end-a-war-that-has-killed-4-million\/"},"modified":"2008-06-05T06:00:43","modified_gmt":"2008-06-05T06:00:43","slug":"two-us-senators-want-their-country-to-get-more-involved-to-help-end-a-war-that-has-killed-4-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/africa\/two-us-senators-want-their-country-to-get-more-involved-to-help-end-a-war-that-has-killed-4-million\/","title":{"rendered":"Africa Lifelines: Two U.S. Senators Want Their Country to Get More Involved to Help End a War That Has Killed 4 Million"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong> Another 1,000 die daily<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Goma, Congo<\/em> &#8211; Militiamen from neighboring Rwanda barged into her<br \/>\nmud-brick hut at night. They stabbed and sliced Farijika Nzigire&#8217;s<br \/>\nhusband to death. Then five men raped her. They burned the hut and<br \/>\nleft her beaten and bloody.<\/p>\n<p>Now, a year later, a baby girl, Ajibu, tugs at Nzigire&#8217;s tattered<br \/>\nshirt. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know who her father is,&#8221; she said looking down,<br \/>\ntrying to coax milk from her depleted body here at a hospital in<br \/>\neastern Congo.<\/p>\n<p>Nzigire, 22, is part of a forgotten exodus, thousands of ragged<br \/>\ngang-raped women and other victims staggering from forests where<br \/>\natrocities happen every day.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly 4 million people have died in a war that began around 1998.<br \/>\nU.S. officials estimate 1,000 more die each day across a<br \/>\nEurope-sized area.<\/p>\n<p>Such is the suffering that two U.S. senators who visited Goma this<br \/>\nmonth &#8211; Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill. &#8211; want the<br \/>\nUnited States to get more involved. Brownback said he&#8217;s working on<br \/>\nlegislation, with help from Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., that would<br \/>\nsend $200 million to $300 million a year to Congo for basic needs<br \/>\nsuch as access to safe water.<\/p>\n<p>Brownback said his visit also has inspired a broader initiative to<br \/>\noverhaul U.S. Africa policy. He proposed designating an &#8220;Africa<br \/>\naid czar&#8221; in the State Department as part of an overhaul that<br \/>\nwould shore up scattershot aid efforts, aligning projects more<br \/>\nclosely with African self-help efforts.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re the most powerful nation on Earth, and yet we&#8217;ve got this<br \/>\nnumber of deaths taking place daily that are preventable,&#8221;<br \/>\nBrownback said. &#8220;We have a responsibility to do what we can to<br \/>\nhelp.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>West pushes for elections<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>U.S. and European government officials say they&#8217;ve been trying to<br \/>\nhelp stabilize Congo &#8211; Africa&#8217;s third-most-populous country with 60<br \/>\nmillion people, a fourth the size of the United States &#8211; by<br \/>\nencouraging elections.<\/p>\n<p>But no U.S. or European troops participate in United Nations<br \/>\npeacekeeping work. A U.N. Security Council deadline for disarming<br \/>\nmilitias passed at the end of September &#8211; and the killing<br \/>\ncontinues.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The tragedy is certainly apparent to everyone,&#8221; said Christopher<br \/>\nDavis, spokesman at the U.S. embassy in Kinshasa, Congo&#8217;s capital.<br \/>\n&#8220;Our feeling is the U.N., with the 17,000 contingent it has in<br \/>\nCongo, is quite capable of helping the Congolese army do what it<br \/>\nneeds to do to bring these militias under control.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Most urgently for Nzigire, she leaks urine because the rapes<br \/>\nruptured her vagina. Congolese doctors at the hospital planned to<br \/>\nperform reconstructive surgery.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Despicable war tactic<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Gang rapes have become a war tactic. Tens of thousands of women<br \/>\nsuffer from the ruptures known as fistula &#8211; once a rare injury<br \/>\nassociated with traumatic births but common now in Congo.<\/p>\n<p>A private U.S.-based group, Doctors On Call for Service, has funded<br \/>\nmore than 150 fistula-repair surgeries in Goma, a former Belgian<br \/>\ncolonial town that Denver Post journalists visited in September.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t feel like a normal person,&#8221; Nzigire said. &#8220;I feel my<br \/>\nheart beating hard, fast. I try to sleep. \u2026The war is still<br \/>\nhere.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In 1998, Congo became the battleground for six nations in a war<br \/>\nthat killed 50,000 people, and 4 million more died from<br \/>\nconflict-induced hunger and disease &#8211; the most deaths from a<br \/>\nconflict since World War II.<\/p>\n<p>A peace deal in 2003 recognized warring factions and scheduled<br \/>\nelections. U.N. peacekeepers deployed to towns. But violence in<br \/>\nCongo&#8217;s hinterlands &#8211; mostly roadless, lacking electricity and<br \/>\nphone lines &#8211; repeatedly has prevented those elections.<\/p>\n<p>Violence also blocks international aid crews from reaching forests<br \/>\nwhere thousands of women and children are stranded, said Carla<br \/>\nMartinez, operations chief for Doctors Without Borders&#8217; 35-member<br \/>\nteam, inside a fortified compound.Much of the killing and raping is<br \/>\ndone by rebels from Rwanda who fled after the genocide in 1994 when<br \/>\nRwanda&#8217;s president, Paul Kagame, seized power. The rebels<br \/>\nre-organized inside Congo at French-run U.N. refugee camps.<\/p>\n<p>Parliamentarians from Uganda, Congo and Rwanda met recently,<br \/>\ncalling for expulsion of the Rwandan rebels. Kagame has refused to<br \/>\ntake them back. The United States backs Kagame&#8217;s authoritarian<br \/>\nregime.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. diplomats say they help organize meetings in the region<br \/>\nwithout taking part. The United States currently gives no bilateral<br \/>\naid to Congo, but contributes about $100 million a year to<br \/>\ninternational relief operations.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Businesses buy security<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Amid the killing, foreign-financed mining companies still extract<br \/>\ngold, diamonds and coltan, an ore used in cellphones and laptop<br \/>\ncomputers, because the companies can afford private security forces<br \/>\nto hold off armed factions and &#8220;mai-mai&#8221; bandits. A U.S. company,<br \/>\nPhoenix-based Phelps Dodge Corp., last month began a copper and<br \/>\ncobalt mining project in southern Congo.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, warlords target subsistence-farming villagers like<br \/>\nNzigire and her husband.<\/p>\n<p>U.N. reports this year referred to atrocities nobody has been able<br \/>\nto investigate fully, including an incident in which militiamen<br \/>\nallegedly grilled bodies on a spit and boiled two girls alive as<br \/>\ntheir mother watched.<\/p>\n<p>Here behind blue metal gates, Dr. Flory Cirimwami, 29, a surgeon,<br \/>\ndescribed incidents he&#8217;d learned of through patients south of Goma<br \/>\nnear Bukavu. Militiamen buried a girl up to her neck after raping<br \/>\nher, tortured an 80-year-old woman, and sexually assaulted two<br \/>\nwomen with knives, boots and sticks after raping them, Cirimwami<br \/>\nsaid.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The misery of people here is unbelievable, unimaginable. \u2026 I<br \/>\nalways feel the cry of helpless people here as a heavy burden for<br \/>\nme.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Global policy experts increasingly raise concerns about instability<br \/>\nin Africa as terrorism spreads and African oil production grows. A<br \/>\nrecent report from the Council on Foreign Relations think tank<br \/>\ncalls for new U.S. efforts to integrate Africa into the world<br \/>\neconomy by removing trade barriers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The United States cannot afford to let another decade go by<br \/>\nwithout effective solutions,&#8221; the CFR task force said, &#8220;and<br \/>\nAfrica deserves better.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another 1,000 die daily Goma, Congo &#8211; Militiamen from neighboring Rwanda barged into her mud-brick hut at night. They stabbed and sliced Farijika Nzigire&#8217;s husband to death. Then five men raped her. They burned the hut and left her beaten and bloody. Now, a year later, a baby girl, Ajibu, tugs at Nzigire&#8217;s tattered shirt. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,29,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-africa-lifelines","category-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}