Saturday, November 22, 2008
The basic cause of most of the trouble in the Congo right now is the intervention of outsiders
Spotted on one of my of my favourite websites/blogs on European and left politics, Spectrezine (I just love that name), is a piece from Tony Iltis, originally written for Green Left Weekly, on the ongoing conflict in the Congo and some of the causative factors for the decades long conflict in the region.
Mark McGregor @ 06:45 PM
It’s been a long time since I have read such drivel.
According to Iltis, even though Che, the Cubans and Malcolm X did their best to help, the US is responsible for all of the current problems in Congo.
What a pathetic fantasy.
Posted by on Nov 22, 2008 @ 08:14 PMMark,
I have considerable sympathy for some of that analysis. However, there have always been ethnic tensions there so I suspect some of all of this cannot be laid at the door of the West. Also France has traditionally supported the Francophone Hutus rather than the Anglophone Tutsis. As such one needs to be a little cautious when quoting French sources: though clearly Anglo Saxon ones are also biased.The current UN forces are African and are completely overwhelmed. They have indeed committed acts of rape, violence etc. which is utterly to be condemned. However, if they were not there the situation might be even worse. One of their problems seems to be that they are relatively few in number and poorly equipped. They may also lack adequate training I do not know.
Some of the local population seem to be calling for Western intervention. Western intervention would bring weapons, training and equipment which would almost certainly prevent direct attacks on them and areas they held. There would, however, be the possibility of creating a guerilla war.
It is an extremely difficult situation and which option is the least worse is difficult to be sure. However, harking back to the imperial past, accurate as it is does not necessarily mean that western intervention is inherently wrong. Had there been proper western intervention in Rwanda in 1994 there would have been a lot less deaths tahn there were.
Posted by on Nov 22, 2008 @ 08:19 PMFrançois Mitterand attended a rally in the capital of Rwanda with “Papamadit” and the crowd was chanting “Tues les Tutsis” which someone its meaning was lost in translation and people actually thought that it meant that the Hutus aimed to harm to the Tutsis.
Posted by on Dec 01, 2008 @ 08:51 PM
