News from a Mud Hut

Trouble in DRC

by Thad Mandsager : May 6, 2009

The people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo probably can’t remember what peace looks like. For years, DRC was the vortex of Africa’s Great War, a conflict that involved government armies from eight countries and culminated with the ascension of Joseph Kabila as president. Though the war officially ended in 2003, the killing did not. Today, DRC is the battleground for regional and ethnic militias, some of which have taken root as lords of certain mining industries – the lifeblood of this mineral-rich country. In this mess, children and women bear the deepest wounds. The rebel forces are taking children from their homes and turning them into armed fighters. Women, too many of them widows, endure rape – by men from both rebel and government armies. An indication of the savage, lawless nature of the chaos in the country’s eastern region, there are tens of thousands rape victims fighting to regain their lives. Villages have been built, torched, and built again, children have been lost. Still, there is hope: This year 1,200 child soldiers have been released, and, recently, 18 militia groups dissolved and put down their arms. Joint military operations have tried to root out the remaining rebel groups, signaling that there is a serious movement to restore calm. What is discouraging, though, is that little help can be expected for the survivors of rape. Little help can be expected for the former child soldiers returning from the bush. (Too often the answer to this problem is to simply push these youth into the government army, giving them a place and purpose but failing to meet developmental, educational, and psychological needs.) To create a real sense of peace and reconciliation across DRC, the government must not only remove the scourge of rebel fighters, it must, in conjunction with the UN and NGOs, provide meaningful aid to the country’s victims of war. Those survivors – mothers and children, on whom future peace depends – need to be healed.