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At Large
A Perfect Kleptocracy
A historian tries to find hope amid the horrors of the Congo.
In Africa there are some conflicts that are simply too convoluted, too entangled to comprehend. Most are the result of a long history of violence and colonialism, timeless tribal and sectarian animosities, greed, corruption, intervention of foreign interests, and the spillage from neighboring conflicts. The civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1998-2004) contained all of these elements and more. The fighting — which continues to this day, though sporadically — has been going on so long few of the combatants know why it started in the first place.
In the new issue of New York Review of Books historian Adam Hochschild attempts to explain how the DROC got to its present chaotic state of affairs, a state where barbarism — the likes of which have rarely been seen — are commonplace.
Hochschild is best known for King Leopold’s Ghost, his masterful retelling of the Belgian king’s bloody rape of colonial Africa. The atrocities committed in his name were so horrific they drew loud condemnation from Mark Twain (in his satire King Leopold’s Soliloquy) among others, and resulted in the first great human rights movement of the 20th century.
If the mission of European colonizers was to spread the benefits of civilization, and not mere plunder, they failed miserably. But the story Hoschschild tells is how little things have changed. Post-colonial African history follows a familiar pattern. There is the concentrated effort to stamp out Western influence. There is the back and forth between pro-U.S. and pro-Soviet kleptocratic regimes during the Cold War. There is the dysfunction, the poverty, the tribal warfare, the unspeakable brutality, accounts of which will make your hair stand on end.
It is the latter that Hochschild seems intent on recounting here following his recent visit to the DROC. Example: He asks one native human rights worker what got her involved in her work. In a detached, emotionless tone, the woman recounts how a decade ago she was raped by local militiamen:
Their main purpose was to kill my husband. They took everything. They cut up his body like you would cut up meat, with knives. He was alive. They began cutting off his fingers. Then they cut off his sex. They opened his stomach and took out his intestines. When they poked his heart, he died. They were holding a gun to my head…They ordered me to collect all his body parts and to lie on top of them and there they raped me — twelve soldiers. I lost consciousness. Then I heard someone cry out in the next room and I realized they were raping my daughters…When I got out I found these two daughters were pregnant…After this [my husband’s] family chased me away. They sold my house and land, because I had had no male children…Both girls tried to kill their children. I had to stop them. I had more difficulties. I was raped three more times when I went into the hills to look for other raped women.
The various militias currently roaming the DROC make Attila’s Huns look like a band of archangels. Among the many horror tales is an account of an ethnic Ngiti militia that in 2002 burned a library and massacred everyone in a hospital maternity ward. In all militiamen killed 3,000 in that hospital, including patients, staff and nearby residents. The commander of that militia, he notes dryly, is now a minister in the cabinet.
CAN SUCH THINGS BE? Hochschild replies with an emphatic yes, and attempts to show that such brutality has many fathers. For one, the continual and eternal strife between ethnic and religious groups or tribes. Second, the Tutsi and Hutu militias, still fighting the battle that began with the Rwandan Genocide, only now on Congolese soil. Perhaps more important is the battle over rich natural resources: gold, tungsten, diamonds, coltan, and copper. “[F]inally, this is the largest nation on earth — more than 65 million people in an area roughly as big as the United States east of the Mississippi — that has hardly any functioning national government,” he adds.
Indeed, the Democratic Republic of Congo may be the most perfect kleptocracy that ever existed on earth. Its armies loot because they don’t get paid, because the colonels simply take the soldiers’ salaries for themselves. “If they don’t have any money,” one UN official notes, “they have a weapon, so…” The DROC is a classic example of why anarchy will never work. Rid yourself of a federal government and somebody much worse than the government will step in to fill the vacuum. Soon you will have armed, self-proclaimed officials collecting taxes every time you try to take your kids to school. If there are any schools.
Rape, however, remains the weapon of choice for militiamen, “a calculated method of sowing terror.” Almost all rapes are done by gangs, three to five armed men, with some victims as young as two. Today the perpetrators include three different armed rebel groups — plus the Congolese national army.
Again, Hochschild searches for an answer:
What turns such people into rapists, sadists, killers? Greed, fear, demagogic leaders and their claim that such violence is necessary for self-defense, seeing everyone around you doing the same thing — and the fact that the rest of the world pays tragically little attention to one of the great humanitarian catastrophes of our time.
With the exception of the eastern region, a fragile peace is maintained, mostly because in order to buy “a series of half-effective peace accords” the government has had to invite into the government “an array of predatory, criminal warlords and their followers.” Hochschild recommends purging the thugs from senior officer ranks, but this will likely only cause them to form rebel bands and renew hostilities.
Hochschild is seasoned enough to know a writer cannot end on a downer. You have to try to find some reason for hope, some statement that proves goodness and the universal human spirit will ultimately triumph. But it’s not easy. Strangers help him change a flat tire. He spies a few others rebuilding a town devastated by a volcano. Most of all there are the former rape victims now helping other rape victims overcome their trauma. These pale besides the unspeakable horrors, but they offer a small glimmer of hope. Anything more, Hochschild concludes, “will be a long time in coming.”
About the Author
Christopher Orlet writes from St. Louis.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (38) | Leave a comment
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Tim| 8.5.09 @ 10:54AM
Africa is lost . . . the only way to relatively salvage the continent is for the West to re-colonize. China is already gobbling up vast tracks of land and exploiting resources without regard to any environmental or human concerns.
We can sit on the sidelines and leave it up to that colossal failure, the UN, to try and stabilize Africa, or the US and Europe can go in and re-colonize and exploit her resources in a much more responsible way than the Chinese ever will.
Big Leo| 8.5.09 @ 12:36PM
During my travels in Africa, my conversations with thoughtful Africans would include a nostalgic look back on when the colonial power ruled. It was remembered as a golden age. Unfortunately, recolonization will not happen. Africa can't be fixed. It can only be mourned.
Cris Worth| 8.5.09 @ 2:42PM
For you history buffs the Congo gained independence from Belgium on June 30, 1960. One week later a civil war began and the killing hasn't stop. The white man's burden took a real nasty turn in 1964 when white people were taken hostage and executed because of the color of their skin forcing an American and Belgian military/rescue response.
chi hair straightener | 8.5.09 @ 10:46PM
The price of Buy chi hair irons for the two new races is as the same as the original races.
Dave Lincoln| 8.6.09 @ 3:34AM
"We can sit on the sidelines and leave it up to that colossal failure, .... " Good damn idea, Tim. We have no business sending American soldiers, who signed up to to defend the US and Constitution, to get killed and maimed in Africa. For what? Those people can all die, and it is not the US Gov'ts damn business.
Private humanitarian missions and Christian church missions are another story. Besides providing food and clothing to the most destitute, the next best thing people could do is to provide small arms and shooting instruction to your average villager. That's a big project, but it would be the most effective in preventing the sick things that have happened over the years (and that project would be totally against the UN's philosophy, which is another plus and pretty much proves it's wisdom).
Also, let the Chinese have at it, I say. First of all, they are the best businessmen in the world; it's what they do. Secondly, it would give the world a different super power to berate every day about their colonialism. Maybe they could do a better job than the English, Germans, French, Dutch, and Belgians in trying to turn a rat-hole of a continent into a decent place to live, who knows?
Leave us out of it!
Vicki P| 8.6.09 @ 4:03AM
Tim, you are sorely confused. America can't even recognise, much less figure out how to defend herself against the Moslem schools like the one in Virginia spawning anti-American graduates. If we can't get rid of that activity, how could we ever decide to go clean up Africa? Wouldn't do us any good. Some groups of people have a long history, much older than the USA's of killing each other, committing atrocities against each other, and never actually progressing past the point of mindless butchery.
Give those that make it out help, yes, but commit our soldiers? Not just no, but never-in-this-lifetime-no.
Eric| 8.6.09 @ 6:07AM
See here's the problem with Americans and with white people in particular. You are under the misguided notion that it's your calling and responsibility to save people from theirselves Here's an idea, why don't you climb down off of your crosses and let Africans sort out their issues after colonization just like the English,French and various other ethnic groups did after they were freed from their overlords so that the rat hole of Europe could become liveable.
Dave Lincoln| 8.6.09 @ 9:30AM
".... let Africans sort out their issues after colonization just like the English,French and various other ethnic groups did after they were freed from their overlords so that the rat hole of Europe could become liveable. "
Eric, are you equating Europe's departure from the middle ages and the Renaissance with Africa after colonization? Europe at it's worst was never the rat-hole that Africa is, even now. I wouldn't blame these current problems in Africa on colonization (take Zimbabwe for instance, .... please).
I do agree with you that left-wingers in particular feel that the US have this thing about trying to save people from themselves when it's not our business (meanwhile the right-wing wants to meddle in countries where we do at least have a strategic interest).
Ken| 8.6.09 @ 3:23PM
Ah...good ole' "African culture".
A few years ago in an unnamed sub-saharan African area. I personally watched a man being led by a dinky little leash.
He and his "leaser" stopped right in front of our so-called cafe where a fellow customer made a mark on his hip.
Later my translator explained that the man had sold his body...one steak at a time...to feed his children and perhaps even send them to missionary school.
Gulp!
Smarty| 8.7.09 @ 1:56PM
Thanks to US liberals, and the KGB training that some of their leaders recieved (knowing and unknowing), white men of the west would rather pretend not to notice black after black being raped and killed by blacks than to get involved and be called racists.
Look at the situation with Gates and Obama. Just as that situation shows why police departments don't like dealing with black on black crime (the white cop is ALWAYS the bad guy, usually accused by both parties), it makes it less likely that "white" America would get involved in Africa in any meaningful way.
Smarty| 8.7.09 @ 1:59PM
Eric,
Why not at least wait until blacks can figure out how to govern places like Detroit and Compton before you assume that they could manage someplace like Africa.
Richard Baker| 8.7.09 @ 7:51PM
Smarty:
As I've written elsewhere, are they capable of self governance and self-control, at all, anywhere? Sad to witness almost an entire race constantly living off the bottom of human behavior, wherever they may be. Wonder what the anthropologists and social studiers discover during their ongoing research?
WW Rutland| 8.9.09 @ 8:16AM
Africa is now what our ancestors wqere like thousands of years ago. We grew out of it and so will they if it wer not for th minerals there. Congo or whatever its name is now is too big and several smaller states would big better. The thugs go could home then work on building a semi-functional state with their own tribe. The problem with colonial borders is too many people hate each other in a made up country and it's not gonna stop until one tribe kills off all the others . WWR http://wwrutland.wordpress.com
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RationalGeezer| 8.15.09 @ 2:58PM
Here, from Wikipedia, Richard Baker, is what the anthropoligists have found. You won't find many in the propaganda media talking about this.
Biden for President. Remove the usurper.
"The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994) (ISBN 0-02-914673-9) is a controversial, best-selling 1994 book that Charles Murray wrote with the late Harvard professor Richard J. Herrnstein. Its central point is that intelligence is a better predictor of many factors including financial income, job performance, unwed pregnancy, and crime than one's parents' socio-economic status or education level. Also, the book argued that those with high intelligence (the "cognitive elite") are becoming separated from the general population of those with average and below-average intelligence, and that this was a dangerous social trend. Much of the controversy erupted from Chapters 13 and 14, where the authors write about the enduring differences in race and intelligence and discuss implications of that difference. The authors were reported throughout the popular press as arguing that these IQ differences are genetic, although they state no position on the issue in the book, and write in the introduction to Chapter 13 that "The debate about whether and how much genes and environment have to do with ethnic differences remains unresolved."
The reason Africa is in chaos, and in such will remain, is because the inhabitants simply have not the intelligence to look beyond their immediate satisfactions and recognize better practices for the greater good. In short, they are just like the primitives in Washington and Detroit.
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David| 3.19.10 @ 8:37AM
While reading this article I felt horrible,then what was the condition there we just can imagine.This is nothing but completely animal behavior.
David,
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teayza| 12.1.10 @ 3:47PM
I do agree with you that left-wingers in particular feel that the Shopping Laptops US have this thing about trying to save people from themselves when it's not our business (meanwhile the right-wing wants to meddle in countries where we do at least have a strategic interest).
vouchercodes | 1.6.11 @ 9:07AM
That's it