The Tutsis and the Hutus are at it again

[Pardalis]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hoitt5BsM5OKJ2Mmc3g5q6iufXjwD944AFD82
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3075537.stm

From the first article:

"It's the 'long noses' from Rwanda who are bombing us, the Rwanda Tutsi," refugee farmer Gaspar Sebigore shouted at a village overrun by people fleeing the fighting.

I can't believe the size of their nose is the reason they still hate each other so much.

From what I read there is basically no such thing as a Tutsi or an Hutu, that it 's a completely made-up conflict. They lived together for centuries, speak the same language, they don't seem to have any major cultural differences, and there is questionable evidence that they have any genetic differences. Even if they had genetic differences, what difference would it make? I'm sure the general population isn't even aware of DNA. Sometimes people just want to hate eachother, and they would find any reason to continue.

Of course the Germans and the Belgians used that conflict to their own advantage and exarcebated the 'perceived' difference, but why haven't hey moved on since the colonial years? Why haven't they learned from 1994?

[WildCat]

Don't worry, the UN is on top of it.

[tomwaits]

Roméo Dallaire must be having a heart attack right now.

[Pardalis]

Don't worry, the UN is on top of it.

Instead of sending troops of peace keepers there, they should have sent hords of teachers to teach the young about their own history, and how bunk their whole ethnic schism really is.

[geni]

Don't worry, the UN is on top of it.

No the UN is in the middle of it. Well other than the gun ships they are on top of it. UN force in the area is about 18K. For the time being they can probably survive the situation but if it goes back to all out war. Well at most they can die bravely.

[Madalch]

Why haven't they learned from 1994?

They did learn from 1994. They learned that the other guys are out to get them, and will happily butcher them given half a chance.

You don't forget a lesson like that.

[lionking]

Instead of sending troops of peace keepers there, they should have sent hords of teachers to teach the young about their own history, and how bunk their whole ethnic schism really is.

If I recall correctly, some of the worst atrocities last time happened in schools. You couldn't pay me enough to teach there. I say that with great sadness.

[geni]

Instead of sending troops of peace keepers there, they should have sent hords of teachers to teach the young about their own history, and how bunk their whole ethnic schism really is.

Won't work. There was a bunch of hutu on hutu violence last time around. Fudimentaly Rwanda suffered from urbanisation not keeping up with population growth resulting in certian areas not haveing enough farmland to go around. Events then transpired that provided some relife for this problem.

The DRC is just a mess with the ethnic divides being somewhat secondard to the devide between the country and relative peace. Too many warlords and too much poverty for much stability to exist.

[Pardalis]

I'm sure if you'd ask an Hutu what is the fundamental reason he hates the Tutsis (or vice-versa) he wouldn't know what to answer, except that they are Tutsis. It's a completely artificial conflict. I can't wrap my mind around it.

[Matteo Martini]

Who is interested in knowing things, and not just polemics as always, here is an interesting article on the reasons of the war (little to do with Hutu and Tutsi):

Congo is the richest country in the world for gold, diamonds, coltan, cassiterite, and more. Everybody wanted a slice, so six other countries invaded.

The UN named the international corporations it believed were involved: Anglo-America, Standard Chartered Bank, De Beers and more than 100 others.
(They all deny the charges.) But instead of stopping these corporations, our governments demanded that the UN stop criticising them.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-we-fuel-africas-bloodiest-war-978461.html

[Darth Rotor]

Don't worry, the UN is on top of it.
Now is a good time for the French to stand up and be heard, eh?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/29/AR2008102902589_pf.html
PARIS, Oct. 29 -- The French government decided Wednesday to increase military spending by an average of $1.8 billion a year as part of an effort to field a trimmer but better-equipped army to safeguard France's role in world affairs.
-snip-
Sarkozy proposed Wednesday, for instance, that European countries, including France, dispatch a military force to Congo to work alongside U.N. peacekeepers trying to end the spiraling conflict there.
-snip-
The French armed forces, numbering 259,000 regulars and 419,000 reserves, are the largest in Europe. But they rank 14th in the world, reflecting France's relative decline as a military power over the last half a century. Sarkozy has vowed to reverse the trend and keep the country in the club of nuclear powers with the ability to intervene militarily around the world.

Morin said the expenditures also will permit France's defense industries to remain competitive. "France is among the three or four biggest countries when it comes to the arms industry," he said. "I did everything so that we can maintain those industrial icons and the 350,000 jobs they generate in France."
From Pardalis' link:
The UN fears that some people are dying from malnutrition.
Yes, an unhealthy diet consisting of far too much hot lead.

Matteo: your point on "follow the money" strikes me as incisive.

[Matteo Martini]

[..]

From the quoted article:

Sarkozy proposed Wednesday, for instance, that European countries, including France, dispatch a military force to Congo to work alongside U.N. peacekeepers trying to end the spiraling conflict there.


Yes, but so far, all words, no action!!


Matteo: your point on "follow the money" strikes me as incisive.

I hope it is not ironic

[Delvo]

From what I read there is basically no such thing as a Tutsi or an Hutu, that it 's a completely made-up conflict.Not true. The division existed long before white people got there. But it's not a matter of neighboring tribes; it's a matter of upper and lower economic classes within a single society (which might have originated with one tribe invading and conquering the other). Like the economic classes in modern industrial countries, it was possible (before Dutch colonization), although not common, to move from one class to the other, but that didn't make the upper and lower classes not actually two real, separate things.

Why haven't they learned from 1994?What happened in 1994 might have been the worst episode, but it was far from the first. It's the way things have been there for as long as anybody who's alive today has been alive.

Won't work. There was a bunch of hutu on hutu violence last time around. Fudimentaly Rwanda suffered from urbanisation not keeping up with population growth resulting in certian areas not haveing enough farmland to go around. Events then transpired that provided some relife for this problem.And many of them have actually been saying since then that another war is NEEDED in order to relieve it some more because the population density still wasn't taken down low enough. The biggest problems weighing on these people's minds are population density & growth and small land parcel size, not simple ethnic antagonism.

[Pardalis]

so six other countries invaded.

Invaded? I've never heard of a six-progned invasion of Congo.

Who invaded and when? Isn't the author using loaded words?

[geni]

Invaded? I've never heard of a six-progned invasion of Congo.

Who invaded and when? Isn't the author using loaded words?

Officialy the country was invaded by Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. But as time went on the "goverment" became increaseing just another side in the civil war so you can pretty much count Namibia, Zimbabwe, Angola, and Chad as invadeing.

Death toll just under 4 million and an unreasonably large number of Pygmies got eaten.

[geni]

Yes, but so far, all words, no action!!


France sent 1800 troops during Operation Artemis. They may well do the same this time.

[WildCat]

No the UN is in the middle of it. Well other than the gun ships they are on top of it. UN force in the area is about 18K. For the time being they can probably survive the situation but if it goes back to all out war. Well at most they can die bravely.
Oh, I know. I was being sarcastic. Uruguayan and Indian troops I underestand, and the locals are turning on them for not fighting the rebels.

What a mess...

[dudalb]

I'm sure if you'd ask an Hutu what is the fundamental reason he hates the Tutsis (or vice-versa) he wouldn't know what to answer, except that they are Tutsis. It's a completely artificial conflict. I can't wrap my mind around it.

Sadly, education seems to be of limited use with this kind of thing.
No country on Earth was more highly educated then Germany in the early
20th Century..and look what happened there.

[dudalb]

Who is interested in knowing things, and not just polemics as always, here is an interesting article on the reasons of the war (little to do with Hutu and Tutsi):

Congo is the richest country in the world for gold, diamonds, coltan, cassiterite, and more. Everybody wanted a slice, so six other countries invaded.

The UN named the international corporations it believed were involved: Anglo-America, Standard Chartered Bank, De Beers and more than 100 others.
(They all deny the charges.) But instead of stopping these corporations, our governments demanded that the UN stop criticising them.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-we-fuel-africas-bloodiest-war-978461.html


I see Matteo is buying the Marxist line on this. How surprising.

[geni]

I see Matteo is buying the Marxist line on this. How surprising.

No the marxist line is that at this point there would be nothing wrong with implimenting a working capitalist system in the area (since capitalism would be more advanced than what is there at the moment).

It is however generaly accepted that people trying to get their hands on congo's mineral weath was a driving factor for a number of the sides in the war.

[Matteo Martini]

Officialy the country was invaded by Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. But as time went on the "goverment" became increaseing just another side in the civil war so you can pretty much count Namibia, Zimbabwe, Angola, and Chad as invadeing.

Death toll just under 4 million and an unreasonably large number of Pygmies got eaten.

Thanks for the info.
BTW, I did not know nothing about this story of the Pygmeis, could you please elaborate further?

France sent 1800 troops during Operation Artemis. They may well do the same this time.

I strongly doubt that 1800 soldiers alone can do anything to prevent what is happening.
BTW, I have little faith in France helping any African country, after they have been considered as having helped the massacre in Rwanda in 1994 (I ahve read quite something about this info, and I am still shocked).

P.S.
If I were you, I would not feed the trolls....

[gumboot]

Jared Diamond covers Rwanda in his book Collapse. It would appear that it had nothing to do with ethnicity or tribes or Tutsis and Hutus, and everything to do with rich and poor. There was ample Tutsi on Tutsi and Hutu on Hutu violence, and plenty of examples of one group protecting the other from one side or the other.

[geni]

Thanks for the info.
BTW, I did not know nothing about this story of the Pygmeis, could you please elaborate further?

The various groups fighting in the DRC were killing and eating pygmies. It has been suggested that the Movement for the Liberation of Congo did it a bit more than the other groups. Treatment of Pygmies in the DRC has always been very poor in any case. Or as one comentator put it "please don't eat the pygmies".


I strongly doubt that 1800 soldiers alone can do anything to prevent what is happening.

In the short term they might. Remeber that is 1800 highly trained and well equiped soldiers. The average african militia is not going to present a major challange in a conventional conflict.



BTW, I have little faith in France helping any African country, after they have been considered as having helped the massacre in Rwanda in 1994 (I ahve read quite something about this info, and I am still shocked).


In Rwanda they would have been limited by their UN mandate.

France's last actions in the DRC were fairly sucessful. They managed to stop sudan from sucessfuly invadeing chad and managed to hold apart the two sides in Ivory coast for a fair while.

[Matteo Martini]

Here are come companies believed to take part in the explotation of Congo:

As a result, the report recommends that some mining companies examine their corporate conscience, for instance Britain's Anglo American, De Beers, as well as South Africa's Iscor and Orion Mining, Belgian bankers Fortis, plus the United Arab Emirates' Standard Chartered Bank. Other mining companies included on the list, for instance, included America Mineral Fields (USA), Anglovaal Mining Ltd (South Africa), Ashanti Goldfields (Ghana), Banro Corporation (South Africa), First Quantum Materials (Canada), Harambee Mining Corporation (Canada), International Panorama Resources (Canada), Kababankola Mining Company (Zimbabwe), Kinross Gold Corporation, Lundin Group (Bermuda), Melkior Resources Ltd (Canada), OM Group (USA), Tenke Mining Corp (Canada), Zincor (South Africa).
http://www.rabsila.net/index.php?view=article&catid=36%3Aarchive&id=6260%3Acongo-report&tmpl=component&print=1&page=&option=com_content

[Matteo Martini]

In Rwanda they would have been limited by their UN mandate.
[..]

Mm..

Rwanda's civil war saw 800,000 Tutsis slaughtered by the Hutus - armed and supported by France.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jan/11/rwanda.insideafrica

[Pardalis]

Jared Diamond covers Rwanda in his book Collapse. It would appear that it had nothing to do with ethnicity or tribes or Tutsis and Hutus, and everything to do with rich and poor. There was ample Tutsi on Tutsi and Hutu on Hutu violence, and plenty of examples of one group protecting the other from one side or the other.

I'll take a look at this book. What baffles me is that if it's not ethnically motivated, then what exactly mustered such violence between the two groups?

[ElMondoHummus]

Pardalis, this is a book I recommend you read:

"We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (http://www.amazon.com/Wish-Inform-Tomorrow-Killed-Families/dp/0312243359)"

Now, the book has a very strong point of view, and doesn't make any pretense at objectivity or balance. But if the author is correct in his opinion of Hutu power, such "slanting" is very likely justified. Anyway, that's one book I'd recommend taking a look at. If nothing else, it gets much of the background of Rwanda across, and explains the myths and legends that formed the perceptions of ethnic and cultural differences between the Hutus and Tutsis.

... What baffles me is that if it's not ethnically motivated, then what exactly mustered such violence between the two groups?

According to this book, it's more complex than simply calling it ethnic violence. In a way, the ethnic differences were merely the weakness that was exploited by power-hungry groups and their sponsors (political groups in Rwanda, neighboring governments, etc.). It's hard for me to try to explain late at night after a hard days work, but a reading of the book will really expand on what I'm trying to get across. I seriously recommend the book. And I'm sorry to just throw a whole volume at you and say "read" instead of summing it up for you, but I'm new to the topic of Rwanda myself, and I think I need to do much more reading and gathering of information before I can cast events in the proper context.

Anyway, that's what I'd contribute to this thread.

[Darth Rotor]

In a way, the ethnic differences were merely the weakness that was exploited by power-hungry groups and their sponsors (political groups in Rwanda, neighboring governments, etc.)
That is a method of inspiring action or support that is not confined to Rwanda, not in the least. ;)

Look at how race or class, or both, or for that matter another broad affiliation, is used in elections the world over?

DR

[Professor Yaffle]

I remember watching an episode of the excellent Channel 4 foreign affairs series "Unreported World", a few years ago, about the role of the mining of Coltan (for use in mobile/cell phones) in the Congo war.

[Francesca R]

Jared Diamond covers Rwanda in his book Collapse. It would appear that it had nothing to do with ethnicity or tribes or Tutsis and Hutus, and everything to do with rich and poor. There was ample Tutsi on Tutsi and Hutu on Hutu violence, and plenty of examples of one group protecting the other from one side or the other.Well, I understood the Rwandan conflict as (according to Diamond) being due to a Malthusian overpopulation catastrophe, which may be what you mean. In other words, popopulation growth turned amicable co-existence into a bloody struggle over land and resources.

[plumjam]

I remember watching an episode of the excellent Channel 4 foreign affairs series "Unreported World", a few years ago, about the role of the mining of Coltan (for use in mobile/cell phones) in the Congo war.

good call

[a_unique_person]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hoitt5BsM5OKJ2Mmc3g5q6iufXjwD944AFD82
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3075537.stm

From the first article:



I can't believe the size of their nose is the reason they still hate each other so much.

From what I read there is basically no such thing as a Tutsi or an Hutu, that it 's a completely made-up conflict. They lived together for centuries, speak the same language, they don't seem to have any major cultural differences, and there is questionable evidence that they have any genetic differences. Even if they had genetic differences, what difference would it make? I'm sure the general population isn't even aware of DNA. Sometimes people just want to hate eachother, and they would find any reason to continue.

Of course the Germans and the Belgians used that conflict to their own advantage and exarcebated the 'perceived' difference, but why haven't hey moved on since the colonial years? Why haven't they learned from 1994?

How many years was Europe at war with each other? It can take hundreds of years for things like this to be forgotten.

My current observation is that East Asia is much more peaceful than Africa because the colonialists pretty much left the borders as they were.

[egslim]

My current observation is that East Asia is much more peaceful than Africa because the colonialists pretty much left the borders as they were.
I think it was more a matter of East Asia already having borders (together with fairly modern states) when it was colonized, while much of Africa was entirely tribal with much more primitive government.

[gumboot]

I'll take a look at this book. What baffles me is that if it's not ethnically motivated, then what exactly mustered such violence between the two groups?

Money, basically.

Consider, by comparison, Nazi Germany (I'm not Godwinning, honestly). While Hitler's plans had an ethnic motivation to them, why is it that the Jews, more than blacks or arabs or gays or anyone else, got singled out for particularly brutal treatment?

Because as a group, they controlled many of the financial institutions at the time, and the combination of hyperinflation and a depression saw the savings Germans put in those banks vanish. Hatred of Jews in Germany was primarily fueled by economics. The fact that the Jews also belonged to a distrusted ethnic group just made it easier.

Likewise, in Rwanda, you had distinct economic classes. Neither was destroying the other, but both were nearing the absolute brink of survival, with land being subdivided to the point that farmers couldn't even grow enough food to feed themselves, let alone pay their rent. But the land owners themselves were subdividing in a desperate attempt to increase their earnings so they could afford to feed their family.

The economic status was divided along ethnic grounds, so naturally it turned into an ethnic clash, but it was driven by economics, not ethnicity. And the reason it was so brutal was because this wasn't an oppressed underclass rising up against a fat oppressive upper class. It was two starving, desperate classes, one a little better off than the other, both driven to drastic measures to keep themselves alive.

[Matteo Martini]

I remember watching an episode of the excellent Channel 4 foreign affairs series "Unreported World", a few years ago, about the role of the mining of Coltan (for use in mobile/cell phones) in the Congo war.

I have seen a lot of news reports on Congo.
Very few of them talk about the connections between the mining companies in the West and in Africa, and the military groups in Congo.
And, only one or two of them seem to be able to write down the names of such Corporations.
Makes me wonder why is that, maybe they are scared of being sued?
Makes me also wonder how much faith you can put in the traditional news media, today..

[Darth Rotor]

I have seen a lot of news reports on Congo.
Very few of them talk about the connections between the mining companies in the West and in Africa, and the military groups in Congo.
And, only one or two of them seem to be able to write down the names of such Corporations.
Makes me wonder why is that, maybe they are scared of being sued?
Makes me also wonder how much faith you can put in the traditional news media, today..
Are you trying to manufacture a conspiracy theory here? While the multinational mining interests are hardly benevolent in a general sense, they do not benefit from conflict, as it tends to disrupt operations.

I am trying to understand your position: are you suggesting that mining interests force people to go to war?

DR

[Father Dagon]

But the genocide in '94 wasn't the first one. Wasn't there a similar genocide in the 50's?

[Almo]

Definitely read Collapse. That's one of the best books I've ever read. Very illuminating.

[Matteo Martini]

Are you trying to manufacture a conspiracy theory here? While the multinational mining interests are hardly benevolent in a general sense, they do not benefit from conflict, as it tends to disrupt operations.

I am trying to understand your position: are you suggesting that mining interests force people to go to war?

DR

This is what the article say.
I do not live in Congo, so I can not say.
But, it makes sense.
Multinationals companies may pay guerrillas to get control over mines, if they believe that the legitimate government is against their interests..
The coup in Iran in the 1950s was due to the fact that Iranians did not accept the conditions of the British regardig the price of oil.
Nothing new under the sun..

The principal cause (among others) of Operation Ajax (the coup d'état) was Western (American and European) dispute over the nationalisation of the Anglo- Iranian Oil Company between the Imperial British government and the civil Iranian ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax

[geni]

This is what the article say.
I do not live in Congo, so I can not say.
But, it makes sense.
Multinationals companies may pay guerrillas to get control over mines, if they believe that the legitimate government is against their interests..

Viable goverment would probably be a more reasonable term and there wasn't one. Mobutu was the last to have reasonable control. Laurent-Désiré Kabila never did for any significant length of time.
Companies delt with whoever they had to but found the war a considerable inconvience. A brief rebellion to remove a problematical leader is one thing. Years of massively bloody war is quite another.


The coup in Iran in the 1950s was due to the fact that Iranians did not accept the conditions of the British regardig the price of oil.
Nothing new under the sun..

Britian is a country not a business.

[Matteo Martini]

Companies delt with whoever they had to but found the war a considerable inconvience.


Nice excuse

[geni]

Nice excuse

Excuse no. Facts on the ground. See normaly yes you could pay off the local rebal leaders. Obviously that costs money and you can still have the problem of getting stuff out of the country but it allows you to continue your oprations. In the DRC the militias were too unstable for that and had an anoying habit of attacking and nicking all the mining kit (stupid in the medium/long term but no one was thinking that far ahead).

Of course the locals who actualy lived there didn't have much in the way of other sources of income so where the mining companies had given up they went back into the mines and started extracting ore with their bare hands.

[Delvo]

But the genocide in '94 wasn't the first one. Wasn't there a similar genocide in the 50's?There have been an ongoing string of them for decades, but usually not so severe.

[Matteo Martini]

Excuse no. Facts on the ground. See normaly yes you could pay off the local rebal leaders. Obviously that costs money and you can still have the problem of getting stuff out of the country but it allows you to continue your oprations. In the DRC the militias were too unstable for that and had an anoying habit of attacking and nicking all the mining kit (stupid in the medium/long term but no one was thinking that far ahead).

Of course the locals who actualy lived there didn't have much in the way of other sources of income so where the mining companies had given up they went back into the mines and started extracting ore with their bare hands.

You are making unfounded assumptions.
I quote an article from an informed writer

[geni]

You are making unfounded assumptions.
I quote an article from an informed writer

rabsila.net article? Doesn't accuse the companies of promoteing the war simply of takeing advantage of the resulting situation in unspecified manners.

[Pardalis]

Now cholera on top of it all, just to make things worse.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6331233.stm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article5126970.ece

[Matteo Martini]

Now cholera on top of it all, just to make things worse.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6331233.stm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article5126970.ece

Certainly the problem will finish on January 20th. (ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!)
If Obama will not do anything, surely Berlusconi will (ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!)

[Matteo Martini]

"We would have liked to see a larger force in. I had had situations where I called 82 member states together, trying to get troops. I got zilch."

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/11/13/sbm.dallaire.profile/

[a_unique_person]

But the genocide in '94 wasn't the first one. Wasn't there a similar genocide in the 50's?

I find it interesting to compare Africa to East Asia.

Africa was colonised according to random or arbitrary lines on a map, with no regard to ethnic dispersion, SE Asia wasn't, the countries that exist there are pretty well along the lines of the historical ethnic distributions.

East Asia is much more stable, and wealthy. Africa lurches from one crises to the next, often with problems inflamed by ethnic clashes.