ArtsAutosBooksBusinessEducationEntertainmentFamilyFashionFoodGamesGenderHealthHolidaysHomeHubPagesPersonal FinancePetsPoliticsReligionSportsTechnologyTravel

Why is Africa so Horrible and Why Is There No Intervention?

Updated on April 11, 2009


Cannibalism has been added to a list of atrocities allegedly carried out by one of the tribal groups fighting in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Vital organs have been cut off and used as magic charms and Hema children were thrown onto arrows stuck into the ground according to UN observers. The Congo became a battleground for six nations during a 1998-2002 war that killed 50,000 people directly and another 3 million through strife-induced hunger and disease. But sporadic fighting continues in the lawless north-east.


Frequently, women are shot or stabbed in their genitals, after they are raped. Women, who survived months of enslavement are forced them to eat excrement or the human flesh of murdered relatives.The mineral-rich eastern reaches of Congo, bordering Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, are the most unstable in the country.

Where is the UN?

Its 18,000-strong force currently in Congo is the U.N.’s largest peacekeeping operation. Another 3,000 are being sent but as the locals state, they are never intervene to halt it and powerless militarily. What is wrong??? Why? They are only there to enforce exactly what? Such an outrage!

While rebels commit most of the worst abuses, Government forces and national police (the good guys!) are responsible for nearly 20 percent of all cases of sexual violence reported! Rape, sometimes by groups as large as twenty men, has become a hallmark of the conflict, with armed factions. Rapes of girls as young as six and women over 70 have been reported. Young girls are also regularly abducted and held captive for years to be used as sexual slaves by combatants and their leaders. The FDLR is a Hutu militia whose members are alleged to include perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The group continues to commit grave human rights abuses against Congolese civilians. It was this group that caused the 500,000 genocide in 1994 in Rwanda, remember that?

Where is the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, China? Apparently the only thing any of these countries are doing are providing lip service to the atrocities. Yes, lip service, AKA, words. Why does not Obama direct even a 120 US soldiers armed for combat to enter into this and prevent it??? Providing aid to any of them is a waste. They will do as they want. The super powers all have blood on their own hands with this indifference. What is happening there is a war crime, as bad as anything Hitler did. 


    0 of 8192 characters used
    Post Comment

    • tonymac04 profile image

      Tony McGregor 8 years ago from South Africa

      As an African (a white one, to be sure) I would like to set a few things straight. Firstly the Western powers are not really welcome in Africa - their hands are too full of African blood and the deliberate improversihment of Africa for the enrichment of the West. So Africa, while acknowledging the awfulness of some of the things that happen here, would like to find African solutions to them. In the past the West, and most particularly the US, supported tyrants and butchers, like Mobutu Sese Seko, on the flimsy grounds that they were anti-communist. So the US especially has little credibility in Africa. Indeed the conflicts in Congo are directly and indirectly attrributable to the noxious interventions of the US in that country since it attained independence from Belgium in 1960. Mobutu was put in place by the US and bled his country systematically of billions of dollars, with the tacit support of successive US governments.

      And by the way, the Belgian overlords of Congo were slavemasters who used every imaginable form of cruelty to keep the people subject. They deliberately denied the people of education. The list could go on and on.

      Secondly cannibalism is not native to Africa but is sometimes practiced in extreme situations. But it doesn't happen everyday.

      Africa and Africans make mistakes, to be sure, who doesn't? But intervention by Western powers has almost always led to more trouble.

      The two most destabilising factors in Africa right now are firstly the artificial national boundaries imposed on people by the former colonial powers, and secondly the crippling debt owed by African governments to Western banks. These are taking so much capital out of Africa that necessary development cannot happen and people are left in their desperate situations.

      The best the West could do for Africa is to cancel all debts, and be more careful about who they support. And stop all arms shipments to the continent which is overflowing with arms happily supplied by Western arms manufacturers, and the Chinese, and which feed the violence and add to the indebtedness.

      If the Western powers really want to help Africa they should be looking at these things and talking to responsible leaders to find out from them what is needed.

      So the blood on the hands of the Western powers is not only from their non-intervention now, but because of their intervnetions in the past, which have left very bitter memories in the minds of Africans.

      Love and peace


    • cindyvine profile image

      Cindy Vine 8 years ago from Cape Town

      As a fellow African, I agree 100% with what Tony has said. Even though I am a product of the colonial rule. Africa's problems go back to colonialism and the greed of the west. Why did nobody from the west step in to help Zimbabwe? They don't have oil, that's why. I lived in Angola for a year during it's 30 years civil war. America supported Savimbi because he was anti-communist and controlled the diamond mines. So in exchange for cheap diamonds, America managed to sell off old weapons they no longer needed to the rebel leader in Angola. However, lots and lots and lots of oil was dicovered off the coast of Angola. Unfortunately, the communist president dos santos controlled the oil fields. American temporarily forgot its hatred of communism and managed to scure the drilling rights for the oil. They supplied dos Santos with cheap old weapons etc for his war effort. So in actual fact, America was funding the civil war in Angola. So please, don't be so hypocritical and come with why is Africa so horrible and there is no intervention!

    • agvulpes profile image

      Peter 8 years ago from Australia

      tony and cindy , I am not disputing what either of you have said is true, but even if half of what Perry says is true the whole world should be appalled at what is happening.

      It doe's not matter who is to blame for what , this sort of thing should not be happening and it is time the UN did something.

    • cindyvine profile image

      Cindy Vine 8 years ago from Cape Town

      CHINA HAS JUST BUILT A VERY BIG HOSPITAL oops capslock was on, in Congo. they are giving money to many African countries to try and help them. The UN were completely ineffectual in Rwanda as they are not allowed to shoot. Poverty, disease and injustices of the past can get a mob stirred up in no time.

    • agvulpes profile image

      Peter 8 years ago from Australia

      UN a peace keeping force , thats a joke ?

      I believe the UN Secretary is an African ? Is he doing anything?

    • perrya profile image

      perrya 8 years ago

      I am sure what everyone has said is probably correct, however, the fact is none of us are there, in the Congo. If we were and witness to the horrible acts, we would not even give such a discussion much thought for it is simply "evil and wrong" to do this to any people. At such low levels, one cannot blame any superpower for past aggressions. However, Russian influence from the cold war days was heavy and remains so. They cut weapon deals wherever they can, they armed both Eithiopia and Eritrea in that 1999 war with modern aircraft and armor. Odds are, the fighting most anywhere in Africa is with Russian arms.

      The UN remains a joke. It is useless. Perhaps using NATO troops to restore the situation would be a better way. Africa has been Satan's playground for a long time.

    • perrya profile image

      perrya 7 years ago

      exactly what is incorrect? facts are facts. Africa is a mess. The recent CBS 60 min piece on the Congo and its gold simply reinforces the opinion than few can deny. Obviously, some of the mess is because of the West and Russia, still, Africans may be their own worse enemy in many ways by allowing the mayhem to continue due to corruption at many levels.

    • breaththeair profile image

      breaththeair 5 years ago from Chicago, Illinois

      i recently worked on a lengthy project about this and I really enjoyed your article!

    • perrya profile image

      perrya 5 years ago


    Click to Rate This Article