Yeah...there simply aren't any words adequate to address this kind of sadism, and it's utterly unfathomable that it's become so widespread.
I actually just finished teaching a unit on DR Congo in my Comparative Government class, and several students made comments to the effect that they found it difficult to think constructively about what they were reading because they were so shocked by the brutality of the atrocities involved. Four million people have died in the fighting so far--it is the most deadly conflict in the world since WWII.
Here is the website for the UN's mission there. They just extended their mandate (which is currently disarmament-focused) once again, to February 2007. Currently there are just under 18,500 UN personnel there, roughly 16,600 of them troops. This is well below the numbers Kofi Annan has repeatedly sought--the last several times he asked the Security Council for more, they were only able to russle up about half of what he wanted. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have been the heroes in this drive so far, contributing more than half of the total personnel. The US has not contributed any troops to the effort. About a hundred UN personnel have died in the fighting thus far.
As with many other African conflicts, the modern roots of this one can be traced to colonial policies (themselves backed by deplorably brutal violence) which bred ethnic tension by favoring some groups over others for land rights and political representation, followed by criminally opportunistic Cold War meddling which furthered already-endemic corruption and violence. Spillover from the Rwandan genocide is a more recent, and also very potent, contributor--not only has the presence of more than a million refugees (many of them militants) logistically complicated matters, but on top of that the Tutsi-Hutu divide driving that abysmal conflict has "transfered" itself to exisiting divides between Congolese groups like the Lendu and Hema, who identify with one side or another in the Rwandan conflict. More than half the militia fighters are child soldiers (18 and under). Graft and corruption associated with the coltan, gold and diamond mining industries in the area further fuels the fire by funding weapons procurement.
One would like to think that the relative lack of connection between the situation in DR Congo and other major international conflicts would make it a magnet for international cooperation and collaboration to address the horrific consequences but, unfortunately, thus far that hasn't happened.
There's a whole world of dark psychological issues concerning how and why women and girls so often become the prime targets of attempts to "symbolically" dominate and humiliate the various parties to the conflict in situations like this to be discussed, too. But that can't be effectively addressed beyond what people like the medics described in the article are already doing until more progress is made in ending the conflict itself. But this is a paradigmatically diffuse and battlefront-less conflict, and ending it will take years more no matter what we do--which, at present, is nowhere near enough.
Thanks for bringing this to everyone's attention, AEON.
