A Conflict's Deadly Ripple Effects -- Washington PostFighting in Congo Has Killed Millions, Most of Them Succumbing To Displacement, Flights Through Harsh Jungles and Lack of Care
WALIKALE, Congo -- Death came quietly for Bahanuzi Mihigo. Unconscious from a soaring fever, his body full of infection, the 36-year-old farmer lay under a white hospital tent in this tiny village, a place that floats like an island in a vast sea of roadless jungle.
It was a cool evening, and the fighting that had chased Mihigo from his home was far away now. Still, its aftermath surrounded him in the tent, where ants crawled up the wooden posts of beds occupied by others weak or dying from their own jungle odysseys: three babies listless with malaria; a woman wheezing from tuberculosis; another with a raging infection ballooning her left arm.
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My Comment: More people have died in this region of Africa than in any other conflict since the Second World War .... and it has always been under reported by not only the Western media .... but also by the media in Africa. The focus is on places like Darfur, Iraq and Afghanistan, the drug wars in Latin America, Somalia, and the Civil War in Pakistan's tribal regions .... the conflict in The Congo is rarely on anyone's radar screen.
But it is in the jungles of Central Africa that the true toll of human misery from war is happening. I can understand the reason why .... the area is so dangerous that war correspondents will never dare to enter the area. Even bloggers who live in the periphery of the conflict and who report on it daily on their blogs or for news organizations .... they are also afraid of retribution and revenge killings if their reporting antagonizes anyone of the many militias and armed groups in the area.
Therefore .... kudos to the Washington Post for this story .... and let us hope that they continue with this type of reporting and coverage.
1 comment:
Agreed. I have commented on Stealth Conflicts a couple of times at my own site, as far too often it seems that the only way to get Western media to pay attention to a central African conflict is to have a few members of the LRA or some like group kill some Gorillas in the fighting. Kudos indeed to the WaPO.
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