The Did The DRC Become A Failed State Overrun By Warlords

The Origins Of War In The DRC -- Armin Rosen, The Atlantic

How the region became overrun by warlords and lacking any kind of functional government.

The conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which I visited over the last week of April, has killed somewhere between 3.5 and 5.4 million people since 1996. It destroys human life in crushing and un-cinematic fashion. Its victims live deep in the mountains of central Africa, and despite the efforts of a few intrepid journalists, scholars, and human rights observers, their suffering goes largely undocumented. They include peasant women who are raped collecting firewood, children dying of cholera in bulging refugee camps, and starving young boys conscripted into militia groups so numerous that experts have trouble keeping track of them all. The DRC's conflict might be the deadliest since World War II, and one of world's worst active crises. But it also may be the most obscure -- the most anonymous.

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My Comment: A sobering analysis on how a country can become a failed state where war and conflict is the only constant.