War and (Maybe) Peace

Refugees flee the violence, 2012.                       Phil Moore/AFP/Getty Images

To Kurtz's "The horror! The horror!" I would add "the irony, the irony." The natural riches that could have made the Democratic Republic of Congo one of the world's most prosperous and fortunate countries instead made it one of the poorest, most plundered, and most abused (http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2012/12/heart-of-darkness.html, http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2013/01/its-how-they-roll.html, and http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-whole-sorrowful-land.html). As if that isn't enough, it also has to contend with incursions by rebels from neighboring countries: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/08/us-rwanda-congodemocratic-fdlr-idUSBREA370AU20140408
   This is the fullest, best explanation I've read of what's going on in Congo and how it got to be this way: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140327-congo-genocide-united-nations-peacekeepers-m23-kobler-intervention-brigade/?utm_source=NatGeocom&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=inside_20140403&utm_campaign=Content