In America we elect presidents.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo they elect “lion warriors,” “saviors of the nation,” “supreme combatants,” and “The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake.”
That last one is what Mobutu Sese Soku chose as his title when he was chosen as leader of the country in 1965, a position he would not relinquish until 1997. Mobutu was a staunch anti-communist, but not for the good of his people. He amassed billions in embezzled funds, leaving the Democratic Republic of Congo in severe economic desolation by the time his regime came to an end. Three United States Presidents granted him official White House visits: Nixon, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. As with many post-colonial leaders, America turned a blind eye to the tens of thousands of “dissidents” Mobutu dispatched in the name of eradicating communism.
When the Soviet Union fell, our support for Mobutu waned as well. The power vacuum left behind in the late 1990s set off numerous warring factions itching for power. Each faction laid claim to being the most “Congolese,” and the country has been in state of civil war since 1996.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) sits landlocked in the middle of Africa. This places it in the middle of several different conflicts, which over the years have spilled across borders. Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Chad, Angola, Zimbabwe, and Namibia have all sent soldiers into the perfect storm of warring factions. The countries don’t fight solely for ethnic pride. Within the rolling forest hills of the country lie vast amounts of precious metals used in the production of our cell phones, laptops, and iPods. In 2009 alone rebel groups took in $200 million off of this illegal mineral trade.
Sheer numbers can only tell part of the story. What makes the war most disturbing is how it has affected the next generation in DRC. Children are forced into a conflict they don’t understand. Instead of going to school, young boys and girls are given machine guns and told to fight. Those that are too small to wield guns are given whistles, becoming the first line of defense. They are sent to the front lines and blow their whistles when they see the enemy. Of course, when a combatant sees the children or so much as hears the sound of a whistle, they shoot. If the children try to retreat they are shot at with friendly fire. Either way, their bodies end up as human barricades as child after child falls on the battlefield.
The world has changed a lot over the past two hundred years, some for the better, some for the worse. In this post-colonial world that we live in, the theory of the “dark continent” still holds water. We assume that there is fighting throughout the entire developing world, but don’t really care about specifics. The idea of the “dark continent” stems from 18th and 19th century European cartographers, who were unsure as to the geography of Sub-Saharan Africa. Instead of leaving that area blank, they left that region of world maps dark.
A few hundred years later, those regions are still dark, at least in the minds of many Westerners. Sure, we’ve penciled in borders and have explored the continent, but do we really know the inner workings of how those countries operate? The sad answer is no. It’s hard to indict the textbooks we were all brought up on, but the conflict in DRC is just one of many post-colonial conflicts we rarely learn about, it just happens to be the largest.
Trying to shed some light on this seemingly bleak situation is the Los Angeles nonprofit group Falling Whistles. Their main goal is to rehabilitate child soldiers in DRC, and ultimately end the world’s deadliest war. The group was founded in 2008 by Sean Carraso, a humanitarian worker who helped get the TOMS shoe company off the ground. He teamed up with Yves Muya, a refugee from DRC who came to America looking for help to end the conflict in his home country.
The Falling Whistles program runs under a simple mantra: “Make their weapon your voice.” Carraso and Muya are touring the United States, sharing their stories about post-colonial Africa, and the realities of living in DRC. They sell whistles, much like ones the children in Africa are given. With each city or school they visit, their goal is to set up a network of “whistleblowers for peace,” where people can gather to discuss the conflict and ways to help see it come to an end.
All proceeds from whistle sales go to help with the rehabilitation of child soldiers. With the help of Congolese community leaders that are hand chosen, children who only knew lives of rape, torture, and abuse are given a second chance through a four step program: expression therapy, psychological support, job training, and education. So far the group has rehabilitated 267 former child soldiers, a number that will be built upon in the coming years to insure a lasting peace in a nearly decimated country.
Since 1996 some 6 million people have died in this conflict. 6 million. That makes it easily the deadliest war since World War Two. We live in time where we are more connected than ever. Between the internet and cable news, we have unlimited informational resources at our fingertips, and yet somehow this war has escaped Western eyes and ears. In DRC it is not just seasoned war-lords or paid mercenaries that are doing the fighting, in many cases it is children. The country is losing an entire generation of doctors, lawyers, nurses, athletes, and inventors, all for naught. The discourse around countries that face immediate humanitarian crises like these has to start somewhere. If we want peace in the world as a tangible goal and not just empty rhetoric, we need to be wary that atrocities like these do occur, but there are simple steps we can take to bring about massive change.
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