Hey - Africa’s over here!

While the world watches Syria, a new world war could develop in Africa.

Syria. That has been the international crisis word for the past two weeks as the superpowers debate what position to take while the global media documents every move. But is the world completely distracted from a decade long situation which is as bad, if not worse, than the issue of Syria? And the bigger question: how long can they continue to ignore the problems in the DRC, which are set to spiral into a major conflict involving more than a few badly armed rebel groups?

The conflict in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) has been nicknamed ‘Africa’s World War’ and over the last ten years has involved countless rebel groups, as many as nine countries and the largest peacekeeping force the UN has ever had costing 1.5 billion dollars a year. Since 1998, a conservative estimate  puts the death toll due to the conflict at nearly five and half million people and despite many returning home, there are still one and a half million refugees.

Of course we all know that it is the nature of the press to get as much out of a story as possible and then move on and at certain times the DRC conflict has had its international attention, but the coverage has been nothing compared to the Syrian issue which has the world enraptured. Granted, there is an international crisis in Syria and the use of chemical weapons should definitely attract an international response. Yet small arms have accounted for millions of deaths in the DRC but it is unlikely that the President of the USA has ever considered sending rocket attacks to strike at any side in the conflict.

Could this all be about to change? Recently, the fighting has simplified slightly, involving one particular rebel group known as M23 against the DRC government who are backed by a UN force, 3000 strong, with a tough mandate to ‘restore government authority’. However, the UN has declared that it has strong evidence to show that the neighbouring country Rwanda could be backing M23 and has openly accused them of it. Rwanda has denied the charges and in return accused the DRC of backing a Rwandan rebel group.

The situation escalated recently when mortar shells hit a Rwandan town killing two civilians. Rwanda responded with a statement saying that more shelling “would be tantamount to crossing a red line” (sound familiar?) and said it would be “forced to intervene” as it blames the shelling on the DRC and the UN. This brought forward the prospect of a direct conflict between the two nations in which the UN could be put in a precarious position with its offensive force, especially after all the backing it has given to the DRC government.

The prospect of an international conflict involving African governments has huge repercussions for the world. Certainly, Rwanda and DRC would not be the only two involved as other African countries would quickly choose sides. As for the rest of the world, a new Cold War scenario could emerge, similar to the situation in the mid-20^th century involving Israel and the surrounding Arab region in which the US and the USSR chose sides.

The difference is that it would be more likely to be between the West and China. And the incentive for the superpowers to take sides? Firstly, regional dominance and secondly, the mineral wealth that the area around the conflict is rolling in - Cobalt for one which is a major input for cell phones etc. And to add to the confusion, where does this leave the UN force? Either backing a side, running from the war or ‘trying to keep the peace’, something they are not renowned for.

For now, this doomsday scenario is still preventable and tensions have since cooled between the two nations. But it still leaves a situation where the world must either start paying attention to the DRC issue as much as they have to Syria; or accept the possibility of a future involving a war that could spiral to drastic proportions and cause them to rue the day they didn’t open up the Atlas to find out where Goma is.