Grim Toll in Congo’s Civil War: More Than 3 Million Lives

The battlefields in Congo’s civil war are shrouded mainly by dense jungle, far from the glare of television crews like those that have swarmed into Iraq and Afghanistan.

But in the last 4 1/2 years, the Congolese war has claimed at least 3.3 million lives -- more fatalities than any conflict since World War II -- according to estimates released Tuesday by the International Rescue Committee, a private aid group based in New York.

“This is a humanitarian catastrophe of horrid and shocking proportions,” said George Rupp, the IRC’s president. “The worst mortality projections in the event of a lengthy war in Iraq, and the death toll from all the recent wars in the Balkans, don’t even come close. Yet the crisis has received scant attention from international donors and the media.”

The IRC, which periodically has tracked mortality rates by taking a statistical survey -- or so-called death census -- of Congolese people since the war broke out, calls its latest study its most exhaustive yet.

A previous report, released in May 2001, suggested that 2.5 million Congolese had been killed in the conflict.

According to the latest study, from 3.3 million to 4.7 million people have died in excess of what would normally be expected during the 4 1/2-year period.

About 15% of the deaths have been attributed to violence. But the vast majority of Congolese who have perished during the conflict have succumbed to malnutrition and other easily treatable diseases such as malaria, measles and diarrhea.

Hardest-hit are small children, who like other Congolese have poor or no access to clinics or health care because the nation’s health system has almost collapsed.

The IRC reported that in three regions visited by its researchers, more than half the children born during the war died before age 2.

Congo’s civil war -- often dubbed Africa’s First World War because of the involvement of several national armies -- has been fought largely in the vast jungles of Central Africa.

Different parts of the country have in the past fallen under the control of government soldiers, foreign armies and dozens of ragtag militias, including so-called Mai-Mai tribal fighters who believe that holy water sprinkled on them will repel bullets from enemy guns.

Fighting in Congo, formerly known as Zaire, exploded in August 1998 when Rwanda and Uganda backed rebels seeking to oust then-President Laurent Kabila. The two neighbors, which had helped Kabila topple the regime of longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, accused him of supporting rebels threatening their security.

Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi supported various opposition groups in eastern Congo while Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia dispatched thousands of soldiers to back the government.

Analysts say peace in Congo, the continent’s third-largest country, is crucial to stability in much of Africa because it shares borders with nine nations. While foreign armies have been feasting on Congo’s vast deposits of gold, diamonds, copper and other minerals, hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled to neighboring countries, further straining their limited resources.

The IRC, which operates several health, water and shelter projects for people displaced by fighting, said the conflict is the “deadliest war ever documented in Africa.” A massacre last week of 966 civilians in northeastern Congo -- the worst single atrocity since the start of the civil war -- seemed to underscore Rupp’s argument that the media and international donors pay scant attention to the bloodletting.

In a rampage lasting just a few hours, attackers including women and children descended on 14 villages in the province of Ituri, using guns and machetes to slaughter members of the Hema ethnic group, witnesses told U.N. investigators.

U.N. officials who visited the scene reported finding 20 mass graves with “fresh blood on them.” Investigators have not yet determined who carried out the attacks. Ituri, which is controlled by Ugandan soldiers, has been the scene of vicious clashes between the Hema and Lendu ethnic militias.

On Saturday, Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese rebel leader, blamed Ugandan troops and allied Congolese militia groups for the massacre. A Ugandan military spokesman denied that any Ugandan troops were involved in the slaughter.

On Monday, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker called on Uganda to exercise its responsibility to protect civilians.

“Uganda, as the party responsible for security in that region, must ensure that no human rights violations or atrocities are committed there and that reports of any and all such activity are investigated immediately,” Reeker said.

The massacre in Ituri came only a day after the main warring parties signed a deal in Sun City, South Africa, to end the bloodshed. The accord -- titled the Final Act, probably because of numerous other failed peace deals -- calls for a new constitution and a power-sharing administration under current Congolese President Joseph Kabila, who assumed power when his father was assassinated two years ago.

Kabila and other faction leaders have also agreed to hold democratic elections in two years, which would be the Central African country’s first such balloting since 1960.

Francois Grignon, a Central Africa specialist with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said the latest massacre showed how much the political process is disconnected from the reality on the ground.

“If things don’t improve, the number of people dead is likely to top 4 million in two years,” Grignon said.

On Tuesday, IRC officials called on the international community to play a more active role in ending the conflict. The humanitarian group also urged the warring parties to agree to an immediate cease-fire and to permit the safe delivery of humanitarian aid to starving people.

In Ituri, however, the plea was apparently not being heard. Aid workers trying to get food to the region said they were being hindered by warlords who control access to the area.

“The needs there remain very high,” said Robert Dekker, the eastern Congo director for the U.N. food agency. “If all the roads to Ituri are open, we will need a lot more food than we have.”