Certainly there are easier problems in Africa to solve. "The Democratic Republic of Congo is a country in name only ... our policy options there are limited," says Timothy W. Docking of the U.S. Institute of Peace. Although he says he's hopeful Bush will address the Congo while in Africa, "the argument can be made that today we have limited resources, [so] let's engage in places where we know we can make a change."
In contrast to previous decades, this is what the Bush administration has done in Africa, Docking says. Clinton also was inactive in the Congo, despite his 12-day trip to Africa in 1998. "Africa's never been a priority in American foreign policy. Even during the Cold War it was to confront perceived Soviet advances in the region ... In the '90s we really disengaged -- cut USAID posts, downsized foreign aid."
By any objective measure, he argues, sub-Saharan Africa has assumed a much greater priority under Bush. "Look at the AIDS funding," he says, "the Millennium Challenge account, and the engagement in Sudan." But though Clinton also turned a blind eye, the violence and deaths in the Congo have only increased under the Bush administration.
Scott Pegg, an activist and political science professor at Indiana University, believes it's difficult to avoid the conclusion "that racism somehow is involved."
"The example I sometimes give is in the early to mid '90s, when everyone was focused on Bosnia, the killing and the starvation and the refugees were far worse in Angola and nobody cared," Pegg says. "I just don't think the American public or our leadership really views African deaths in the same light that they view European or other deaths." Historian Gondola agrees. "Of course it's racist," he says. "It's worse than racist ... We turn on the TV and their faces are so remote. They're darker, they're marked by suffering, by famine, by disease. They don't really resemble us. And because of that we create a gap, we almost deny them their humanity. So if they're dying, it's not human beings dying. There's almost a sense that they deserve to die, because they can't fight. And it's very racist."
Gourevitch points to a lack of stories in the news media. "If it were better covered in the news media there would be greater attention," he says. "In that respect, the press seems to follow the priorities of the government rather than to set the agenda." With the exception of the New York Times, coverage of the Congo has been erratic and sparse. One reason media coverage of Africa is so scarce is that response is so low. "Ted Koppel did a five-night series on the Congo in 2002, and the response was minimal," says Anne Edgerton of the aid group Refugees International, who returned recently from the Congo.
But as far as Gourevitch is concerned, people don't pay attention because the media have not made it a sustained story with daily coverage, as they did with Rwanda or the Balkans. "How do you get people to follow the Balkans? I'm sure they flipped the page at the beginning of the '90s too. People weren't itching to read about 50 people whose names ended in -vitch," he said. And unlike Rwanda, "it's not a genocide," says Gondola. "It's a war about valuable, non-renewable resources. It would be good if it were genocide, because then it's normal to intervene."
Docking points to both the size of the area and the lack of an advocacy group such as Israelis have in the U.S. "This is an enormous area," he said. "There are 48 states in the region, and at any one time a third of them are involved in violent conflict ... it's hard to know where to dig in and engage. It's also a continent we don't have a lot of historical ties to, despite 12 percent of our nation's population being able to trace their roots back to the region. For some reason, and this is the question of African-ness, Africa doesn't have a strong constituency back here. In other words, African-Americans are not vocal ... and have not formed effective policy pressure groups on American politicians, and a lot of us ask ourselves why that is."
Gondola disagrees. "African-Americans are still fighting wars here. There's still discrimination, still prejudice. They can't fight wars on two fronts. [The Israel lobby] has power, they are better off as a group than African-Americans, so it's easier for other groups as a whole to advocate for their places of origin."
But regardless of the reasons why, there is not currently a national movement placing pressure on Washington, and no sign from the left of any grass-roots movement to protest U.S. inattention to the catastrophe. Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER), a coalition of activist groups that protested the war in Iraq -- especially civilian deaths -- has also campaigned on Palestine and Cuba, but staffers in the group's Washington and San Francisco offices said there are no plans in the works to protest the lack of U.S. involvement in the Congo. Top ANSWER officials did not respond to requests for comment about their lack of a campaign regarding the Congo.
Pegg believes it's possible a protest movement could form, as they did around the issues of apartheid in South Africa and, to a lesser extent, conflict diamonds in Angola, but he wouldn't bet on it. "One of the problems here," he says, "is that there are a lot of different players involved, and it's harder to put in a 30-second sound bite and have a clear 'here's the bad guy, here's the victim.' This one's a little blurrier and messier, and I think that's something that hinders [the forming of a strong activist movement.] If there was a clear campaign against a corporation that was benefiting from it ... if something like 'conflict cellphones' or 'conflict computer chips' were to catch the imagination, that might be the route that that could happen."
But unless something is done, the future of the Congo looks yet more bleak. "There's no way the violence is going to stop until the conflict is ended at a very high level," says Karin Wachter of the aid agency International Rescue Committee, speaking from Bukavu, a town in the east part of Congo. "Intervention has to come from the outside. It can't come from the people standing up to it -- they're fairly powerless at this point. There's so much keeping this conflict alive, and I'm absolutely amazed that this kind of conflict can exist without being given the attention it deserves, especially from the Americans."
But as far as the U.S. government is concerned, "they're going to be trying to avoid it unless it's stuck under their noses," says Gourevitch. "So let's put it there."
This story has been corrected since it was originally published.
About the writer
Laura McClure is assistant news editor at Salon.
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