A University of Wisconsin professor told a campus crowd Wednesday the ongoing wars in west central Africa have been some of the most devastating in human history and they have been intentionally fueled by foreign influences with economic interests in the region.
“Discussion about this topic is important because it has been the most devastating war since World War II. About 4.8 million people have died,” said Scott Straus, UW professor of political science and international studies and faculty coordinator of the Wisconsin Human Rights Initiative.
Straus said globalization has implications in the wars. The quest for resources such as minerals and diamonds led many international companies to stimulate conflicts between countries and ethnic groups in Africa, according to Straus.
Straus also showed how the genocide in Rwanda is intertwined with the conflict in the Congo. In 1994, one of Rwanda’s ethnic groups, the Hutus, conducted and instigated a mass extermination of the other ethnic group, the Tutsis, Straus said.
In 100 days, half a million Tutsis were killed. However, the Hutu powers lost the civil war in Rwanda and 1.5 million refugees, afraid of retaliation, fled to Zaire — later called the Democratic Republic of Congo — taking town after town, according to Straus.
In 1996, the first war in Zaire began as the new Tutsi government started to arm the Tutsi people that lived in the Congo, Straus said.
He added, in 1998 another invasion in the country took place, which involved six more countries in Africa.
“Africa’s World War has started,” Straus said.
Millions of people have died and the total collapse of social services is the cause of 98 percent of deaths in the country, according to Straus.
“This is a very complex conflict, because it involves different states, a set of civil wars that were also happening and it has local dynamics as the countries were also fighting for resources,” Straus said.
Another issue that has been worrying many international organizations is the use of rape as a weapon, Straus said. Sexual violence was used as a war tactic and as a method to occupy territories.
“Women were used as properties,” Straus said.
Formally, the war in Congo ended in 2004, but there are Rwandan troops still in the Congo, while many international and non-governmental organizations are working and aiding people there, according to Straus.
UW graduate student in international public affairs Marissa Mommaerts considered the lecture a good opportunity to get to know how complex the conflict is.
“I spent two months in Uganda with 10 other UW students in contact with refugees of this war and I came to get a better understanding of the situation I saw,” Mommaerts said.
UW junior Elise Mann, who also spent the summer in Uganda said she doesn’t think Americans feel the effects of this and believes we should be aware of the violence that still happens there today.