12-09-2017, 12:14 AM
*** 9-Dec-17 World View -- United Nations stunned as peacekeepers are massacred in DR Congo
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
****
**** United Nations stunned as peacekeepers are massacred in DR Congo
****
![[Image: g171208b.gif]](http://Media.GenerationalDynamics.com/ww2010/g171208b.gif)
Graph showing that the number of armed conflicts in Africa has been growing fairly steadily since the end of World War II (IDMC)
The worst attack on United Nations peacekeepers in recent history
killed 15 people and wounded 54 on Thursday evening in Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC) in Kivu state, near the border with Rwanda and
Uganda.
UN secretary-general António Guterres made a standard statement
expressing outrage:
<QUOTE>"These deliberate attacks against UN peacekeepers are
unacceptable and constitute a war crime. I condemn this attack
unequivocally. There must be no impunity for such assaults, here
or anywhere else. ...
These brave women and men are putting their lives on the line
every day across the world to serve peace and to protect
civilians."<END QUOTE>
Officials in Tanzania expressed shock as well, since 14 of the deaths
were of peacekeepers from Tanzania.
There are 15 UN peacekeeping missions, and the largest of them, with
15,000 personnel, is the DRC mission Monusco (United Nations
Organization Stabilization Mission in the DR Congo), with 1,000 troops
from Tanzania.
It's estimated that there are some 120 armed groups in eastern DRC,
described as mostly ragtag groups of 60-70 people each.
In this case the suspected attackers are the Alliance of Democratic
Forces (ADF), a group of Islamists formed in the late 1990s in western
Uganda to fight the government of Uganda. However, a number of
analysts say other militia and elements of Congo’s own army have also
been involved.
DRC's president Joseph Kabila is following the standard pattern of
African nation leaders of refusing to step down, benefiting from
massive corruption, and using massive violence against the opposition
to stay in power.
Kabila has stated that he does not want any UN forces in his country,
and so it's entirely plausible, though unproven, that Kabila ordered
his army to cooperate with the ADF in Thursday's massacre of the UN
peacekeepers.
Kabila's bloodiest violence is in the opposition stronghold, the
central province of Kasai, where more than 3,000 people have been
killed in escalating violence blamed on a government-sponsored
militia. The UN has identified more than 80 mass graves and said it
had found toddlers with limbs chopped off and pregnant women with
their bellies sliced open, their unborn babies mutilated.
The violence has resulted in 3.9 million people forced to flee their
homes to escape the violence. Hundreds of thousands have fled to
Zambia, Angola and other neighboring countries as refugees, creating a
humanitarian disaster in those countries, and threatening to
destabilize the entire region. United Nations
and Reuters and Global Security and MONUSCO
Related Articles
****
**** Violence continues to spread in countries across Africa
****
The violence in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of the worst
of any country in the world, but similar violence occurs in many
African countries, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring
Center (IDMC).
The IDMC report measures the number of internally displaced people
(IDPs) in each country. These are people who are forced to flee from
their homes either because of violence or because of a natural
disaster (usually meaning a drought). In this article, we're focusing
on people fleeing violence.
The countries in Africa with the most IDPs are Sudan (3.3m), DRC
(2.2m), Nigeria (2.0m), South Sudan (1.9m), and Somalia (1.1m).
People who are forced to flee violence often experience further
violence again in their place of displacement, including murder and
rape. People in displacement camps are vulnerable to human
trafficking and slavery.
DRC is the worst affected in the last year. In just January through
June of this year, there were 997,000 more displacements in DRC, more
than the 922,000 that were displaced in the entire year 2016.
Africa is disproportionately affected by conflict. Africa has 16% of
the world's population, but over 33% of the world's conflicts. As the
graph at the beginning of this article shows, the number of armed
conflicts in Africa has been growing fairly steadily since the end of
World War II.
However, the IDMC found an apparent contradiction that they have to
explain: Although the number of armed conflicts has been rising, the
intensity of these conflicts has been falling, and yet the number of
IDPs has been rising. They explain this as follows:
<QUOTE>"Why then the consistently high rates of conflict
displacement seen in our figures? Other forms of violence are on
the rise, in some instances involving higher death tolls. ACLED,
which monitors armed conflict and political violence, indicates
that riots, protests and bombings are increasing in Africa.
Importantly, violence against civilians is on the rise. Forty-two
per cent of incidents of political violence targeted civilians in
2014, and 45 per cent in 2016."<END QUOTE>
According to the report, there were 2.7 million people newly displaced
people in Africa between January and June of this year, the equivalent
of 15,000 people forced from their homes every day. 75% of of new
displacement is attributed to conflict and violence. Internal displacement monitoring center (IDMC) and Institute for Security Studies and EyeWitnessNews (South Africa)
****
**** Generational analysis of the rise in armed conflicts in Africa
****
The DRC alone is being described as a "mega-crisis" because of the
huge numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs), but it's far from
unique, as illustrated by the numbers above. Outside of Africa, Syria
also has millions of IDPs.
I've written articles about numerous countries that are currently in
generational Awakening or Unraveling eras, with leaders that refuse to
step down and are using violence and atrocities against civilians to
stay in power. These include Paul Biya in Cameroon, Pierre Nkurunziza
in Burundi, Paul Kagame in Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, Robert
Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Joseph Kabila in DRC, or, outside of Africa,
Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Hun Sen in Cambodia.
There's a reason why so many African countries are in generational
Awakening eras. The Awakening era is one generation past the end of
the preceding generational crisis war, and for most countries of the
world, the last crisis war was World War II, so the generational
Awakening era occurred in the 1960s and 1970s.
However, African countries have been on a different timeline. Most
African countries were largely unaffected by World War II, but had
generational crisis wars in the 1960s-80s. These wars were usually
wars of "liberation" from colonial powers.
The graph at the beginning of this article shows that the number of
armed conflicts in Africa has been growing fairly steadily since the
end of World War II. In many cases, the colonial powers drafted men
from their African countries to fight in WW II, but the countries
themselves were not always involved. After WW II ended, the number of
demands for liberation from colonial powers led to liberation wars,
which explains the sharp increase in armed conflicts in the next three
decades.
However, the armed conflicts that lead to independence for these
African nations did not resolve the ethnic and tribal differences
occurring within the nations. In country after country, a leader from
one tribe or another took control of the country, became right through
corruption, often channeling international aid into their own bank
accounts or into weapons to be used against political enemies, and
continued using violence for decades to stay in power.
So the "apparent contradiction" that the IDMC found as described
earlier in this article, is explained by the fact that the tribal,
ethnic and anti-colonial wars have been ending, but the violence has
been replaced by leaders staying in power by using genocide, murders,
rapes, torture, jailings, and massacres.
One thing that's pretty clear is that there's no end in sight for this
kind of violence. To the contrary, new post-war generations of young
men and women are coming of age, and these leaders who are doing
everything they to stay in power are going to have to commit more
murders, rapes, torture and jailings to keep these new generations
under control.
This leads to a grim choice for the United Nations and its
peacekeeping forces. These peacekeeping forces have been failing to
accomplish anything of value, and they will fail even more in the
future. These forces are hugely expensive, and really accomplish
little or nothing. On the other hand, nobody wants to leave Africa in
distress without doing everything possible to help, even if the help
is futile. This is one of those problems that have no solution.
BBC
Related Articles
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, United Nations, António Guterres, Tanzania,
Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, Joseph Kabila, Kasai,
United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the DR Congo,
Monusco, Alliance of Democratic Forces, ADF, Uganda,
Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, IDMC,
Sudan, Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
- United Nations stunned as peacekeepers are massacred in DR Congo
- Violence continues to spread in countries across Africa
- Generational analysis of the rise in armed conflicts in Africa
****
**** United Nations stunned as peacekeepers are massacred in DR Congo
****
Graph showing that the number of armed conflicts in Africa has been growing fairly steadily since the end of World War II (IDMC)
The worst attack on United Nations peacekeepers in recent history
killed 15 people and wounded 54 on Thursday evening in Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC) in Kivu state, near the border with Rwanda and
Uganda.
UN secretary-general António Guterres made a standard statement
expressing outrage:
<QUOTE>"These deliberate attacks against UN peacekeepers are
unacceptable and constitute a war crime. I condemn this attack
unequivocally. There must be no impunity for such assaults, here
or anywhere else. ...
These brave women and men are putting their lives on the line
every day across the world to serve peace and to protect
civilians."<END QUOTE>
Officials in Tanzania expressed shock as well, since 14 of the deaths
were of peacekeepers from Tanzania.
There are 15 UN peacekeeping missions, and the largest of them, with
15,000 personnel, is the DRC mission Monusco (United Nations
Organization Stabilization Mission in the DR Congo), with 1,000 troops
from Tanzania.
It's estimated that there are some 120 armed groups in eastern DRC,
described as mostly ragtag groups of 60-70 people each.
In this case the suspected attackers are the Alliance of Democratic
Forces (ADF), a group of Islamists formed in the late 1990s in western
Uganda to fight the government of Uganda. However, a number of
analysts say other militia and elements of Congo’s own army have also
been involved.
DRC's president Joseph Kabila is following the standard pattern of
African nation leaders of refusing to step down, benefiting from
massive corruption, and using massive violence against the opposition
to stay in power.
Kabila has stated that he does not want any UN forces in his country,
and so it's entirely plausible, though unproven, that Kabila ordered
his army to cooperate with the ADF in Thursday's massacre of the UN
peacekeepers.
Kabila's bloodiest violence is in the opposition stronghold, the
central province of Kasai, where more than 3,000 people have been
killed in escalating violence blamed on a government-sponsored
militia. The UN has identified more than 80 mass graves and said it
had found toddlers with limbs chopped off and pregnant women with
their bellies sliced open, their unborn babies mutilated.
The violence has resulted in 3.9 million people forced to flee their
homes to escape the violence. Hundreds of thousands have fled to
Zambia, Angola and other neighboring countries as refugees, creating a
humanitarian disaster in those countries, and threatening to
destabilize the entire region. United Nations
and Reuters and Global Security and MONUSCO
Related Articles
- Democratic Republic of Congo issues farcical call for elections in December 2018 (07-Nov-2017)
- DR Congo's Joseph Kabila brings the art of power and corruption to new heights (24-Jul-2017)
- Massive government atrocities in DR Congo's Kasai threaten regional stability (21-Jun-2017)
****
**** Violence continues to spread in countries across Africa
****
The violence in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of the worst
of any country in the world, but similar violence occurs in many
African countries, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring
Center (IDMC).
The IDMC report measures the number of internally displaced people
(IDPs) in each country. These are people who are forced to flee from
their homes either because of violence or because of a natural
disaster (usually meaning a drought). In this article, we're focusing
on people fleeing violence.
The countries in Africa with the most IDPs are Sudan (3.3m), DRC
(2.2m), Nigeria (2.0m), South Sudan (1.9m), and Somalia (1.1m).
People who are forced to flee violence often experience further
violence again in their place of displacement, including murder and
rape. People in displacement camps are vulnerable to human
trafficking and slavery.
DRC is the worst affected in the last year. In just January through
June of this year, there were 997,000 more displacements in DRC, more
than the 922,000 that were displaced in the entire year 2016.
Africa is disproportionately affected by conflict. Africa has 16% of
the world's population, but over 33% of the world's conflicts. As the
graph at the beginning of this article shows, the number of armed
conflicts in Africa has been growing fairly steadily since the end of
World War II.
However, the IDMC found an apparent contradiction that they have to
explain: Although the number of armed conflicts has been rising, the
intensity of these conflicts has been falling, and yet the number of
IDPs has been rising. They explain this as follows:
<QUOTE>"Why then the consistently high rates of conflict
displacement seen in our figures? Other forms of violence are on
the rise, in some instances involving higher death tolls. ACLED,
which monitors armed conflict and political violence, indicates
that riots, protests and bombings are increasing in Africa.
Importantly, violence against civilians is on the rise. Forty-two
per cent of incidents of political violence targeted civilians in
2014, and 45 per cent in 2016."<END QUOTE>
According to the report, there were 2.7 million people newly displaced
people in Africa between January and June of this year, the equivalent
of 15,000 people forced from their homes every day. 75% of of new
displacement is attributed to conflict and violence. Internal displacement monitoring center (IDMC) and Institute for Security Studies and EyeWitnessNews (South Africa)
****
**** Generational analysis of the rise in armed conflicts in Africa
****
The DRC alone is being described as a "mega-crisis" because of the
huge numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs), but it's far from
unique, as illustrated by the numbers above. Outside of Africa, Syria
also has millions of IDPs.
I've written articles about numerous countries that are currently in
generational Awakening or Unraveling eras, with leaders that refuse to
step down and are using violence and atrocities against civilians to
stay in power. These include Paul Biya in Cameroon, Pierre Nkurunziza
in Burundi, Paul Kagame in Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, Robert
Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Joseph Kabila in DRC, or, outside of Africa,
Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Hun Sen in Cambodia.
There's a reason why so many African countries are in generational
Awakening eras. The Awakening era is one generation past the end of
the preceding generational crisis war, and for most countries of the
world, the last crisis war was World War II, so the generational
Awakening era occurred in the 1960s and 1970s.
However, African countries have been on a different timeline. Most
African countries were largely unaffected by World War II, but had
generational crisis wars in the 1960s-80s. These wars were usually
wars of "liberation" from colonial powers.
The graph at the beginning of this article shows that the number of
armed conflicts in Africa has been growing fairly steadily since the
end of World War II. In many cases, the colonial powers drafted men
from their African countries to fight in WW II, but the countries
themselves were not always involved. After WW II ended, the number of
demands for liberation from colonial powers led to liberation wars,
which explains the sharp increase in armed conflicts in the next three
decades.
However, the armed conflicts that lead to independence for these
African nations did not resolve the ethnic and tribal differences
occurring within the nations. In country after country, a leader from
one tribe or another took control of the country, became right through
corruption, often channeling international aid into their own bank
accounts or into weapons to be used against political enemies, and
continued using violence for decades to stay in power.
So the "apparent contradiction" that the IDMC found as described
earlier in this article, is explained by the fact that the tribal,
ethnic and anti-colonial wars have been ending, but the violence has
been replaced by leaders staying in power by using genocide, murders,
rapes, torture, jailings, and massacres.
One thing that's pretty clear is that there's no end in sight for this
kind of violence. To the contrary, new post-war generations of young
men and women are coming of age, and these leaders who are doing
everything they to stay in power are going to have to commit more
murders, rapes, torture and jailings to keep these new generations
under control.
This leads to a grim choice for the United Nations and its
peacekeeping forces. These peacekeeping forces have been failing to
accomplish anything of value, and they will fail even more in the
future. These forces are hugely expensive, and really accomplish
little or nothing. On the other hand, nobody wants to leave Africa in
distress without doing everything possible to help, even if the help
is futile. This is one of those problems that have no solution.
BBC
Related Articles
- Cameroon's English-speaking provinces on the verge of full-scale violence (04-Dec-2017)
- Cambodia dissolves the opposition political party so that Hun Sen can be reelected unopposed (17-Nov-2017)
- Burundi's Hutu government leaves International Criminal Court to avoid crimes against humanity charges (28-Oct-2017)
- Burma's (Myanmar's) leaders may be inspired by Pol Pot's Cambodian 'Killing Fields' genocide (29-Sep-2017)
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, United Nations, António Guterres, Tanzania,
Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, Joseph Kabila, Kasai,
United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the DR Congo,
Monusco, Alliance of Democratic Forces, ADF, Uganda,
Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, IDMC,
Sudan, Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
