I had the privilege this week of meeting in a doughnut shop with some people from Doctors Without Borders whose special concern is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC, formerly Zaire, before that the Belgian Congo, or just, the Congo. They were almost apologetic about making a “pitch.” I said I didn’t consider it a pitch, but an opportunity.

I’ve seen facts and numbers about the place go by for years: 3.9 million dead due to internal fighting and invasions just since 1998 — 3.9 million — then it’s gone; 30,000 preventable deaths each month; the equivalent of two tsunamis every few months. Why do some numbers stick: six million, 800,000 in Rwanda, 3000 plus from 9/11, and others — 3.9 million — don’t?

Can you even find the place on a map? It’s huge. I’ve visited Africa, but I’m still vague on placing the DRC. It’s like a massive area in the centre of the continent, that isn’t there. Your eyes glide over it. It’s flanked by eight smaller African states, all of which you likely know more about: places like Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan and Angola. They perch round it like barnacles.

Nothing about it is boring. A century of brutal Belgian rule. Then a U.S.-backed assassination of popular leader Patrice Lumumba. The corporate-supported secession of mineral-rich Katanga. Decades of terror under a repellent, hypnotic dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. His overthrow engineered by much smaller Rwanda, after its own catastrophe in 1994.

Other states invading since then, fighting each other. A “peace process” led to a truce in 2002. Peace was officially declared.

Elections are scheduled for next month. Everyone seems to feel we can all relax, say the people in the doughnut shop. Yet the numbers stay the same: 30,000 preventable deaths, fighting, fleeing.

It’s as if the solution and the problem co-exist, oblivious to each other, I say. “Welcome to our world,” says Helen O’Neill, deputy director of Doctors Without Borders in the DRC.

She says the main problem people have is running. Trying to think medically, I wonder if she means diarrhoea. But she means running . . . away. Year after year, into the dense tropical forest, rarely seeing their village again as invaders, rebels, local militias attack, retreat and “predate” on them, till they often take refuge in game parks.

So what’s the conflict about at bottom? Well, just as people say there would be no U.S. troops in Iraq if they harvested artichokes there instead of oil, in the DRC the prize is immense mineral wealth.

They have minerals you haven’t heard of, says Helen O’Neill, like coltan, for cellphones. After the Mobutu regime fell, the first plane in carried weapons. The second carried medical supplies. Then came the Lear jets. Business people say they crave stability, but often they seem to just want to get wherever their rivals plan to be.

With that kind of wealth, you can’t argue that the DRC’s misery is overlooked because it is irrelevant to big power interests. It is relevant, but not in the right way.

The DRC just doesn’t qualify under what seem to be the rules for widespread sympathy and humanitarian intervention. These are:

  • There must be a genocide;
  • There must be clear victims and villains;
  • Act single-mindedly for the victims and against the villains;
  • Ignore everything else.

In fact, the DRC is almost a contradiction to these rules since Rwanda, now one of the main illustrations of the schema, actually invaded the DRC and carried out massacres there itself. (I base this on the account by New York Times reporter Howard French.)

Darfur qualifies though, and I am not being snide. It is Darfur’s luck to fit the current fashion for compassion. It might help them get some help. In the DRC, people appear to know they are less favoured. “What struck me most,” says Helen O’Neill, “was that these people seemed to have no expectations of being helped.” Hopeless and cynical then. But not foolish, or ill-informed.

(A photo exhibit about the DRC, based on the work of five distinguished photographers, is currently showing as part of the Contact festival in Toronto at Scotia Plaza. I know: The irony, the irony.)

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.