Ignored Africa must be helped

Through Murky Waters

Once, Africa’s foreboding jungles and mysterious interior earned it the title of "the dark continent." After centuries of colonialism and exploration, Africa’s mysteries have been penetrated, but it has lagged far behind the rest of the world in economic and political development. Now, more than ever, Africa is "the dark continent" — cut off from Europe, Asia and North America by its dark, looming specter of instability.

African instability is chronic — tribal, regional and national conflicts are frequent and often go unreported. The global community has taken steps to ensure that there is no repeat of the Rwandan genocide that went unprevented in 1994, but it tempers its active involvement with the memories of the United States’ peacekeeping mission to Somalia in 1992.

Recently, the Darfur region in Sudan has seen militias — possibly sponsored by the Sudanese government — slaughter, rape and destroy villages that sympathized with the rebel Sudan Liberation Army. The United Nations has pressed for talks on disarmament and peacekeeping missions, but no progress has been made.

In Burundi, 180 Tutsi refugees from Congo were massacred 12 days ago, sparking both Burundi and its neighbor Rwanda to threaten to invade Congo to root out the rebels responsible.

Many nations have called for an African peacekeeping force to intervene in both situations, but African Union troops already are stretched thinly in other missions and insuring stability within their own nations.

The world acknowledges the African crisis, but refuses to act itself.

Military action is all but impossible for the global world to take. Although the recent U.S. mission to Liberia has gone off without a hitch, a major deployment to an unstable region almost guarantees a costly mission — both in dollars and in lives. If the United States is to hold to its recently adopted mission of upsetting tyrannical dictators and saving oppressed peoples, it must take a hard-line approach to dealing with the humanitarian crisis in Africa.

This hard-line approach need not involve heavy troop deployments, however. The source of all conflict is economic in nature and Africa holds true to this principle. As long as one tribe or group views another with envy there is potential for disaster. Only through prosperity and education can these barriers be overcome.

There is no easy fix for the situation in Africa, but if the world turns its back on the problems and continues to do only crisis management, no progress can be made. An aggressive education and relief program combined with legitimate investments — not loans — would do wonders, but it still would run into opposition from warlords, corrupt politicians and local rivalries. There is no perfect solution for this problem, but the global community must seek the best one. The constant state of crisis in Africa cannot be allowed to continue.

The United States attempts to prevent terrorism by involving thousands of troops and billions of dollars in the Middle East and, by doing so, forces the world to turn its attention towards that region. However, the worst terrors in this world do not originate in the Middle East. They lay in the heart of the dark continent and without the United States and United Nations tackling the problem head-on, they will remain.

Alex Sirney is a sophomore SMAD/anthropology major.