The wars in the DRC are like watching National Weather Service satellite shots in fast-forward. As one typhoon builds up from another country, then blows itself out over land, another ferments and festers in the heavy steam of the African tropics-young, immature, silly with rage and ready to strip all that was temporarily repaired.
Laurent Kabila's platform to the presidency in May 1997 was an agenda of bazookas, butchery and battles that hasn't quite ended. What exists is Africa's first continental war as allies, interlopers, mercenaries and refugees battle each other in ever-shifting, ever-spiraling death spasms. Production is at a standstill in the DRC. Food prices have skyrocketed. Monthly foreign exchange earnings have dipped to under $10 million from nearly $50 million before the latest rebellion. Kinshasa's dark at night and the phones don't work. The lines at fuel stations make the U.S. gas lines of the 1970s look like the ticket booth at a weekday Montreal Expos game. Half the country's children can't afford to go to school. And Congo's nasty little jungle schoolyard brawl has dragged in six other African countries, ironically, to stop war in their own countries. Keep your seat belts fastened; Desire hasn't ridden this one out yet-and Africa just loves a good demolition derby.
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