How I dread the arrival of another story of genocide in Africa, - not merely because of the unbelievable human suffering involved, but also because it will trigger the why-doesn't-the-West--do-something-about-it school into another frenzy of moral pulpiteering. These are probably also the very people who say we should cherish our neutrality, and the US is a vile and wicked world empire, and NATO is a military conspiracy against the Third World, and intervention in Kosovo was no more than a cynical piece of imperialism. And having said all that, they still want somebody to go charging into Africa.
Who nowadays actually is able to keep track of what occurred between Hutu and Tutsi, Hema and Lendu, Huanga and Shutu, Ngdwanga and Ruhuya? I confess I am not. Apart from the pulpiteers conjuring imaginary troops with imaginary peace-making skills out of imaginary barracks in imaginary countries with a wholly imaginary political culture of self-sacrificial virtue to send to this imaginary African land which will respond with a wholly imaginary cordiality, relief and docility to this thoroughly imaginary outside interference, almost no-one has the least idea what is going on in Africa, and absolutely no-one has the least idea what to do about it.
Massacre
Here is a horrible question. Brace yourself. Do we care? Do we really? The death of a single elephant keeper in England three days ago merited a sidebar story in this newspaper alongside a comparably sized report about the appearance in court of an African gentleman charged with the massacre of over 100,000 Africans six years ago. Most of these poor people were not even shot, but hacked to death: it does seem to be one of the peculiarities of the greater Congo area that tribal butchers, even when they have access to Kalashnikovs, prefer to kill their victims - usually in perfectly astronomical numbers - with their crude, machete-like pangas.
Here is another horrible question. Is it more fun that way?
We must recognise this awful truth: most of us are now irredeemably past caring about these human calamities. A tribe being chopped to death by their nearest and dearest neighbours in their African rain-forest will make less impact in Europe than an earthquake in California in which no-one dies. Usually the most vociferous people in Ireland who respond to Africa's calamities with demands for intervention by armed outsiders are middle-class breast-beaters whose sons or daughters will not die trying futilely to impose order over African swamplands.
Human calamities
For the rest of us, we know we can do absolutely nothing about the human calamities being visited on Africa. How is it possible for the outside world to impose its will on any country on that continent? The combined mass of NATO and sundry other countries - including a highly-skilled and much-praised contingent from our own Army - is unable to impose its will on Kosovo, which is about the size of a couple of largish Irish counties, and which has numerous NATO air-bases a short flying time away. Which country is willing to sort out a continent which is the size of the European land-mass from the Arctic circle to the Mediterranean, from the waters of the English Channel to the Caucasus mountains?
Well, plucky Zimbabwe is having a go: is it because it wishes to bring democracy, WCs, nice toilet-roll holders and honest local government to the Democratic Republic of Congo? Possibly.
On the other hand, is it because Robert Mugabe and his generals have an eye for the unprotected diamonds and gold their troops might find there? And if we were to send the Army in to help out, which square mile of rain-forest would our lads and lasses be bringing peace to? And who would then be minding the other 905,364 unpoliced square miles of the place?
But of course, somebody will then have to ensure that trouble doesn't spill over into the neighbouring - but slightly confusingly named - Republic of Congo, which, at 132,000 square miles, is a mere postage stamp of a country: the size of Germany, 40 per cent larger than Britain and 26 times larger than lovely, cuddly Northern Ireland.
Dear me; and that's just two African countries, with lots and lots still to go. But will the logistical enormity of Africa's problems, their sheer intractability and their utter incomprehensibility silence the pulpiteers who call for armed outside intervention? Probably not; for Africa is not the issue.
Morality competition
The issue is their own self-esteem. They have opened a morality competition over Africa, a Fantasy Football of Good Works, in which they buy all the great virtues on the transfer market of their mind and in which they are the certain champions.
So be it. And ask yourself, when next you here mountebanks demanding "action" over Africa, how deep they are prepared to dig into their own pockets to help that continent? When such people sermonise, they are merely being casual about other lives, other treasuries. There is in fact not much we can do for poor bloody Africa, other than helping cope with short-term disasters, as we would anywhere, and providing technical assistance in backward areas, and most of all, giving Africans visas to work and settle here. Not out of goodness: but out of self-interest - the most logical and comprehensible motive of all.