It is estimated that two-and-a-half million people have died in Congo because of the war since 1998. Nobody paid any attention at all to that, not in the western media anyway. Natural disasters are more televisual writes Vincent Brown.
Although it was a war zone (September 1999) there was a breezy, nonchalant informality about Goma airport, chaos but friendly chaos. I had come in on a light aeroplane, seating about 12 people, from Entebbe in Uganda, hopping from one small airstrip to the other en route,
There was no sign of other aircraft in the small airports on the way but in Goma there was a longer airstrip and several modern, large jets. These weren't taking in passengers - the passenger seats had been taken out, except for the front few rows, to allow more room for freight. I never found out what freight but I suspect guns were coming in and cotton and diamonds were going out.
A taxi driver "befriended" me at the airport and brought me to a modest lodge/hotel on the road to the Rwandan border (less than a mile away), surrounded by a luxuriant garden.
The sheer beauty of the location is so striking, the vegetation, the lake and the brooding Nyiragongo volcanic mountain. They used to be inundated with tourists in the 1980s and early 90s, tourists who wanted to see a rare species of gorillas, now almost extinct because of the war. Out along the shores of Lake Kivu were villas, a fine restaurant, an expensive hotel and gardens dripping with luxuriant magnificence. Joseph Mobutu, the former dictator of the Congo built one of his magnificent palaces on Lake Kivu. Not far from here homo sapiens emerged.
But Goma has been devastated by what happened in Rwanda in 1994 and afterwards and by the Congolese rebellions that started there: it was this lodge/hotel that Laurent Kabila started his rebellion against Mobutu in 1997. The main street of Goma is a long, two-lane broken-down avenue. In September 1999 the buildings on both sides were ramshackle, a few bars, a travel agency, a few poorly stocked shops, offices of aid agencies and makeshift garages.
At the bottom of the main street was what I think was once a school but which had been taken over by the rebel movement, the RCD. RCD soldiers lounged around in dishevelled gear - you would easily tell Rwandan troops from them by the gear, the Rwandans were well attired.
The Rwandans had come into Goma in 1997 to help Kabila's rebellion and they stayed. They had come to Goma because of what Goma had become after 1994. That was the year of the genocide in Rwanda when the majority Hutu population (or over half the Hutu adult population) attempted to exterminate the minority Tutsi population of a million and nearly did so in 100 days. In those three months 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred. Lake Kivu was choked by mounds of bodies.
The Tutsi army from Uganda defeated the Hutu forces in Rwanda and the Hutus fled en masse across the border, nearly a million of them to Goma. Having stood by and allowed the genocide to take place unimpeded, the world then lavished aid on the Hutu fugitives who had set up massive "refugee" camps in Goma and elsewhere. From these camps the Hutu militias sought to continue the genocide through raids across the Rwandan border and between 1994 and 1997 thousands more Tutsis were slaughtered.
The Tutsi-dominated government that had taken over in 1994 wanted to "cleanse" the border area and they sent troops to help Kabila when the rebellion against Mobutu started in 1996. Goma was cleared of Hutu militias, the Hutu civilians returned to Rwanda and the huge "refugee" camps were closed.
It was in Goma also that the rebellion against Kabila started in 1998 and the belief is that it was started at the instigation of the Rwandans, disenchanted by Kabila's disassociation from the Tutsis who had brought him to power and his alliance with what were seen as Hutu factions - the Rwandan civil war had been exported to the Congo. And it is in Goma that the main base of the Rwandan rebel movement is based, the RCD.
North and south of Goma, in eastern Congo, it is estimated that two-and-a-half million people have died because of the war since 1998. Nobody paid any attention at all to that, not in the western media anyway. Yes, there were a few Security Council resolutions and some efforts by the US and by Bill Clinton's administration to get a peace process going in the Congo but very little commitment - the UN promised 5,000 peacekeepers whereas at least 60,000 are needed in a country the size of Germany, France and Spain combined.
There have been real prospects of peace in the Congo of late with all groups - the government of the new Kabila (his father was killed a year ago), the rebel armies and the seven states that have become embroiled in the Congolese war (Zimbabwe Angola, Namibia, Chad, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi) all agreeing to hammer out an agreement but they have run out of money.
A brief report in yesterday's Times of London stated negotiations that were to get under way in South Africa later this month have had to be postponed because the organisers need more funding and none is so far forthcoming.
And then the volcano. Yes, the Goma has been further devastated and maybe 80 to 140 people have been killed. Vivid shots of the burning lava streaming down form the mountain and the mounds of lava on the street have been on the world's television screens for days now. But during all those years of carnage and death, nothing or almost nothing.
Natural disasters are more televisual.
vbrowne@irish-times.ie