once upon a time,

a piece of congo
exploded
over
japan.

1945

Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from

the outside, is availablea new idea as
powerful as any in history will be let loose.

fred hoyle, 1948

In the late 1950s, the United States began sending men hurtling
towards the moon in big hunks of metal. Those first brave pioneers
were on a mission to infiltrate civilizations final frontier. They
werent concerned about looking back at the planet they came
from. But when they gazed out their spacecraft windows to find
a pale blue dot suspended in the emptiness, many of them felt
forever changed.

Writer Frank White coined the term ov e rv i e w e f f e c t to

describe the deep cognitive shift experienced by astronauts who have
seen the earth from outer space. The feeling is one of overwhelming interconnectedness, achieved through a perspective that renders
our human differences insignificant in the face of the vastness.
To see our planet so alive, so beautiful, and so vulnerable, is to
see it as an intimate, interdependent community. It leads to a new
understanding of who we are, redefining our responsibilities to each
other, and to our home.

who do you mean ?

5
6

5
6

timothy ash, Free World

In our answer to that question lies the key to our future.

Yet these largest senses of we are

seldom what people really have in
mind when they say we must do
this or we cannot allow that.
The moral we of all humankind
is today more important than ever,
but its not the same as our operational we. So let us pose the
question more precisely: Whats
the widest political community of
which you spontaneously say we
or us?

most of us have a strong sense of

we meaning all our fellow human
beings. Some would add other
living creatures.

when you say we ,

5

Many of us would start the answer

with our family and our friends.
Widening the circle, we might think
of our town or region, supporters of
the same football team, our nation
or state, a sexual orientation, a
political affiliation (we on the
Left, we Republicans), or those
who profess the same religion
world-straddling fraternities these,
with more than 1.3 billion Muslims
and nearly 2 billion Christians,
though fraternities scarred by deep
internal divisions. Beyond this,

When you say we, who do

you mean?

5
2004

ONLY EARTHBOUND MAN STILL CLINGS TO THE DARK AND POISONING

SUPERSTITION THAT HIS WORLD IS BOUNDED BY THE NEAREST
HILL, HIS UNIVERSE ENDED AT RIVER SHORE, HIS COMMON
HUMANITY ENCLOSED IN THE TIGHT CIRCLE OF THOSE WHO
SHARE HIS TOWN AND VIEWS AND THE COLOR OF HIS SKIN.

In a few hours, the plane that

brought me to this country crossed
over oceans and countries which
have been a crucible of human
history. In minutes we traced the
migration of men over thousands
of years; seconds, the briefest
glimpse, and we passed battlefields
on which millions of men once
struggled and died. We could see
no national boundaries, no vast
gulfs or high walls dividing people
from people; only nature and the
works of manhomes and factories
and farmseverywhere reflecting
mans common effort to enrich his
life. Everywhere new technology
and communications bring men
and nations closer together, the
concerns of one inevitably becoming
the concerns of all.

1966

And our new closeness is stripping

away the false masks, the illusion
of difference which is at the root of
injustice and hate and war.

bobby kennedy,
Day of Affirmation Speech,
South Africa, 1966
8

10
Pull back the curtain. Look deep into a
place at the center of the world: a place
where the grass grows dense, the air hangs
heavy, and the water runs deep. Like so
many blood cells held in the heart, here
our planet holds so much of her energy.
Here, a great river snakes through a
thick tangle of jungle, across a rainforest
rivaled only by the Amazon. Her waters
wind and fall through canyons and
cataracts, plunging to greater depths, at
greater speeds, and at greater volumes
than any other river on Earth.
She is our most curious river.
For centuries, she left outsiders perplexed:
How does she thrive through all seasons,
untamed by the tides that pull her sisters
up and down?

Eventually they understood:

She runs from south to north across the
equator and then back again. Half of
her is always bathed in rain.
Her hydroelectric potential is unmatched.
Here is the heavy core of sub-saharan
Africa. A place some have called the
cradle of humanity. Others, the Heart
of Darkness.
Officially the land has known many
names: the Kingdom of Kongo, the Congo
Free State, Belgian Congo, the Republic
of Congo, Zaire, and now: the Democratic
Republic of Congo. Home to 70 million
people speaking 242 distinct languages,
ancestors to early inventors of math,
astronomy, architecture, and complex
political systems.

During World War II, the United States

needed uranium to build an Atomic
Bomb. They dug it up from beneath her
forest floor. 80% of the uranium in the
Hiroshima bomb came from Congo.
Once upon a time,
a piece of Congo
exploded over Japan.
Congo is made of more than just uranium;
her soil is rife with the rocks that power
our gadgets and the diamonds that
decorate our fingers.

She is one of the most minerally rich lands

on the planet. Her people, the poorest.
Her soil pulses with the life-force and
agricultural potential to feed the entire
continent. Yet millions lie buried within
her, taken by hunger. Her jungle swarms
with flora and fauna found nowhere else
on the planet. Yet in recent history more
human beings have died upon her than
any other place on Earth.

Hers is a habitat of abundance and scarcity.

A contradiction so counter-intuitive,
it becomes an enigma.
A knot of energy and potential, swallowed
by the shadow of its own complexity.

How can we begin to unravel it?

10

11

12

african proverb
11

11

12

12

SAV ING A M ERIC A

In 1492, a visionary sailor named Christopher Columbus approached

the Spanish Crown with a novel idea. He persuaded them to fund a
journey across the Atlantic and around the globe in search of a new
trade route to India. Mastering treacherous currents as no seaman had
before, he discovered America. Thanks to Columbus, Europeans were
able to spread progress, faith, and prosperity to a land of people in need.

the story of
christopher
columbus

the
bloody
trail
of
conquest
the story of
christopher
columbus

In 1492, Columbus encountered the Arawaks: native inhabitants of several Caribbean Islands. He immediately noticed how easily he could conquer
and govern them, to be traded as slaves and exploited for gold. When he
returned the following year with more guns, men, and ships, demanding
food, gold, and cotton threads, the Arawaks resisted. So he waged war and
terrorized them into submission. In 1492, the regions Arawak population was
estimated at 8,000,000. By 1516, only around 12,000 were still alive. By 1542,
less than 200 remained. After 1555, the Arawaks were never to be seen on
Earth again.

1400

Colonialism is a relationship between an

indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority
and a minority of foreign invaders. The
fundamental decisions affecting the lives
of the colonized people are made and
implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit
of interests that are often defined in a distant
metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises
with the colonized population, the colonizers
are convinced of their own superiority and
their ordained mandate to rule.

To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and

his successors as navigators and discoverers,
and to deemphasize their genocide, is not a
technical necessity but an ideological choice.
It servesunwittinglyto justify what
was done.

james w. loewen

Christopher Columbus introduced two phenomena that revolutionized race

relations and transformed the modern world: the taking of land, wealth, and
labor from indigenous peoples, leading to their near extermination, and the
transatlantic slave trade, which created a racial underclass.

16

juergen osterhammel

My point is not that we must, in telling history,

accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless
scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy
acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but
necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western Civilization;
Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism;
nuclear proliferation, to save us all)that
is still with us. One reason these atrocities
are still with us is that we have learned to
bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the
earth. We have learned to give them exactly
the same proportion of attention that teachers and writers often give them in the most
respectable of classrooms and textbooks. This
learned sense of moral proportion, coming
from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is
accepted more easily than when it comes from
politicians at press conferences. It is therefore
more deadly.

A
Brief History
Of
Colonialism

Christopher Columbuss 1492 voyage marked

the beginning of a great 500-year expansion:
a forceful invasion by the Europeans into the
Americas, Asia, and Africa. The conquerors
stole riches, confiscated land, and enslaved
people to unearth precious metals and
produce high-yield crops. Their new surpluses allowed them to build more ships and
better weapons, to lavish their royalty with
greater luxuries, and eventually, to revolutionize their domestic industries and pull
their own people out of poverty. Within 200
years, the Europeans had brought their trading activities to every continent on the globe,
establishing a new system of interdependence
that has forever changed the world.

The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their

victims (the Arawaks)the quiet acceptance
of conquest and murder in the name of progressis only one aspect of a certain approach
to history, in which the past is told from the
point of view of governments, conquerors,
diplomats, leaders.
howard zinn,
A Peoples History of the United States

16

In 1400, only a very talented clairvoyant

could have predicted the rise of Western
Europe. The fledgling kingdoms, recovering
from the black plague and constant intercontinental wars, were places where life was
short and full of misery. To the great eastern
empires of China, Byzantium and Turkey,
the Europeans were backwards and barbaric,
indebted to Oriental sciences, and the lazy
inventors of unsophisticated Latin-derived
languages. By 1913, eleven Western empires
controlled nearly three-fifths of all the
territory on Earth and three-quarters of the
global economy.

Comparing the 15th century quest for trade

routes to the 20th century Space Race
(between the U.S. and the Soviet Union),
historian Niall Ferguson suggests that a state
of intense competition was what propelled
European kingdoms to go in search of new
lands. Portugal, a tiny agrarian country with
less than a million inhabitants, was locked
out of the eastern spice trade by Venice and
Genoa. To compete with the Italians, they
began to sail around Africa, reaching the
Congo River in 1497 and rounding the South
African Cape ten years later. They set up
posts along the African, Indian and southeast Asian coasts. Eventually they reached
the mighty Chinese empire, who ceded the
pesky barbarians a port at Macau.
16

2013

17

At the same time, all the military development required to play western Europes trade
game created an economic crisis. Feudalism,
the fragile system by which an overlord elite
owned land while a peasant class paid tribute or rent for the right to work it, became
stressed under the need for more funding.
The land wasnt getting more fertile. Peasants could only produce so much wheat.
Pushed far enough, they would revolt.
Colonialism offered a solution. Precious
New World vegetables like sugarwhich
Spain had been growing on their colony in
the Canary Islands as early as 1500corn,
and potatoes yielded more energy per acre,
generating larger surpluses for greater trade
profits. They even came with a free labor
force. This wealth allowed Europeans to live
beyond their means, while the imposition
of monoculture onto their colonies left an
economic deficiency that many now-independent nations have yet to overcome.
In 1493, the Spanish and Portuguese decided there was enough land on Earth to make
them each sufficiently wealthy. They signed

the Treaty of Tordesillas to amicably split it

in half. Portugal got Brazil and everything
east to Asia, while Spain contented itself with
the rest of the western hemisphere. In Spanish America, natives worked tirelessly in the
mines and the fields to supply the crown with
silver. From Spanish Peru to Belgian Congo,
it became the standard of colonialism that
conquerors assumed ownership of not just the
land and its fruits, but also its inhabitants.
In South America through the 16th and 17th
centuries, malnutrition, harsh conditions,
murder and deadly foreign viruses killed tens
of millions of indigenous peoples. To replace
them, the colonizers began importing slaves
from Africa. Nearly 22 million were captured
and sold, though less than half would survive
the journey.
It wasnt too long before other European
countries came looking for a piece of the
Tordesillas deal. In the 17th century, the
Dutch began to chip away at the Portuguese
and Spanish empires, while also making
claims against England in North America.
They conquered several Pacific islands, from
which they took everything they possibly

could. And so it went: another thinly populated country with no natural resources became
fabulously wealthy. For a time, Amsterdam
was the financial center of the world
before that status was passed to London in
the 18th century.
The process by which Western culture has
mythologized Christopher Columbus applies
to colonialism as a whole. Its a process of
injecting virtue into a man who symbolizes
the expansion of our civilization in order to
justify our way of life. In the same way, we
remember the successes of our ancestors as
the natural recourse of their moral and intellectual superiority, rather than the spoils of
exploitation, enslavement or genocide. In
this way, we become the deserving benefactors in a story where good has triumphed
over evil. it s a da n g e r o u s way o f

Freethinkers are those who are willing

to use their minds without prejudice
and without fearing to understand
things that clash with their own
customs, privileges, or beliefs.

t h i n k i n g : o u r d e st i n y r e ac h e d,
t h e r e i s n o t h i n g le f t t o b e d o n e .

fwr
This state of mind is not common,
but it is essential for right thinking.
leo tolstoy

17

17

17

20

The first era of European Imperialism ended

in the early 19th century. Revolution had
swept through the Americas, depriving England, Spain, and Portugal of their colonies.
In the 1860s, Germany and the United States
emerged as competitive industrial powers
looking to establish empires of their own.
By the end of the century, economic depression had all the industrialized Western nations feeling like their production capacity
had outgrown their markets. They needed
new colonies.
Most of the world was already spoken for.
Except for Africa, where eighty percent of
the land was still under indigenous rule.

Or as colonists liked to call it: vacant.

The subsequent scramble for Africa led to
some heated, paranoia-fueled entanglements. Belgiums unprecedented grab for
Congo ruffled everyones empirical feathers. So before things got too heated, the
powersItaly, Germany, Austria-Hungary,
Portugal, the Netherlands, Sweden-Norway,
England, France, Russia, Spain, the United
States, and Belgiumdecided to sit down
and talk it out like civilized adults.
In 1884, the representatives convened at the
Berlin Conference to cut up their brand
new cake.

fwr

The Germans, the Belgians, the English and the Portuguese

are crying out at present for territory in Central Africa.
Africa is claimed by everybody, and it belongs to nobody.
henry drummond, 1888
20

21

21

1835

1909

It was only when the swashbuckling, tale-spinning

American explorer Henry Morton Stanley returned
home having traced the elusive Congo river from
source to mouth that Leopold finally identified the
true object of his desires.

king leopold ii

21

monsters exist. but they are too few in

number to be truly dangerous. more
dangerous are the functionaries
ready to believe and to act
without asking
questions.

Long before King Leopold II ascended the

Belgian throne in 1865, he had already developed a deep dissatisfaction with his lot in
life. To a gangly, teenaged Leopold, the tiny
territory he was born to rule represented not
enough land, not enough subjects, and, with
the trendy advent of parliament, not nearly
enough power.
21

With no conquests on the royal resume, little

old Belgium was outshone by her historically empirical neighbors. Unimpressed and
perhaps a bit embarrassed, Leopold was not
about to settle for what his underachieving
ancestors had carved out for him. He would
have more. He would havea colony.

primo levi

Leopold devoted his life to pursuing this

singular obsession. As a young man, he avidly studied the conquistadors in the Americas,
read about the profitable Dutch plantations
in Java, and traveled to see what the British
were up to in India, Ceylon and Burma. He
scoured the map for unclaimed islands and
tried to buy colonies off of Holland, Portugal
and Spain.
Leaders seek wealth, power, and prestige. To build a following, they construct narratives and histories to define us and
demonize them. They speak to local cultural understandings
and fears, invoke potent symbols, and offer plausibleeven if
falseexplanations of recent miseries...Many leap to the cause,
providing a hard core of followers to command. Thus empowered,
the leaders foster polarization and fear, and start the killing.
With the die cast, it becomes a situation of follow the leader.

As the anthropology of violence has taught us, acts of war are

expressive as well as instrumental. Slaughters, tortures, exemplary killingall are performances, laden with deep meaning
for the actors, victims, and audiences. They become critical
social facts, defining relationships and playing a major role in
shaping future actions.

No dice.

r. brian ferguson, Ten Points on War

Little Leo was late to the game. By the 1870s,

Africa was the last single lady on Earth.
But Africa was also still a mystery. While
the slave trade had been operating off the
western coast for centuries, few white men
had crossed through the dark heart of the
continent. It was only when the swashbuckling, tale-spinning American explorer Henry
Morton Stanley returned home having traced
the elusive Congo river from source to mouth
that Leopold finally identified the true object
of his desires.

Neither Parliament nor the Belgian people

had any interest in Leopolds big dreams. The
Congo project would have to be a solo-endeavor. Armed with high-tech guns, PR savvy and
some shady treaties, King Leopolds privately
held, dubiously titled International Association of the Congo seized an area eighty
times the size of his own Kingdom.
Leopold implemented a forced labor
system to steal resources like ivory,
and especially rubber during its boom.
In twenty-three years, Congo made him
a billionaire. During the same period,

22

a billionaire. During the same period,

his
lethal
business
practices
decimated
the native
population
by half,
killing
over
10
million
Congolese
people
.
fwr

21

21

22

22

24

24

24

24

24

24

26

congo : a place where anyone with

a gun can have their own little kingdom.

suroosh alvi

Illustration by justin bauer, justinbauer.com.

Each time a corporal goes out to get

rubber, cartridges are given to him. He
must bring back all not used; and for
every one used he must bring back a
right hand!...As to the extent to which
this is carried on...in six months they,
the State, on the Momboyo River had
used 6000 cartridges, which means
that 6000 people are killed or mutilated. It means more than 6000, for the
people have told me repeatedly that
the soldiers kill children with the butt
of their guns.
From the diary of Ellsworth Faris,
a missionary in Congo, 1899

chocolate antwerpse handjes:

enjoyed daily by thousands in belgium.

26

28

The Crusade that E.D. Morel orchestrated through the Congo Reform
Association exerted a relentless, growing pressure on the Belgian, British,
and American governments. Almost
never has one man, possessed of no
wealth, title, or official post, caused
so much trouble for the governments
of several major countries.

28

E.D. Morel was in his late-twenties when

he made a life-changing discovery. Morel
was working for Elder Dempster, a Liverpool-based shipping company that carried
all the cargo to and from King Leopolds
Congo Free State. One day he observed that
the contents of the steamers did not match
the trade records. Someone was skimming
profits off the top. Worse yet, shipments of
ivory and rubber came in; mostly guns went
out. Something didnt add up.

adam hochschild,
King Leopolds Ghost

What were all those weapons for? How was this

trade fair? Who was making money? Morel
suspected forced labor alone could account
for the tremendous profits. He brought it up
with his superiors, who tried to silence him
with a promotion. But Morel could not forget
what he had learned.

Instead, he quit Elder Dempster and dedicated himself fully to exposing the truth about
the Congo Free State. He worked tirelessly,
gathering testimony from missionaries and
foreign consuls on the ground and writing
carefully researched articles for various
papers. He soon launched his own publication, the West African Maila platform
where no one could censor his findings.
Fueled by outrage, Morel became one of the
most prolific and relentless investigative
journalists of his time.

28

28

Reform Movement

The root of the evil will remain untouched...till the native of the Congo
becomes once more owner of his land and of the produce which it yields.

e.d. morel, 1907

28

28

29

30
Instead of lifting up the native populations
submitted to and suffering from it, it can,
if persisted in, lead only to their final
extinction and the universal condemnation
of mankind.

William Sheppard was one of the first African Americans to become a foreign missionary. He lived in Congo for twenty years and
was perhaps the first to take up the cause
of documenting and reporting the terror he
witnessed. Along with his white colleague,
William Morrison, he became the most
outspoken American missionary in Congo.
A 1908 article written by Sheppard and
published by Morrison landed the two men
on trial in Leopoldville. Belgian leader and
lawyer Emile Vandervelde took on their case
pro bono, and won.

29

roger casement, 1903

After having lived in Africa for twenty years,

Irish-born Roger Casement was appointed
British Consul to the Congo Free State in
1903. In 1904, he delivered the Casement
Report: an in-depth eye-witness account of
the rubber terror, forced labor and systemic
violence in the region. Soon after its release,
Casement became friends with E.D. Morel
and convinced him to organize on a larger
scale. Casement wrote Morel a check for 100
pounds, more than a months income, and
the Congo Reform Association was born.

29

30

30

More than 1000 people attended the Congo Reform Associations first meeting in Liverpool. Morel made use of photographs, charts, graphs and poems
to publicize and invigorate his campaign. He set up local branches across Europe and the United States, in which members wrote their government
representatives and local newspapers en masse. Morels events brought together the influential elite, speakers from across political parties, and
clergy from a variety of churches. He staged large protest rallies followed by meetings with dignitaries at city hall. He mobilized fellow journalists
to cover the story and reached newspapers all over the world.
29

30

31

31

In 1904, a group of American missionaries to Congo invited Morel to speak

in New York. While across the pond, he
was received by President Roosevelt at
the White House and spoke at a Human
Rights conference in Boston, where he
inspired the founding of the American
Congo Reform Association.

We live in the presence of the greatest crime

which has ever been committed in the history of
the world, and yet we who not only could stop it
but who are bound by our sworn oath to stop it
do nothing? The thing has been going on for 20
years. What are we waiting for?

The Association was led by Booker T.

Washington, President David Starr
Jordan of Stanford University, and
Mark Twain.
Twain became a formidable ally in the
American lobbying efforts. In 1905 he
published King Leopolds Soliloquy,
a political satire written from Leopold
IIs perspective.

31

sir arthur conan doyle

31

Eventually the global movement was too

powerful to ignore. In 1908, King Leopold
II relinquished his rights to the Congo Free
State. He sold it to Belgium for what amounted to over 200 million francs (about 1 billion
in todays dollars).
But the power transfer didnt exactly bring
peace. The Belgians exploited and oppressed
the Congolese people for another 52 years.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock
Holmes, joined the movement as it continued
to push for reform in Belgian Congo after
Leopolds exit. He helped keep the campaign

31

31

alive, speaking alongside Morel for massive

crowds and publishing his own book on the
topic, which sold 25,000 copies in a week and
was translated into several languages.
The Congo Reform Movement lives on as the
second great human-rights movement in
history. In many ways, their work remains
unfinished. Today, across the world, we
stand on their shoulders in working to ensure
the Congolese own their own land. And with
it, their future.
fwr

33

Like most other colonial powers in

Africa, Belgium was taken by surprise by
the demand for self-rule that swept across
the continent in the 1950s, igniting mass
demonstrations in Leopoldville in 1959 that
were bloodily suppressed by the Belgians.
Until then, Leopolds heirs thought independence might come, but decades hence.
Some Africans were being trained for that
distant day; but when pressure grew and
independence came in 1960, in the entire
territory there were fewer than 30 African
university graduates. There were no Congolese army officers, engineers, agronomists,
or physicians. The colonys administration
had made few steps toward a Congo run
by its own people: of some five thousand
management level positions in the civil
service, only three were filled by Africans.
In the first democratic national election
the territory had ever had, Patrice Lumumba was made coalition-government prime
minister. As a former postal clerk he was
an unlikely leader for a nation, but he
spoke with fiery conviction for the prosperity of his people. Lumumbas intensity and
strong will exasperated his colleagues.

soldiers
of the
revolution

King Baudouin of Belgium arrived in Leopoldville to grant, officially and patronizingly, the Congo its freedom. He said, It is
now up to you, gentlemen, to show that you
are worthy of our confidence. An angry,
impromptu speech in reply by Patrice
Lumumba caught the worlds attention

that day.

33

Army musician in the Belgian Congo, 1943

adam hochschild,
King Leopolds Ghost

Think of how much the West progressed from 1890 to 1960. Cars, roads, suburbs, trolley systems, large boats,
small boats, radios, cameras, consumerism, corporate advertising, rock-n-roll, doo-wop, the league of
nations, the United Nations, public relations, two world wars fought, two atomic bombs dropped,
the beginning of the military industrial complex, the film industry, the TV and the telephone...
While all that was happening, the Congolese
were, in effect, slaves. The Belgians used
the enormous revenue they were generating
from the resource trade to create a paradise
on Earth for themselves and their Western
friends. With modern homes, modern hotels,
modern transportation, modern technology,
and modern infrastructure they built tall,
modern cities ruled by modern whites in the
middle of Africa.
And then something happened.
Something big. World War II.

1945

In order to fight a large-scale land war, the

West did something they had never done
before. They recruited soldiers from Congo.
From across Africa. The nature of the war
required more bodies. And so they took
strong Congolese men who had been slaves
for three generations and sent them to fight
and die alongside Belgian men.
So they went. And for the very first time,
they saw their white brothers die in droves.
Saw them die just as the Congolese had died.
Black and white, they fought together, slept
in ditches together, shat in the same holes
and ate the same shitty food.

And what do you think awaited them when

they returned? Veterans of a European
fight, returning to Congo after the war?
Victorious. Alive.
They would walk through the major cities still
controlled by the Belgians, only to encounter
the Belgian police who had been safe at home
the whole time and be asked for their Congo
ID cards in order to walk down the street.
To get a drink at a bar. To take their girl on
a date.
fwr

1961

President Ben-Zvi of Israel with President Kasavubu of Congo,

Leopoldville Airport, 1962

Illustration by justin kasereka

Patrice Lumumba was the greatest

black man who ever walked the African
continent. He didnt fear anybody. He
had those people so scared they had to
kill him. They couldnt buy him, they
couldnt frighten him, they couldnt
reach him. Why, he told the King of
Belgium: Man, you may let us free, you
may have given us our independence,
but we can never forget these scars. The
greatest speechyou should take that
speech and tack it up over your door.
This is what Lumumba said: You arent
giving us anything. Why, can you take
back these scars that you put on our
bodies? Can you give us back the limbs
that you cut off while you were here?
No, you should never forget what that
man did to you. And you bear the scars
of the same kind of colonization and
oppression not on your body, but in your
brain, in your heart, in your soul, right
now. I think too much time is spent by
newspapers, commentators, and some
of these so-called scientists who are
supposed to be authorities trying to
prove that the Congolese are savage,
that they are not fully developed, that
they are not able to govern themselves.
Most of the things that weve seen in
print usually are designed toward that
end, and this is not done actually to
prove that they are savage as much as
it is done to justify what the Western
powers are doing in the Congo, or the
presence of the Western powers in the
Congo, and primarily the presence of
the United States. The basic cause of
most of the trouble in the Congo right
now is the intervention of outsiders
the fighting that is going on over the
mineral wealth of the Congo and over
the strategic position that the Congo
represents on the African continent.
And in order to justify it, they are doing
it at the expense of the Congolese, by
trying to make it appear that the people
are savages. And I think, as one of the
gentlemen mentioned earlier, if there
are savages in the Congo then there are
worse savages in Mississippi, Alabama,
and New York City, and probably some
in Washington, D.C., too.

patrice lumumba, 1960

35

35

Nous allons veiller ce que les terres de notre patrie

profitent vritablement ses enfants.

1961

MALCOLM X ,
1961
35

35

1953

Illustrations by justin kasereka, Goma DRC

38

38

1986

prime minister mohammad

mosaddeghb IR A N, 1953

president jacobo arbenz

GUATEM A L A, 1954

president bartlemy boganda

CENTR A L A FRIC A N REPUBLIC, 1959

Democratically-elected leader who sought

progressive social reform and the nationalization of a British-owned oil company.
Overthrown in a coup organized by the CIA
and the British M16, jailed for three years
and then put to death.

Democratically-elected leader who promised land reform, threatening the holdings

of the American United Fruit Company.
Overthrown in a coup engineered by the
CIA and replaced with a military junta.

Democratically-elected to the French

National Assembly in 1946, where as
a nationalist leader, he maintained a
platform against racism and the colonial
regime. In 1958 he met with French Prime
Minister Charles de Gaulle and negotiated
his countrys independence. He died in a
suspicious plane crash a year later.

united nations secretary

general dag hammerskoljd
CONGO, 1961

president joo goulart

BR A ZIL , 1964

president salvador allende

CHILE, 1973

Swedish Secretary Hammerskoljd was trying

to negotiate a peace agreement between
Lumumbas Congolese Government and
the Katanga Secession movement when his
plane was shot down. New evidence links
his death to a plot by the CIA and the M15.

Democratically-elected leader and head of

the Brazilian Labor Party. His nationalist
tendencies (land redistribution) and willingness to associate with Communist countries made him a radical threat. He was
overthrown in a military coup with ties to
Washington and sought exile in Uruguay.

Democratically-elected, openly Socialist

leader who proposed nationalization
and collectivization. U.S. President
Nixon declared his election unacceptable and authorized funds to thwart his
success in 1970. Three years later Allende
was overthrown in a military coup and
replaced with the military dictatorship of
Augusto Pinochet.

president jamie rolds aguilera

ECUA DOR, 1981

supreme chief of government

omar torrijos PA NA M A, 1981

prime minister olof palme

SW EDEN, 1986

Democratically-elected leader who favored

labor reform and human rights. He
convened Latin American leaders to sign
the Charter of Conduct, which signaled
the protection of human rights as more
important than non-intervention. He died
in a suspicious plane crash.

Leftist, progressive autocrat regarded as

the first Panamanian leader to represent
the poor majority. He famously negotiated
sovereignty of the Panama Canal with President Jimmy Carter. He died in a suspicious
plane crash.

Democratically-elected leader who ran

the Swedish Social Democratic Party from
1969. He favored non-alignment to superpowers and was highly critical of US and
Soviet foreign policy. He spoke out against
apartheid and supported third world liberation movements. He was assassinated
in 1986.

38

38

john f. kennedy, 1961

We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and

ruthless conspiracy that relies on covert means for expanding
its sphere of influenceon infiltration instead of invasion,
on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead
of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day.
It is a system which has conscripted vast human and
material resources into the building of a tightly knit,
highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic,
intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.
Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes
are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not
praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed,
no secret is revealed.

John F. Kennedy and Joseph Mobutu

Photo by stringer, licensed from Getty Images

42

42

42

You have guns.

You dont need a salary.

42

Illustration by cun shi

mobutu
to the Congolese National Army

42

42

1960

1965

44

44

congo descends
into 32 years
of mobutu.

Mobutu didnt do it on his own, he was helped.

They came to take this countrys wealth. They
came to get contracts with him so they could
fill their pockets, and to get bigger and bigger
royalties. They supported him for more than
thirty years. The Americans, the Belgians, the
French and the big international companies.
They didnt come to develop the country,
they came to make a profit, and they made
huge profits.
juliana lumumba

43

On 4 August 1992, the overwhelming majority

of the 2,842 delegates at the Congolese Sovereign National Conference in Kinshasa voted,
to acclamation and standing ovation, to
change the name of the country from Zaire
back to its original name of Congo. They
also adopted a Transitional Charter or provisional constitution, according to which then
President Mobutu Sese Seko was stripped of
his executive powers but allowed to remain
in office for two years as a ceremonial head
of state. The international community chose
to follow Mobutu[and ignore these decisions.]

Five years later, on 17 May 1997, Laurent-Desire Kabila changed all of this by a stroke
of the pen. Having taken over Kinshasa by
the force of arms after seven months of a
virtually unchallenged long march, Kabila
proclaimed himself president of a country
he renamed the Democratic Republic of
Congo. This time, not only did the international community take notice of Mobutus
ouster and the change in the countrys name,
it moved quickly to recognize the new name
and the new ruler.
The message that the world community
of nations sent to the people of the Congo
and Africa as a whole in these two instances is loud and clear. c h a n g e s t h r o u g h
d e m o c r at i c m e a n s a n d t h e r u le
o f l aw i n a f r i c a a r e n o t a s
d e s e rv i n g o f u n e q u i vo c a l s u p p o r t
as changes through the barrel
of a gun.

44

The negation of democracy and the popular

will through Mobutus usurpation of power in
1960, 1965 and 1992, and through Kabilas
self-proclamation in 1997, were made possible by the external backing and/or endorsement that these actions obtained in the
international community. For those external
forces with a vested interest in the Congos
enormous size, geographical location and
bountiful resource endowment, it is preferable to deal with rulers whom they can hope
to influence and manipulate, rather than
with democratically elected leaders who are
accountable to their national constituencies.
Given this reality, the struggle for democracy in the Congo is inextricably linked to the
struggle for national liberation. It involves
the quest for national sovereignty and genuine liberation from both colonialism and
neo-colonialism in all its forms, as well as
the ability of the Congolese people to freely
determine their own destiny and to use their
bountiful natural resources to improve their
living conditions.
georges nzongola-ntalaja,
The Congo: From Leopold to Kabila,
A Peoples History

43

43

44

1997

Its very hard to get to the point where you can even
discuss alternatives until you first peel away layer
after layer of myth and illusion.
noam chomsky

47

After inspecting the empty house, we walk into the

shrubs, wandering through, not knowing what we
will discover on the other side. Then we arrive at an
enormous set of buildings.
Where are we? What is this place? Rather, what was
this place?
Amani explains that it was once a great university.
Here the Belgians studied biology, anatomy, chemistry,
ecology and more. But that was before Independence,
over fifty years ago.
Corridors twenty feet across guide us to what were once
places of lecture and learning. Great doors open onto
great hallways, where hundreds, if not thousands, of
people once gathered and engaged.
Today Amani said he wanted to show us something. Something special. So we got in a truck and
drove a few hours outside of Bukavu. The roads
are worse than you might imagineAmani calls
it the Congolese massage. Stuffed into a truck
together, shoulder to shoulder, over ruts, bumps
and dust that chokes engines and people alike.

Today the campus is deserted. Perhaps fifteen people

work here, preserving this, the last great Institute of
eastern Congo. They tell us the Government should
be funding it, but they dont. So people just continue
to come to work, day after day, hoping that one day
theyll be paid.
We meet the museum curator, a woman devoted entirely to preserving what is buried in this tomb: treasures.
Instruments, masks, jewelry, and tools; treasures that
tell of life in Congo before and after the Belgians, that
give clues to who the Congolese were. Mathematical
systems, icons of power and government, shackles
from the rubber trade. In one room theres a throne
that King Albert of Belgium used during his reign, a
seat designed to be carried by four slaves so he could
ride on high.

Jungle surrounds us on all sides. Trees grow

endlessly over a tangle of mountains stretching
into the mist.
Eventually we turn off the main road and begin
up a mountain. After a short while, two daunting
concrete towers come into focus, framing a grand
entrance. They may have been painted at one point,
2012 some stunning vibrant shade like red or Congolese
orange. But weather has long since stripped them
of their color, and now they stand, stark and grey.

We walk through long, empty corridors lined with

huge empty rooms. Stunning courtyards filled with
barren pools and dry fountains.

The gate is wrought-iron, swooping untoward in

that way so familiar to Victorian palaces and institutions. We drive right in.

In the biology labs creatures float in test-tubes: snakes,

lizards, squirrels and rats; hands, feet, eyeballs and
organs. All preserved, who knows for how long, or
what for.

The further we go, the more the land grows tame;

wild grass, trees, and bushes are suddenly manicured into geometric lines and shapes, unfolding like an estate from another world. We
arrive at a large guest-house and get out of the
car. To our left is a path lined with seven-foot
shrubs like an old maze.

10

Photos by breton carasso

In underground corridors they keep the skeletons

of native beasts: White Rhino, Okapi, Bonobo, the
Congolese Parrot and of course the formidable Mountain Gorilla. At 2 meters tall and 250 kilos, it is the
largest gorilla in the world.
And then we walk into the library. An immense
sprawl of knowledge neatly cataloged on deep
red-wood shelves, with staircases in each corner
spiraling up to a sweeping balcony. Every square inch
from floor to ceiling is covered in books and magazines, all written before 1960. The men here take pride
in their meticulous preservation of this knowledge
from another era. They smile when I gasp at the sight
of it all: 7805 books and 2500 magazines, to be exact.
Perfectly preserved. Perfectly categorized. Organized.
Dusted and cleaned.
And never picked off the shelves.
sean carasso, Congo Journals

1996

2013

50

50

in under twenty years ,

war has left 5 . 4 million
dead.
The number of deaths is so immense that it
becomes incomprehensible and anonymous, and
yet the dying was not spectacular. Violence only
directly caused 2 percent of the reported deaths.
Most often, it was easily treatable diseases, such as
malaria, typhoid fever, and diarrhea, that killed.
There was, however, a strong correlation between
conflict areas and high mortality rates. As fighting broke out, people were displaced to areas where
they had no shelter, clean water, or access to health
care and succumbed easily to disease. Health staff
shuttered up their hospitals and clinics to flee the
violence, leaving the sick to fend for themselves.

congo is one of the deadliest

places on earth.
49

The conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which I visited over
the last week of April, has killed somewhere between 3.5 and 5.4 million people
since 1996. It destroys human life in crushing and un-cinematic fashion. Its
victims live deep in the mountains of central Africa, and despite the efforts of
a few intrepid journalists, scholars, and human rights observers, their suffering goes largely undocumented. They include peasant women who are raped
collecting firewood, children dying of cholera in bulging refugee camps, and
starving young boys conscripted into militia groups so numerous that experts
have trouble keeping track of them all. The DRCs conflict might be the deadliest since World War II, and one of worlds worst active crises. But it also may
be the most obscure the most anonymous.

49

50

50

jason stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters

armin rosen, Origins of War in the DRC, The Atlantic

49

Almost half the victims were childrenthe most

vulnerable to disease and malnutrition. A full
60 percent of all children died before their fifth
birthday. Step out of a car in many areas of the
eastern Congo during the war, and you were often
confronted with children suffering from kwashikor, or clinical malnutrition. It was a bizarre
sight to see such listless children surrounded by
lush hills. Congo is not Nigeria or Somalia, where
famine and malnutrition are closely linked to
drought. Here, the rainy season lasts nine months
a year in most parts, and the soil is fertile. But the
harvests were often stolen by hungry militias, and
farmers were unable to access their fields because
of the violence.

49

50

50

51

52

The first child soldier pops out of the bush

clutching an AK-47 assault rifle in one hand
and a handful of fresh marijuana buds in the
other. The kid, probably 14 or 15, has this big,
goofy, mischievous grin on his face, like hes
just stolen somethingwhich he probably
hasand hes wearing a ladies wig with fake
braids dangling down to his shoulders. Within seconds his posse materializes from the
thick, green leaves all around us, about ten
other heavily armed youngsters dressed in ratty
camouflage and filthy T-shirts, dropping down
from the sides of the jungle and blocking the
red dirt road in front of us. Our little Toyota
truck is suddenly swarmed and immobilized by
a four-and-a-half-foot-tall army.

THE PRICE OF
51

This is on the road to Bavi, a rebel-controlled

gold mine on the Democratic Republic of the
Congos wild eastern edge. Congo is sub-Saharan Africas largest country and one of its
richest on paper, with an embarrassment of
diamonds, gold, cobalt, copper, tin, tantalum, you name ittrillions worth of natural resources. But because of never ending
war, it is one of the poorest and most traumatized nations in the world. It doesnt make
any sense, until you understand that militia-controlled mines in eastern Congo have
been feeding raw materials into the worlds
biggest electronics and jewelry companies and
at the same time feeding chaos. Turns out your
laptopor camera or gaming system or gold
necklacemay have a smidgen of Congos
pain somewhere in it.

PRECIOU$
2013

jeffrey gettlemen,
The Price of Precious, National Geographic

51

Photo by roland meinecke

The story of Congo is this:

The government in Kinshasa, the capital, is
weak and corrupt, leaving this vast nation
rotten at its core. The remote east has plunged
straight into anarchy, carved up by a hodgepodge of rebel groups that help bankroll their
brutality with stolen minerals. The government army is often just as sticky fingered
and wicked. Few people in recent memory
have suffered as long, and on such a horrifying scale, as the Congolese. Where else are
men, women, and children slaughtered by
the hundreds, year after year, sometimes so
deep in the jungle that it takes weeks for the
truth to come out? Where else are hundreds of
thousands of women raped and just about
nobody punished?

52

Many signs point to the fact that the youth of the Third World will
no longer tolerate living in circumstances that give them no hope
for the future. From the young boys I met in the demobilization
camps in Sierra Leone to the suicide bombers of Palestine and
Chechnya, to the young terrorists who fly planes into the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, we can no longer afford to ignore
them. We have to take concrete steps to remove the causes of
their rage, or we have to be prepared to suffer the consequences.

53

The global village is deteriorating at a rapid pace, and in the

children of the world the result is rage. It is the rage I saw in the
eyes of the teenage Interahamwe militiamen in Rwanda, it is
the rage I sensed in the hearts of the children of Sierra Leone, it
is the rage I felt in crowds of ordinary civilians in Rwanda, and
it is the rage that resulted in September 11.
Human beings who have no rights, no security, no future, no
hope and no means to survive are a desperate group who will do
desperate things to take what they believe they need and deserve.

Illustration by cun shi

romeo dallaire

53

53

Goma is where it all happens. Shops and

clubs, fashion and entertainment, war and
rebels, politicians and protest, prostitutes
and propaganda. It is the capital city of
North Kivu, and on the Rwandan border,
where so much of the violence has centered
over the past few years.

Today Goma is guarded by a few thousand UN Peacekeepers. You see them everywhere with their blue helmets
and big tanks. But just a 20 minute drive outside the city
walls, youll find the camps.
Thats right, camps.
Camps filled with 1000s upon 1000s of people. Displaced
people. PEOPLE. Families, workers, lovers, players, thinkers, pimps, leaders, whores, designers, farmers, teachers,
drug dealers, pastors, mechanics. People. People living
in a town doing whatever it is they do.

C
And
then war

comes.
Rebels and military clash, guns fire,
grenades launch, homes burn, and
the people flee. Thats right, flee.
They just pick right up, grab whatever shit they can, and

run.

Run where?

As far as anywhere but here.

Photos by daniel n. johnson

Im currently in Goma-town. Thats what

people call it anyway, but this is no town.
This is a city. A city that is alive. Moving.
An epicenter.

Often theyll find others running as well. Along the

road, after days and weeks of walking, theyll find
more. And eventually theyll find more. And together,
walking now as a mass gathering, theyll find a camp.
Sometimes that camp
will provide food.
Sometimes water.
Sometimes toilets.
Sometimes not.

Today we went out with Arnold and Amani.

Both leaders who have seen every face of this war.
We found roughly 600 homes with 6 people living inside
each one. So roughly 3600 people living in straw huts.
When they saw Arnold, they gathered in a circle to hear
what he had come to say. It is clear that though they
have only been here a short while, already they have a
great deal of respect for him. He fights for them, and
they know it.
The leader of the camp stands tall. Despite the rags
dropping off his body, he holds himself with great pride.
We want to send you home with a single
message, he says.
Peace.

The crowd stirs, grunting their agreement.

Another steps forward.

She strips off her hat. Look at my white hair!

I am going to die in this camp. Die!

We were farming, we were trading, we were taking care

of our families. But the war forced us out. And now we
are living like pigs. No water. No food. We want to go
home.

The crowd goes silent. Respect hangs heavy in the air.

The leader steps up again. I was a leader. Now I drink

water from where people shit.
A woman comes forward.
I have 3 things to share with you: We need water.
We need food. Above all, we need peace.
At this point an old woman, frail like
Look at me!
my grandmother, begins to scream.
Look at me!

Another man makes his way forward. Quietly. We have nothing at all.
No access to medicine. We need peace.
The cries of children and the howls of the elderly echo across the camp.
The stench of death hangs heavy in the air.
We want to go back. We want to go back to our homes.
Then from the mouth of a young boy:
Weve been here for 2 months and 2 weeks now.
We are lucky to be alive. There was so much
gunfire. We are crippled and living here. We
must go back to our homes.
His mother: We are very upset. Many people are
dying in these huts.
Then a man who clearly is not from this camp
comes forward. His clothes are clean and pressed.
The people make room for him with great reverence.
I am the principal of this school nearby. And I
have welcomed these people here because they have
nothing. You have heard them. They are living like
animals. There is nothing here. There is a woman
behind me. She was raped by 15 men. They used
weapons. Amani
And there
stopssheinlays.
the midst of translating.
Everyone looks his way. Deep breaths.
He looks down at me, and crumbles.
I cant. I just cant.
cant. He turns around,
takes a knee, and buries his face in his hands.

This war is heating up. How hot it

will get, I dont know. But it has not
been like this since I was first here
in 2008.
sean carasso, Congo Journals

Illustration inspired by Gold Diggers by polyp, www.polyp.org.uk

62

62

t h e cover sto ry o f t ime mag a z in e on june 5, 20 0 6, was

T H E WOR L DS DE A DL IEST WA R a detailed d ocum entation
o n h ow a b o u t fo u r millio n peo ple d ied in congo as the
r esu lt o f po lit ica l vio len ce over the previous d ecad e.
n o n e o f t h e u sua l h u ma n ita r ia n uproar followed , just a
co u ple o f r ea der s let t er s a s if a filtering m echanism
b lo c ked t h is n ews f ro m ach ievin g its full im pact.
In 2001, a UN investigation on
the illegal exploitation of natural
resources in Congo found that the
conflict in the country was mainly about access, control and trade
of five key mineral resources
coltan, diamonds, copper, cobalt
and gold.

2011

According to this investigation, the

exploitation of Congos natural
resources by local warlords and
foreign armies is systematic and
systemic, and the Ugandan and
Rwandan leaders in particular
(closely followed by Zimbabwe and
Angola) had turned their soldiers
into armies of business. Rwandas
army made at least $US250 million
in 18 months by selling coltan,
used in mobile phones and laptops.

the only
loser in this
huge business
venture is the
congolese people.

The report concluded that the permanent civil war and disintegration of
Congo has created a win-win situation for all belligerents. The only loser
in this huge business venture is the
Congolese people.
Beneath the facade of ethnic warfare,
we thus discern the contours of global
capitalism. After the fall of Mobutu
Sese Seko, Congo no longer exists as
a united operating stateespecially its eastern part is a multiplicity
of territories ruled by local warlords
controlling their patch of land by an
army which as a rule includes drugged
children, each of the warlords with
business links to a foreign company
or corporation exploiting the (mostly)
mining wealth in the region.

62

This arrangement fits both partners:

the corporation gets the mining
right without taxes, the warlord
gets money. The irony is that many
of these minerals are used in hightech products like laptops and mobile
phonesin short, forget about the
savage customs of the local population, just take away from the equation
the foreign high-tech companies and
the whole edifice of ethnic warfare
fuelled by old passions will fall apart.
slavoj zizek,
Drilling into Hearts of Darkness,
the Sydney Morning Herald, 2011

62

62

swahili proverb

65

65

66

66

HISTORY LIES

heavy on africa .
65

65

It is an oversimplification to blame
Africas troubles today entirely on
European imperialism; history is far
more complicated. And yet, consider
Mobutu again. Aside from the color
of his skin, there were few ways
in which he did not resemble the
monarch who governed the same
territory a hundred years earlier.
His one-man rule. His great wealth
taken from the land. His naming
a lake after himself. His yacht. His
appropriation of state possessions
as his own. His huge shareholdings
in private corporations doing business in his territory. Just as Leopold,
using his privately controlled state,
shared most of his rubber profits
with no one, so Mobutu acquired his
personal group of gold minesand a rubber plantation. Mobutus
habit of printing more money when
he needed it resembled nothing
so much as Leopolds printing of
Congo bonds.

Those who are conquered, wrote

the philosopher Ibn Khaldun in the
fourteenth century, always want to
imitate the conqueror in his main
characteristicsin his clothing,
his crafts, and in all his distinctive
traits and customs. Mobutus luxurious Villa del Mare, a pink-and-white
marble colonnaded chateau at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on the French
Riviera, complete with indoor and
outdoor swimming pools, gold-fitted
bathrooms, and heliport, lay a mere
dozen miles down the coast from the
estates Leopold once owned at Cap
Ferrat. From one cape you can see
the other.

66

In the 1970 presidential election,

Mobutu was the only candidate. He
won with a vote of 10,131,699 to 157.
As a return to African values he
renamed the country Zaire. At the
same time he invented a new name for
himself: Mobutu Sese Seko, or The
all-powerful warrior who, because
of his endurance and inflexible will
to win, will go from conquest to
conquest, leaving fire in his wake.

adam hochschild,
King Leopolds Ghost

65

66

Over his 32-year autocratic reign,

Mobutu embezzled over 5 billion
dollars from the Congolese government. His kleptocratic rule left the
country in shambles.

By the early 1990s, Congo had

become a tinderbox.
fwr

66

1994

1890

to un d ersta nd the twenty-year

con f lict in congo , you have to look

1997

T H E C O N Q U E S T of RWANDA
ac ros s th e border ...

Mobutu would eventually go down,

and when he did, Congo would go
down with him. In 1994 Rwanda,
next door, imploded in genocide,
leaving up to a million dead. Many
of the killers fled into eastern Congo,
which became a base for destabilizing Rwanda. So Rwanda teamed
up with neighboring Uganda and
invaded Congo, ousting Mobutu
in 1997 and installing their own
proxy, Laurent Kabila. They soon
grew annoyed with him and invaded
again. That second phase of Congos
war sucked in Chad, Namibia, Angola, Burundi, Sudan, and Zimbabweits often called Africas
first world war.

The conquest of Rwandafirst by Germans, then Belgiansradically altered

social structures. A tiny group of white administrators was faced with ruling
a complex, foreign country they barely understood. As elsewhere in Africa,
the new rulers chose to rule through what they thought were well-established,
existing structures. They thus empowered the Tutsi monarchy, which they saw
as the natural elite, abolished checks and balances on the royal family, and
streamlined the local administration by ousting Hutu chiefs and vesting all
power in a Tutsi-dominated administration.
The first German governor of Rwanda, Count Von Goetzen, theorized the Tutsi
are Hamitic pastoralists from Ethiopia, who have subjugated a tribe of Negro
Bantus, While Catholic prelate Monsignor Le Roy put it differently: Their
intelligent and delicate appearance, their love of money, their capacity to adapt
to any situation seem to indicate a Semitic origin. Armed with rulers and
measuring tape, craniometric Belgian administrators went about rigidifying
with physical measurements the previously more fluid boundaries between
Tutsi and Hutu identities.

68

jason stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters

Congos east remained a battle zone.

Ugandans, Rwandans, and Burundians kept sneaking across the borders
to sponsor various rebel outfits,
which kept using minerals to buy
more weapons and pay more rebels.
jeffrey gettlemen,
The Price of Precious,
National Geographic
the promotion of the tutsi minority during the colonial era fostered
resentment among the hutu, who saw the them as in league with their
oppressors. after rwanda achieved independence from belgium in 1962,
the hutu majority expelled the tutsi population from the country.

67

1962

PAUL K AGAME
president of rwanda

kingdom of rwanda 1959 1962

69

A soldier by training, he joined a Ugandan rebel group shortly out of high school,
rose up through the ranks and then did
a short stint at the staff college at Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas, part of the Pentagons efforts to make African armies more
professional. But Kagame left the program
early to help command a Tutsi rebel force
that invaded Rwanda in 1990.
He would soon become the head of
the Rwandan Patriotic Army, which was
bent on overthrowing Rwandas Hutuled government.
jeffrey gettleman,
The Global Elites Favorite Strongman,
New York Times

1996 2001

papy kamanzi, who fought in the RPF and A FDL ,

as recorded in Dancing in the Glory of Monsters

[Paul] Kagame, who is 55, grew up in a

Ugandan refugee camp in a thatch-roofed
hut (like the ones his government has
banned), an especially deep humiliation
for a Tutsi like him. Tutsi monarchs ruled
Rwanda for centuries until the majority
Hutus turned the tables in 1959, killing
hundreds, possibly thousands, of Tutsis and
causing many others, including Kagames
family, to flee for their lives. When Kagame
was about 12 and marooned with his family in the Ugandan camp, he asked his
father: Why are we refugees? Why are we
here? Why are we like this? What wrong did
we do? That, Kagame said, was the birth
of his political consciousness.
Theres nothing like having your own country. Il fallait tupate adresse.
We needed to have our own address.

69

2013

The decision to abandon the soil on which your father and mother are buried is not an easy one.
papy kamanzi

1959

2001 PRESENT

69

1990

71

72

72

OCTOBER 1ST, 1990

A PRIL 6T H, 1994

A PRIL 6T H JULY, 1994

JULY, 1994

SEPTEMBER, 1996

rpf invasion of rwanda

assassination of
president habyarimana

rwandan genocide

hutu refugees flood into congo

the first congo war begins

Between April and June 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans are killed in 100
days. Most of the dead are Tutsisand
most of those who perpetrate the violence
are Hutus.

Kagames RPF sweeps through Rwanda and takes control. Over a million Hutu
refugees flee into Congo (called Zaire at
the time), including those who committed the genocide. They settle in refugee camps near the Rwandan border in
the east.

The new Rwandan President Kagame fears the Hutu refugees are planning to invade Rwanda
with support from Mobutu. He decides to overthrow Mobutu and install a new government.
They create a forward-facing Congolese identity, the AFDLthe Alliance of Democratic
Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaireand invade Congo with support from Congolese
Tutsis as well as Uganda, Burundi, Eritrea and Ethiopia.

The Rwandan Patriotic Front is created in

1987 by a community of second-generation
expelled Tutsis. In 1990 Paul Kagame leads
the RPF to invade northern Rwanda, beginning the Rwandan Civil War.

After more than three years of fighting, the Rwandan President and reigning Hutu leader Juvenal Habyarimana is killed. His plane is shot down.
This triggers the wars final, deadliest period.

Africas
World Wars

71

Congo is like banana

plantation without an owner

72

aka the congo wars

T I M E L I N E : 199 0 20 01

71

yoweri museveni
President of Uganda

M AY 17, 1997

JULY, 1998

AUGUST, 1998

JULY, 1999

JA NUA RY, 2001

the afdl rebels take congo,

endin g the first war

president laurent kabila orders all rwandan and ugandan

military officials to leave the country

the second congo war begins

lusaka ceasefire agreement

President Kabila grows suspicious of his allies and throws them out. To protect his country,
he forms a military alliance with the Rwandan Hutu soldiers who have
been living in Congo since the Genocide. This move angers Congolese Tutsis
and the new Rwandan Tutsi regime.

The war officially ends with the signing

of the Ceasefire. Under the agreement, all
parties must join together to disarm the
militias. But that never really happens.

assasination of
president laurent kabila

Kagames coalition marches through the

endless Congolese jungle to reach the capital
city, Kinshasa. Mobutus dilapidated military
is defeated and he flees the country. AFDL
figurehead Laurent Kabila is sworn into
office as President. He renames the country
the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Rwanda invades eastern Congo, again. Nine

central African countries are involved in the
war that follows.

71

72

His son Joseph Kabila takes power.

2001

1997

74

Laurent-Desire Kabila was born the

son of a colonial administrator in
1939. He grew up well-off and well
educated in the mineral-rich Katanga
province. In the ultimate act of teenage rebellion, he became a rebel militia leader by age 20.

coercionto spin an aura of consent.

Surrounded by Rwandans, he grew increasingly paranoid. Tensions peaked when he replaced
his Rwandan Chief of Staff with a native
Congolese general and then ordered all Ugandan and Rwandan military officials to leave
the country.

LAURENT K ABILA
PR ESI DE N T OF CONG O,
1997 20 01

73

During the crisis that preceded

Lumumbas assassination, Kabila
was mobilizing in northern Katanga against the Belgian-led secession movement. After his father was
kidnapped and killed by members of
his own militia, Kabila left Congo,
traveled around, and spent some time
in Russia as part of a socialist delegation. In 1965, after Mobutu had
taken power, he returned to lead a
Lumumbist, nationalist insurrection
in the highlands of northeastern
Congo. The famous Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara even came out to
support him, but Communist ideology
didnt quite catch on with the Congolese rebels, and Che left seven months
later, ill and disillusioned. Kabila
however kept at it, though his guerilla moves in the jungle were starting
to give him a bad rap. One time in
1975, he and his crew snuck into a
chimpanzee research camp in Tanzania. They kidnapped four American
and Dutch students, and gave them
lectures on Marxism while awaiting a
$500,000 ransom.
Eventually Kabila gave up his sinking career in revolution and contented himself with a quiet life in Dar Es
Salaam, the capital of Tanzania. Then
one day in 1995, a Rwandan intelligence agent showed up at his house
and offered the old man a new job.

73

This was not what Rwanda had in mind

when they bankrolled his ascendancy. Just 15
months into Kabilas rule, the same Rwandan
generals who helped install him decided it
was time for him to go.
Kabila needed a new force to defend himself.
So he turned to the only qualified mercenaries around: Rwandas former Hutu army
hiding out in Congo post-genocide. Yes, these
were the same guys who had fought with
Mobutu the year before. The ones Kabila had
just sought to defeat.

The new Rwandan government needed some Congolese figureheads to

make their plot look like an internal
rebellion. A forgotten rebel leader
who had antagonized Mobutu thirty years earlier seemed like an okay
choice. Kabila moved into a house
in Kigali, Rwandas capital, with his
25-year-old son, Joseph and three
other unrelated leaders (an architect, an aging commander, and a
young Rwandan sergeant). Thus the
Alliance of Democratic Forces for the
Liberation of Congo-Zaire, aka the
ADFL, was born; and the First Congo
War began.
We werent looking for a rebel leader,
we just needed someone to make the
whole operation look Congolese, said
Rwandan Intelligence Chief, Patrick
Karegeya. But a leader is what they
got. With his penchant for revolutionary rhetoric, Kabila quickly emerged
as the voice of the movement. And
luckily for him, all of Zaires neighbors were pretty tired of Mobutus
antics. (The Congolese people werent
fans either.) The ADFL invasion was
masterminded by Rwanda and fought
with help from Uganda, Burundi,
Eritrea, Ethiopia, Angola, Zambia and
Zimbabwe. Mobutus weak, fragmented military couldnt keep it together
in the face of this hyper-organized
team effort. In 1997, ADFL forces took

Congos capital, Kinshasa. Mobutu

fled the country, leaving his palaces
behind to be devoured by the weeds.
Meanwhile, Kabila arrived to empty
state coffers and a $14 billion debt
obligation to the World Bank.
One of his first moves was to re-name
Zaire the Democratic Republic of
Congo, though democracy didnt really turn out to be his thing. He immediately ordered a temporary ban on
all rival political activity, a timeout
where he could draft a new constitution while nobody challenged him.
But everybody wanted to challenge
him, so he took a few moves out of
the Mobutu play-bookcensorship,

His alliance with Hutu militants gave Rwanda an excuse to invade once again. They
alleged that Kabila was organizing another
genocide of Tutsis inside Congo. Under this
pretext Rwanda riled up Congolese Tutsis in
eastern Congo, funding militias and rebel
groups to aid their cause. The Second Congo
War was fought between Rwanda, with help
from Uganda and Burundi, and Kabilas new
DRC plus Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Chad
and Sudan. The war ended in 1999 with the
signing of the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement.
Under the agreement, all parties had to join
together to disarm the militias. But that
never happened.

We werent looking
for a rebel leader,
we just needed
someone to make the
whole operation
look congolese.

Rwandan Intelligence Chief

patrick karegeya,
as recorded in Dancing in the Glory of Monsters

74

In 2001, Kabila was shot by one of his bodyguards in what some speculate was a Rwandan-organized assassination. The leftover
government officials maneuvered to install
his son, Joseph Kabila, as the new President.
With a couple of rigged elections under his
belt, Joseph has been running thingsor
letting them fall apartever since.
fwr

2001

75

75

Its unclear exactly why or how Joseph Kabila

was chosen to succeed his father as President
of Congo. Though he had served as Military
Chief of Staff during the Second Congo War,
the quiet, introverted twenty-nine-year old
was a complete stranger to the Congolese
people. There were certainly louder voices to
choose from within Laurent Kabilas top leadershipand there were louder voices leading
larger movements outside of it as well. Some
have suggested that the elder Kabilas cabinet
felt Joseph was simply the least controversial
choice. The appointment of any other leader could have caused a divisive uproar that
might have descended into chaos. Young,
innocuous Joseph on the other hand, could be
easily influenced and controlled, by potentially anyone. Or at least that was the idea.
75

76

JOSEPH KABILA
Tshisekedi, politicians distributed cash for
votes and soldiers warned peasants that it was
President Kabila or war.
At every level, bribery and corruption turn the
wheels of Congos economy, and it starts at the
top. President Kabila keeps his civil servants
scraping by on impossibly low salaries, forcing them to seek bribes. Occasionally he
mails them an envelope of cash to keep them
contentand dependent on his direct generosity. He pays his top military commanders
out of his personal funds, leaving the foot
soldiers to survive off of extortion. And where
do his personal funds come from? In 2005
for example, he made a killing selling shares
in mining concessions for around one-tenth
of their price, cheating the Congolese people
out of billions of dollars and creating alliances with wealthy foreign businessmen in
the process.

Three months into his rule, Joseph Kabila

proved to be more independent-minded than
they thought. Soon after taking power, he
replaced almost everyone who had given it
to him.
The worlds first leader born in the 70s, Joseph
Kabilas new cabinet had an average age of
38. Though he was born in a rebel camp in
the jungles of North Kivu during his fathers
early revolutionary days, he grew up in Tanzania, spoke mainly English and Swahili, and
for this many Congolese perceived him as an
outsider. Even though he has vastly improved
his French, many still do.
In his first televised address on inauguration
day, Joseph Kabila spoke of creating more
political openness and even holding elections.
Thirteen years into his largely unpopular,
unsuccessful rule, we know these promises
to be empty. During the overtly-rigged 2011
election against opposition leader Etienne

2001

76

PRESIDENT OF CONGO,
20 01 PR ESEN T
75

76

76

Not unlike his father, Joseph Kabila has failed

to deliver democracy. He has however stayed
true to his introverted nature. He maintains a
low profile, rarely making media appearances
or giving speeches. He doesnt like to go out
much, preferring to stay home playing video
games with his brother. At his most ostentatious, hes a quiet appreciator of flashy luxury goods and fancy cars. He had a Maserati
at one point, but could only drive it outside
of his house in Kinshasa, at half speed. Too
many potholes.
fwr

2013

when yo u he ar t he t e rm REBELS, yo u m i gh t b e t em p t e d to i m agi ne a g ro up

of dis sen tin g n at ion als se e k i ng to ove rt h row t h e i r gove r nm e nt . but in
descr ibin g t he re b e ls w ho c r e at e t h e co nf l i ct i n e a st e r n co n g o , t h at
im ag e d o e s not s o ne at ly a p p ly .

SELECT YOUR PLAYER

FARDC
Mai-mai
m23
FDLR
MONUScO
INTERVENTION BRIGADE

Some depend on extorting the population so

they can fund their agendas; others receive
outside investment so they can continue
extorting the population at a profit. Whether
under the pretense of providing protection or
protesting injustice, ultimately they are all
in the business of wielding weapons. Often
because few other businesses are hiring.
Congo is so big and its budget is so small
that the government is unable to protect all
its citizens. Its a country the size of western
Europe tied together by roughly 1400 miles
of roads. To put that in context, Los Angeles
alone has over 7300 miles of pavement.

By developed-world standards, such a nation should

be operating on an annual
budget of a trillion dollars a year.
Instead, after decades of kleptocracy,
Congo scrapes by on just five billionnot
nearly enough to fund a functioning police
force or army.
In the absence of security, these armies-ofbusiness stake their claim. Distance further
fuels the mistrust. Decisions are made
across the thick Congolese jungle, on the
western edge of the continent, in Kinshasa.
In mountainous eastern Congo, the population is particularly vulnerable. Rural villages sit several days from each other, making
them highly susceptible to extortion, protection rackets, and all-out raids from roaming troops running low on supplies and high
on anger.

With no faith in the central government, local

militia form to protect their people against
these attacks. But without official funding,
they usually begin to abuse their power. As
with the all the other rebels, tactics include
collecting fake taxes, taking over trade
routes for minerals, raping women, stealing
food and displacing populations.
Most estimate that since 1994, over 5.4
million people have died in the crossfire.
Of profit, corruption, malnutrition, disease,
and murder.
fwr

Illustration by paul solis

There are currently over twenty gun-toting

entities running the show in eastern Congo,
from ragtag militias to the national army.
They operate on a wide range of scales and
exist for an even wider variety of reasons.

Federal Army of t h e

MAI- M A I M E A N S Wa te r
Wa te r i n Swa h i l i

D e m o c r a t i c Republic of Congo

PURPOSE: To protect the

territorial integrity of
the state and defend
the population.

PURPOSE: To protect their

local communities against
outsiders, as the FARDC is
incapable of doing so.

NUMBER OF SOLDIERS

NUMBER OF Soliers

UN KNOW N
150,000

UNITY

TRANSPARENCY

UNITY

= 1,000 soldiers

TRANSPARENCY
FRAGMENted

FRAGMENted

UNIFIED

OUTWARD IDENTITY

OBSCURITY

VISIBILITY

OUTWARD IDENTITY

A patchwork of integrated rebels and

FUNDING

Mai-Mai factions, varying from well-

President Kabilas private assets.

organized militia to local farmers with

pitchforks. Each claims to exist in order to
protect their people and country.

HISTORY

aligned with President Kabilas central

independently, off private mining interests

this day they maintain a relationship of mistrust with the

or extortion schemes.

civilians they are supposed to protect. Divergent rebel

groups have frequently been integrated into the national
army, but have generally remained loyal to either their
former warlords or their own independent interests.
Often only the highest ranking officers receive sufficient
pay to survive. Ordinary foot soldiers are only provided
with arms, forcing them to live off the population.

16% LOADED

ALIGNMENT Independent, hyperlocal.

against Mobutus government. It only became a powerful

force in eastern Congo following the Rwandan Genocide.
Though an estimated 10-25k soldiers fought with Kabila

sovereignty that controlling isolated communities allows

them. The Mai-Mai are generally ruled by a belief in a

Illustrations by joshua ariza

domestic policing activities since the time of Leopold. To

The Mai-Mai movement began in the 1960s as a rebellion

into the FARDC, preferring the influence, profits, and

Congos official armed forces have been involved in

with local rebel groups, and some function

sovereign unified nation in need of defense.

Protection rackets, extortion, theft.

during the 1996-97 War, many have resisted integration

government, some have received training

The Democratic Republic of Congo is a

VISIBILITY

HISTORY

eastern Congo. There are hundreds of

Constantly shifting. Some squadrons are

POLITICAL IDEOLOGY

FUNDING

descendants of the original people of

The National treasury, extortion, theft, smuggling, and

from Belgium or the U.S., some cooperate

OBSCURITY

Believe they are Sons of the Soil,

soldiers with wildly varied levels of training.

ALIGNMENT

UNIFIED

witchdoctors and local magic, claiming their purification

POLITICAL IDEOLOGY

ceremonies make them bullet-proof. When children are

faced with no other option, they often go to the Mai-Mai for

President Joseph Kabila is complicit with the

protection. Initiations vary from place to place, but

Rwandan agenda to split-up Congo and

involve small cuts over organs such as the heart and

cannot be trusted; outsiders (Tutsis) have

stomach, and the injection of a local concoction, including

no claim to their native lands.

marijuana and human organs, into the bloodstream.

33% LOADED

T he m ar ch 2 3 rd
move m ent
PURPOSE: To maintain power
over the mineral trade in
eastern Congo, creating
profits for the Rwandan
g o v e r n m e n t a n d t h e m s e lv e s .

The Rebel Group Formerly

Known As CNDP

The FEDERATION for

THE LIBERATION
OF RWANDA
the genocidares

NUMBER OF Soliers

PURPOSE: To overthrow
the government in
Rwanda and protect Hutu
refugees living in Congo.

2,000

NUMBER OF SOLDIERS

= 100 soldiers

UNITY

FRAGMENted

2,000

TRANSPARENCY

UNITY

= 100 soldiers

UNIFIED
OBSCURITY

VISIBILITY

FRAGMENted

OUTWARD IDENTITY

HISTORY

Congolese Tutsis with an ancestral claim to land

in eastern Congo, protecting themselves
against ethnic discrimination.

TRANSPARENCY

UNIFIED

The CNDP (National Congress for the Defense of the People) was
the original post-war rebellion to protect Congolese Tutsis. CNDP
was led by General Nkunda, a former colleague of Kagames.

OUTWARD IDENTITY

OBSCURITY

Rwandan Hutu who fled their country in 1994.

They are both the former Rwandan military
and those that committed the genocide.

ALIGNMENT
Rwandas Tutsi Regime. Many of their rebel
commanders were originally commanders with
Kagame in the Rwandan Civil War, as well as in
his march to overthrow Mobutu.

A unified Congo is dysfunctional and nonsensical. Cultural and geographic divisions from the
past cannot be reconciled.

under an agreement to work together to take out the FDLR. For a

The current FDLR can be traced back to members of the

few years, the integrated ex-CNDP network was profiting nicely

from an arrangement that gave them free reign of eastern Congo.
When the National Army tried to break up the network and take
back control of the region, ex-CNDPs defected and formed M23;
rebelling against what they claimed was a violation of the treaty.

ALIGNMENT
Habyarimana regime. Today, they are largely

took over Rwanda in 1994, these fighters escaped into Congo

independent and isolated in the jungle.

disguised as refugees. In the camps on the border, it was difficult

to designate who had or had not participated in the Genocide,
allowing most of the fighters toblend in. Their anonymity invited

under house-arrest in Rwanda in 2009, Bosco took over the

of children, raping of women, assassination of whistleblowers,

blanket attacks on the camps from the newly installed Rwandan

POLITICAL IDEOLOGY

public humiliation of local leaders, and the general terrorizing of

the population. In March of 2013, heavy political pressure and

Maintain a deep-seated hatred for Tutsis.

FUNDING

Brigade defeated M23.

0% LOADED

RPF government. The early FDLR claimed to be in response to

these blanket attacks. Most of the modern day FDLR are largely
the sons and daughters of those who committed the genocide.
They have spent roughly two decades living in the jungle, and

Hague awaiting trial. Seven months later, amidst overwhelming

public and diplomatic pressure, FARDC and the Intervention

as the Interahamwe, who were responsible for the Rwandan

Genocide. When an army of Tutsi exiles stopped the Genocide and

fought directly under Nkunda as CNDP. When Nkunda was put

movement that became M23. Their tactics included the abduction

Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) and civilian militia groups, such

Formerly aligned with the old Rwandan

internal divisions drove Bosco to surrender. He is now in the

Extortion, theft,
Rwandan military.

HISTORY

On March 23rd, 2009, CNDP was integrated into the National Army

Bosco Ntganda was originally a soldier for Paul Kagame, and then

POLITICAL IDEOLOGY

VISIBILITY

FUNDING

continue to be the justification for Rwandas attacks., including

Extortion, theft.

those by M23.

66% LOADED

United Nations Organization

Stabilization Mission in the
Democratic Republic of Congo

The Blue Berets

PURPOSE: under a
mandate to protect civilians
and defend human rights,
assist in disarmament and
demobilization of combatants.

PURPOSE: To carry out offensive

operations to neutralize
and demobilize armed
groups in eastern Congo.
NUMBER OF SOLDIERS

NUMBER OF SOLDIERS

3000

17,000

= 1,000 soldiers

= 1,000 soldiers

TRANSPARENCY

UNITY

FRAGMENted

UNIFIED

OBSCURITY

TRANSPARENCY

UNITY

VISIBILITY

FRAGMENted

UNIFIED

OBSCURITY

FUNDING

FUNDING
OUTWARD IDENTITY
Part of the International UN Peacekeeping
Force, with hired conscripts from over 50

All UN Member States are required to pay towards

peacekeeping. MONUSCO, the largest peacekeeping
mission in the world, costs over $1.4 billion a year.

OUTWARD IDENTITY

that followed, the UN created a specialized Intervention

Brigade. Consisting of roughly 3000 soldiers, with a

The original UN Peacekeeping mission in Congo, titled

mandate to remove belligerents from the battlefield,

MONUC, was established to observe the upholding of

ALIGNMENT

the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement, which ended the

The United Nations

Second Congo War in 1999 and was signed by five

their aggressive tactics are the first of their kind.

A L I G N M E N T The United Nations

central African countries. Their mandate was expanded

The Intervention Brigade operates under direct

stabilization, supposedly reflecting a new phase of

Peacekeeping missions are based on

tenets of impartiality, consent of parties,
and non-use of force except in selfdefense or defense of the mandate.

of thousands of civilians in eastern Congo, MONUSCO

has continued to be criticised for extraordinary inefficacy.

command of the MONUSCO Force Commander, with

POLITICAL IDEOLOGY

In November 2012, when M23 invaded the protected

Based on tenets of impartiality, consent of

city of Goma, the Blue Berets grabbed their tanks and

parties, and use of force in defense of the

vast arsenal, and stood aside.

mandate.

83% LOADED

the authorized MONUSCO troop ceiling of 19,815.

and one special force and reconnaissance company.

changed their name to MONUSCO, adding an S for

the mission. As fighting continues to displace hundreds

Their initial term is for a period of one year and within

It consists of three infantry battalions, one artillery

to the enforcement of the agreement, and in 2010 they

POLITICAL IDEOLOGY

On 28 March 2013, after the humiliating invasion of

Goma by M23 at the end of 2012, and the global uproar

HISTORY

Bangladesh.

UN Member States

HISTORY

This force is largely comprised of units

from South Africa, Tanzania and Malawi.

countries. A large proportion are from

VISIBILITY

the objective of contributing to reducing the threat

posed by armed groups to state authority, and civilian
security in eastern DRC, and to make space for
stabilization activities. In October of 2013, the
Intervention Brigade fought alongside FARDC to
defeat M23.

100% LOADED

86

86

The disintegration of the states

moral and legal authority plays itself
out in ways that are deeply insidious
and directly connected to the regions
violence. One Goma-based humanitarian professional explained how
something like ICC-indicted warlord
Bosco Ntagandas integration into
the military might pervert everything
else in the eastern DRC. Ntaganda
got a good deal. What incentive are
you giving people here to be good,
or to follow the law, or to not take
up arms? None, he said. a r e yo u
g o i n g t o b e a t e ac h e r o r a
wa r lo r d? yo u r e g o i n g t o b e

No soldier is allowed to
go to farm; his fields are
the population.

a wa r lo r d . b e c au s e it wo u ld
b e c r a z y t o b e a t e ac h e r .

We came to realize that our country had been

invaded by foreign troops, and that we needed,
ourselves, to fight for our country. We have
waited for government support for so long, it
did not come.
They [Interahamwe] were killing the population, they were beating them without any
reason, and they were looting their goods and
raping the population. Because of that, we felt
that we might be exterminated and so we decided to create this group to be able to protect
the population.

congolese rebels,
Interviewed for a USIP Special Report,
Rape in War: Motives of Militia in DRC

86

Photos by daniel n. johnson

There was nothing else for me to do.

I knew I had no other support, so I had to
join the military.

86

The night I returned from Rubaya, I

met young men who had made exactly that decision. Their names were
Henri, Wolf and Chris, and I spoke
with them in a discreet corner of a
hotel courtyard in Goma. They were
budding warlords from M23-occupied territory, leaders of fledgling
Hutu militias that were fighting the
mostly-Tutsi rebels. Chris was a thin
and intense man who drew invisible
maps on the table with his forefinger as he spoke. He had been a math
teacher before he became a militant.
The quiet and muscle-bound Wolf
brought along a fancy notebook with
the MONUSCO logo embossed on
the cover; he had been studying to
become a teacher as well. Henri was
president of a group called the Movement for Popular Self-Defense; the
other two belonged to a militia called
the FDIPC, whose meaning I never
learned. Between them, they claimed
to command about 400 fighters, and
they volunteered responsibility for
various battlefield successes over the
course of our conversation, including the killing of eight M23 the
week before.

86

armin rosen,
Origins of War in the DRC,
The Atlantic

2013

87

87

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87

Extreme violence has

a way of preventing
us from seeing the
interests it serves.

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big p
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ll
Welcomadventure, dang
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87

naomi klein

87

87

d of
Congo, w s under n
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a worl
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7.

CONGRATULATIONS!
YOU ARE NOW THE OWNER OF A BRAND
NEW SMARTPHONE, COURTESY OF THE
ARTISANAL MINERS OF EASTERN CONGO
AND THEIR REBEL OVERLORDS.

8.

A smelter will
combine rocks from
around the world,
obscuring their origins
of conflict. Most minerals
from Congo are smelted
in east Asia.

Goods that cross the border into Rwanda on

their way east should not pay taxes since they
are technically in-transit, however, Rwanda
systematically taxes all goods and issues
certificates of Rwandan origin. This allows
smugglers to circumvent bribes on the Congo
side of the border and pay Rwanda a tax to
make the export official.

PAY $5000 TO CERTIFY

RWANDAN ORIGIN
OR GO BACK 12 SPACES.

4. Small truckloads are brought to a center with-

TRAVEL TO A PORT ON THE INDIAN OCEAN!

ADVANCE 4 SPACES!

in 30km and grouped together. Tax collectors here are often unpaid; instead of
charging taxes that can be reported to
the government, they will pocket bribes
to allow the shipment to be processed.
This is also because official tax rates
can be between 200-300% of profits.

5.

Comptoirs buy large shipments of

raw minerals, sort and sift the
rocks to up their value, then
package them in large
containers.

TOO MUCH PAPERWORK

PAY THE MINISTRY OF EXTERNAL
TRADE OFFICER $100 OR STAY
HERE 2 TURNS.

ANOTHER ROADBLOCK!
PAY THE FDLR $600
OR GO BACK 10 SPACES.

ROADBLOCK!
PAY THE FDLR $600
OR STAY HERE 3 TURNS.

6.

An average of 15 unofficial services are

rendered at any border crossing as
unpaid bureaucrats demand bribes.
Border positions can be among the
most lucrative, so people will even
bribe the government to obtain them.
ROADBLOCK!
Along the Bukavu-Cyangugu trade corriPAY THE MAI MAI $200 IN TAXES OR
dor, which is a two-hundred foot steel
RETURN TO THE HUT.
bridge, a trader with a truckload
of goods can be made to pay
up to $ 1,100 in bribes.

YOUR COMPTOIR OWES TAXES

TO THE GOVERNMENT AND
ARMED GROUPS

PAY $2000 OR STAY HERE 3 TURNS.

PAY THE TAX COLLECTOR A $200

BRIBE OR RETURN TO SHACK.

3. Armed groups, sometimes even the

army itself, set up roadblocks and checkpoints to tax vehicles carrying loads of
minerals at gunpoint. In 2013, M23s going tax rate was $600.

Artisanal mining is huge in

eastern Congo. The quick cash
turnaround and low investment required
has lured many farmers from their fields.
In 2008, one study estimated that
450-500k worked in the
mines, and that 40% of
those were children.

1.

UH OH! AN ARMED
GROUP STOLE ALL
YOUR ROCKS.
RETURN TO START.

SECURITY FEE!
PAY THE LOCAL MILITIA
$10 OR STAY HERE
5 TURNS.

UH-OH! YOU ARE

BEING HELD IN
SLAVERY BY AN
ARMED GROUP!
STAY HERE
10 TURNS.

2. Most rural mining

START
HERE
YOU FINALLY GOT
A BAG OF ROCKS!
ADVANCE SIX SPACES.

AVOID ALL THE FUSS.

SMUGGLE YOUR GOODS
TO RWANDA BY PLANE.

villages have a few

local traders who operate
out of a shack. The trader
buys product from various
miners until he has enough
material for a small truck load.

93

93

93

94

If

you have a problem

you cannot solve, enlarge the context.

jean monnet

94

94

2001

Excuse me, let me tell you something. When America opened up

the floodgates and let all us Italians in, what do you think they
were doing it for? Cause they were trying to save us from poverty?
No, they did it because they needed us. They needed us to build
their cities and dig their subways, and to make them richer. The
Carnegies and The Rockefellers: they needed worker bees and
there we were. But some of us didnt want to swarm around their
hive and lose who we were. We wanted to stay Italian and preserve
the things that meant something to us: honor and family and
loyalty...and some of us wanted a piece of the action. Now we
werent educated like the Americans, but we had the balls to take
what we wanted! And those other folks, those other... the, the
JP Morgans, they were crooks and killers too, but that was the
business right? The American Way.

Illustration by cun shi

tony soprano

95

97

paul mazer, Lehman Brothers,

early 1920s

97

If everyone lived the lifestyle of the average American, we would need about 5 planet Earths to support us.

herbert hoover, 1928

THE

Our chosen economic model has created a global situation in which

today, less than 25% of the worlds population uses more than 80% of
the worlds resources while creating 70% of its pollution.

You have taken over the job of creating

desire and have transformed people into
constantly moving happiness machines,
machines which have become the key to
economic progress.

98

Global Footprint Network

97

98

michael watts, Author / Professor

We must shift America from a needs to a

desires culture. People must be trained to
desire, to want new things even before the
old have been entirely consumed. We must
shape a new mentality in America. Mans
desires must overshadow his needs.

We are no less dependent on strategic resources now than we were in 1890. And its not just
about oil, its about a whole raft of key minerals and resources that are indispensable.

1920

world system
The process of extraction from global
periphery to global core is what
sociologist Emmanuel Wallerstein
has called the world-system. Since
the 1980s, one way of facilitating
extraction within the world-system has
been through structural adjustment
loans from Western governments to
post-colonial countries. Debts from
these loans are leveraged to forcibly
liberalize markets, privatize resources,
cut social services, and curb labor and
environmental regulations to create
business opportunities for multinational companies and facilitate the
flow of wealth to the West.
Western corporations realize huge
profits by taking advantage of these
policies. They externalize the costs of
production to the global South where
they can get away without paying for
the labor they exploit, the resources
they extract, and the pollution they
leave behind.

98

Forced liberalization has plunged

poor countries into economic collapse,
slashing average per capita income
growth in half after 1980 and leading
in some cases to negative rates. Economists estimate that poor countries
have lost $480 billion per year as a
result of structural adjustment, while
multinational corporations have stolen
as much as $1.17 trillion (from Africa
alone) through loopholes created by
market deregulation since 1970. The
upshot of this has been rising inequality, deepening poverty, and worsening
health, mortality, and literacy rates in
much of the global South.
dr. jason hickel,
London School of Economics

97

98

2013

Other than football, can you guess what the most popular television show in America was in 2013? Anyone
with pulse and a Facebook account might have made
the educated guess that it was Breaking Bad. But, it
was actually the naval-police procedural NCIS. A show
which nobody in the online pop-culture conversation
seemed to be talking about it.
What is it about certain communities of opinion and
taste that inspires them to be louder, albeit smaller,
than others?
Perhaps the inverse question is more interesting still:
what is it that causes large contingents of like-minded
individuals to keep their opinions silent?
It turns out that the realms of perceived, external
public opinion and actual, internal public opinion are
not always equal. German political scientist Elisabeth
Noelle-Neumann developed a theory to explain this
phenomenon: the Spiral of Silence. She arrived at the
hypothesis while studying election results in the 1960s
that didnt match up with preceding polling data.
Noelle-Neumann describes the perception of public
opinion as having a cascading effect, a spiral. When one
person voices an idea, it becomes safe for others to do
the same. The media reinforces that idea and suddenly
it feels like the stance of a majority. As a result, when
people feel as though their opinions are of the minority, they become less comfortable expressing them. They
remain silent.
The only way to reverse the spiral of silence then, is to
harness the courage to be the first person to say aloud
what many others are also likely thinking.
fwr

T H E SPIRAL
of SILENCE

1920

102

Every minute, the poorest part of the world, Sub-Saharan

Africa, is paying 25,000 dollars to northern creditors.

Western affluence and the consumer lifestyle

of the 99% in the United States and Europe
depend on the plunder of other places and
other peoples.

80 to 1 Today.

35 to 1 in 1950,

dr. jason hickel, London School of Economics

The gap between the poorest and

richest country was 3 to 1 in 1920

I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and

states. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,
tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one
directly, affects all indirectly.

dr. martin luther king jr.

101

2013

104

104

Strangely, in a city where it seems that on almost every block a

famous event or resident is commemorated by a blue and white
glazed plaque, none marks this spot. All you can see today, after
you leave the Bank section of the London Underground, walk
several blocks, and then take a few steps into a courtyard, are
a few low, nondescript office buildings, an ancient pub, and, on
the site itself, 2 George Yard, a glass and steel high-rise. Nothing
remains of the bookstore and printing shop that once stood
here, or recalls the spring day more than two hundred years ago
when a dozen peoplea somber looking crew, most of them not
removing their high-crowned black hatsfiled through its door
and sat down for a meeting. Cities build monuments to kings,
prime ministers, and generals, not to citizens with no official
position who once gathered in a printing shop. Yet what these
citizens began rippled across the world and we feel its aftereffects
still. It is no wonder that they won the admiration of the first
and greatest student of what we now call civil society. The result
of the series of events begun that afternoon in London, wrote
Alexis de Tocqueville, was absolutely without precedent.
If you pore over the histories of all people, I doubt that you will
find anything more extraordinary.
12 MEN IN A
PRINT SHOP

another world
is not only
possible, she
is on her way.
on a quiet day,
i can hear her
breathing.
arundhati roy

104

1787

105

To understand how momentous was this beginning, we must picture

a world in which the vast majority of people are prisoners. Most of
them have known no other way of life. They are not free to live or
go where they want. They plant, cultivate, and harvest most of the
earths major crops. They earn no money from their labor. Their
work often lasts twelve of fourteen hours a day. Many are subject
to cruel whippings or other punishments if they do not work hard
enough. They die young. They are not chained or bound most of the
time, but they are in bondage, part of a global economy based on
forced labor. Such a world would, of course, be unthinkable today.
But this was the worldour worldjust two centuries ago, and to
most people then, it was unthinkable that it could ever be otherwise.
At the end of the eighteenth century, well over three quarters of all
people alive were in bondage of one kind or another. Looking back
today, what is even more astonishing than the pervasiveness of slavery in the late 1700s is how swiftly it died. By the end of the following
century, slavery was, at least on paper, outlawed almost everywhere.
The antislavery movement had achieved its goal in a little more than
one lifetime.
Every American schoolchild learns how slaves fled Southern plantations, following the North Star on the Underground Railroad. But
England is where the story really begins, and for decades it was
where American abolitionists looked for inspiration and finally for
proof that the colossally difficult task of uprooting slavery could be
accomplished.
If we were to fix one point when the crusade began, it would be the
late afternoon of May 22, 1787, when twelve determined men sat
down in the printing shop at 2 George Yard, amid flatbed presses,
wooden trays of type, and large sheets of freshly printed book pages,
to begin one of the most ambitious and brilliantly organized movements of all time.

106

campaign. A notice that a prominent social activist will

be reading from her new book at your local bookstore.
A plea that you write your representative in Congress or
Parliament, to vote for that Guatemalan coffee boycott
bill. A report card on how your legislators have voted
on these and similar issues. A newsletter from the
group organizing support for the grape pickers or the
coffee workers.

The British abolitionists were shocked by what

they came to learn about slavery and the slave
trade. They were deeply convinced that they lived
in a remarkable time that would see both evils
swept from the face of the earth. Like anyone who
wages such a fight, they discovered that injustice does not vanish so easily. But their passion
and optimism are still contagious and still relevant to our times, when, in so many parts of the
world, equal rights for all men and women seem
far distant.
The movement they forged is a landmark for an
additional reason. There is always something
mysterious about human empathy, and when we
feel it and when we dont. Its sudden upwelling
at this particular moment caught everyone by
surprise. Slaves and other subjugated people have
rebelled throughout history, but the campaign in
England was something never seen before: it was
the first time a large number of people became
outraged, and stayed outraged for many years,
over someone elses rights. And most startling
of all, the rights of people of another color, on
another continent. No one was more taken aback
by this than Stephen Fuller, the London agent for
Jamaicas planters, an absentee plantation owner
himself and a central figure in the pro-slavery
lobby. As tens of thousands of protesters signed
petitions to Parliament, Fuller was amazed that
these were stating no grievance or injury of any
kind or sort, affecting the Petitioners themselves.
His bafflement is understandable. He was seeing
something new in history.

Each of these tools, from the poster to the political book

tour, from the consumer boycott to investigative reporting designed to stir people to action, is part of what we
take for granted in a democracy. Two and a half centuries ago, few people assumed this. When we wield any
of these tools today, we are using techniques devised or
perfected by the campaign that held its first meeting at
2 George Yard in 1787. From their successful crusade we
still have much to learn.

105

The abolitionists succeeded because they mastered one challenge

that still faces anyone who cares about social and economic justice:
drawing connections between the near and the distant. We have
long lived in a world where everyday objects embody labor in another corner of the earth. Often we do not know where the things we
use come from, or the working conditions of those who made them.
106 Were the shoes or shirt youre wearing made by children in an Indonesian sweatshop? Or by prison labor in China? What pesticides were
breathed in by the Latin American laborers who picked the fruit on
your table? And do you even know in what country the innards of
your computer were assembled? The eighteenth century had its own
booming version of globalization, and at its core was the Atlantic
trade in slaves and in the goods they produced. But in England
itself there were no caravans of chained captives, no whip-wielding
overseers on horseback stalking the rows of sugar cane. The abolitionists first job was to make Britons understand what lay behind
the sugar they ate, the tobacco they smoked, the coffee they drank.

For fifty years, activists in England worked to end slavery in

the British Empire. None of them gained a penny by doing so,
and their eventual success meant a huge loss to the imperial
economy. Scholars estimate that abolishing the slave trade and
then slavery cost the British people 1.8 percent of their annual
national income over more than half a century, many times
the percentage most wealthy countries today give in foreign aid.

One thing makes these men and women from the age of wigs,
swords, and stagecoaches surprisingly contemporary. This small group
of people not only helped to end one of the worst of human injustices in the most powerful empire of its time; they also forged virtually every important tool used by citizens movements in democratic
countries today.
Think of what youre likely to find in your mailboxor electronic
mailboxover a month or two. An invitation to join the local chapter of a national environmental group. If you say yes, a logo to put
on your car bumper. A flier asking you to boycott California grapes
or Guatemalan coffee. A poster to put in your window promoting this

If, early that year, you had stood on a London street

corner and insisted that slavery was morally wrong
and should be stopped, nine out of ten listeners would
have laughed you off as a crackpot. The tenth might
have agreed with you in principle, but assured you
that ending slavery was wildly impractical: the British
Empires economy would collapse. The parliamentarian Edmund Burke, for example, opposed slavery but
thought the prospect of ending even just the Atlantic
slave trade was chimerical. Within a few short years,
however, the issue of slavery had moved to center stage
in British political life. There was an abolition committee in every major city or town in touch with a central
committee in London. More than 300,000 Britons were
refusing to eat slave-grown sugar. Parliament was
flooded with far more signatures on abolition petitions
than it had ever received on any other subject. And
in 1792, the House of Commons passed the first law
banning the slave trade. For reasons we will see, a ban
did not take effect for some years to come, and British slaves were not finally freed until long after that.
But there was no mistaking something crucial: in an
astonishingly short period of time, public opinion in
Europes most powerful nation had undergone a sea
change. From this unexpected transformation there
would be no going back.
Never doubt, said Margaret Mead, that a small group
of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
adam hocshchild, Bury the Chains

105

106

What does it mean to resist? What exactly is being resisted?

In the case of the Congolese Sapeurs, the resistance is sartorial,
and it is perhaps the cycle of war and poverty to which they are
declining an invitation.
In French, the word saper means to dress elegantly. In Congo, theyve
turned it into an acronym for a subculture: S.A.P.E.Socit des Ambianceurs et des Personnes lgantes, or Society of Ambiance-creators and
Elegant People.
Most Sapeurs are ordinary working men who take extraordinary pride in their
presentation. They often seek out high-fashion designer brands like Gucci or
Prada. Some veteran Sapeurs have saved up for years to acquire well-tailored
luxury suits and croc-leather shoes; those new to the movement often rent or buy
second-hand.
In a country where war is the norm and free-speech is censored, the Sapeurs stand
apart. Their motto is Lets drop the weapons and dress elegantly. But without having to
actually say a word, their behavior speaks volumes. fwr

what does a resistance

movement look like ?

White people invented the clothes,

but we make an art of it.

papa wemba, famous Congolese Sapeur

and Rumba Musician

sekombi is a filmmaker, activist, entrepreneur and award-winning dancer. As a

teenager, he started a community center
in his native city of Goma. Over ten years,
artists, dancers, filmmakers and creatives
of all kinds gathered there to express
themselves. He began channeling that
energy into a radio stationMutaani FM.
Today this Congolese media company now
includes a magazine, recording studio and
record label. Every day over the airwaves,
Sekombi and his crew of young journalists pioneer free-speech in a warzone.

amanis name means peace-warrior

in Swahili. And he lives up to his name.
He believes the solutions to Congos problems are all around the Congolese. Whether its a shopping center or a beauty salon,
a coffee farm or an internet cafe, Amani
works with Congolese entrepreneurs to
build their skill, scale, and ultimately,
their vision. He leads FW in Congo.

blaise lives in Bukavu, the capital city

of South Kivu, and a border town in
Congos conflict region. Blaise noticed
that his country was importing a pricey
malaria treatment whose main ingredient
was quinine. He asked, if Quinine grows
all over Congo, why are we importing it?
Blaise has since created the infrastructure
for a sustainable business, using Congolese
agriculture and processing to get low-cost
malaria treatment to hundreds of thousands of people.
justine and her family are from North
Kivu, a province that has known war and
rape for over a decade. A region where sexual violence was once deliberately overlooked. In 2002 Justine decided to change
that. She rallied a coalition of womens
rights groups and became their bullheaded
leader, demanding global action against
the rape epidemic in eastern Congo. That
coalition is now called Synergie. Synergie
works to physically and psychologically
restore women, expose rapists, and bring
these abusers to justice.

110

In 2011, Congo held its third election in history.

Immediately after the polls opened, voters
started texting each other furiously regarding
THE BALLOTS. Some ballots were burned, some
polling stations had no ballots at all, and others
had ballots pre-filled and stuffed for Kabila. Text
messages flew in and out of the country. Many
of them went to Mutaani Radio in Goma. The
team there shared everything online and over
the airwaves instantly. Though the news wasnt
good, it was extraordinary. The Congolese
people were monitoring their own elections,
sharing information in near real-time. For the
first time, a people who had been cut off from
the rest of the world and each other were able to
speak the truthand be heard.
Three days into the voting process, President
Kabila shut down SMS across the country. The
flow of information stopped. Violence grew.
Police and protesters clashed in the streets.
Journalists who had been reporting on the vote
received threats. Hundreds of people were
murdered by forces aligned with the government.
Dozens of whistleblowers were kidnapped from
their homes and disappeared.

Years ago when the only channel in Congo was

SMS, the government could silence dissent
with the switch of a button. By 2016, as new
technology becomes increasingly available to
the Congolese4G balloons, WiFi, social media,
satellitescommunication wont be so simple
to control.
Today it is possible to have daily encounters with
people from all corners of the earth. You can
skype a friend on a farm in India, in a skyscraper
overlooking Abu Dhabi, or in the jungle of Congo.
For those who have enjoyed this privilege, it has
become an expectation. We wake up every day
expecting to be able speak with people from
anywhere. To be able to work with people from
anywhere. We are already casually creating
music, art, films, businesses, movements,
experiences, together from multiple continents,
in multiple languages, on a regular basis.

110

What will this do to our priorities? Our

perceptions. Our decisions. Our interpretations.
Our political opinions, or lack thereof.
We can now see each other, in all our splendor
and absurdity. We can chose a street in Hong
Kong and zoom down to stare at the cracks
and pebbles. If given the choice, would we
allow our governments to drop a bomb on that
same street?
Our astronauts who lifted above the skies
and looked back to see the earth were forever
changed. As the world online lifts above national
boundaries and continental limitations, how will
it change us?
fwr

Spread s by nina brav

But as the distances between us draw to a

close, the voices of the oppressed will not be so
easily silenced.

Coercion and censorship may have won

Kabila this election, but suppressing the truth
wont always be a viable strategy, in Congo
or anywhere.

we can now see each other, in all our splendor

and absurdity. we can chose a street in hong
kong and zoom down to stare at the cracks
and pebbles. if given the choice, would we
allow our governments to drop a bomb on
that same street?

110

our astronauts who lifted above the skies

and looked back to see the earth were
forever changed. as the world online lifts
above national boundaries and continental
limitations, how will it change us?

IPhotos by abby ross

Fifty years ago, when Patrice Lumumba said the

Congolese would rule not by the peace of guns
and bayonets, but by a peace of the heart and
will, we could not hear him. Western media
hardly broadcast it; there were few headlines.
And certainly seventy years before that, when
King Leopold IIs men invaded Congo, we could
not hear the ten million Congolese who lost their
lives so we could drive on rubber tires.

110

110

110

UNITED
STATES.
1775 - 76

thomas paine

An Englishman publishes a pamphlet arguing

against monarchy and colonialism. Common
Sense spreads like wildfire and ultimately inspires
the ideology behind the American Revolution.

UNITED
STATES.
1852

harriet beecher stowe

Stowes novel Uncle Toms Cabin exposes the reality of slavery to those who have never witnessed
it. It is the best-selling book of the 19th century
and helps lay the groundwork for the abolitionist
movement in the U.S.
TUNISI A.
2011

All change begins local.

All local change begins
with a whistleblower.

GER M A N Y.
1942 - 43

white rose movement

A group of University students create and distribute pamphlets and organize graffiti campaigns
exposing Nazi atrocities and war crimes. In 1943,
the Allied Forces air-drop millions of copies of
their final pamphlet over Germany.

SENEGA L.
2011

INDI A.
1930

sidi bouzid

An antagonized, marginalized fruit

salesman, ignored by his local
governor, sets himself on fire and
ignites the Arab Spring.

june 23rd movement

In 2011, President Aboulaye Wade makes moves to

grant himself a third term in office. A fierce movement rises in opposition. In March of 2012 Wade
peacefully hands power to his elected successor.

sa lt m a r c h

Gandhi symbolically breaks the British colonial

governments exploitative, irrational salt taxes
and production laws, inciting nationwide boycotts
and strikes.

UK R A INE.
2004

the orange revolution

Upon hearing reports of a corrupt,

stolen election, thousands from all
over the Ukraine gather to protest in
Kiev with the color orange as their
symbol. The results of the original
election are annulled. A new free
and fair election sees that the true
winner takes office.

TURK EY.
2013

the standing man

After weeks of violent clashes between police and

citizen protesters, performance artist Erdem
Gunduz stands in silent vigil against the demolition
of an Istanbul Park. Hundreds follow, his message
goes viral.

SERBI A.
1998 - 2000

otpor

A nationwide network of youth activist groups rally

together to topple a 13-year dictatorship through
boycotts, protests and propaganda campaigns,
breaking the culture of fear and silence.

One person willing to

say out loud what others
have kept silent.

K EN YA.
2013

occupy parliament

In Nairobi, a group of over 200 Kenyans stage

dramatic protests against their parliamentarians
exorbitantly high salaries. The legislators agree
to accept a pay cut of roughly 40% .

114

As I talk to young people around the world I am impressed

not by the diversity but by the closeness of their goals, their
desires and their concerns, and their hope for the future.
There is discrimination in New York, racial inequality in
South Africa, and serfdom in the mountains of Peru. People
starve in the streets of India, a former Prime Minister is
summarily executed in the Congo, intellectuals go to jail
in Russia, and thousands are slaughtered in Indonesia;
wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere in the world.
These are differing evils; but they are the common works of
man. They reflect the imperfections of human justice, the
inadequacy of human compassion, the defectiveness of our
sensibility toward the sufferings of our fellows; they mark
the limit of our ability to use knowledge for the well-being of our fellow human beings throughout the world. And
therefore they call upon common qualities of conscience
and indignation, a shared determination to wipe away the
unnecessary sufferings of our fellow human beings at home
and around the world.
It is these qualities which make of youth today the only true
international community. More than this I think that we
could agree on what kind of a world we would all want to
build. It would be a world of independent nations, moving
toward international community, each of which protected
and respected the basic human freedoms. It would be a
world which demanded of each government that it accept its
responsibility to ensure social justice. It would be a world of
constantly accelerating economic progressnot material
welfare as an end in itself, but as a means to liberate the
capacity of every human being to pursue his talents and
to pursue his hopes. It would, in short, be a world that we
would be proud to have built.
Our answer is the worlds hope; it is to rely on youth. The
cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet
will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It
cannot be moved by those who cling to a present which is
already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the
excitement and danger which comes with even the most
peaceful progress.
This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life
but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the
imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of
the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. It is a revolutionary world we live in, and it is young people who must
take the lead. You, and your young compatriots everywhere,
have had thrust upon you a greater burden of responsibility
than any generation that has ever lived.
There is, said an Italian philosopher, nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more
uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Yet this is the measure
of the task of your generation, and the road is strewn with
many dangers.
First, is the danger of futility: the belief there is nothing one
man or one woman can do against the enormous array of

A third danger is timidity. Few men

are willing to brave the disapproval
of their fellows, the censure of their
colleagues, the wrath of their society.
Moral courage is a rarer commodity
than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital
quality of those who seek to change a
world which yields most painfully to
change. I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter
the moral conflict will find themselves
with companions in every corner of
the world.

the worlds illsagainst misery and ignorance, injustice

and violence. Yet many of the worlds greatest movements,
of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single
man. A young monk began the Protestant Reformation, a
young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the
borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the
territory of France. It was the thirty-two-year-old Thomas
Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal.
Give me a place to stand, said Archimedes, and I will
move the world. These men moved the world, and so can
we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but
each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and
in the total of all those acts will be written the history of
this generation. Thousands of unknown men and women in
Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died,
but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their
countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage
and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man
stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others,
or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple
of hope, and crossing each other from a million different
centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current
which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression
and resistance. If Athens shall appear great to you, said
Pericles, consider then that her glories were purchased by
valiant men, and by men who learned their duty. That is
the source of all greatness in all societies, and it is the key
to progress in our time.

114

114

The second danger is that of expediency; of those who say

that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities. Of course, if we would act effectively we must deal
with the world as it is. We must get things done. But if there
was one thing President Kennedy stood for that touched the
most profound feelings of young people around the world,
it was the belief that idealism, high aspirations, and deep
convictions are not incompatible with the most practical
and efficient of programsthat there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities, no separation between the deepest desires of heart and of mind and
the rational application of human effort to human problems. It is not realistic or hardheaded to solve problems and
take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values,
although we all know some who claim that it is so. In my
judgment, it is thoughtless folly. For it ignores the realities
of human faith and of passion and of belief-forces ultimately more powerful than all of the calculations of our economists or of our generals. Of course to adhere to standards,
to idealism, to vision in the face of immediate dangers
takes great courage and takes self-confidence. But we also
know that only those who dare to fail greatly can ever
achieve greatly.

For the fortunate among us, the fourth

danger is comfort, the temptation to
follow the easy and familiar paths
of personal ambition and financial
success so grandly spread before those
who have the privilege of education.
But that is not the road history has
marked out for us. There is a Chinese
curse which says May he live in interesting times. Like it or not we live in
interesting times. They are times of
danger and uncertainty; but they are
also more open to the creative energy
of men than any other time in history.
And everyone here will ultimately judge
himself on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society
and the extent to which his ideals and
goals have shaped that effort.
We areif a man of forty can claim
that privilegefellow members of
the worlds largest younger generation.
Each of us has our own work to do. I
know at times you must feel very alone
with your problems and difficulties.
And I hope you will often take heart
from the knowledge that you are joined
with fellow young people in every land,
they struggling with their problems
and you with yours, but all joined in a
common purpose; that, like the young
people of my own country and of every
country I have visited, you are all in
many ways more closely united to the
brothers of your time than to the older
generations of any of these nations;
and that you are determined to build
a better future.

It is this new idealism which is also, I believe, the common

heritage of a generation which has learned that while efficiency can lead to the camps at Auschwitz, or the streets of
Budapest, only the ideals of humanity and love can climb
the hills of the Acropolis.

bobby kennedy,
Day of Affirmation Speech,
University of South Africa June 6th 1966

114

114

115

115

T H ER E A R E

Alexis de Tocqueville once described what

he saw as a chief part of the peculiar genius
of American societysomething he called
self-interest properly understood. The last
two words were the key. Everyone possesses
self-interest in a narrow sense: I want whats
good for me right now! Self-interest properly understood is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone elses
self-interestin other words, the common
welfareis in fact a precondition for ones
own ultimate well-being. Tocqueville was
not suggesting that there was anything noble
or idealistic about this outlookin fact, he
was suggesting the opposite. It was a mark of
American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for
the other guy isnt just good for the soul
its good for business.

two

American Dreams
T H E F I R ST IS A DR E A M OF L I BE RT Y a

world wher e a l l a r e bor n fr e e. Fr e e to

say, t h i n k , a nd b el ieve a c cor d i ng to our ow n va lue s. To l ive, love, d r ea m
a nd d ie a c cor d i ng to our ow n t ra d it ion s. In excha nge, we a g r e e to a ct i n a
way t hat do e s not l i m it a not hers fr e e dom.

T H E SECON D IS A DR E A M OF I N DI V I DUA L PROSPE R I T Y a

joseph stiglitz, Of the 1%, by the 1%, for

the 1%, Vanity Fair

115

115

world wher e we a r e
ea ch fr e e to do what ever we mu st to get a hea d , no mat t er t he i mpa ct.
Fool the customer, exploit the sucker, oppress the other, prey on the weak,
drive up the margin, bury the cost.
To day s A mer ica is much bigger t ha n her nat iona l bord er s. It i nclud e s
t he g loba l s y st em t hat she dom i nat e s. It sp e ci f ica l ly i nclud e s t he
develop e d Nor t h.
A nd so we mu st a sk a ga i n what so ma ny generat ion s have a ske d :
What dream will we fight for?
T he one t hat g ive s u s t he mo st b enef it s t he fa st e st ? Or t he one t hat cr eat e s
t he mo st fr e e dom a nd oppor t u n it y for t he mo st p eople ?
T he r evolut iona r y pro sp e ct of our t i me may ju st b e t hat our fr e e dom,
pro sp er it y a nd s e cur it y a r e complet ely a nd ir r ever sibly i nt erd e p end ent w it h
ever yone el s es fr e e dom, pro sp er it y a nd s e cur it y. T hat our g loba l pol it ic s,
e conom ic s a nd p er sona l sa fet y a r e i n fa ct caug ht i n what Dr. K i ng ca l le d
a n i ne s ca pa ble net work of mut ua l it y. I f t he r is e of t er ror ism ha s taug ht u s
a ny t h i ng, it is t hat we a r e no longer sa fe from t he out ra ge of t he oppr e s s e d.
Our choic e t hen b e come s t he sa me a s t ho s e who t h r ive d u nd er a s y st em of
slaver y : cont i nue to f ig ht for cont rol, or s et p eople fr e e.
fwr

115

115

free & fair elections

CONGO 2016

congo

2016

A CLARION CALL
Congos great wars are a product of world history
and a function of the current global economic
system. Understanding and acknowledging this
is only the first step in arriving at solutions.

CONGO 2016

fr ee & fair elections

CONGO 2016

free & fair elections

There are three very concrete

goals the world can support
to see peace in Congo.

2016
While dictators remain in office decade after decade, and are allowed to
wage war through proxy rebels, there can be no peace. Standing shoulder
to shoulder with the Congolese, international governments can provide
the political, diplomatic, technological and logistical support to make
these elections free and fair.

free

fair

an end to impunity

an

conflict free

FUT UR E

end

future

FUT UR E

FUT UR E

conflict free

conflict free

an end to impunity

an end to impunity

The warlords who have terrorized civilians in Congo must be driven from
the battlefield, and face public trials. In the spirit of The Nuremberg
Tribunals, a collaborative judicial process should support Congolese
courts with international judges to ensure transparency and due process.
Without justice, there can be no peace.

The development of a CO N FLI C T- FR E E E XP O RT ECO N O MY could allow

Congos vast supply of resources to finally benefit its own people, create
enormous wealth for the region and provide more resources for a
modernizing global society.

to

impunity

conflict

free

123

123

You are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on Earth at a time when every living
system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating.
When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look
at the science about what is happening on Earth and arent pessimistic, you dont understand the data. But
if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you arent optimistic, you havent got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront
despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to
this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who,
age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world. There could be no better
description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refugee camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries
ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams.
Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that
were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly
interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because
the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come
true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which
are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without
those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each
human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of
processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity
in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at
any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a
millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes
than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what
Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover
that each living creature was a little universe, formed of a
host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and
as numerous as the stars of heaven.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on
the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it
seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. It works behind the
scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope,
support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made
up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government
workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets,
doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America,
and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.
There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and
then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in
humanitys willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider.

123

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their
bad advice, is Mary Olivers description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.
Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of
strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights
of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The
founders of this movement were largely unknown Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood
and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were
enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement
was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives,
do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into
poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would
never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit.
And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society,
schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and
environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled
in history.

123

The living world is not out there somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words
of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better
motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of
thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how
to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an
economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain
it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you cant print life to bail out a planet. At present we are
stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily
have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for
the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever
we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get
rich, it is a way to be rich.

123

126

So I have two questions for you all: First, can

you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel
your body. One septillion activities going
on simultaneously, and your body does
this so well you are free to ignore it, and
wonder instead when this speech will end.
You can feel it. It is called life. This is who
you are. Second question: who is in charge
of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is
creating the conditions that are conducive
to life inside you, just as in all of nature.
Our innate nature is to create the conditions
that are conducive to life. What I want you
to imagine is that collectively humanity is
evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming
together to heal the wounds and insults of
the past.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we
would do if the stars only came out once
every thousand years.
No one would sleep that night, of course.
The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made
rapturous by the glory of God. Instead,
the stars come out every night and we
watch television.

126

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has
never happened, not in a thousand years,
not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as
complex and beautiful as all the stars in the
universe. We have done great things and we
have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most
amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before
you failed. They didnt stay up all night.
They got distracted and lost sight of the fact
that life is a miracle every moment of your
existence. Nature beckons you to be on her
side. You couldnt ask for a better boss. The
most unrealistic person in the world is the
cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes
sense when it doesnt make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as
if your life depends on it.
paul hawkens, Commencement Speech to the University of Portland Class of 2009

126

VOICES
BOOK S
timothy garton ash
Free World: America, Europe,
And The Surprising Future Of The West.
Random House, 2004.

A RTICLES
DR Congos M23 rebels: Rwandan support
falling.
The BBC, July 2013.

niall ferguson
Civilization: The West And The Rest.
Penguin Press, 2011.

slavoj zizek
Drilling into Hearts of Darkness.
The Sydney Morning Herald, October
2011.

john perkins
Confessions of an Economic Hitman
Berret-Koehler Publishers, 2004.

dr. jason hickel

How to Occupy the World.
Common Dreams, Dec. 2011.

eric wolf
Europe and the People Without History
University of California Press, 1982.

joseph stiglitz
Of the 1% , by the 1% , for the 1% .
Vanity Fair, May 2011.

adam hochschild
King Leopolds Ghost: A Story of Greed,
Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa.
Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

r. brian ferguson
Ten Points on War.
Social Analysis, 2008.

adam hochschild
Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels
in the Fight to Free an Empires Slaves.
Houghton Mifflin, 2005.
howard zinn
A Peoples History of the United States:
1492Present.
HarperCollins, 2003.
jason k. stearns
Dancing In The Glory Of Monsters:
The Collapse Of The Congo And The
Great War Of Africa.
PublicAffairs, 2011.
james w. loewen
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything
Your American History Textbook Got
Wrong.
New Press, 1995.
georges nzongola-ntalaja
The Congo From Leopold To Kabila:
A Peoples History.
Zed Books, 2002.
naomi klein
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of
Disaster Capitalism.
Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2007.
neumann, elisabeth.
The Spiral Of Silence: Public Opinion,
Our Social Skin.
University of Chicago Press, 1984.

jeffrey gettleman
The Global Elites Favorite Strongman.
The New York Times, Sept. 2013.
armin rosen
The Origins of War in the DRC.
The Atlantic, June 2013.

REPORTS
Coming Clean: How Supply Chain
Controls can Stop Congos Minerals Trade
Fueling Conflict
Global Witness, 2012.
globalwitness.com
The Hammarskjold Commision
2013
hammarskjoldcommission.org
jocelyn kelly
Rape in War: Motives of Militia in the
DRC.
United States Institute of Peace, 2010.
Natural Resource and Trade Flows in the
Great Lakes Region.
Initiative for Central Africa, 2011.
Congolese Mining Primer
US Embassy in Kinshasa Diplomatic Cable
2005
WikiLeaks, 2011.

Bibliography

jeffrey gettleman
The Price of Precious.
National Geographic, Oct. 2013.

FILMS
The Century of the Self
dir. adam curtis
BN Pub., 2006.

The Vice Guide to Congo

Hosted by alison suroosh alvi
Vice Media, 2011.

roger casement

suroosh alvi

noam chomsky
romeo dallaire

Creative Director
sean
carasso

sir. arthur conan doyle

henry drummond

Art Director
mario
salangsang

Editor-in-Chief
rebeca
arango

ellsworth faris
Senior Editor
monique beadle

r. brian ferguson
jeffrey gettleman
john f. kennedy

Art & Design

robert f. kennedy

dexsy
repuyan

dr. martin luther king jr.

naomi klein

daniel n.
johnson

paul hawkens
dr. jason hickel
adam hochschild
herbert hoover

fred hoyle

PU B L I S H E D

papy kamanzi

by

primo levi

F R E E WOR L D PU BL I S H I NG

james w. loewen

s u b s c r i b e at w w w. f r e e world r ea d er.c om

juliana lumumba

patrice lumumba

The End of Poverty?

dir. philippe diaz
Cinema Libre Studio, 2010.

timothy garton ash

F R EE WOR L D
READER

jean monnet

AC C E P T I NG C O N T R I BU T IO N S

e.d. morel

writers, artists, and storytellers

georges nzongola-ntalaja

submit your ideas to:

h.w.o. okoth-ogendo

editor@ f r e e world r ea d er.c om

juergen osterhammel

armin rosen
W EBSITES
congo siasa
Congosiasa.blogspot.com
the united nations
un.org
human rights watch
hrw.org

CONTRIBUTORS

joshua ariza
neil bardon
justin bauer
nina brav
justin kasereka
matt metzner
kate morris
marcus price
emma schmidt
teddy sczudlo
cun shi
paul solis
grayson stebbins
capers rumph
will watson
grayson stebbins
marcus price

CONTRIBUTING
PHOTOGRAPHERS

breton carasso
abby ross
daniel n. johnson

FALLING WHISTLES TEAM

david lewis
anders olsson
joey rubin
amani matabaro
miad ballai
madison bigg
umba peggy monga
kaylee tersini

arundhati roy
mobutu sese seko
tony soprano
henry morton stanley
jason stearns
joseph stiglitz
michael watts
papa wemba
oscar wilde
malcolm x
howard zinn
slavoj zizek

SPECIAL THANKS TO

the whistler society

daily dose
for the coffee, breakfast, and love.
everyone who has worked,
in their own way, to tell
a truth worth telling.

129

129

So here it is. Issue 0. In one way or another, weve wanted to make

this piece since the very beginning.

The violence of our past has created the violence of our present. To create
a different tomorrow, we must begin shifting our patterns today.

For most us at FW, we knew nothing about Congo. Until we did. And
then we couldnt stop learning. Each of us discovered this great and
beautiful country in our own way. And each of us looked into her eyes
through our own unique lens. But there was one thing we all held
in common: the deep sense that a situation like this couldnt just
continue unchallenged.

Free World Reader, Issue 0, is the beginning of a real effort to consider

our options. It is an exploration, not an explanation. Not a blueprint, an
exacting map, or a definitive guide. It is the first step in a longer journey
to answer the fundamental question plaguing so many who face our
world honestly:

We are Italian, Swedish, Jewish, Persian, Congolese, Mexican,

Native American, Greek, German, Filipino, Brazilian, Norwegian,
British, and we are alternately Texans, Californians, New Yorkers,
Alabamians, Oregonians, kids from the streets of D.C., and many
other things. Still, growing up in America comes with its own
vantage pointas does growing up anywhereand it is worth
acknowledging ours.
I myself was raised on the border. A few miles from all that is Mexico.
The thing about borders is, they tend to provoke questions to which
there are no good answers. This is especially true of borders with
great disparities in prosperity. Cross a line, arrive in another world.
Those who walk them find themselves repeatedly wondering
why? Its the same way we felt when we began to look at the borders
between Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. Too many questions.
Not nearly enough answers.
There is much to disagree about in this rapidly shifting world.
We face a seemingly constant flood of competing issues, visions,
ideologies and cultural movements which push us to draw a line
in the sand and isolate ourselves from those across the borders and
divisions of our minds.
Our hope is we can agree on this: non-violence is superior to
violence. The twenty-first century opens at the dawn of a new era
of technological possibility, and reeling from the generational
shockwaves that shook the century many of us were born in.
The 20th.
129

It is worth acknowledging our Editor and my partner in crime, Rebeca

Arango. I can say definitively that without her, this project would never
have come to be. She has devoured vast swathes of information and
come back with lucid, insightful, and at times hilarious responses. She
may be the youngest member of the team, but she leads us with a quiet
courage. A deep confidence that, day after day of pages and images, we
will meet our deadline and present a piece we can be proud of. And of
course, the one and only, Mario Salangsang. It is my humble opinion

that as a young communicator, he has few peers. It has been an honor to

work alongside his colorful brilliance these last few years.
It is also worth acknowledging every intern, staff, volunteer, advisor,
eager questioner, calloused critic, seasoned mind, and young searcher
who has worked with FW these last five years. Many of you sold possessions
and gave up personal stability to create a coalition for peace in Congo.
You have our unending gratitude. This book is dedicated to you.
And finally, to the millions who have survived the Congo wars. We can
say only that we join Lumumba in what became his final words. I know
and I feel in my heart that sooner or later my people will rid themselves
of all their enemies, both internal and external, and that they will rise
as one man to say no to the degradation and shame of colonialism, and
regain their dignity in the clear light of the sun.
No one is more conscious of how much was not said in this issue than
we are. How many authors not included. How many perspectives not
shared. How many relevant statistics, articles, poems and reports, cut off
the page and thrown to the floor. Issue 0 is hardly exhaustive. But it is
valuable. Because it is a beginning.
And such is how all spirals shift directions. With a simple step in the
opposite direction of momentum.
sean d. carasso
129

Oscar wilde

Admittedly, the team who put this together is an overwhelmingly

American one. We were born in different parts of our own great and
beautiful country. A country of unprecedented cultural collisions.
Each of us was raised in a different situation. Born of parents with
wildly different perspectives. On politics and religion. Money and
lifestyle. Race and region. Culture and tribe.

History tells us that all great shifts have small beginnings. Peace
in Congo, or peace anywhere for that matter, wont come in a single
dramatic leap. It will be the accumulation of millions of steps, day after
day, away from oppression and toward liberty.

but
some
of
us
are
staring
at
the
stars.
-

It was then that we began thinking about what it would look like
to pick apart the very best of that information, and put it together
into a clear and cohesive piece. To take the moments that had most
challenged our thinking, inspired our conscience, or pushed us to
consider other perspectives, and share them as one for the world
to see.

What do we do?

we
are
all
in
th e
g u tte r ,

As we dug further, we unearthed a hundred years of books, reports,

essays, articles, films and propaganda surrounding a century of
conflict and exploitation. The information was often as compelling
and rich in detail as it was dense and challenging to understand.
To our eyes, it may as well have been written in another language.