From: Phil deHaan (dehp@calvin.edu)
Date: Fri Dec 06 2002 - 09:17:17 EST
December 9, 2002 == FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Central African countries of Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC) face a plethora of crippling challenges, including genocide and
civil war, according to Alex Laskaris, a policy planning staff member with the
U.S. State Department and an expert on Central African affairs, who spoke
recently to a capacity crowd of students and faculty at Calvin College.
But that African "Great Lakes” region (named for the three countries'
proximity to Central Africa’s Rift Valley lakes) is not without hope said
Laskaris.
In the DRC a cease-fire plan called the Lukasa Agreement brought armed
combatants and practitioners of non-violent opposition together at the
negotiating table. And in all three countries civil society — including
religious organizations — provides such tangibles as health care and
education, while also serving as witnesses to injustice.
Hope however needs a hand in Central Africa. And that's where other countries,
including the United States, need to play a role. "This is a region," he said,
"where one of the world’s most dire sustained humanitarian emergencies is
taking place below the radar screen."
Laskaris said it's time to get Central Africa on the radar.
"It (Central Africa) matters," he told the Calvin audience, "because the line
between our security and everyone elses’, and the line between our prosperity
and everybody elses’, is only going to get blurrier. It matters because
individually and collectively, Americans can be galvanized into action by
suffering and injustice, and they demand a response from their government."
But, Laskaris acknowledged, each of the three countries needs a different kind
of assistance.
In the Congo the challenge is to build a legitimate and viable state where none
has ever existed. Warlords continue to be the biggest threat to stabilization.
Said Laskaris: "In anarchic regions of the world, we face a challenge that is
part 'Lord of the Flies' and part 'The Road Warrior' – armed non-state actors,
often using child soldiers as shock troops, who sustain themselves through
localized economic activities."
Rwanda, the most densely populated country in Africa, still suffers the legacy
of a somewhat stable regime that actually promoted genocide, advocating the
massacre of some 800,000 citizens in 1994 alone.
"A society eight years removed from the violent massacre of one-eighth of its
population requires unique instruments and solutions," said Laskaris.
The specter of genocide also haunts densely populated Burundi where, in 1974,
the minority government targeted for murder anyone who could comprise a future
leadership class, a strategy that bedevils the peace process to this day. And
Burundi, the country at greatest risk for more mass violence in Laskaris'
opinion, still does not have a cease-fire agreement.
Corwin Smidt, director of Calvin's Paul Henry Institute for the Study of
Christianity and Politics (which hosted the event), said it is important for
Americans to lean on the expertise of Laskaris and others.
"Africa," said Smidt, "is not on the radar screen of most Americans. But, as
(Laskaris) suggested, these things have ramifications throughout the world
today. We need to be much more informed than we are."
~with reporting by media relations staff writer Myrna Anderson
-end-
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