World’s deadliest war ignored, says Kobia on eve of Congo elections

by Peter Kenny
Ecumenical News International 

GENEVA — There is “an eerie silence” surrounding the “most deadly of all wars,” World Council of Churches’ head, the Rev. Samuel Kobia, has told churches in the Democratic Republic of Congo before the country’s first democratic elections in 46 years. 
 
     WCC general secretary Kobia, in a pastoral letter to member churches in the DRC ahead of the July 30 elections, has appealed to Congolese leaders — and to the wider world — to provide resources and good governance to enable progress in the central African country that has the largest UN peacekeeping force in the world. 
 
     “Without money from the developed world to rebuild, without more peacekeepers to protect the innocent, without the genuine commitment of whomever leaders the Congo chooses and without Africa’s own leadership empowering the heart of Africa, these elections will not bring any progress, and millions of people will have died in vain and millions more face the same future,” Kobia’s letter warns. 
 
     The WCC is the world’s largest grouping of churches, made up of mainly Anglican, Orthodox and Protestant churches representing about 560 million Christians, and it has 11 member churches in Christian-majority Congo, where the Roman Catholic Church is the largest denomination.  
 
     “The elections will cost almost US$500 million and should be carried out in an atmosphere of national unity and reconciliation, but there is every possibility that they could cause even greater division,” Kobia warns. He speaks of “senseless devastation” in the former Belgian colony and of “the wanton killings of your beautiful people in the worst wars in Africa’s history,” referring to a country with 62 million people, bordered by nine nations, some with their own bloody conflicts. 
 
     “The largest and most expensive peacekeeping operation in the world with 19,000 soldiers can barely keep itself intact, let alone protect the lives of the terrified population. MONUC [the UN peacekeeping force] has also been charged with trying to arrange the elections in a country almost the size of Western Europe … , lacking roads, electricity, telephones and local governments,” says Kobia. “It is also trying to assist 2 million people displaced by war in Eastern Congo, stave off 20,000 militiamen and protect humanitarian agencies which has become the single most ambitious project the world body has undertaken in its history.  
 
     “Yet, there is an eerie silence surrounding this most deadly of all wars in the world today. In February this year, the UN and humanitarian aid agencies asked the world for US$682 million for the displaced and hungry and sick,” said Kobia. “So far, as we write this, they have received just $94 million, or $9.40 per person. By comparison last year’s tsunami appeal raised $550 per person.”