LONDON: A humanitarian catastrophe more overwhelming than Afghanistan grips the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). United Nations figures suggest that two million people are displaced, and estimates of the number killed in the past half-dozen years of this invisible war range from one million to three million.

This week the UN has announced two human rights inquiries into different areas in the eastern part of the DRC; the international court of justice at the Hague has also started hearing a case between the DRC and neighbouring Rwanda; and the UN’s mission in the DRC — MONUC — has had its mandate prolonged for a year.

Earlier this year, hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent by the international community on seven weeks of peace talks in Sun City, South Africa, between the various Congolese factions. The political talks produced a power-sharing formula, but no resolution in the east.

Meanwhile, the social and political crisis is worsening. A report from Human Rights Watch on the war in the east reveals a level of sexual violence against women and a barbarity which local doctors describe as unprecedented.

The DRC is a product of colonialism, too vast and diverse to be a viable country. The atmosphere in Goma in the east is instantly recognisable as East Africa, while Kinshasa feels like Guinea, Senegal or Angola. The eastern provinces of the Kivus have long been regarded as a bastion of opposition to central government, and since 1993, when a violent land dispute broke out, there has not been a day of peace.

The fabulous wealth of the DRC’s mining industry (gold, cobalt, diamonds, copper, cadmium, coltan and germanium) has long made it a magnet for unscrupulous outsiders.

The new, post-cold-war DRC shows little sign of being different. The fundamental power struggle remains for the wealth of the country.

Meanwhile, the formal economy and the state have virtually collapsed over much of the country.

The catastrophic condition of the people is even worse than under former President Mobutu. The vast majority of the country eats less than two-thirds of the calories needed to maintain health, and 70 per cent of the population have no access to healthcare.

Since 1996 this tragic place has been at the centre of a series of wars that have greatly contributed to the continent’s impoverishment.

For the three close neighbours in the east — Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi — war in the DRC threatens chronic instability.

The poison which feeds it now is the continuing presence in the DRC of 12,000 or so armed former combatants from the days of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

After they and thousands more fled into exile in the DRC they were initially used by President Laurent Desire Kabila against his former backers, the government of Rwanda.

In the lawless east, where numerous militias of shifting alliances make much of the region a no-go area, the Interahamwe militia and ex-soldiers from Rwanda remain a significant factor.

Over the years, thousands of them have returned voluntarily to Rwanda or been captured. Peace talks, UN inquiries into human rights violations and international court cases are distractions from the central issue of who will disarm this group of men, who have caused so much suffering.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.