Word: congos
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There can be no greater indictment of a peacekeeping mission than when it is attacked by the people it was sent to protect. But that is what's happening to the U.N.'s biggest peacekeeping mission, the 17,000 blue helmets in the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C.) known by the French acronym MONUC. On Monday, one person died when hundreds of protesters attacked the mission in the eastern Congolese city of Goma, on the border with Rwanda. The protesters say the U.N. is not doing enough to protect them from an advancing rebel army. Several U.N. compounds...
...crossing the border from neighboring Rwanda at the end of the genocide there in 1994. In some ways - such as how the conflict has sucked in armies from across Africa and how it has often descended into a fight over the region's plentiful natural resources - the war in Congo is immeasurably more complicated than the one in Rwanda. But in other ways, it's a direct sequel. The rebels now advancing on Goma, for instance, are led by General Laurent Nkunda, an ethnic Tutsi fighting remnant Rwandan Hutu militias...
...according to humanitarian NGO the International Rescue Committee, the war in Congo - which escalated into a full-scale civil war in 1998 that lasted until 2003, and still erupts periodically, as now - has killed 5.4 million people, mostly through hunger and disease...
...world prices for oil and minerals have soared in recent years, rebel groups in Chad, Sudan, Congo and elsewhere are trading valuable oil and mineral deposits in their regions for arms. Rather than seek the backing of friendly foreign officials - as Dos Santos allegedly did in the mid-'90s - combatants can now bulk up on their own dime. "Each group raises its own funds and then negotiates to buy weapons," says Will Hartley of Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center in London. "Gone are the days when governments will send weapons and cash into African states...
...nearly $36 billion in endowments, have become serious players in international programs. It will provide $66 million to the project, while the Howard G. Buffett Foundation will give $9 million; another $750,000 will come from the Belgian government for aid programs only in the Democratic Republic of Congo. "It sets a very important example," says von Braun. It could also change the WFP itself from a purely humanitarian organization into one which helps poor farmers - and so ultimately weans millions off food aid. Says Shah of the Gates Foundation: "This is a market-based initiative." Open markets...