Comments on issues raised by BBC WHYS

Army reinforcements have been sent to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where an offensive is planned against a renegade general’s forces.

DR Congo is a vast country with a big population and enormous resources. It’s a country that is difficult to govern without risking political and social instability. From its creation, it was governed by iron fist as democracy in it was stifled by its late and long running president Joseph Mobutu for more than 30 years.

It’s interesting to see that this huge country was occupied by a very small European country, Belgium. The similarity between the two is they have ethnic groups. Belgium population is ethnically various, but it has kept together under one constitution. In DR Congo, tribalism is the source of its divisions.

The tragedy of many African countries is that they are ruled on tribal lines. The Rwanda genocide in 1994, to the indifference of the world, was carried out because of tribal enmity in this country between the Hutu and the Tutsis. In DR Congo the civil war lingered because of the desire to keep to power on tribal line instead of ruling on democratic basis. This country remains under external influence, especially from neighbouring countries siding with one side or the other. The misfortune of DR Congo is that it is in the centre of Africa where its trouble isn’t a grievous danger to world peace. The best thing it can do is to keep a large UN peacekeeping force to keep the country calm to the minimum.

As for the rebels to lay their arms, this has to do with the will of the government in Kinshasa to integrate the rebels in power sharing. But it seems each side depends on its armed forces to keep it challenging the other at the expense of the progress this country it can enjoy in view of its enormous natural resources. Ironically, these resources income evaporate in arms purchase when many of the population are under abject poverty or dying because their means for survival are used to spill blood.

Many groups and governments in Africa are known for breaking their agreements as soon as they sign them. The rebels and the government in DR Congo can come to a deal but the desire to keep to power on the part of the government and the desire of the rebels to have more than the government can accept will put things to square one. There can be the risk of the rebels falling apart with one side vowed to continue its fight. Sudan is an example when there are other rebel groups resisting any peace agreement with the Sudanese government. In view of the similarity of the conflicts in Africa, the rebels in DR Congo won’t be an exception.

The people in DR Congo should have the wisdom for democratic power sharing to allow all the Congolese to enjoy the wealth of their country instead of seeing it plundered because of greed just for power by those ready to kill their countrymen as if they were foreign invaders with no right to enjoy life in their country.

Chinese President Hu Jintao has said in a keynote speech that the Communist Party he leads has fallen short of the people’s expectations.

Napoleon once said “Quand la Chine s’éveillera, le monde tremblera”, which means “When China wakes, the world will tremble”. But from the tone of Chinese President’s speech, China hasn’t risen to fulfil its social and economic expectations. It can be a worry just to the rest of the world, which sees in it a rising power blowing hot and cold in every direction.

China has been a great worry to the existing capitalist power when it was implementing rigorous communist principles as it had an influence on emerging countries with communist principles. Its ideology was more frightening although at that time China was economically backward and awkward.

Today China with giant economic rise, the world economic powers are feeling the shake as it is starting to pull the rug from under their feet. It is starting to flex its muscles as it entered the world markets benefiting from trade surplus with the USA amounting to billions of dollars.

But internally, the economic boom has just widened economic disparities across China, which will make Mao Tse Tung turn in his grave with rage. Economic reforms are far from yielding popular results as the economic boom is at the expense of the poorly paid labour. Ironically, when under communism, China was waging propaganda against capitalism because according to it workers were slaves to corporations, now it is allowing these corporations to invest in it benefiting from Chinese cheap labour. In a sense, Chinese labours are just enriching Western corporations and Chinese government treasury.

Economic liberalism isn’t enough as political freedom is very restricted. What is interesting is that China has strong economic relations with the West but also strong political relations with repressive regimes as in Burma. When the West is ready for strong action in Darfur, it is opposing them because of its economic interests.

Chinese President Hu Jintao lashed out at officials who were extravagant, wasteful and corrupt. If the Chinese government fails to redress the economic situation it will have more extravagant, wasteful and corrupt officials. Unequally shared economic boom will create just a minority enjoying lifestyle as that in Shanghai and Hong Kong while the rest will be living under acute poverty which was in the first place the reason for the Communist Revolution.