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| The camp for internally displaced persons on April 22, 2013. (Armin Rosen) |
The
conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which I visited over the
last week of April, has killed somewhere between 3.5 and 5.4 million people
since 1996. It destroys human life in crushing and un-cinematic fashion. Its
victims live deep in the mountains of central Africa, and despite the efforts
of a few intrepid journalists, scholars, and human rights observers, their
suffering goes largely undocumented. They include peasant women who are raped
collecting firewood, children dying of cholera in bulging refugee camps, and
starving young boys conscripted into militia groups so numerous that experts
have trouble keeping track of them all. The DRC's conflict might be the
deadliest since World War II, and one of world's worst active crises. But it
also may be the most obscure -- the most anonymous.
In
Kitchanga, the conflict erupted into view during a bloody week in February and
March. The aftermath is still visible, although the journey there is a torrid
demonstration of how the land, a blinding-green labyrinth of steep valleys
bordered with jagged volcanic hills, can mask the tragedies contained within
it. The road from Goma, the eastern DRC's largest city, rises into the
mountains of the East African Rift, where villages stand silhouetted against
the distant shores of Lake Kivu, a harmony of sloping green and mesmeric blue
that stretches far into an unpolluted sky. As the road climbs, travelers can
have the illusion of being eye-level with the white smoke billowing from the
Nyiragongo volcano, alone in the center of the gaping mountain-ringed valley.
