For Irish people of a certain age, the names are somewhat familiar. Katanga, Manono, Kongolo are places that register vaguely at first and then come into focus. In the 1960s Irish troops were stationed in the former Belgian Congo in the very areas where war has now led to appalling grief for the local population. The vast country later became Zaire and is now styled the Democratic Republic of Congo or DR Congo for short to distinguish it from a similarly-named neighbour.
All the colonial powers in Africa have questions to answer. Land-grabbing and the plundering of resources are nothing to be proud of despite attempts to excuse and even glorify them. But the consequences of imperial greed have, in a devastating paradox, visited themselves on the colonised with far more awful consequences than on the colonisers. Tribal divisions did exist and do so today. But they were encouraged and exacerbated from the great capitals of Europe as part of a policy of "divide and rule" and have, not surprisingly, bequeathed war and strife long after the Europeans departed with their booty.
Some areas have emerged better than others. Former British colonies inherited a legal system of value when applied even-handedly. The French left an effective colonial administrative system behind them. DR Congo, Rwanda and Burundi have been less fortunate. More recently, well-intentioned but ill-considered efforts by western relief agencies provided the milieu for the Rwandan Interahamwe militia to set up camp in the eastern DR Congo with disastrous consequences. Tribal militias, Congolese and Rwandan, have since then wrought havoc. As many as 2.5 million people may have died there in the past three years.
Irish Times correspondent Declan Walsh has spent the past three weeks working, mainly in the eastern DR Congo, on reports which bring to the attention of Irish people, once again, the plight of innocent Africans who suffer massively from internal strife and consequent famine. No one with an ounce of humanity can fail to be shocked at what is happening. The Governments of wealthy European states now need to shoulder the burden of aid in as forthcoming a manner as concerned individuals have done in the past.