Lots of attention has been paid recently to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Congo. Bruce Rolston has the best summary of the story so far over at Flit. I tend to agree with Rolston that kicking the Rwandans and Ugandans out of the eastern part of Congo was a poor idea, and I agree with everyone who says that the current situation cannot be tolerated.

As this story, which I linked to last July, points out, part of the deal for Rwandan troops leaving the Congo was that the Congolese government would not tolerate the presence Rwandan Hutu rebels in the area that the Rwandan soldiers were to vacate. That obviously hasn’t happened, and it’s these same people and their ethnic allies that are committing the atrocities in the eastern Congo that they once perpetrated in Rwanda.

I’ve been following the Congo situation for a long time, mainly after developing an interest in that region of Africa in general and Paul Kagame in particular after reading about him in Dangerous Places. (The DP piece on Kagame is a bit dated, he’s now president of Rwanda.) The thing that remains consistent in my memory is that things have been so bad for so long that even bad news that isn’t awful can be considered a hopeful sign.