africa: 'Never Again,' Now in the Congo

'A Sept. 11 toll, every day, for 666 days," headlined a June 25 article in a Johannesburg newspaper, The Star, on the five-year-old conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. How odd. The death of at least 3.3 million Africans - exceeding the numbers killed in either the Korean or Vietnam wars - seems comprehensible to the newspaper's predominantly white readership only in terms of a catastrophe that has so profoundly affected the West. After the Holocaust, the world said "never again." And yet, less than a decade ago, the international community turned away from genocide in Rwanda. Now it seems willing to allow a replay in the Congo. To many in Africa, white as well as black, the West is prone to a sort of blindness when it comes to the fate of Africans.