Al Jazeera Wonders, 'Could Violence Spread?' – Forgetting History's Echo
Al Jazeera's headline, 'Could violence in the DRC become a regional conflict?', acts as if the Democratic Republic of Congo's strife exists in a vacuum, a sudden spark rather than a decades-long inferno fed by regional actors and external interests. The report mentions 'Rwandan-backed rebels' seizing a city, glossing over Rwanda's consistent, well-documented involvement in destabilizing the DRC
since the 1990s, often with tacit Western approval due to Rwanda's strategic alliances. The media routinely frames these protracted African conflicts as isolated incidents, ignoring the historical patterns of resource exploitation—coltan, diamond, gold, cobalt—that fuel proxy wars and benefit global corporations. To ask if this 'could become' regional ignores the undeniable reality that it is
regional, and has been for decades, with millions dead since the First Congo War. How many times must the cycle of mineral extraction, rebel groups, and neighboring state interference repeat before we call it what it is—a systemic, ongoing regional crisis, not some potential future development?