Demagogue

For over a year now, Darfur has been referred to as "the world's worst humanitarian crisis." But now that that crisis is beginning to receive a bit more attention, that honor has been bestowed upon the ongoing war in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Jan Egeland, who estimates that 10,000 people a month are dying in Darfur, estimates that 1,000 people a day are dying in the DRC.

And they are not dying pleasantly

Militiamen grilled bodies on a spit and boiled two girls alive as their mother watched, U.N. peacekeepers charged Wednesday, adding cannibalism to a list of atrocities allegedly carried out by one of the tribal groups fighting in northeast Congo.

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"Several witnesses reported cases of mutilation followed by death or decapitation," the report said. The U.N. report included an account from Zainabo Alfani in which she said she was forced to watch rebels kill and eat two of her children in June 2003.

The report said, "In one corner, there was already cooked flesh from bodies and two bodies being grilled on a barbecue and, at the same time, they prepared her two little girls, putting them alive in two big pots filled with boiling water and oil."

The savagery is incomprehensible, but if you want to understand the roots of the conflict, I recommend that you read John F. Clark's "The African Stakes of the Congo War."