Special Report from Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC)
KINSHASAÑDecember 30 2004 -- Following days of repeated threats by
President Paul Kagame to send Rwandan Defense Forces to attack Hutu rebels
based in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), television stations in
Kinshasa, DRCÕs capital, began broadcasting alerts
Nov. 26 that RwandaÕs invasion was underway.
Belgian and US military sources
in Kinshasa said that at least five battalions (1,500-3,000 troops) had
penetrated the provinces of North and South Kivu from five different points.
ÒThis is a sizeable advance
force for the Rwandan army,Ó said one military
source in Kinshasa.
With RwandaÕs government continuing to deny their invasion, some 6,000 Rwandan troops had reportedly penetrated eastern DRC by December 4, making this tiny RwandaÕs third major invasion of its huge neighbor to the west.
According to the DRC government,
troops of the Armed Forces for the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) had
clashed with the RDF at numerous locations by early December. The Monitor
newspaper in Uganda Dec. 6 reported that RDF troops passing illegally through
Ugandan frontier areas had clashed with Ugandan soldiers. The Monitor reported
thousands of Congolese refugees fleeing into Uganda.
Thousands of Congolese
civilians, especially women and children, were fleeing North Kivu province as
of Dec. 6, according to IRIN, news network of the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, with civilians claiming executions and
massacres as RDF troops burned and looted everything in their path. NGO staff
in the region are bracing for the flood of tens of thousands of internally
displaced persons.
Rwandan guerrilla groups based in DRC echoed the claims. ÒAccording to our sources
five Rwandan battalions are already in the DRC ready to create chaos,Ó reported Jean-Marie Higiro, former leader of the
Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). ÒKagameÕs regime maintains
its sponsorship to rebel DRC forces. Under all kinds of tricks, KagameÕs regime is able to continue to pull the strings in the
DRC.Ó
He also rejected claims that the Rwandan military is acting in self-defense from DRC based guerrillas. ÒRwanda and its proxy armies in DRC maintain an absolute cordon sanitaire at the Rwandan-Congolese border,Ó Higiro says. ÒHow can Hutu rebels break through this cordon sanitaire and strike Rwanda, then retreat into the DRC without being intercepted?Ó
Higiro reports that powerful interests in Washington had as
early as 1989 delineated the now-apparent Tutsi strategy of annexation of
eastern DRC and that there is a very powerful Tutsi lobby in Washington DC.
RwandaÕs latest bid to annex DRCÕs
Kivu provinces was called the ÒThird War of
Occupation of Eastern CongoÓ by Congolese
students who took to the streets of Kisangani in protest on Dec. 4.
Despite RwandaÕs official denials of aggression, Rwandan leaders had issued unambiguous warnings in recent days. ÒYou have to make war to have peace,Ó RwandaÕs President Paul Kagame told United Nations ObserverÕs Mission. In Congo (MONUC) peacekeeping forces on Nov. 23. ÒWe are preparing to return our forces to the DRC,Ó RwandaÕs Regional Cooperation Minister Protais Mitali said on the 25th, according to Reuters. ÒWe cannot watch as these extremist forces advance onto our territory.
Reuters correspondent David
Lewis in Kinshasa reported Nov. 26 that the Congolese army has told the United
Nations that its soldiers had clashed with Rwandan troops inside Congo. UN
peacekeepers found no signs of any fighting, according to LewisÕ U.N. sources. Lewis also reported that clashes had taken
place earlier in the week.
In Kinshasa, long-time Mobutu opposition party leader
Etienne Tshisekedi from the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS)
issued a communiquŽ Nov. 26 warning that if Rwanda has again invaded DRC then
the Congolese people must demonstrate against MONUC.
May and June 2004 saw major
demonstrations across DRC where MONUC vehicles and homes rented by MONUC
personnel were destroyed in protest of MONUC's perceived failure to defend the
city of Goma from the invading forces of
pro-Rwandan rebel groups in Congo. There are no US military on the ground with
the MONUC force in DRC.
Rwandan and Ugandan guerrilla groups continue to maintain a
destabilizing presence in eastern DRC, including the ex-Force Armee Rwandais
(ex-FAR, the former Rwandan army), Interahamwe (the militia largely responsible
for the1994 genocide), Allied Democratic Forces for Uganda (ADF), and the
PeopleÕs Redemption Army (PRA). The DRC
government and international community have failed to implement the
disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) process called for by
international peace accords.
Rwanda has repeatedly threatened
to invade DRC to attack Hutu rebels accused of genocideÑInterahamwe and ex-FAR. The ÒgenocidiaresÓ fled Rwanda in 1994 and
established themselves in Hutu refugee camps in eastern Zaire (as DRC was then
known), with the help of the French intervention force Operation Tourquoise and support from ZaireÕs
32-year dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Rwanda also
claimed that it must defend the BanyamulengeÑCongolese
TutsisÑfrom ongoing genocide.
MONUC entered DRC in 1999 after
peace agreements signed in Lusaka, Zambia. Subsequent
peace accords in Sun City, South Africa, and negotiations with rebels and
militias in eastern DRC, ushered in a peace process under a transitional
power-sharing government, implementing a joint UN/DRC program of ÒDDR,Ó and the promise of
elections in 2005.
The DDR program has largely been
an empty promise. The DRC was formally cited at the UN Security Council on Nov.
23 for its lack of cooperation in the arrest of people accused of taking part
in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
In a UN press statement, the
Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Hassan
Bubacar Jallow from Gambia, told the Security Council that 14 indicted people
were still at large and Òthe bulk of the
fugitives continued to be based in the Democratic Republic of Congo.Ó
The press release stated that
the US ambassador to the UN John Danforth called upon the DRC and Kenya to
arrest fugitives accused inciting conflicts in the Great Lakes region on the
border of DRC and Rwanda.
Impunity for government soldiers
and guerrillas alike remains endemic in the eastern DRC provinces of Orientale,
Equateur and the Kivus. According to a recent alert by SurvivorÕs Rights International, reports from isolated areas across
the country indicate that populations continue to suffer wholesale extortion,
racketeering, theft, rape and other violence.
Rights groups accused all sides
of exploiting ethnic conflict in the region, including
RwandaÕs government. ÒRelations between the Banyamulenge and other Congolese
groups have been strained and are frequently manipulated by politicians in both
Rwanda and the DRC,Ó wrote Human Rights Watch
in a June 2004 report, War Crimes in Bukavu. ÒThe past six years of war have contributed to hostility
against them as they are increasingly identified as ÔRwandanÕ by other
Congolese. Rwanda has often justified its presence in DRC in part as an effort
to protect the Banyamulenge people, though this was challenged in 2002 when
they attacked the Banyamulenge homelands killing
scores of Banyamulenge civilians, shooting some of them from Rwandan
helicopters.Ó
In a bold article that caught
major international press on December 4, BBC journalist Robert Walker, who
overflew the North Kivu region in a MONUC helicopter, reported that ÒPresident Kabila is getting away with a crimeÓ because the DRC government was fabricating reports of war
and Rwandan involvement in eastern DRC.
However, by December 20, 2004, UNICEF was reporting Òmillions displaced by recent fighting.Ó
Paul KagameÕs Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) invaded Rwanda
from Uganda in 1990, launching a four-year campaign of guerrilla warfare. Open
support for RwandaÕs then-Hutu-led government
from French paratroopers failed to prevent the RPA victory of August 1994,
following the coordinated genocide of hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Tutsis
by hard-line Hutus, Force Armee Rwandaise (FAR) and affiliated Interahamwe
(Hutu) militias from April to July.
Critics such as Wayne Madsen,
author of Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999, assert that
Kagame and the RPA orchestrated the April 6, 1994 assassination of the
presidents of Rwanda and Burundi Ð shooting down their plane on approach to
Kigali airport with SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles
taken from Iraq by France in 1991, then delivered by the US military to Uganda,
the base for RPA guerrilla operations against Rwanda prior to 1994.
Evidence was provided at a
special hearing held by then Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney at DCÕs Rayburn House Office Building on April 6, 2001, the
seventh anniversary of the assassinations. Journalist Charles Onana of
Cameroon, author of The Secrets of the Rwandan Genocide, also aired claims of
RPA involvement in the incident, and was sued for defamation by Paul Kagame. A
Paris court found in favor of Onana. Defense attorneys working at the
International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) maintain that the standard
figure of 800,000 Tutsis killed in the 1994 genocide is grossly inflated. At
least three major films continue to circulate in the US, all furthering the
pro-RPA and pro-Tutsi perspective of the Hutu genocide.
Paul Kagame, who was trained by
the US military at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, has been a regular visitor at
Harvard University, at the James Baker III Institute in Houston Texas, at the
White House and the Pentagon. US, European and
South African military interests have continued to support various factions in
Central Africa, arming militias and rebel groups through proxy armies from
Uganda (UPDF), Rwanda (RPA), Burundi and the Sudan PeopleÕs Liberation Army (SPLA) in south Sudan. FranceÕs presence in Central Africa is based out of Gabon, the
major point of French military penetration on the
continent.
Terror continued in Rwanda under
the new RPA government of Paul Kagame, with Amnesty
International documenting a pattern of assassinations, arbitrary imprisonment and
Òdisappearances.Ó Nearly all political opponentsÑTutsi or HutuÑhave been
labeled ÒgenocidiaresÓ, and Amnesty has protested that some trials and executions
of accused genocidiare collaborators have been tainted and politically
motivated.
The first Rwandan invasion of its huge neighbor to the
west occurred in 1996. According to the influential Africa Confidential
newsletter, Major Gen. Paul Kagame visited the
Pentagon in August of 1996, conferring with Washington prior to launching a
grand plan to unseat Mobutu Sese Seko. While the US public was consumed with
the 1996 presidential elections, Rwanda was preparing its war against ZaireÑand it began with the shelling of Hutu refugee camps in
eastern Congo with Katusha missiles, killing non-combatant men, women and
children.
RPA joined with
Ugandan PeopleÕs Defense Forces (UPDF) and the guerrilla army of Laurent
KabilaÕs Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (ADFL) in
the ÒWar of LiberationÓ that subsequently ended the decades long reign of
President Mobutu Sese Seko in Congo (Zaire). Sources in DRC quickly add that American military personnel were seen on
the ground advising the joint UPDF/RPA invasion which swiftly moved across the
vast forested territory of Zaire.
MobutuÕs generals were reportedly contacted in advance by
high-level US officials in the region; most of those who agreed to support the
US invasion when it came remain in high posts in DRC today; other of MobutuÕs highest military were sacrificed one way or another.
Wayne Madsen reported that the US established major
communications and listening stations in UgandaÕs Ruwenzori Mountains.
Witnesses interviewed in Kampala, UgandaÕs capital, support this claim. Communications equipment was
also seen on Idjwe Island in Lake Kivu, on the DRC-Rwanda frontier.
Recent interviews with survivors across the country document crimes against humanity and acts of genocide committed against Congolese civilians by all sides in the ensuing war.
ÒIn May 1997, hundreds of unarmed Hutu refugees were
massacred in the town of Mbandaka by soldiers of KabilaÕs Alliance of
Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (ADFL), operating under apparent
Rwandan Army (RPA) command,Ó wrote Human Rights Watch in June 1998. In an October 1997
report (ÒWhat Kabila is Hiding: Civilian
Killings and Impunity in CongoÓ),
Human Rights Watch
concluded ÒRwandan troops had a role in some of the killings of Rwandan Hutu
refugees on Zairean territory.Ó Thousands of Hutu refugees
were slaughtered in Mbandaka in May 1997, on the day that the Allied Forces for
the Democratic Liberation of Congo (AFDL) arrived there. One eyewitness told
this reporter: ÒWe ran down to the beach
[port] because we heard the shooting. I saw two people shot but there were
bodies all lined up on the beach. The soldiers were also throwing dead bodies
in the [Congo] river. There were a lot of Tutsi soldiers but we couldnÕt distinguish. I saw soldiers question one woman. The woman
was not able to talk in [Congolese] Lingala. He said, yes you are among the
Rwandais Hutus. He said to the woman, ÔTurn,
face the river, prey your God, because you are about to meet your God.Õ Then he shot her in the back with an automatic weapon.Ó
ÒUS Special Forces were
involved,Ó asserted one DRC army captain
interviewed recently in Kinshasa. The AFDL forces included UPDF, RPA and US
military advisers, he claimed.
Colonel James Kabarebe, now Chief of Staff of the Rwanda
Defense Forces, is said to have led the campaign to annihilate fleeing Hutu
refugees. Kabarebe has been sited in UN reports for
massive violations in Ituri. ÒKabarebe was
reportedly the biggest advocate of Rwandan support to [ethnic] militias,Ó wrote UN investigators in MONUCÕs Special Report on Events in Ituri, January 2002-December
2003. Rwanda armed, trained, and advised militias in Ituri, as it has in North
and South Kivu provinces, the report found. The Ugandan military was similarly
cited for atrocities.
The RPA joined with the UPDF to invade DRC again in 1998
after ADFL leader Laurent Kabila rejected U.S. and Bechtel Corporation plans
for the newly liberated country, annulled mining contracts signed with some
powerful western companies before he had even taken
power in KinshasaÑincluding America Mineral
Fields (AMF), based in Hope, AK, and said to be linked to then-President
Clinton through ÒFriend of BillÓ investorsÑand ejected the
Rwandan and Ugandan military allies that brought him to power.
The Congolese people call it the ÒWar of Aggression,Ó but
it was dubbed ÒAfricaÕs First World WarÓ by the western press, as it involved
six regional nations as well as arms and advisers
from western countries. Troops from Rwanda and Uganda (now backing anti-Kabila
rebels) as well as Zimbabwe (allied with the DRC government) worked with
commercial agents pilfering DRCÕs ivory,
diamonds, gold, timber, cobalt and other natural resources.
Foreign agents moved these plundered resources onto the
international market, as militia groups raked in local profits. At least 3.5
million people died due to warfare in DRC, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC) report on the region for the
period from 1998 to 2001. From 1999-2001, through networks of Rwandan military
and commercial agents, Rwandan interests aligned with the state earned at least
$240 million in the sale of coltan (columbo-tantalite) -- a precious ore
essential to Sony play-stations, laptop computers and cell-phones. In December
2000 alone, the main RPA-supported rebel group in DRC earned some $600,000 in
coltan sales. Coltan moved through criminal syndicates to American, Swiss,
Belgian and German clients. Rwandan syndicates continue to dominate the coltan
trade out of eastern DRC, local sources claim.
Friends of the Earth and the UK-based group Rights and
Accountability in Development (RAID) filed a formal complaint with the US State
Department on August 4, 2004 against three US
companies accused by the UN Panel of Experts of fuelling war in DRC. The UN
panelÕs three-year investigation implicated
Cabot Corporation (Boston), Eagle Wings Resources International and George
ForrestÕs OM Group (Ohio) in collaboration
with various rebel groups trafficking in coltan from DRC. Current deputy
director of the US Treasury Department, Samuel Bodman, was CEO and chairman of
Cabot from 1997-2001.
It is important to
note that the conflict in Central Africa revolves not around ÒgovernmentsÓ so
much as militarized power blocks and multinational corporate alignments which
are transnational. Thus while powerful US government interests may back the
Kagame and Museveni regimes in support of destabilization of Central Africa and
the annexation of the Kivu and Orientale provinces, other powerful
interestsÑsuch as the International Rescue Committee (IRC) -- maintain a
constant international media presence which appears to be in conflict with that
agenda but which nevertheless exists as a major lobby in support of or defense
of certain interests at the expense of certain others. Notable personalities on
the IRCÕs Boards of Directors and Overseers include Morton Abramowitz, Tom
Brokaw and Henry A. Kissinger.
The DRC frontier with Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi has
remained the locus of instability and guerrilla warfare since at least 1994 --
long before the first Rwandan invasion of Congo in 1996 -- and the rising
insecurity and terrorism has all but annihilated the
local civilian populations. North and South Kivu provinces continue to suffer
from widespread violence, and killings in the Goma and Bukavu areas are
rampant.
The Ituri region of Orientale Province, bordering on
Uganda, Sudan and Central African Republic, is cited as one of the bloodiest corners of the world by numerous human rights agencies.
The UN Security
CouncilÕs Special Report on Ituri, January 2002-December 2003, outlines the
history of conflict in Ituri, the role of Ugandan and Rwandan government forces
in arming factions, bombing villages, massacring and torturing civilians, and
provoking and, at times, abetting, acts of genocide. Given
the rising insecurity in Ituri in recent months, with assassinations and
nightly shootings, the population in Bunia increasingly sees MONUC as a hostile
and aggressive force of foreign military occupation.
Said one Bunia resident formerly employed by MONUC: ÒPublic opinion is that MONUC has done nothing. People thought that MONUC came here to bring peace but to their surprise people find that MONUC is like a spectator in a football match. But people are dying in their presence. People are being terrorized in their presence. People are being killed in there presence. And MONUC is doing nothing.Ó
ÒFiring incidents occur daily,Ó admitted one public information officer for MONUC. ÒI donÕt think there is any area except maybe in Bunia [town] where the human rights situation is improving.Ó
Reports of MONUC personnel buying and transporting
contraband goodsÑleopard and okapi skins, gold, ivoryÑare also widespread; one
western photojournalist witnessed Belgian troops openly purchasing ivory;
troops are immune to customs search and seizure.
Arms continue to flow into the region. UgandaÕs government newspaper the New
Vision Nov. 23 reported that arms shipments reportedly
destined for the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), a regional militia aligned
with Rwanda, were seized by the Armed Forces of the Congolese People (FAPC), a
rival Congolese militia in control of the lucrative Ituri Province customs posts
in northeastern DRC. The story was picked up by a Chinese news service only.
ÒAccording to local sources, local government officials have delivered firearms to civilians in Masisi, North Kivu, long the site of conflict between different political and military groups,Ó wrote Human Rights Watch on November 19. ÒOther shipments have been delivered to Ituri, another persistently troubled area in northeastern Congo. U.N. sources reported that some 300 Congolese high school students, refugees in neighboring Rwanda, abruptly left their schools and are said to be undergoing military training.Ó
According to recent reports from northern Ituri, the FAPC
has reportedly executed child soldiers seeking to enter the DDR process, and
attacked the families and looted the homes of
reintegrated ex-child soldiers. The UPC and the Force for National Liberation
(FNI), another militia, continue to extort a weekly war tax from citizens,
persecute those who refuse to comply, and terrorize the citizenry.
ÒAll armed groups in Ituri have integrated children into
their ranks,Ó wrote MONUC investigators in Special Report on Events in Ituri,
January 2002-December 2003. MONUC conservatively estimated Òat least 40 percent
of each militia force are children below the age of
18, with a significant minority below the age of 15.Ó
The MONUC investigation found that Ugandan and Rwandan
military were frequently training children abducted and forcibly or willingly recruited into DRC militias. MONUC documented cases where
hundreds of children were taken by road or plane to Uganda or Rwanda for
military training. Child soldiers were sometimes ÒtrainedÓ by child
soldiers. Some children have been passed from one group to another.
The UPC and the Force for National Liberation (FNI)
another militia, continue to extort a weekly war tax from citizens, persecute
those who refuse to comply, and terrorize the citizenry. Said one witness, ÒThe
UPC is collecting money. They say, Ôeither you pay 100 francs Congolese or we come at night.Õ Then when they come they cut off your hand or violate
women.Ó
ÒSexual violence is a national epidemic in DR Congo,Ó wrote Survivors Rights
International (SRI) in a December 5 2004 alert, Òinvolving
all military factions, both current and past military forces involved in the
internal affairs of the DRC, and it appears to be sanctioned by all levels of
military command. SRI research completed in Equateur and Orientale (Ituri) from September to November 2004 indicates that the
scale and frequency of sexual violence committed during the successive wars
(1996-2004) is unprecedented and unquantifiable.Ó
SRI also reported that the presence of hundreds of
internally displaced girls and women currently resident in Mbandaka has spawned
commerce in prostitution and survival sex involving both Armed Forces of
Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) and MONUC troops. ÒFARDC further prey on
female sex workers by forcing sexual relations,
raping those who refuse, and universally robbing desperate females of their
livelihood,Ó SRI wrote. ÒFARDC soldiers
in rural areas and population centers continue to steal and abduct the wives of
civilians, and to abduct women and adolescent girls many of whom are impregnated and abandoned.Ó
SRI called on the UN, MONUC and the international
community to define and implement a new strategy for dealing with widespread
and ongoing sexual violence, noting Òthat the societal effects will be
long-lasting, and that accountability for sexual
violence could be easily countered given greater international attention to
gender violence in the DRC and a campaign to end impunity and bring the
perpetrators to justice. The MONUC communications infrastructure
installed nationwide in DRC (Radio Okapi) provides an excellent and functioning
tool for raising the awareness of sexual violence and the growing campaign to
hold perpetrators to account through the International
Criminal Court.Ó
On November 28, 2004, a group of seven young women arrived
in Mbandaka -- after
trekking hundreds of miles from EquateurÕs easternmost city of Lisala reporting that they were raped in the past week by
government soldiers (FARDC). Other girls are also being raped, the seven
survivors said.
AllAfrica.com, the preeminent on-line Africa news service
based out of Washington, DC, refused to publish the SRI alert on DRC;
Allafrica.com has become increasingly selective,
excluding major reportage in the region that does not fit with the interests of
the predominant powers.
Rwanda and Uganda continue to benefit from high-level
military arrangements with the United States. Entebbe, Uganda, is a forward
base for US Air Force operations in Central Africa. According to the Global
Policy watchdog, there are eleven US servicemen permanently stationed in
Entebbe. Sources on the ground in Uganda and DRC confer that weapons move
freely through Entebbe airport from US interests.
The BBC reported March 23, 2004 that US General Charles
Wald confirmed that the US is directly involved in the fight against the LordÕs
Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda. ÒI have met with [UgandaÕs] President
Museveni,Õ the BBC reported, ÒI have heard personally that he is very pleased with the
support we are giving him... Its not just moral support... But many things need
to be kept a bit more private.Ó
In July 2004, members of the DRC
military flew to Tampa, Florida to participate in an unfolding US Ôanti-terrorismÕ military
program called ÒGolden Spear.Ó
The Canadian mining firms Barrick Gold and Heritage Oil &
Gas arrived with Ugandan (UPDF) and Rwandan (RPA) military during the ÒWar of
AggressionÓ to exploit mining opportunities in the north. Barrick principals
include former Canadian premier Brian Mulroney and
former US president George H.W. Bush. Heritage has secured contracts for the
vast oil reserves of Semliki basin, beneath Lake Albert, on both the Congolese
and Ugandan sides of the border. Heritage is reportedly tapping the Semliki
petroleum reserves from the Ugandan side, where a huge pipeline to Mombasa,
Kenya, worth billions of dollars, is now in the works.
According to a petroleum futures report (Africafront),
Heritage Oil was poised to exploit the northern Lake Albert basin, southern
Lake Albert basin, River Semliki basin, and Lake George and Lake Albert basin
areas in partnership with the Zhongyuan Petroleum
Exploration Bureau (ZPEB) of China. Heritage is currently exploiting petroleum
in neighboring war-torn Congo-Brazzaville in partnership with ZPEB. Notably,
ZPEB is the petroleum firm currently operating behind the genocide of
indigenous Anuak people in southwestern Ethiopia (See the December 12, 2004
report by Genocide Watch: OPERATION SUNNY MOUNTAIN?). Ashanti Goldfields has
reportedly secured a contract for the vast gold reserves at Mongwalu, north of
Bunia. Ashanti has ties to South Africa and the British Crown and some sources
in Bunia report that the Ashanti interest in nearby Mongwalu is guarded by
Nepalese Gurkhas, possibly of the Gurkha Security Group based in Britain.
The Clintonite multinational America Mineral Fields in May
2004 changed its name to Adastra Minerals, and the corporation has
multi-billion dollar copper and cobalt mining
projects underway, in partnership with the Kabila government, in Katanga
province. Elsewhere in DRC, major foreign mining and logging contracts are
underway.
The death toll in CongoÕs war has easily exceeded 5 million people.
End.