The Invisible "World War of Africa"

As the San Francisco Chronicle points out:

The world's biggest war may be its most invisible. In 10 years, an estimated 4 million have died in eastern Congo [note: referring to the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), not to be confused with neighboring Republic of Congo]. A maelstrom of invading forces, local militia, a central army and United Nations peacekeepers shoot their way across the landscape.
The location is the center of Africa, far from capital cities and widespread notice. But the conflict demands serious attention, not the intermittent interest it draws now. Congo, nearly the size of Western Europe, has become a nation in name only. Rwanda, on Congo's border, is the most recent aggressor, sending its army repeatedly across the boundary to hunt forces behind a horrific uprising that killed 800,000 in the small country in 1994.
But that is only one thread. U.N. forces this week moved to separate the government army from a breakaway faction. In general, the Congo war is a scattershot conflict based on ethnicity and survival. The death rate, according to a relief group, the International Rescue Committee, runs at 1,000 people a day. These deaths, like the millions before, stem from hunger and disease, both preventable by peace.
This conflict, nicknamed the World War of Africa, can't be dismissed. The potential for peace and stability remains, especially given Congo's mineral wealth.
For starters, the United Nations must play a bigger role. Its 11,000 troops are clearly not enough. U.N. leader Kofi Annan has tried to boost the number without success. The United Nations must also clean up its act. A report showed serious levels of rape and sex abuse by its troops. But the big nations, including the United States and Europe, must play a more forceful role. Anger and energy are missing from the picture. Meanwhile, a preventable death toll grows.

As the AP reports (citing a Human Rights Watch report), rape warfare by militia groups is rampant in the DRC:

Militiamen and renegade soldiers have raped and beaten tens of thousands of women and young girls in eastern Congo, and nearly all the crimes have gone unpunished by the country's broken judicial system, an international human rights group said Monday.
Hundreds of new rapes are reported every week, but only 10 soldiers and militants have been convicted of rape in relatively lawless eastern Congo since the end of the country's devastating war in 2002, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report.
"Perpetrators of sexual violence are members of virtually all the armed forces and armed groups that operate in eastern Congo," according to the 52-page report. "The Congolese justice system has to date failed to address the egregious problem." Rape is often a preferred weapon of armed groups fighting the east's myriad battles, as
it was during the 1998-2002 war — Monday's report quotes a World Health Organization study that documented over 40,000 rapes in two eastern provinces during the conflict.