The New York Times has an article on the latest fighting in the Congo, complete with a picture of Congolese Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, who, I must say, has a quite distinctive fashion sense. (He claims to be a Seventh-Day Adventist priest. The Seventh-Day Adventists say they don't have priests and wouldn't take a warlord if they did).There is a general rule in Africa, if not across the world: Behind any rebellion with legs is usually a meddling neighbor. And whether the rebellion in eastern Congo explodes into another full-fledged war, and drags a large chunk of central Africa with it, seems likely to depend on the involvement of Rwanda, Congo’s tiny but disproportionately mighty neighbor.There has been a Tall vs. Not-Tall struggle going on in Central East Africa for a long time, dating back well before the arrival of Europeans. It manifests itself under different tribal names, such Tutsi vs. Hutu in Rwanda, Burundi, and Congo, or Luo vs. Kikuyu in Kenya. Generally speaking, the Not-Talls have the numbers and the Talls have the brains. (Our President-Elect, by the way, is 50% Tall.)
There is a long and bloody history here, and this time around the evidence seems to be growing that Rwanda is meddling again in Congo’s troubles; at a minimum, the interference is on the part of many Rwandans. As before, Rwanda’s stake in Congo is a complex mix of strategic interest, business opportunity and the real fears of a nation that has heroically rebuilt itself after near obliteration by ethnic hatred.The signs are ever-more obvious, if not yet entirely open. Several demobilized Rwandan soldiers, speaking in hushed tones in Kigali, Rwanda’s tightly controlled capital, described a systematic effort by Rwanda’s government-run demobilization commission to send hundreds if not thousands of fighters to the rebel front lines. ...
There seems to be a reinvigorated sense of the longstanding brotherhood between the Congolese rebels, who are mostly ethnic Tutsi, and the Tutsi-led government of Rwanda, which has supported these same rebels in the past.
The brotherhood is relatively secret for now, just as it was in the late 1990s when Rwanda denied being involved in Congo, only to later admit that it was occupying a vast section of the country. Rwanda’s leaders are vigilant about not endangering their carefully crafted reputation as responsible, development-oriented friends of the West.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Lots of good stuff on War Nerd about this conflict.
ReplyDeleteThis conflicts with the meme that European colonialism caused all of Africa's wars and troubles. In fact those in the know will tell you that colonialism put a temporary halt to these long-standing conflicts and was the reason why Africa was economically far more prosperous under colonialism than before or since after. Essentially colonialism (and its neo- versions such as Rhodesia’s UDI and Apartheid) disciplined blacks into a western style economic order instead of letting them roam around and kill each other. It made them build roads and dams and till fields instead of cutting out each other's testicles.
ReplyDeleteBut don't expect liberals and African Americans to notice.
I knew that the Skinnies defeated us when we attempted to invade Somalia, but I didn't know the defeat was so decisive that they would soon be installing a Skinny in the White House.
ReplyDeleteThe matter-of-fact tone in the NYT belies the reality that we are talking about people with guns and adult hormones who have the mentation and impulse control of 11-year olds. I mean, I look at that picture and see a tall freak in house slippers with a sloppy "army" that picked up some modicum of martial training left over from white rule. Note the guy in rain galoshes going through the motions of a present-arms to Nduka's right. But the NYT writes it up like it's the Crimean War.
ReplyDelete--Senor Doug
"I knew that the Skinnies defeated us when we attempted to invade Somalia, but I didn't know the defeat was so decisive that they would soon be installing a Skinny in the White House."
ReplyDeleteWhat's really funny is that Bush I and Clinton thought a "humantarian mission" in Africa would win them black support at home. HA! There is nothing more laughable than white politicians pandering for black votes. (I don't have the link, but who can forget Hillary's pathetic "black voice"?)
"But the NYT writes it up like it's the Crimean War."
ReplyDeleteThe NYT's in bed with these people and lives off the fact that ordinary Americans don't have a clue how barbaric and primitive these internecine African wars really are. If the NYT had truly been a "Paper of Record" people like Mugabe and Mandela would not have been sanctified.
Intelligence Agencies in the West were informed and given data about the brutal ways of most African "Freedom Fighters", but decided not to enlighten their countries. This allowed liberal outfits like the NYT and WAPO, who do know, to create false legends.
The last Congo war which only sort of ended about 2 years ago took 4 mio. lives. Many African leaders sent their armies there on private missions in order to loot the minerals and whatever else they could find. In the process they did not exercise any mercy. You heard practically nothing about it in the West. But South Africa's townships clashes which netted 580 people over 35 years were all over the front pages of rags like the NYT and WAPO for decades.
re:"Generally speaking, the Not-Talls have the numbers and the Talls have the brains."
ReplyDeleteYea, right. IQ of Not Tall circa 65 v. IQ of Tall IQ circa 75.
Dan Kurt
The Congo is too big and like Somalia doesn't really exist anymore!
ReplyDeleteIt needs to be cut up into a lot more smaller states based on tribal affiliation.
The Western powers did not colonise Africa to stop Africans fighting each other.
anon:
ReplyDelete"a sloppy "army" that picked up some modicum of martial training left over from white rule"
That seems highly unfair characterisation of Nkunda's Tutsi army. If you see them on TV, they dress and act professional, and they're beating an army dozens of times larger. As a description of the Congolese and most other African armies it'd have merit, but not the Rwandan Tutsis.
Wellington boots are actually good combat footwear in the eastern Congo where everything is mud.
ReplyDeleteThis picture of Nkunda is pretty badass, too: http://blog.colombus.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/nkunda01.jpg
And it's the other side in this war that was trained by white people (the French trained Hutu genocidaires, for example). Aside from Paul Kagame's brief stint as an exchange student doing advanced officer training at Leavenworth, the Rwandan and Congolese Tutsi developed their tactics and strategies pretty much on their own, and they've been very effective.
If you read the accounts, the Congolese army, Rwandan Hutus, Mai Mai and other ethnic militias are good at rape and massacre but fall apart whenever they have to fight organized opposition, while Nkunda's guys are able to fight like a disciplined military unit. It appears that this X-factor-- that the Tutsis are the only people in the region who seem able to fight like a coordinated army-- that lets this tiny minority stomp all over their neighbors.
The Ugandans are also supposedly not bad as well (note that the very crafty President Museveni is a Hima, who are ethnic cousins to the Tutsi), but when they had a falling out with their former Rwandan allies in Kisangani a few years back, the Rwandans stomped them, too.
Keeping one's clothes THAT white in the middle of THAT much dirt and crap must take up a lot of his minions' time. It's a perfect way to demonstrate status.
ReplyDelete"Tell it to people too ignorant to know the depravities of white governments in southern Africa, koos. The Congolese do not have airplanes to throw their victims out of, or a Robben Island to exile them to, or even scientists trying to invent biological weapons that will kill only non-whites. But, not only does that not prove them 'inferior,' it is preferable. South Africa and Rhodesia proved the extent to which technology and wealth can be misused."
ReplyDeleteAt least nobody got eaten:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/22/1053585643490.html
And it wasn't Col. Sanders chasing them through the forest either. Rhodesia and SA ain't what they used to be either...Not that you'd know or care...
"If you read the accounts, the Congolese army, Rwandan Hutus, Mai Mai and other ethnic militias are good at rape and massacre but fall apart whenever they have to fight organized opposition, while Nkunda's guys are able to fight like a disciplined military unit."
ReplyDeleteCan you recommend a good account?
And our First Lady not so elect is presumably 85% or more Not Tall (given the locales of the slave ports)...but...dang, she's tall, and also, it would appear the not tall pushes around the tall and the white a good bit in both Obama's thoughts on race and in his marriage
ReplyDeleteThere isn't a lot of study done on Kenyan tribal heights and intelligence averages, but I suspect Obama's conceit(a conceit you fully endorse, Steve) about the tall, intelligent Luo's is unsupportable, or at least advantages are marginal at best. I have spent a fair bit of time in Kenya, and never noticed a big difference in height between Kikuyus and Luos, perhaps a slight advantage(maybe an inch) for Luos, which might be due to diet, as Luos traditionally eat a lot of protein such as Lake Victoria fish as a staple. A rough survey of the many Kenyans I know here in Canada produced similar opinions. On topic, Kenya's most famous acting export is six foot ten inch Kikuyu Charles Maina from the Kevin Bacon movie "The Air Up There". In the political tale-of-the-tape, Kikuyu President Kibaki and Luo prime minister Odinga are both about six foot.
ReplyDeleteFor intelligence, top grade school performers tend to be in the cities of Nairobi and, more recently, Mombasa, not Luo dominated Kisumu. Tribe-wise this won't tell too much, since these cities are increasingly multi-tribal, but based on last names, many tibes are represented among the top students. However, even the last names measure is increasingly inaccurate due to the very high rate of inter-tribal mating occuring in all Kenya's big urban centers.
As my granny used to say (quoting Kipling, I think), east is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet.
ReplyDeleteI grew up on politically incorrect stories of missionaries in cooking pots and the derring do of the thin red line against fuzzy wuzzy. Frankly, recent events in Africa simply confirm the stereotyping.
The Tutsi are a martial race of herder-warriors, the feudal elite of Rwanda.
ReplyDeleteThis image illustrates the classic breakdown of physical type: Tutsi, Hutu, Twa, from left.
Dr. J. Sasserath (Belgian proponent of the Hamitic hypothesis) on the Tutsi: "1.90 meters tall. They are slim. They have straight noses, high foreheads, thin lips. The Hamites seem distant, reserved, polite and refined."
Dr. Sasserath on the Hutu: "The rest of the population is Bantu... possessing all the characteristics of the Negro: flat noses, thick lips, low foreheads, brachycephalic skulls. They are like children, shy, lazy and usually dirty."
Plates from "Afrique moyenne" in "Rassengeschichte der Menschheit, Afrika I" (Jean Hiernaux, 1975):
1. Tutsi
2. Hutu
3. Twa
Hiernaux presents the interesting case of an opponent of the Caucasoid-origin idea who nonetheless affirms the separate origins of the Tutsi (part of his 'elongated African' spectrum), Hutu, and Twa.
Quoth he: "The Tutsi are evidently not Hutu transformed by selection."
Interestingly enough, incidence of sickle cell in Tutsi is remarkably low, and lactase persistence lies between 75 and 90% (around 25% for the Hutu, quite high for Sub-Saharan agriculturalists and probably due to Tutsi admixture).
So are the Tutsi allochthonous to the Rwanda-Burundi region? The evidence is suggestive.
It depends on who the colonialists were. King Leopold's private fiefdoms were hellish places where about 7 million or so died over ten years during a time of much less population. Basically forced labor camps in the entire nation of the Congo.
ReplyDeleteBy contrast the British colonialists left a legacy of schools and infrastructure, the French less, and the Germans almost nothing. The Portugese had not even a pretense of ruling anything but the cities, and the Spanish only a light presence on the continent.
The Rwandans are an efficient force, they are generally well disciplined by African standards. Their country though a tough place is reputedly less corrupt than most others.
The Tutsi look related to Ethiopians and Somalians. All non-Africans are descended from East Africans after they had split apart from Bantu type blacks. Caucasians look like depigmented East Africans. You can clearly see how Caucasians have much more similar features to the Tutsi than the Hutu. But the reason is because Caucasians are descended from people like the Tutsi, not the other way around. If you look at pictures of Ethiopians, you can see a range of people from ones who look like Tutsis to ones who like like Europeans with dark brown skin.
ReplyDeleteTutsis are very closely related to the somalians and the horn of africa types in general. Everybody understood this and when the Hutus were exterminating them in 1994 , they were grimly exhorted by their leaders to thrown the Tutsis in some river that was going to carry them back to ethiopia . Tutsis know it too : I have a Tutsi colleague I like to quiz about this stuff. He certainly feels a kind of kinship with Somalians and Erythreans particularly. He said that many tutsis feel related to the Peuhl western african pastoralists . Paul Kagame is an extreme example of a caucasian looking black african. Imho, he doesn't look "white" because he has white ancestors but because he carries those traits which were also carried by the distant ancestors of caucasoids, who then went on to expand throughtout eurasia.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure about the brains dominance thing. It might be true in the great lakes region in particular, but in Nigeria , for instance, the bantu-like Igbo and the pure west-african Yoruba seem much more intellectually inclined than the northern Fulani ( peuhl) and the Hausa . In the west, somalian immigrants aren't exactly known for being smarties or being civilized at all , even by african immigrant standards.
Finally , i think it's important to mention that there are (at least)2 great categories of tall ones in africa,. The Tutsi belong to the so called hamitic supergroup and the Luo belong to the Nilotic supergroup. They're not the same and Steve has been told previously to stop confusing them.
This account of Rwanda's failed but incredibly audacious attempt to take Kinshasa and the amazing fighting retreat conducted by its forces is quite a good one. You can't read it and come away thinking that black African armies are utterly incapable of creative military thinking. The Tutsis are badass.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/20thcentury/articles/kitona.aspx
"South Africa and Rhodesia proved the extent to which technology and wealth can be misused."
ReplyDeleteYeah. No other nations in the history of the world are guilty of that charge.
Pygmies are being exterminated, not kicked around:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/The-Pygmies-Plight.html
A funny aside-- it's hilarious watching earnest human rights campaigners and cultural anthropologists cluck earnestly about how Tutsi and Hutu are artificial ethnic distinctions or at most caste differences, and how it's a myth that the Tutsi are taller and slimmer than their Bantu neighbors. And then you see how the main regional Tutsi leaders are guys like Paul Kagame, Laurent Nkunda, James Kabere... all of whom are tall, extremely slim, with the long noses and elongated, bony faces right out of a 19th Century colonialist textbook.
ReplyDeletere:"Generally speaking, the Not-Talls have the numbers and the Talls have the brains."
ReplyDeleteYea, right. IQ of Not Tall circa 65 v. IQ of Tall IQ circa 75.
Dan Kurt
That's still equal to the white/black IQ difference here in the USA, relatively speaking. It's also enough to make Not-Talls clinically retarded on average, but the Talls not quite so.
In a sense, South Africa is Rwanda on a much larger scale and in much slower motion.