When Hillary Clinton visited eastern Congo this week, she stepped into a land of fairy-tale beauty and incredible potential. I remember vividly the day in 1982 when my incoming "class" of Peace Corps volunteers made the same trip. Eastern Congo may be the most magical place on the planet; I remember thinking it did not even belong on this planet, so surreal were its mountains, lakes, volcanoes, and lush forests and farmland.
Unfortunately, the tragedies and turmoil afflicting this area have no place in this world, either. For much of the time that Mobutu Sese Seko ruled then-Zaire, the eastern region was poor but reasonably stable. Since the early 1990s, however, it has been on a rapid descent. Genocide in Rwanda spilled over the border; the Democratic Republic of the Congo's own conflicts accelerated, fueled by the region's mineral wealth; health-care infrastructure disappeared; sexual violence became worse than anywhere else on Earth.
Clinton has taken the first step by calling attention to this region and its terrible problems. But the United States has shown interest in Congo before to little avail. If the situation is to improve, we need to do the one thing that is required above all others -- strengthen security, especially in eastern Congo. And by now we should have learned the hard way that there is only one way to do so -- by leading through example, with the deployment of at least modest numbers of American troops, to spark a broader strengthening of the current U.N. mission. If the Afghanistan mission was undermanned last year with only 60,000 NATO-led troops in a country of 30 million, how can a U.N. mission of 20,000 address the challenges of Congo and its 60 million people?
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