Sir, - Once again, the international media is providing wall-to-wall coverage of hostilities in one specific region - Afghanistan. Why is the coverage of war so selective? The war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been raging now for three years and has cost more than three million lives and yet we see or read very little about it.
The vast majority of the casualties in this war are civilians, and the Congo's natural resources have been the subject of wholesale plunder by the various armies involved.
How long must the Congolese people suffer before the world finally comes to their assistance? Three million dead is surely significant enough to warrant action from the international community. It is roughly half the numbers that died in the Nazi holocaust.
If the liberty and life of people in the West is worth defending surely the same should apply for Congolese citizens. Or is a Congolese life worth less than a Western one? - Yours, etc.,
John O'Shea, GOAL, D·n Laoghaire, Co Dublin.