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TechnoratiHow We Fuel Africa's Bloodiest War
What is rarely mentioned is the great global heist of Congo's resources
The deadliest war since Adolf Hitler marched across Europe is starting again -- and you are almost certainly carrying a blood-soaked chunk of the slaughter in your pocket. When we glance at the holocaust in Congo, with 5.4 million dead, the clichés of Africa reporting tumble out: this is a "tribal conflict" in "the Heart of Darkness". It isn't. The United Nations investigation found it was a war led by "armies of business" to seize the metals that make our 21st-century society zing and bling. The war in Congo is a war about you.
Every day I think about the people I met in the war zones of eastern Congo when I reported from there. The wards were filled with women who had been gang-raped by the militias and shot in the vagina. The battalions of child soldiers -- drugged, dazed 13-year-olds who had been made to kill members of their own families so they couldn't try to escape and go home. But oddly, as I watch the war starting again on CNN, I find myself thinking about a woman I met who had, by Congolese standards, not suffered in extremis.
I was driving back to Goma from a diamond mine one day when my car got a puncture. As I waited for it to be fixed, I stood by the roadside and watched the great trails of women who stagger along every road in eastern Congo, carrying all their belongings on their backs in mighty crippling heaps. I stopped a 27-year-old woman called Marie-Jean Bisimwa, who had four little children toddling along beside her. She told me she was lucky. Yes, her village had been burned out. Yes, she had lost her husband somewhere in the chaos. Yes, her sister had been raped and gone insane. But she and her kids were alive.
I gave her a lift, and it was only after a few hours of chat along on cratered roads that I noticed there was something strange about Marie-Jean's children. They were slumped forward, their gazes fixed in front of them. They didn't look around, or speak, or smile. "I haven't ever been able to feed them," she said. "Because of the war."
Their brains hadn't developed; they never would now. "Will they get better?" she asked. I left her in a village on the outskirts of Goma, and her kids stumbled after her, expressionless.
There are two stories about how this war began -- the official story, and the true story. The official story is that after the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu mass murderers fled across the border into Congo. The Rwandan government chased after them. But it's a lie. How do we know? The Rwandan government didn't go to where the Hutu genocidaires were, at least not at first. They went to where Congo's natural resources were -- and began to pillage them. They even told their troops to work with any Hutus they came across. Congo is the richest country in the world for gold, diamonds, coltan, cassiterite, and more. Everybody wanted a slice -- so six other countries invaded.
These resources were not being stolen to for use in Africa. They were seized so they could be sold on to us. The more we bought, the more the invaders stole -- and slaughtered. The rise of mobile phones caused a surge in deaths, because the coltan they contain is found primarily in Congo. The UN named the international corporations it believed were involved: Anglo-America, Standard Chartered Bank, De Beers and more than 100 others. (They all deny the charges.) But instead of stopping these corporations, our governments demanded that the UN stop criticising them.
There were times when the fighting flagged. In 2003, a peace deal was finally brokered by the UN and the international armies withdrew. Many continued to work via proxy militias -- but the carnage waned somewhat. Until now. As with the first war, there is a cover-story, and the truth. A Congolese militia leader called Laurent Nkunda -- backed by Rwanda -- claims he needs to protect the local Tutsi population from the same Hutu genocidaires who have been hiding out in the jungles of eastern Congo since 1994. That's why he is seizing Congolese military bases and is poised to march on Goma.
It is a lie. François Grignon, Africa Director of the International Crisis Group, tells me the truth: "Nkunda is being funded by Rwandan businessmen so they can retain control of the mines in North Kivu. This is the absolute core of the conflict. What we are seeing now is beneficiaries of the illegal war economy fighting to maintain their right to exploit."
At the moment, Rwandan business interests make a fortune from the mines they illegally seized during the war. The global coltan price has collapsed, so now they focus hungrily on cassiterite, which is used to make tin cans and other consumer disposables. As the war began to wane, they faced losing their control to the elected Congolese government -- so they have given it another bloody kick-start.
Yet the debate about Congo in the West -- when it exists at all -- focuses on our inability to provide a decent bandage, without mentioning that we are causing the wound. It's true the 17,000 UN forces in the country are abysmally failing to protect the civilian population, and urgently need to be super-charged. But it is even more important to stop fuelling the war in the first place by buying blood-soaked natural resources. Nkunda only has enough guns and grenades to take on the Congolese army and the UN because we buy his loot. We need to prosecute the corporations buying them for abetting crimes against humanity, and introduce a global coltan-tax to pay for a substantial peacekeeping force. To get there, we need to build an international system that values the lives of black people more than it values profit.
Somewhere out there -- lost in the great global heist of Congo's resources -- are Marie-Jean and her children, limping along the road once more, carrying everything they own on their backs. They will probably never use a coltan-filled mobile phone, a cassiterite-smelted can of beans, or a gold necklace -- but they may yet die for one.
To save the lives of the victims of Congo's sexual violence, you can donate money here
To read more of Johann's reporting on Congo, click here
28 Comments so far
Show AllWouldn't it be nice if we could agree to stop our (U.S.) complicity? It's fine to point out others' responsibility but what we need to do is stop supporting the one (so-called) two party system that supports these atrocities, these policies of destruction.
bligh4
This article seems like a smear on the Tutsi's-again. I have no doubt that Tutsi's and Rwanda's government are involved. There is little doubt also that the perpentrators of the Rwanda Genocide fled to the Congo and have been a destabalizing influence ever since-and are knee deep in thid mess themselves.
"Bellissima October 31st, 2008 1:10 am
...
... However, we, the citizens of America, are responsible for allowing this perpetration, to a certain extent."
I think to be able to agree with Bellissima's post. It's true that many citizens of the U.S. haven't been very aware of what's been long going on in the DRC, now, for the past ten years or more, according to Keith Harmon Snow, who I haven't seen any articles by for months now, but who's done excellent and extensive reporting on the real situation in the Congo, the real causes of the genocide there and the guilty parties (www.allthingspass.com was or still is his website).
The ruling Western Establishment elites, however, have long known that they're extremely cause of the conflict and genocide in the DRC! The "news" media is also extremely guilty.
And it's good to see this and the Globe and Mail (Canada) articles here at CD today on this extreme situation in the DRC; after having seen a number of articles over the past year or so on only the rapes of Congolese women and the killing of the wild apes, without any mention of the extreme problem in the DRC. I haven't read either of these articles in full, only having read the beginnings, after spending time at Uruknet and doing other things; but the beginnings of the two articles tell me that we're finally getting the kind of "news" media focus that is required on the DRC, and we need to see this repeated with other "news" media.
Keith Harmon Snow, and possibly some other writers, have said that the pygmies, f.e., have been extremely genocided; by both killings, of them, and forcing them out of their native area(s). Always for the DRC's rich wealth in natural resources, especially minerals, I believe to recall. And as he, and possibly others I've read, said, the guilty corporations are from apparently mostly U.S., maybe also Canadian, and European countries; [as usual]. Their way of obtaining access to and very much control of the DRC's resources is like in other countries they plunder; often using genocidal methods, never, or very rarely, doing business [fairly]. Their souls only know to count MONEY.
This particular wealth exploitation, and the sheer number of the killings, are somewhat new to me.
On my TV screen I've watched the petty heroin warlords fight in Afghanistan after the Russians left, and I've watched the drug cartels duke it out in Columbia and in Mexico.
I've seen people fight for ownership of the hungry masses in Indonesia. I've read of how Chinese political slaves made luxury products for export. I've heard of Nike exploiting kids who make shoes.
I understand that the U.S. government throws coups in Haiti and in Guatemala. It invaded Panama, Grenada and the Dominican Republic.
I've seen Darfur. I've heard of the Lord's Resistance Army.
The point is, people are in chattel to us from generation to generation, making our sugar, our bananas, our shoes, our dog toys. Making someone pay prices as described above, husband killed, sister raped and gone crazy, children starved to the point of partial loss of mental faculties, for a tin can or two is immoral on our part of the bargain. It's unholy. It's an appendage to the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. What if Lazarus was ordered away from the rich man's gate? Would that change the outcome of the story much?
It becomes us to be responsible for who we do business with, to be righteous.
Hooray for Johann for speaking truth to power. My local newspaper has never written a single word about anything in this article so we can all stay guilt free in the West.
We should have no interaction with foreign nations, including Africa, apart from tourism and information sharing, like how to build an alternator from a bearing, magnets and wire coil, how to establish irrigation and regreen the dessert by clay canals, how to cure malaria by oxidative medicine...
These are the real solutions:
Direct Democracy (like how the constituion was established only every day then forever).
Calorie Economics (which means human effort MUST be repaid in HUMAN EFFORT, eliminating the means to game people by cash or material.)
Thermal Depolymerization (The ability to recycle literally anything by feeding it through a pressure boiling process.)
Raised Field Agriculture (Lost Ancient Agricultural system that delivers crop yields on par with modern agriculture which though is sustainable, not environmentally damaging by chemical fertilizer and pesticide.)
Wind Power (Wind energy over America if well enough harnessed could offer 2X the energy that America consumes from all sources today. This does not account for Skyrise Wind Turbines which is my very own invention that I can not find the least help to bring to market.)
Geothermal Energy (Drill to the mantle, pipe some water to it, use the steam coming off it to spin the magnets past the wire coils of your alternator, voila, electricity.)
Wave, River and Tidal Hydro Power (More magnets spinning past wire coils...)
Conversion of solar energy by Heat Engine (aka Stirling Engine... Incidentally solar by photovoltaic and nuclear and biodiesel and oil from half empty wells ALL require more energy to deliver to market than they could possibly return, thus are energy drains and not in the least energy solutions.)
Regenerative medicine (The use of adult stem cells to grow limbs and damaged tissues and whatever's necessary to repair a person.)
Oxidative Medicine (The use of high levels of oxygen to dissolve ANY organism foreign to the human system.)
Chelation (The removal of heavy metal toxins from the body by EDTA.)
This is a list of every nutrient that people need, you can find vege sources of every of these on my blog www.lamegame.name.:
Vitamins
Biotin
Folic Acid
Niacin
Pantothenic Acid
Riboflavin
Thiamin
Vitamin A
Vitamin B6
Vitamin B12
Vitamin C
Vitamin D
Vitamin E
Vitamin K
Minerals
Calcium
Chromium
Copper
Fluoride
Iodine
Iron
Magnesium
Manganese
Molybdenum
Phosphorus
Potassium
Selenium
Sodium (Chloride)
Zinc
Other Nutrients
L-Carnitine
Choline
Coenzyme Q10
Essential Fatty Acids
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Phytochemicals
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Chlorophyll & Chlorophyllin
Curcumin
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Garlic
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Cysteine
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Daniel Vincent Kelley
This article is typical of this politically correct racism I loathe.
WRONG!!
It is NOT the West that's responsible for the death of 4.5 million people in that African Third World War, it is the perpetrators who are!!! For heaven's sake!!
Are you implying that an African who kills, tortures, maims, rapes another African DOESN'T KNOW WHAT HE IS DOING?? Are you telling me that Africans are some kind of kindergarten kids who don't know right from wrong??? How racist can you get?? You sound like a plantation owner in the US South who thinks of his slaves as of some kind of retarded kids.
NO!!! They are guilty, they are as guilty as hell, and don't blame it on a handful of UN troops who are only equipped with light weapons, and who have to follow UN Security Council rules of engagement.
NO: The Congolese, the Ugandans, the Rwandans and whoever else got into it are to blaim.
You would NEVER EVER let whites get away with crimes of this magnitude by finding an excuse. NEVER. Because they are "adults" and know right from wrong?
Would you argue that the Germans didn't know what they were doing in WW2 when they killed the Jews and it's basically the fault of the allies who didn't stop them by bombing the rail tracks leading to annihilation camps? NO? THEN WHY NOT?
Because the Germans are white and should know right from wrong???
See how racist your entire argument is?
So: The culprits are the Africans themselves. They are killing each other.
I am sick and tired of reading all these excuses for genocide in Africa.
is your ignorance intentional or unintentional?
what the author is pointing out is that we are feeding the war because it is being fought over resources we covet.
the author in no way expunges the culpability of the crimes committed by perpetrators on any side.
and the author doesnt imply that they dont know what they are doing. he says exactly the opposite with the statement that the more we buy the resources they are killing each other over the worse their crimes get.
blame goes more to just the immediate perpetrators. your comment about the ugandans. congolese and so on are the ones to blame is horribly simplistic and warped.
let's talk about Nazi Germany, why was it frowned upon for US companies to do business with Germany?? Because, you frigging moron, to do so would be to finance the horrors they were unleashing. It wasnt that IBM or Coca-Cola were to blame, but that they were accomplices.
And racism is about viewing races as either inferior or superior to others. The author stated nothing of the sort.
Take your retarded strawmen arguments and shove 'em.
The USA DID a hell of a lot of business with the Nazis. Check it out. Learn history, while you're at it.
Just because I know more about a subject than you do does not give you the license to call someone who is more knowledgeable than you a moron.
But that's the problem with most Americans, isn't it? Ignorant to a tee, but immediately calling those who know more names instead of doing some research.
you, sir, are an idiot!
Well if someone really said that then yeah, that would be racist.
Obviously, the people perpetrating violence are responsible for their actions. However, the author was pointing out our direct responsibility in the circumstances in which this violence occurs.
Similarly, the soldiers perpetrating violence in Iraq are clearly responsible for their actions ("following orders" in the army is no excuse). However, we, the citizens of America, are responsible for allowing this perpetration, to a certain extent.
You have a point and you don't. Racism to me is when someone suggests one race is superior to another. Clearly, the author does not suggest this.
Most German people did not know the true horrors of the death camps until after the war. Of course the German troops who were ordered to kill Jews knew, and were guilty as sin, but again, many Germans did not believe Germany was a monster.
If you have been to DR Congo and know the history of Belgian Congo, then maybe you know something. If you don't then get off your high horse calling this writer who dares tell the truth a racist.
Have you ever heard of blackmail? It is an age-old technique in Africa. The white traders never traded guns with the blacks to maintain an upper edge in the slave trade for centuries. Today, the mining companies use heavily armed, well-trained mercenaries with air cover (helicopters) to maintain superiority over their puppet armies (the Africans you blame 100%). Read the book "The Dogs of War" and watch Blood Diamond and Hotel Rwanda (why is coltan never mentioned when the news covers Rwanda and Darfur?), and then re-evaluate your misplaced anger.
You are right to be angry. I am very angry too. Every human heart should ache for Africa, but this writer is a lone voice in the wilderness and you rip him to shreds with no background knowledge whatsoever regarding what you say.
Your whole post is pseudo-intellectual. Maybe you are a spy working with the mineral companies? That was my first thought. Maybe you are a racist who doesn't want the truth about Congo to get past this blog?
During Congo Free State,the Belgians used to hire one tribe, under threat of gunning down their innocent children in front of their faces, to capture and enslave another tribe. Then, if the slaves did not meet the quotas set for them, the system demanded the hands of the slaves to be chopped off. Quotas or hands had better be in the baskets when the Belgains come around or black babies get slaughtered. Where do you think the Diamond miners in Sierre Leone learned that trick?
Araquin, if there was no news coverge to stop some hired mercs from killing your whole family right in front of you if you refused to "cooperate" with them, what would you do? American, Israeli, British, South African, Belgian, Italian, and French companies extract trillions from Africa tax-free (not blood free). That is racism purely and simply. Millions dead annually and zero news coverage around here. Sadly, this is the state of the world's "free market" economy.
If you are sick of it, boycott the rich Western companies who supply these penniless Africans with the guns and munitions and blackmail them to perpetrate these heinous crimes. No African nation produces guns or ammo, nor do these villagers have the money to buy guns. But your corporations bring them guns so you don't have to pay fair prices for the minerals you enjoy. In this way, you are as much a killer as them. Sleep well.
I know all that very well. But every government in that region is cooperating and is signing these contracts with multinationals - to the detriment of their own people but to the advantage of their Swiss bank accounts - who exploit the mineral resources of an area that on paper ought to be the richtest in the world. Ruling cliques are lining their pockets in every one of these countries, they are selling their own to the one who pays the highest bribes.
The one who sets the stage is definitely abetting. But not even an arms dealer forces anybody to commit atrocities. It is the choice of the individual to use the arms.
Yes, I am all for boycotting the multinationals, but I don't see that people in the West will go along.
The DRC is a failed state, there IS no state, there's just any number of corrupt and criminal warlords. I still maintain that it is racist not to hold a people responsible for atrocities. I've always held the Belgians or the French responsible for the developments in the Congo area, but then I also have to hold the people who live there responsible.
I know what the Belgians did - but this does not stop the violence. Blaming it all on colonialism is not going to change a thing in present-day Africa. Blaiming it on colonialism has become a hammock for the conscience of many Africans. Anybody who's been there surely knows that much.
Only few African politicians dare admit that some soul-searching is also called for IN Africa, and not just outside. How many more millions need to be killed before Africans themselves are held responsible?
When the lobbyists, economists and cheerleaders for Globalization speak of how necessary it is to expand free trade and access to markets this is exactly why it so important to them.
The Globalizers do NOT WANT the peoples of the Congo to enrich their own with their natural resources. What they want is to feed the already fat pigs of Western Industry with as much profits as they can.
Warlords and a "failed State" will help them in that regard. In time there will be one or two strongmen that become the winners and his financial backers will be lined up like so many pigs at the trough to feed on the exploitation of that lands resources.
If they do not get there way, they merely finance another warlord.
PK
The Congo has long been bedeviled since Henry Morton Stanley "conquered" it at the behest of King Leopold II, turning into the world's first truly corporate state, the Congo Free State. Since then, business concerns have ruled in this vast land of approximately 80 different ethnicities and tribes. As long as outside entities continue to insist upon the idea of Congo as a single unified state, there will always be a struggle to control what is probably Africa's most mineral rich territory.
King Leopold II plundered the Congo using forced (slave) labor until he ran out of natives.
He wanted rubber for automobile tyres at any cost (to others). Are we any different now?
No different. Same shit, different year.
We also fuel the conflict by providing financial support for the IMF, the World Bank, and the mining corporations that are set on getting everything they can. There is a huge dam being planned in the Congo, all to produce electricity for expanded resource extraction, that is being backed by the World Bank.
http://www.probeinternational.org/probe-international/sources/probe-international-opposes-world-bank-f...
"Probe International tells the World Bank to halt all loans to the Democratic Republic of Congo's Inga dam project until those affected by the dam are provided with the water, sanitation, electricity, health and education services promised to them more than 30 years ago."
Same story is taking place in Chad and Sudan, where the culprit is petroleum. Chad's oil reserves have been tapped by an Exxon-Chevron-World Bank consortium, via the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, while China's oil corporations are the big players in Sudan, via their pipeline to the Red Sea.
Spreading freedom and democracy? Right. What kind of fool would believe that?
Jeevee
We can never forget a TV picture of Jimmy Carter in the Rose Garden, smilingly signing a Congressional Bill that included selling armaments all over the world, including those countries on the "other side" of that which America had always been said to stand for.
Perhaps if we saw the images daily - we need to boycott corporate media and create our own & show people what is REALLY happening, so they will care and we can have sane policies that put human lives ahead of corporate profits. Perhaps new policies will be some of the crumbs of an Obama administration.
Thanks, all of you who have posted thus far. I can't claim any particular expertise regarding Africa, but I recognize tragedy when I see it. I've come to believe that these are only the barest hints of the resource wars that are to come. Western "civilisation" has progressed (if you want to call it that) a long way in a short time. Well, the party's over. Resource wars are coming to a theater near you, and probably quite soon. The best advice, now, is get to know your neighbors.
Because Europe and America can't tolerate Africa's uniqueness? At least America will be electing and African America to the White House. Can you say the same in any European country ? Who's the RACIST now ? OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!!! LOL !
Terrance Mitchell
Redfield, South Dakota
Wars over diminishing resources, population growth and extreme money-power concentration are seldom described correctly. That would be too much truth for the exploiters and the exploited to accept.
There is no particular global shortage of tin or tantalum, and any production from the very small-scale artisanal mines operating in the eastern DRC could readily be made up for by facilities operating elsewhere. Nor is the price of cell phones dependent on the few pennies worth of tantalum capacitors they contain. However when you have next to no sources of external income to buy weapons and pay your soldiers (or bandits, the reader can choose...) then even a small prize is worth killing for (if you are that type of leader).
Not sure what the solution is, since the global trade in small arms seems to be just as fluid and adaptable as that in narcotics.
At the risk of annoying readers by reposting a comment I wrote about one of yesterday's articles on the Congo:
.
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The DRC does have very high mineral potential for diamonds, gold, copper, cobalt, niobium-tantalum, and likely other metals. However the extreme level of political conflict and violence involved would drive off major mining companies, which are highly risk-averse when it comes to developing and building billion-dollar mines. Several years ago, a number of large companies optimistically signed exploration agreements with the central government in Kinshasa (1600 km away on the opposite side of this large country) and are more than likely now backing out as quickly as they can.
This leaves regional militias and warlords to fight over the profits from relatively small-scale local mining activity which is one of the few available sources of external revenue, much like coca in the Peruvian/Colombian Andes and opium in Afghanistan.
As always, unarmed civilians are the ultimate losers. But given that the DRC's memories of Western "help" include Belgium's brutal colonial rule, the CIA and Belgian-backed assassination of Patrice Lumumba, and long-time American support of Mobuto Sese Seko, they may be a little skeptical about aid from that source. And neighbouring African countries have been about as much help to the eastern DRC as vultures to a wounded animal...
Divest now! All foreign mining ops out of DR Congo.
If Africans are allowed/helped to invest in education they will rise very fast. I was a secondary teacher in this region 1993-96. These people are very clever and intelligent. There is no reason they should not equal any people anywhere on earth except for frequent military intervention from CIA, Moussad, M5, French paratroopers, and mining company mercenaries. There is no media coverage so it has always been a free for all. It still is crazy...
I would not believe a single word a mining company would ever say about Africa. They are the problem! Give me a break!
Pennies? Cell phones? You are kidding, right? Without the mineral from Congo, there is no cell phone. Just because the price of tantalum dropped doesn't mean it isn't in demand.
No disagreement with Africans being very clever and intelligent. I would say holdovers of colonialism, tribal and ethnic rivalries that too often spill over into bloodshed, and deeply corrupt governments are a *bit* more of a problem than mining multinationals.
Functioning states can of course nationalize natural resources - mineral deposits are fixed where nature put them. They can also, CIA intervention aside, set royalty rates and allow unionization to ensure that a large share of the profits stay within the country. Zambia's experimentation with nationalizing its copper-cobalt mines was less than successful due to lack of in-country engineering expertise and gradual decline of existing facilities and equipment due to lack of recapitalization.
The central African Copperbelt that straddles the Zambia-DRC border contains far more valuable mineral deposits than the small gold, gem and tantalum deposits in the eastern DRC. Now up to the countries involved to determine how, when or if these will be developed.
Regarding tantalum, used in some high temperature corrosion resistant alloys and in electronic capacitors, Australia holds ~75% of the currently known world resources, followed by Brazil and Canada, with Nigeria a distant fourth. A few thousand miners working with shovels, hand-sorting tantalite, and smuggling out a few tons of unprocessed ore whose refined value is $30-40/lb in burlap bags are not a vital mainstay of global industry.
Looking through my latest electronics catalog I see small surface mount tantalum chip capacitors selling for as little as $0.19 in quantities of 1-24. Electronics manufacturers buying in bulk would pay a fraction of this.
What a sad history of the Europeans and Americans in Africa. It should read From Rubber to Coltan, but instead there is a counter line the US and European imperialists have going for themselves, that supposedly only Americans can stop genocide.... by sending in the Pentagon into places like Sudan, no less!??? They ignore Somalia (the entire Horn of Africa, in fact) and what the Americans are doing there, and of course, they ignore Congo, too, with their constant pro- intervention propaganda.
Johann, thank you. The Rwandan genocide revisited,again and again. For years now this part of Africa has suffered terribly and is well documented for those who care-or dare-to read on the atrocities.
Frantz Fannon set this up so nicely in his Wretched of the Earth and Melvern did a miraculous work in The role of the West in Rwandan Genocide. Godd idea on coltan tax. We should add diamonds and cassiterite to the list and feed those people as well as pay for UN peacekeepers. What a great idea that is Johann.