The great global heist of Congo's resources

http://www.independ ent.co.uk/ opinion/commenta tors/johann- hari/johann- hari-how- we-fuel-africas- bloodiest- war-978461. html

How we fuel Africa's bloodiest war
Johann Hari

Thursday, 30 October 2008

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.

 Further reading

Candidates Silent On Resource War In Congo

http://congoplanet. com/article. jsp?id=45261305

War Crimes in the Congo

by Laurent Nkunda and Paul Kagame
Congo News Agency
- October 30, 2008

According to the International Rescue Committee, more than 5,400,000 Congolese civilians have died due to war during the last ten years. Most of these deaths have occurred in eastern Congo where rebel leader Laurent Nkunda continues to wage a resources war against a democratically elected and internationally recognized government. Laurent Nkunda alleges that he is protecting the minority Tutsi ethnic group against remnants of the Rwandan Hutu army that fled to Congo after the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

If Tutsis are under attack in the Congo then there must be a widespread conspiracy not to report these attacks by the local media, the Rwandan media, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo (MONUC), and the international media, at least for the last five years. The fact is that attacks against Congolese of all ethnic groups are a daily occurrence in the region. Laurent Nkunda's troops are responsible for most of these attacks.

Not only have countless civilians lost their lives, hundreds of thousands of Congolese women have been raped by rebels and militiamen in an epidemic that has reached apocalyptic proportions. Tutsis have not been singled out for attacks. Congolese have certainly not attacked Tutsis in Congo. But, they are paying the high price of an unjust and immoral war imposed on them by the Rwandan government and its local agents.

One of the enduring mysteries of the conflict in eastern Congo is why have more than 5,400,000 innocent Congolese civilians had to die at no fault of their own. There are more than 300 ethnic groups in the Congo. Tutsi villages are mainly found in the two Kivu provinces. Tutsis are a small minority in North and South Kivu. Is one ethnic group superior to all other 300 ethnic groups present in the Congo? Should one ethnic group have special dispensations to entertain a war that continues to kill countless civilians, a war that continues to cause tens of thousands of women to be raped, and the displacement of more than 1,000,000 civilians?

Congolese did not invite and have never welcomed the Rwandan Hutu militiamen to their country. Much to the contrary, Congo has no interest and absolutely nothing to gain by their presence. Congolese citizens would like nothing more than to see all remaining Hutus go back to Rwanda. Paul Kagame wants them to stay in Congo. He has frustrated all attempts by the Congolese government and the international community to repatriate them back to their country. He failed to finish them off when he had tens of thousands of his troops occupying the region, before "withdrawing" some of them under international pressure in 2003 and leaving the job to Laurent Nkunda.

Some have bought into the pretext of an endangered Tutsi minority in Congo. They never fail to mention that Laurent Nkunda is supposedly fighting to protect "his people". They have failed to question his true motives which are to occupy the mineral-rich North-Kivu province, pillage its resources, and act as a proxy army in eastern Congo for the Tutsi-led Rwandan government in Kigali. Kagame wants a foothold in eastern Congo so his country can continue to benefit from the pillaging and exporting of minerals such as Columbite-Tantalite (Coltan). Many experts on the region agree today that resources are the true reason why Laurent Nkunda continues to create chaos in the region with the help of Paul Kagame.

What's shocking is that some in the media have no shame in calling and joking with the rebel leader in interviews while he continues to be the main reason why more than 1,000 people are dying per day in Congo, 600 of them children. These journalists should think twice before cozying up to a person that will go down in history as a war criminal and mass murderer alongside Radovan Karadzic and Adolph Hitler.

Laurent Nkunda is a war criminal. The Congolese government issued an international arrest warrant against him for war crimes in 2005. Human Rights Watch has been calling for his arrest for war crimes since February of 2006. He is on a UN Sanctions List for breaches of the UN arms embargo in the DRC. On October 31, 2006 U.S. President George W. Bush signed Executive Order 13413 freezing his assets for contributing to the conflict in the Congo.

Laurent Nkunda belongs in a prison cell at The Hague along with his acolyte Bosco Ntaganda, who is being sought under an unrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and unsealed on April, 28 2008. Laurent Nkunda is also under investigation by the ICC. Many Congolese are wondering why there has not yet been an indictment of Laurent Nkunda while the court was quick to issue one against former Congolese vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba for crimes that while equally important and indefensible, pale in comparison against those of Laurent Nkunda and his troops.

Laurent Nkunda's boss Paul Kagame was indicted on November 17, 2006 by then French magistrate in charge of counter-terrorism affairs Jean-Louis Bruguière. He is accused in the indictment of ordering the attack on the plane carrying then Rwandan President, Juvenal Habyarimana and his counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi. Their deaths led to the genocide of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Judge Fernando Andreou Merelles of the Spanish Central Instruction Court issued indictments against 40 senior officers of the Rwanda Defense Forces formerly of the Rwanda Patriotic Army for committing mass killings after the 1994 Rwanda Genocide. He said he also has evidence against Paul Kagame who only escaped indictment because he is a sitting president.