As a follow-up to my previous blogs on the conflict in DRC and the mining operations that fuel it, I found yet another article (a popular news item of late). It argues that "banning" minerals from DRC is a mistake because it will cut many ordinary citizens off from the only livelihood available to them. He makes the very apt point that the situation in DRC cannot be compared to Sierra Leone's blood diamonds. Instead, he argues for better support of good governance:
"There are a number of people who are actors in this trade because the trade serves their profit motives. So, if we can put the right incentives in place for these actors to also benefit in peacetime from these trades, then we could form a constituency that would allow us to reform the trade and ultimately disconnect it from the military aspect that currently has a severe negative impact on the trade, as such."
With the combination of difficult terrain and widespread insecurity, how can any organization be imposed on the mining operations? Garrett says, "Ultimately, the main reason why a number of these armed groups, including the Congolese army, are allowed to benefit from this trade is the general lack of governance in eastern Congo, which is ultimately due to the severe under-capacity of the Congolese institutions."
He calls on the international community to support and help rebuilding Congolese institutions "to lay the foundation for a large reform process." This includes a well-trained, well-paid national army. "Unfortunately, at the present, the Congolese army is a major source of insecurity instead of a force for order," he says."
(read the full article here )
I agree that there is great nuance in the people and motives involved. But what incentives can be given to the group which is making a lot of money out of doing nothing but being threatening with little chance of reprisal? The banning option takes away the profit, which is probably the easiest and quickest method to impact them, but has the unfortunate side effect of taking away the income of people trying to make an honest living by mining. As such the long-term impact could be increased poverty, which generally leads to increased violence and vulnerability, and more poverty.
Is it possible to design a policy that is effective and that does not ban all minerals from DRC? Wherein mineral purchases are restricted to select companies or organisations that monitor where the minerals come from, who is mining them, and who is controlling the mine? Building local cooperatives could help significantly if there was a structure in place to ensure rebels and the military did not infiltrate them. Of course, this process requires more time and money to set up and monitor initially, but how much is the international community spending now on aid in the refugee camps and the UN peace keeping mission? Prevention is always more cost-effective than a response after-the-fact. Pro-active planning and spending could save a lot of money in the long run if it helps to build sustainable peace.
18 April 2009
12 April 2009
the wealth of DRC
I wrote several months ago about the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (a region known as North and South Kivu). It's a complex issue that has developed and changed over the decades. What is highlighted most recently is the presence of a rebel group known as the FDLR (the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda). This group was formed primarily by genocidaires who fled Rwanda in 1994 after the RPF victory that ended the genocide. The RPF up to that point was itself a rebel group, made up of Rwandan refugees in Uganda who had fled previous massacres in Rwanda, and who had been fighting a war with the Rwandan government since 1990, a war that ended when the RPF took control of the country and stopped the genocide.
The FDLR continue to pursue the Hutu Power ideology to exterminate Tutsi's by terrorising the Tutsi population in Congo. In my previous blog I wrote about the violence that broke out the end of last year when the CNDP (The National Congress for the Defense of the People) threatened to take control of Goma, stating it's goal to protect Tutsi's. Following this a landmark agreement was made between President Kabila of DRC and President Kagame of Rwanda to conduct a joint operation to "root out" the FDLR, considered the source of much bad relations between the 2 countries (Rwanda has invaded DRC twice claiming to be seeking out these genocidaires). The Rwandan military has come and gone, arresting the leader of the CNDP (Laurent Nkunda) in the mean time, and declared the operation a success. Possibly 3000 refugees have returned to Rwanda as a result--when the genocidaires fled the country, they took with them their families as well as Hutus who did not participate in the genocide but feared reprisals from the RPF nonetheless. However, only about 300 of these were combatants and the fact remains that thousands of FDLR remain in the bush of North and South Kivu, and as the Rwandan military left, the rebels continue to attack and terrorise the population.
I pointed out in my previous blog that a big part of this conflict is economics. While ethnic divisions are certainly a motivation, so is money. DRC is an extraordinarily resource rich country. The rebel groups would not be able to sustain themselves without financial support--this is true anywhere. In DRC mining or controlling mines is very lucrative. I've attached two recent articles below that speak to this issue. The first is from the BBC, and while it is long and not incredibly well written, it helps to paint a picture: a villager working in mines to make a living who must bribe the rebels for access, a rebel leader who denies any knowledge that mines even exist in the area, a businessman in town who buys the minerals, and tin cans sitting in your cupboards. (There is also a little tease about the role of China--the newest African colonizer?--the article really doesn't get into it, neither will I except to say that China agreed to build roads in exchange for unregulated access to DRC's mineral wealth):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7991479.stm
Next I offer a piece of a solution--awareness and cooperate responsibility:
http://www.voanews.com/english/Africa/2009-04-01-voa30.cfm
And just as I was about to post this I found yet another, I wasn't able to listen to the report though, so let me know if he had anything good to say!
The public, as consumers, has a voice and has the power to make their voice heard. Globalisation has made access and production simpler or cheaper, but also much more difficult to trace responsibility. Historically there is an attitude that conducting business in the 'third world' means there are no "rules of engagement" and we must continue to break down such colonialist, hypocritical, hierarchical practices. It is encouraging to see the movement towards this understanding in an unrelated article where a judge declared "That level of wilful blindness in the face of crimes in violation of the law of nations cannot defeat an otherwise clear showing of knowledge that the assistance IBM provided would directly and substantially support apartheid."
The FDLR continue to pursue the Hutu Power ideology to exterminate Tutsi's by terrorising the Tutsi population in Congo. In my previous blog I wrote about the violence that broke out the end of last year when the CNDP (The National Congress for the Defense of the People) threatened to take control of Goma, stating it's goal to protect Tutsi's. Following this a landmark agreement was made between President Kabila of DRC and President Kagame of Rwanda to conduct a joint operation to "root out" the FDLR, considered the source of much bad relations between the 2 countries (Rwanda has invaded DRC twice claiming to be seeking out these genocidaires). The Rwandan military has come and gone, arresting the leader of the CNDP (Laurent Nkunda) in the mean time, and declared the operation a success. Possibly 3000 refugees have returned to Rwanda as a result--when the genocidaires fled the country, they took with them their families as well as Hutus who did not participate in the genocide but feared reprisals from the RPF nonetheless. However, only about 300 of these were combatants and the fact remains that thousands of FDLR remain in the bush of North and South Kivu, and as the Rwandan military left, the rebels continue to attack and terrorise the population.
I pointed out in my previous blog that a big part of this conflict is economics. While ethnic divisions are certainly a motivation, so is money. DRC is an extraordinarily resource rich country. The rebel groups would not be able to sustain themselves without financial support--this is true anywhere. In DRC mining or controlling mines is very lucrative. I've attached two recent articles below that speak to this issue. The first is from the BBC, and while it is long and not incredibly well written, it helps to paint a picture: a villager working in mines to make a living who must bribe the rebels for access, a rebel leader who denies any knowledge that mines even exist in the area, a businessman in town who buys the minerals, and tin cans sitting in your cupboards. (There is also a little tease about the role of China--the newest African colonizer?--the article really doesn't get into it, neither will I except to say that China agreed to build roads in exchange for unregulated access to DRC's mineral wealth):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7991479.stm
Next I offer a piece of a solution--awareness and cooperate responsibility:
http://www.voanews.com/english/Africa/2009-04-01-voa30.cfm
And just as I was about to post this I found yet another, I wasn't able to listen to the report though, so let me know if he had anything good to say!
The public, as consumers, has a voice and has the power to make their voice heard. Globalisation has made access and production simpler or cheaper, but also much more difficult to trace responsibility. Historically there is an attitude that conducting business in the 'third world' means there are no "rules of engagement" and we must continue to break down such colonialist, hypocritical, hierarchical practices. It is encouraging to see the movement towards this understanding in an unrelated article where a judge declared "That level of wilful blindness in the face of crimes in violation of the law of nations cannot defeat an otherwise clear showing of knowledge that the assistance IBM provided would directly and substantially support apartheid."
09 April 2009
April 7th: 15th Anniversary of Rwandan genocide
Yesterday marked the 15th anniversary of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. April 7th is the National Day of Commemoration and marks the beginning of the Week of Memorial. Each year the government selects one of the many memorial sites throughout the country to hold the National Commemoration ceremony at, and this year Nyanza was chosen. It is in Kicukiro (kee-choo-kee-ru), outside of the city of Kigali, and just up the road from where I stay when I'm in Kigali.
At this site, on April 11, 1994, 2500 people were massacred. Only hours before they had been under the protection of UN soldiers at Kicukiru Technical College. But after 10 UN soldiers from Belgium were killed trying to protect the woman who should have taken over the presidency after President Habyrimana's plane was shot down, the UN decided to pull out the vast majority of their soldiers (that is, the white ones). Only about 150 UN soldiers remained in Rwanda, charged to fulfill their mandate of "preserving the peace". At Kicukiro Technical College, the UN soldiers were told to evacuate the westerners and abandon their post. People tell me that as the soldiers were preparing to leave, Interahamwe (the trained civilian militia) were standing outside, with their machetes and clubs in hand, just waiting for the opportunity to begin killing those inside. People begged the soldiers not to go. They begged the soldiers to take them away. But they had orders from UN Headquarters--sitting in their offices thousands of miles away in New York, making decisions that determined the lives and deaths of millions, seemingly unaware that these were actual humans they were dealing with and not pictures in a video game. So the soldiers left, they left those thousands desperately seeking refuge at the school, and they left millions in Rwanda lost in a horrible nightmare that some never woke from. Some, passing me on the roads today and working their fields, still sometimes get lost in that nightmare, unsure when it began or if ended.
After the UN soldiers left, the victims were marched up the road and into a patch of forest, where the many facets of the fragility of humanity played out in horrific proportions. 2500 were killed. Men, women, children, for nothing more than a word: Tutsi. Decades of prejudice, economics, power plays, politics, and social stigma worked hard to create the opposing dichotomy of Hutu and Tutsi, divided by a canyon filled with fear, anger, hatred, and greed.
That patch of forest is now the Nyanza Memorial. Yesterday tens of thousands gathered there to honor the memory of loved ones and countrymen, to remember what happened and reaffirm their promise (the promise of the world, I might add): "Never Again". It was a formal affair and most of it was in Kinyarwanda so I didn't understand much of what was said. "Icyizere" (which means hope) was frequently affirmed, especially by President Kagame. Cal Wilkins, who was in Rwanda when the genocide happened, and stayed throughout those hundred days, shared his story and spoke about the power of Presence and the power of standing together. One of the survivors of Nyanza (there were only hundred, or less), also shared his story. Many around me wept. Some women, in listening to his story, remembered their own and were overwhelmed with grief. First I heard one woman wailing loudly in the distance, then another, and another. Some of them, wailing does not describe it, they were screaming as if they were under attack at that moment. Some of them were screaming words, I do not know what they were saying, I only understood "OYA!" which means "NO!". Their wails were heart-wrenching. Their screams eery and disconcerting. At one point a foreigner sitting behind me whispered to her companion "Oh my gosh, this is just too much." There were Red Cross and other medical staff there to help them, carrying them to an area away from the crowd to counsel and comfort them. For the next few hours the silence of the crowd, the encouragement of the speakers, and the comfort of the songs were periodically pierced by the wails and screams of women lost in their memories. There is a price to remembering.
For me, bearing witness to their pain is to too small a cost. For me, remembering the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 brings shame--shame that the Western World, which declared after the holocaust that it would ensure genocide would happen "Never Again", failed to recognize and respond to blatant and forewarned genocide Rwanda. Needless to say the Clinton administration is not terribly popular here, and while people are huge fans of Obama, there is trepedation that he has filled the White House with so many staffers from Clinton's administration.
I watched part of a film called "Rwanda '94", it was powerful and I highly recommend it. In it, one woman tells her story, and she ends by saying that she asks only for people to listen to her words because if you cannot bear witness to her life and to the history of genocide, then your ignorance is as bad as the genocide itself. In his speech Cal Wilkins said your story is the most powerful thing you have. Don't let their voices fall on deaf ears. Listen, though it is painful. Learn, though it will disturb you. And pay attention to the world and to our leaders: peace, like war, does not happen accidently, we must actively pursue it.
At this site, on April 11, 1994, 2500 people were massacred. Only hours before they had been under the protection of UN soldiers at Kicukiru Technical College. But after 10 UN soldiers from Belgium were killed trying to protect the woman who should have taken over the presidency after President Habyrimana's plane was shot down, the UN decided to pull out the vast majority of their soldiers (that is, the white ones). Only about 150 UN soldiers remained in Rwanda, charged to fulfill their mandate of "preserving the peace". At Kicukiro Technical College, the UN soldiers were told to evacuate the westerners and abandon their post. People tell me that as the soldiers were preparing to leave, Interahamwe (the trained civilian militia) were standing outside, with their machetes and clubs in hand, just waiting for the opportunity to begin killing those inside. People begged the soldiers not to go. They begged the soldiers to take them away. But they had orders from UN Headquarters--sitting in their offices thousands of miles away in New York, making decisions that determined the lives and deaths of millions, seemingly unaware that these were actual humans they were dealing with and not pictures in a video game. So the soldiers left, they left those thousands desperately seeking refuge at the school, and they left millions in Rwanda lost in a horrible nightmare that some never woke from. Some, passing me on the roads today and working their fields, still sometimes get lost in that nightmare, unsure when it began or if ended.
After the UN soldiers left, the victims were marched up the road and into a patch of forest, where the many facets of the fragility of humanity played out in horrific proportions. 2500 were killed. Men, women, children, for nothing more than a word: Tutsi. Decades of prejudice, economics, power plays, politics, and social stigma worked hard to create the opposing dichotomy of Hutu and Tutsi, divided by a canyon filled with fear, anger, hatred, and greed.
That patch of forest is now the Nyanza Memorial. Yesterday tens of thousands gathered there to honor the memory of loved ones and countrymen, to remember what happened and reaffirm their promise (the promise of the world, I might add): "Never Again". It was a formal affair and most of it was in Kinyarwanda so I didn't understand much of what was said. "Icyizere" (which means hope) was frequently affirmed, especially by President Kagame. Cal Wilkins, who was in Rwanda when the genocide happened, and stayed throughout those hundred days, shared his story and spoke about the power of Presence and the power of standing together. One of the survivors of Nyanza (there were only hundred, or less), also shared his story. Many around me wept. Some women, in listening to his story, remembered their own and were overwhelmed with grief. First I heard one woman wailing loudly in the distance, then another, and another. Some of them, wailing does not describe it, they were screaming as if they were under attack at that moment. Some of them were screaming words, I do not know what they were saying, I only understood "OYA!" which means "NO!". Their wails were heart-wrenching. Their screams eery and disconcerting. At one point a foreigner sitting behind me whispered to her companion "Oh my gosh, this is just too much." There were Red Cross and other medical staff there to help them, carrying them to an area away from the crowd to counsel and comfort them. For the next few hours the silence of the crowd, the encouragement of the speakers, and the comfort of the songs were periodically pierced by the wails and screams of women lost in their memories. There is a price to remembering.
For me, bearing witness to their pain is to too small a cost. For me, remembering the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 brings shame--shame that the Western World, which declared after the holocaust that it would ensure genocide would happen "Never Again", failed to recognize and respond to blatant and forewarned genocide Rwanda. Needless to say the Clinton administration is not terribly popular here, and while people are huge fans of Obama, there is trepedation that he has filled the White House with so many staffers from Clinton's administration.
I watched part of a film called "Rwanda '94", it was powerful and I highly recommend it. In it, one woman tells her story, and she ends by saying that she asks only for people to listen to her words because if you cannot bear witness to her life and to the history of genocide, then your ignorance is as bad as the genocide itself. In his speech Cal Wilkins said your story is the most powerful thing you have. Don't let their voices fall on deaf ears. Listen, though it is painful. Learn, though it will disturb you. And pay attention to the world and to our leaders: peace, like war, does not happen accidently, we must actively pursue it.
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