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."