Congo Resource Wars and Rwanda

Following the Mineral Trail: Congo Resource Wars and Rwanda

Thursday, 18 February 2010 12:23 John Lasker

The Rwandan government and its military have largely been suspected by a UN Panel of Experts, human rights organizations and independent journalists, of financially supporting a number of violent militias that have destabilized the eastern Congo region to illegally traffic millions-of-dollars worth of minerals such as coltan, gold, and cassiterite. These minerals are then brought from neighboring Congo into Rwanda for eventual sale on the international market.

In 2000, Rwanda, an African ally of Washington, produced 83 tons of coltan from its own mines but found a way to export a total of 603 tons that year, as discovered by Danish journalist Bjorn Willum, after he requested the figures from the National Bank of Rwanda. Willum also found the Rwandan army, which at the time was receiving funding and training from the US military, made $250 million that year by selling stolen Congolese minerals, most likely purchased from their shadow militias.

Roughly ten years later, a UN Panel of Expert's report titled The 2009 Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo states that the illegal traffic of Congolese minerals still flows into Rwanda mostly from these violent militias that continue to profit greatly, presumably passing earnings onto their Rwandan backers. The report also implicated a number of Western-based mining companies and metal brokers of indirectly financing the resource war as their buyers simply waited in Rwanda for the minerals to make their way across the border.

What's more, this is not the first UN Panel of Expert's report on the exploitation of Congolese resources; similar findings were also publicized in 2001 and 2003. While a consensus can not be reached among government agencies and human rights groups, the International Rescue Committee believes the resource war which started in the mid-1990s has taken the lives of 4 to 5 million people, most of whom are Congolese.

Given the implication of such violence and illegal trade, one would expect US embassy officials in Rwanda to have an opinion on the subject. Sasha Lezhnev is the director of the Grassroots Reconciliation Group, a nonprofit that aids former child soldiers. Of late, he's spent time in the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In 2008 Lezhner spoke to the outgoing US ambassador to Rwanda about the resource conflicts in the region.

"I asked the ambassador," says Lezhnev, "'What are your feelings about Rwanda's influence in the eastern Congo?'" The ambassador immediately responded: "I don't know what you're talking about."

Lezhnev was shocked at what he believes is simply the former ambassador's ignorance of Rwanda's influence. "We have to open our eyes to what's going on," he says.

Yet after years of apparent indifference to the eastern Congo resource wars, it appears the US is finally starting to take measures to help end the conflict; the U.S. Senate is pushing forward the Congo Conflict Minerals Act of 2009. The bill calls for, among other things, a system of oversight to keep watch on all US-based industries that utilize Congolese coltan, cassiterite, wolframite and gold, and make sure the minerals were not extracted from conflict mines controlled by illegal armed groups.

However, the bill makes no mention of the Paul Kagame regime, which has led Rwanda since the genocide of 1994, or his administration's influence in eastern Congo. Kagame has said any strategic maneuvers on Rwanda's part in the eastern Congo, which also includes the deployment of regular Rwandan troops, is so to keep the pressure on those groups that took part in the 1994 massacre.

But according to Professor Yaa-Lengi, who runs the New York-based Coalition for Peace, Justice and Democracy in the Congo, millions of Congolese - a number corroborated by several American-based human-rights organizations interviewed for this article - believe Kagame's claims are a ruse, a smoke-screen to loot Congolese minerals. He says it is part of an elaborate plan that many Congolese believe was initiated by the US; and thus Rwanda is an American proxy with a mission to keep Congolese minerals moving cheaply to Western-based mining companies.

Yaa-Lengi says these theories, deemed far-fetched by many experts, don't end there. "Bill Clinton was behind the (1994) genocide," he stated. "Millions of Congolese believe this."

Lezhnev and representatives of other human rights groups working in the eastern Congo scoff at Yaa-Lengi and the charges he levels against the Clinton administration. But they agree the Congolese have plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the US and their regional interests.

For instance, David Sullivan of the Enough Project says during the Bush administration, the White House had a public relations official working in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa. When Bush's term ended in 2008, he says the official quickly took a job with the mining company Freeport-McMoRan and its operations in the country, which mainly extracts copper and cobalt.

"There are some really dangerous arguments about this [Rwanda's interests in the Congo]," says Sullivan. "There are a lot of conspiracy theories. And many people overstate the influence of the US in Rwanda and the region."

Fueling those conspiracy theories in part is President Kagame, who gained power immediately following the 1994 genocide. Kagame went through a U.S. military training program on American soil during the years leading up to the massacre. There's also historical evidence that points to how important Congolese minerals are to the US; the US military acquired uranium from a mine in the DRC town of Skinkolobwe to build the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. The U.S. continues to maintain strong ties with Rwanda: US assistance to the country "has increased four-fold over the past four years," according to the US State Department.

Lezhnev says, "We have a lot of leverage with Kagame and we have to use that." Meaning that the US needs to pressure the Rwandan government into ending its destabilizing role in the eastern Congo.

Yet what specific influences the US ultimately has over Rwanda remains a mystery. One element that contradicts the conspiracy theories offered by Yaa-Lengi, however, is the new Senate bill. Sullivan says it could end the resource war in eastern Congo. But he acknowledges the bill is no panacea.

"We would like to see a provision in the bill that makes [all metal brokers who sell minerals acquired from the eastern Congo] disclose the minerals exact origin, the exact mine it came from," he says. "If they say they are getting the minerals from Malawi, then they have to have an independent verification saying so." When selling their minerals onto the international market, metal traders have faked records saying the minerals were actually from countries other than the Congo.

Essentially, what Sullivan and the Enough Project are calling for is an independent auditing effort based in the eastern Congo. This could be expensive, but if established, could lead to new successes in the fight against the looting. For example, say a metal broker is caught selling minerals from a mine that is a source of conflict and controlled by a violent militia - a reality for many eastern Congolese mines. In this case "[the metal broker] will lose access to international markets," says Sullivan.

Some experts on the eastern Congo say the bill is flawed and if passed, won't have the muscle to end the resource war.

"Given the many links in the supply chain [of eastern Congo minerals], any of them can simply claim they don't know where the minerals are coming from and it is currently difficult to prove them wrong," says David Barouski, a student from the University of Wisconsin, who has documented first-hand the resource war in the eastern Congo. "The U.S. claims it wants to help implement ways to certify this chain, but how are they going to do it for every mine in a conflict zone? Certification at the mines would require agents to go on site, but with such poor infrastructure it would be years before this is feasible and there would need to be peace to rebuild the infrastructure."

Besides the U.S., the Congolese people don't trust the UN either, says Yaa-Lengi. Throwing fuel on their UN speculation, he says, is the 2009 UN Panel of Experts' report on the eastern Congo, The Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At first the report was leaked, angering members of the Security Council. Then its official release was delayed.

"The UN delayed publishing it because it points a finger back to the UN and the Security Council," says Yaa-Lengi. "This is because they are allowing the Congolese to die and be raped. The UN knows it, but they are allowing it. All members of the Security Council are benefiting from the resources of the Congo. The UN does only what the Security Council wants and by that we mean what the super powers want."

The U.N. Security Council is comprised of the U.S., Great Britain, France, Russia and China as permanent members and two other rotating member nations. Companies in every one of these nations, claims Yaa-Lengi, have benefitted in some way from the cheap minerals taken from eastern Congo, one of poorest nations on the planet. But according to the African Business Magazine, the DRC currently has an estimated total mineral wealth of $24 trillion, equivalent to the GDP of Europe and the US combined.

Sullivan of the Enough Project agrees the Congolese are suspect of the UN, as they are of the US. Yet, he says to "keep in mind the [UN] Panel of Experts is independent of the Security Council." For the most part, this UN Panel of Experts is made up of regional experts of the eastern Congo, its culture, government and society, he says, adding "The new report has pretty much been ignored by the Security Council."

Indeed, past UN Panel of Experts' reports on the eastern Congo, published in 2001 and 2003, were also mostly ignored by members of the Security Council. Even though the UN Panel of Experts had evidence piled high implicating scores of Western-based mining companies and metal brokers of buying looted minerals from conflict mines of the eastern Congo.

Take, for example, the story of Robert Raun, a former metal broker who worked just across the eastern Congolese border in Rwanda. He was the beneficiary of a strange response on the part of the UN in 2004, a response that sends mixed messages about the West and their intentions for the eastern Congo resource war.

Raun and his mining company, Trinitech of Cleveland, Ohio, which processed and traded coltan, had been implicated in the UN's 2001 report, The Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This report essentially accused Trinitech and over 100 other Western-based mining companies of looting minerals from the eastern Congo. The minerals included coltan, a black metal ore that is needed to meet the West's insatiable thirst for personal technology. It is a key ingredient in the manufacture of cell phones, lap tops and video-game consoles. (Also see Inside Africa's PlayStation War in Toward Freedom.)

When Raun stepped onto the 20th floor of the Secretariat Tower of the United Nations in 2004 to respond to their charges, the "power of accusation" from the UN, he says, had already ruined Trinitech. The UN also accused Raun of aligning with "elite networks" of Rwandan government officials and high-ranking military officers. The elite networks were apparently forcing Congolese children and captives to mine for coltan.

"The allegations we were using child labor was a fabrication," insists Raun, a devout Christian. "[But] accusation is a powerful thing. It ruined us. Nobody wants to buy from the company that's wearing the Scarlet Letter. We're just a shell of what we used to be. But we're standing, by the power of God, we're standing."

Nevertheless, on that day in New York City in 2004, the UN would surprisingly drop its charges against Trinitech. Indeed, at that time, the UN was giving a lot of Western-based mining companies and metal brokers working in eastern Congo a pass. Out of the 100 or so mining companies accused of looting minerals, the UN dropped the charges against each one, infuriating mining watchdog efforts such as MiningWatch Canada.

Raun only answers to the child labor charges, however. When asked who Trinitech was buying its coltan from, and whether it came from conflict-ridden mines in the eastern Congo, he responds, "No comment".

John Lasker is a freelance journalist from Columbus, Ohio.

Cancun climate agreement and Bolivia's dissent

Cancun climate agreement stripped bare by Bolivia's dissent

By Nick Buxton

December 16, 2010 -- Transnational Institute -- In the famous Hans Christian Anderson fable, "The Emperor's New Clothes", a weaver famously plays on an emperor's arrogance and persuades him to wear a non-existent suit with the argument that it is only invisible to the "hopelessly stupid".The moment of truth comes, as we can all remember, when a child in an otherwise silent crowd yells out, “But he is not wearing any clothes!” What we don't always recall is that the naked Emperor suspects the child may be telling the truth, but carries on marching proudly and unclothed regardless.

The story is a rather apt parallel for the Cancun climate agreements that were signed last week. Only one dissenting country, Bolivia, dared to voice its dissent with the agreement. Yet its voice was silenced by the gavel of the chair and by the standing ovations of 191 countries. They, like the naked emperor, must know that the deal is naked and without substance, yet they march on proudly regardless.

Cancun sets us on dangerous path to runaway climate change

Bolivia's indefatigable negotiator, Pablo Solon, put it most cogently in the concluding plenary, when he said that the only way to assess whether the agreement had any "clothes" was to see if it included firm commitments to reduce emissions and whether it was enough to prevent catastrophic climate change.

The troubling reality, as he pointed out, is that the agreement merely confirms the completely inadequate voluntary pledges of reductions of 13-16% by 2020 made since Copenhagen's climate talks in 2009. Analysts at Climate Action Tracker have revealed that these paltry offers are nowhere near enough to keep temperature increases even within the contested goal of 2 degrees Celcius. Instead they would lead to increases in temperature of between 3 and 4 degrees C, a level considered by scientists as highly dangerous for the vast majority of the planet. Solon said, “I cannot in all in consciousness sign such as a document as millions of people will die as a result.”

To a stony silence from fellow country negotiators, Solon also pointed out a whole range of critical flaws in the agreement from its complete lack of specifics on key issues of finance to its systematic exclusion of voices from developing countries.

Why the Cancun text is a backward step

• Document effectively kills of the only binding agreement, Kyoto Protocol, in favour of a completely inadequate bottom-up voluntary approach.

• Increases loopholes and flexibilities that allow developed countries to avoid action, via an expansion of offsets and continued existence of "surplus allowances" of carbon after 2012 by countries like Ukraine and Russia which effectively cancel out any other reductions.

• Finance commitments weakened: commitment to “provide new and additional financial resources” to developing countries have been diluted to talking more vaguely about “mobilising [resources] jointly”, with expectation that this will mainly be provided by carbon markets.

• The World Bank is made trustee of the new Green Climate Fund, which has been strongly opposed by many civil society groups due to the undemocratic makeup of the World Bank and its poor environmental record.

• No discussion of intellectual property rights, repeatedly raised by many countries, as current rules obstruct transfer of key climate-related technologies to developing countries.

• Constant assumption in favour of market mechanisms to resolve climate change even though this perspective is not shared by a number of countries, particularly in Latin America.

• Green light given for the controversial REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) program, which often ends up perversely rewarding those responsible for deforestation, while dispossessing indigenous and forest dwellers of their land.

• Systematic exclusion of proposals that came from the historic World Peoples' Conference on Climate Change including proposals for a Climate Justice Tribunal, full recognition of Indigenous rights, and rights for nature.

As a press statement from Bolivia put it: “Proposals by powerful countries like the US were sacrosanct, while ours were disposable. Compromise was always at the expense of the victims, rather than the culprits of climate change.”

Solon concluded that in substance the Cancun text was little more than a rehashed version of the Copenhagen Accord, that had been widely condemned the year before. Patricia Espinosa, chair of the talks, refused to open up any points of her draft text for negotiation and cheered on by other delegates made the legally dubious ruling that Bolivia's opposition did not block consensus. The Cancun agreements were "approved" to great celebration from the international community.

Cancun mood-music sways opinion

It became clear soon after the plenary ended that what seemed like roars of support for the Cancun text were more cries of relief or desperation. After the debacle in Copenhagen and following a probably deliberate policy by major powers who spoke constantly of "low expectations", the mere existence of an agreement seemed enough. As Chris Huhne, Britain's climate secretary put it, “This is way better than what we were expecting only a few weeks ago.”

The mood seemed to infect the larger non-governmental organisations who were gathered in Cancun. Greenpeace, whicht had labelled the almost identical Copenhagen Accord last year a “crime scene”, said that Cancun had put “hope over fear and put the building blocks back in place for a global deal to combat climate change”. Oxfam echoed, saying that “negotiators have resuscitated the UN talks and put them on a road to recovery.”

In the aftermath of Cancun, the main defence of the text has been based on appeals to realism. As Tom Athanasiou of Eco Equity puts it in his analysis on the accord: “The reason that so many people are celebrating the Agreements is because they believe that, setting aside the details, they capture the only agreement that was possible.”

Many environmentalists argue that at least with this accord and a reinvigorated belief in the UN, we live to fight another day. Meanwhile they warn that a collapse of negotiations in Cancun would perhaps have forever destroyed the UN process and even the possibility of any future binding agreement on climate change. Nearly all use one of the favourite mantras of the negotiations, saying that critics should “not let the perfect be the enemy of the good”.

Realism of science, or realism of the powerful?

However this argument supposes two things: first, that progress, even if small, was made at Cancun and second, that it is better to have some kind of agreement than none at all. This reasoning along with both the financial offers, cajoling and bullying of the major powers – which was revealed most dramatically in Wikileaks cables – is no doubt what drove most government negotiators to sign the Cancun texts. Yet both suppositions are highly questionable.

First, in terms of analysing progress, aside from the many other critiques of the texts, there is strong evidence that the Cancun agreements take us backwards rather than forwards. One of the key characteristics of the otherwise wholly insufficient Kyoto Protocol is that it had legally binding targets based in theory on the science. As we come up to the first deadline of 2012, 17 countries will almost certainly breach their commitments to reduce emissions by 2020 by 5% compared to 1990. Some countries like Canada, Australia, Turkey and Spain have instead vastly increased emissions. However the fact that they signed legally binding targets does open up the possibilities of legal challenges and a more effective incentive in future for countries to abide by their commitments.

By contrast, the Cancun agreement effectively kills off the Kyoto Protocol and replaces it with a pledge system of voluntary commitments. Not only does this lead to countries only offering what they plan to do anyway, ignoring what science demands; there is absolutely no possibility of legal penalties if a country fails to fulfil its commitments. It is an ineffective and highly dangerous way of tackling one of the biggest crises humanity has faced.

Will good be the enemy of the necessary?

The second questionable supposition is that any agreement is better than no agreement. This may be true for some international discussions on less critical issues, but is it for discussing a climate crisis where urgent and radical action is the only way to avert runaway climate change? As even supporters of the Cancun agreement note, the text has mainly punted off most difficult decisions to the next meeting of the UNFCC in Durban, South Africa, in December 2011. It already seems likely that we will see a repeat of the hype built up around Copenhagen and the equal likelihood of either a fudge or a failure – particularly if delegates can seem so easily sated by a few symbolic gestures such as the ones in Cancun.

Meanwhile the window of opportunity to act is closing. One report by the London School of Economics suggested that greenhouse gas emissions will have to peak by 2015 to have even a 50% probability of keeping temperature increases below 1.5 degrees C – the demand made by over 100 developing nations. The Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change similarly identified 2015 as a time when emissions will have to peak to stabilise atmospheric CO2 at levels of 350 to 400 parts per million.

Yet in the face of this, the best the world community can come up with is an agreement to continue negotiating? And we are happy to call that a success? [As a side note, it can only be seen as deeply cynical that industrialised countries in Cancun agreed on 2015 as the date to review whether the global target should be 1.5 degrees C rather than 2 degrees C given that any action after that will almost certainly be too late.]

The truth is that Cancun revealed a shocking failure by the world's nations – and particularly those most responsible for causing climate change – to find a collective and effective response to a crisis that will affect the most vulnerable. A report by the Climate Vulnerable Forum, in December 2010 noted that already 350,000 people die from natural disasters related to climate change and that this figure is likely to rise to 1 million people every year if we don't radically change course.

Bolivia was not an obstacle to progress, it was rather the only country daring enough to tell the truth. Rather than less Bolivias, we need more willing to stand up and say that the agreement was "naked" and unacceptable. Perhaps if more countries – especially major emerging economies like India and Brazil – had said they would not accept an illusory deal, it could have shocked the world into moving beyond cautious approaches and acting radically for humanity and the planet.

Only mass mobilisation can shift power balance

The needed shift in thinking and action, though, will only happen if we mobilise and on a scale that has never been done before. Bolivia's bravery came to a large degree from the mandate it received at the World Peoples' Conference on Climate Change, and the support it felt from people on the streets just a few blocks from the Cancun negotiating halls. Thousands of Indigenous people, smallholder farmers and grassroots activists marched on the streets were unequivocal in condemning the Cancun agreements and in supporting Bolivia.

They already see the costs of climate change and were not prepared to be bought off with a deal that did nothing to safeguard their future. They were backed by climate justice networks worldwide. Yet the isolation of Bolivia in the conference plenary shows that this movement faces a huge challenge in the coming year to scale up. As Bill McKibben, founder of the global campaign 350.org, argues we need to “build a movement strong enough to take on the most profitable and powerful enterprise that the human civilization has ever seen—the fossil fuel industry” and we need to do it urgently before it is too late.

[Nick Buxton is a communications consultant, working on media, publications and online communications for the Transnational Institute. He has been based in California since September 2008 and prior to that lived in Bolivia for four years, working as writer/web editor atFundación Solón, a Bolivian organisation working on issues of trade, water, culture and historical memory. He is a long-term activist on global justice and peace issues. In the late 1990s he was communications manager at Jubilee 2000, part of the global movement that put unjust international debt on the global political agenda. His publications include: "Networking for debt cancellation”, in Advocacy, activism and the Internet (Lyceum books, 2001); “Civil society and debt cancellation”, in Civil society and human rights (Routledge, 2004) and “Politics of debt”, in Dignity and Defiance: Bolivia’s challenge to globalisation (University of California Press/Merlin Press UK, January 2009). This article first appeared at the Transnational Institute website and is posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewalunder a Creative Commons licence.]