Since January 2006, the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has caused the death of between 3.5 and 4.5 million people. This is the greatest human disaster since the Second World War. Everyone recognizes as the backdrop to the tragedy the embezzlement of strategic minerals found in Congo: diamonds, gold, coltan, cobalt, etc. It is estimated that the DRC possess about 80% of the world existing coltan reserves. It is used in the electronics industry, particularly in the manufacture of mobile phones (millions of units were sold in the world in 2006).  Here are two articles that present the relationship between the power of the mine and technology, and the suffering of a village and the exploitation of the natural resources.

Source: Argenpress and Live Africa

Barrick Gold's Pedigree

By Alejandro Teitelbaum (special to Argenpress.info)

In January 2006, the prestigious English medical journal The Lancet wrote that ten years of civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has caused between 3.5 and 4,5 millions of deaths.

We can say that this is the greatest human disaster since the Second World War. This tragedy has as its backdrop the embezzlement of strategic minerals found in the Congo: diamonds, gold, coltan, cobalt, etc. It is estimated that the DRC possesses about 80% of the world’s existing coltan reserves. This is used in the electronic industry, especially in the manufacture of mobile phones (millions of units were sold worldwide in 2006).

AngloGold Ashanti, headquartered in South Africa, is one of the companies that has benefited from the genocide in the Congo.. AngloGold Ashanti is associated with Anglo-American, a transnational mining company headquartered in Johannesburg and London, and Barrick Gold Corporation, headquartered in Canada. Anglo-America holds 45% of the shares of DeBeers, which has virtually an international monopoly on diamond industry. Among the mining companies of Barrick Gold is Adastra Mining, which has bought a diamond concession along the Congo-Angola border from  the Belgian mercenary company International Defense and Security (1998) and currently, Adastra Mining makes available concessions for cobalt and copper in the Congolese province of Katanga (Shaba). Adastra is a member of Corporate Council of Africa (Board of the largest companies in Africa), together with Goodworks, Halliburton, Chevron-Texaco, Northrop Grumman, GE, Boeing, Raytheon and Bechtel, etc.

The new imperialism:  Coltan

The fight for the control of mineral wealth in the Democratic Republic of Congo has left more than one million of persons in a desperate situation.

Text and story: Alejandra Pataro,

Editors: Ricardo González and Ariel González Mouls

Published in Live Africa

We must state that this still continues today: The Democratic Republic of Congo has the bad luck to be rich in coltan or columbite–tantalite. This misfortune has provoked a tragedy in addition to the array of titles that have been applied to the life of thd inhabitants of the region: “the world war of Africa”, in which the governments and the troops of Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda have been implicated. This war has killed almost 3 million people with the total indifference and hypocritical complicity of the wealthy countries and of their communication companies that are more interested in producing more entertaining which is more economical and politically profitable, in the midst of the war in the Middle East.

This mineral is essential for mobile phones, for the electronic device industry, nuclear and spatial reactors, ballistic missiles, video games, diagnostic medical devices, magnetic trains, optical fibers, etc. Sixty percent of coltan production is destined for the manufacture of electronic condensers and other parts of mobile phones. Coltan permits one of western world’s dreams to become reality: a longer-lasting mobilephone battery, thanks to a new generation of microchip that optimizes electric current consumption.

After being mainly used for lightbulb filaments, it was replaced by the more expensive and accessible metal tungsten. However, in the last decades, the value of coltan has recovered.  The columbite–tantalite extracted in Brazil, Australia and Thailand has started to run out.  As a result, for example, the Japanese company Sony had to postpone the launch of the second version of the favorite game of Western children, the PlayStation: “What a tragedy!” The great increase in demand has established an illegal parallel market in Central Africa. The result is the 3 million deaths in four years.

[This is a phenomenon that even Madeleine Albright has called “the first African world war”].

In the provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, there are ecological reserves of great importance, according to UNESCO, which are where 80% of the coltan reserves are located. In the last ten years, multinational companies like Nokia, Erikson, Siemens, Sony, Bayer, Intel, Hitachi, IBM and others, have closed their eyes to the conflict.  These companies have formed, within this area, a series of companies (of which the majority are “ghost” companies) in the big transnational capitals, for local governments and for military forces (state or guerillas) with the intention of extracting coltan and other minerals such as copper, gold and industrial diamonds. These large companies triggered the dispute over the control of the region through native allies – a phenomenon that Madeleine Albright calls “the first African world war”.

We remember that in 1997, Congolese president Mobutu Sese Seko was overthrown. He had strong relations with the French capital imperialists. Kagame, the actual president of Rwanda (an ex-student of military centers in the USA and England), and Museveni, the president of Uganda (a country considered by Washington as an example for African nations) led the conquest of the DRC capital, Kinshas, and they choose as the leader of the country Laurent Kabila, one of their friends. For the reasons stated here, a new division of the spoils took place. It granted mining concessions for various companies, such as Barrick Gold Corporation of Canada, the American Mineral Fields (in which Bush Sr. had shares) and the South African Anglo-American Corporation. All these have happened against the interests of the old French ”concessionaires”.

In the years leading up to today, there have been two sides, not well delineated, participating in the war. Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, supported by the United States and led by different military “rebels” with exotic names (The Congo Liberation Movement, Congolese Coalition for Democracy); and on the other side the DRC (lead by one of the sons of Kabila, after his father was killed by Rwandese), Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Chad and the guerillas (Hutus and Maji-Maji). In 1999, the division lines were established between the opposition forces by the Lusaka Agreement, an agreement (always provisional) to share the territory, as used in the Berlin Conference of 1885, in which the European powers divided the continent to facilitate their plunder and exploitation. One of the future possibilities, then, is the partition of DRC.

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[As Kofi Annan stated: “the war of Congo is waged for the control of its natural resources”]

While it seems that these countries are fighting for control of the territory,  in reality, the multinationals are dividing the area. They have created several joint ventures for this purpose. The most important of them is the SOMIGL (the Mining Company of the Great Lakes) that consists of three companies: Africom (Belgium), Promeco (Rwanda) and Cogecom (South African). All licenses to buy and sell coltan were revoked at the end of 2000, thereby allowing the Rwandan military forces linked to SOMIGL to avoid the "cost" of middlemen  controlling the coltan market.

Their trucks and helicopters control internal transfers. They have, of course, their own transport companies, owned by close relatives of the presidents of Rwanda and Uganda. They use the Kigali and Entebbe airports, among others. In these true military zones, private airlines (such as Belgium's Sabena, associatedwith American Airlines) carry weapons and minerals.

Most of the coltan extracted (after being accumulated to raise prices) is destined for the U.S., Germany, Belgium and Kazakhstan. The Bayer subsidiary, Starck, is the producer of 50% of tantalum powder worldwide. This movement and production is linked to dozens of companies with monopolistic corporations in various countries. Naturally, a "financial institution" created in 1996, with headquarters in the capital of Rwanda (Kigali), the Bank of Commerce, Development and Industry (BCDI) that operates in concurrence CITIBANK, moves large sums of money from operations related to coltan, gold and diamonds.

The big companies finance, of course, the various military forces, which are taking advantage of the existing ethnic conflicts, sustaining a war for the control of the mines, which, as noted, in the last four years have killed between 2. 5 and 3 million people. Rwanda and Uganda have provided about 40,000 soldiers, which have the best equipment, in the National Parks of the DRC, where the reserves are. As Kofi Annan stated: "The Congo war is waged for the control of its natural wealth" The European and U.S. companies, who have interests in the coltan trade, not only contribute to the financing of the war, but also take a great interest in assuring the continuity of this "insecure climate" in the Congo.

[Beware, NGOs and environmentalists denounced the extinction of the apes!]

More than 20,000 miners work daily in alluvial mines under a repressive system organized by the military and local authorities. These workers are paid about ten dollars per kilogram of coltan (when in the London market, it is traded for about 250-300 dollars). Also, they require the workers to be “allowed” to work for a daily spoonful od the magical mineral, a kind of tribute in kind.  They raise over a million dollars per month this way.

The labor force is mainly composed of ex-farmers and ranchers (after the devaluation of Congolese agricultural export production), refugees, prisoners of war (mostly Hutu) who are promised a reduced sentence, plus of thousands of children in the region, whose small bodies can easily enter the mines.

Neighboring populations recruited to work are becoming a force. On the other hand, these people have no choice than the mines, since they are harassed by armed groups, they have abandoned their homes and have had to become miners. These workers extract coltan from sunrise to sunset and are restrained to sleep and eat in the mountainous jungle area. They make the jungle their own environment, where they have to eat native elephants and gorillas, while the guerrillas trade the furs and the ivory.

In most African countries, the slave labor forcewas  abolished by law after independence, but because of the special power of the customary obedience to the local chief, it continues to exist. It is known as "salongo" in the Congo today.

["The increasing needs of the world's technology industry have created serious conflicts in less developed countries"]

And, attention!: In this context, the management of large companies, governments in the region and international agencies pretend to play the role of mediators between workers, semi-slaves and xenophobic military groups. The UN proposes a provisional seizure of valuable merchandise. And, beware, while NGOs and environmentalists denounced the extinction of monkeys! It creates a wonderful human feeling, entitled: "Cell phones exacerbate the situation for gorillas in Congo".
These clowns painted in red and green want the same companies which accumulate their capital here with fire and blood, to invest in aid projects for the Third World!

In Angola and Sierra Leone, diamond trafficking financed a similar war for years. But the war in the Congo has had a better solution because there was a fake celebration of the peace agreement between Kagame and Kabila. Who was the intermediary? The intermediary was the Vice President of South Africa, acapitalist country of the first order, which has provided much of the capital to exploit the Congolese mines. The relationships of exploitation have been legalized, but the slaughter continued.

"The increasing needs of the world's technology industry have created serious conflicts in less developed countries," says the Canadian newspaper The Industry Standard, in a commentary that is applicable to any age, at least since the nineteenth century. Today, coltan is essential for many industries to be profitable. In this sense, exploitation of the African mines, which the Pentagon considers as strategic, are essential for the reproduction of imperialist capital global considerations. The imperialism is fundamentally a specific form of organization for the production and reproduction of capital and labor, rather than the dominance of one nation over others.