"The suggestion is that Congo's war is too complicated to quench: another age-old and inevitable African war?
This is the kind of journalism we have become accustomed to reading whenever the west is forced to confront the continual wars in The Congo and other African countries over the last 40 years.
This quote, from a recent article in the Guardian, is actually far from the worst. But it shows the sort of language we read and hear every day. This is a kind of hand-wringing compassion which suggests that if only the Africans would stop fighting each other, then the problems of AIDS, debt and starvation could really be tackled. If only they would let the west help them.
We're about to start reading this kind of language again in another context; Iraq. If only the Iraqis would allow themselves to be liberated, then the US and British troops could get on with the urgent (and proftable) task of 'rebuilding' the country.
Even though we're not so used to hearing about western pillage and plunder in Africa any more, the New Colonialism in Africa is actually as old as the middle eastern variety. As far as 'spheres of influence' go, Europe got there first.
African countries used to have names like the "Belgian Congo' and 'German East Africa' before the national liberation movements of the 1950s and 60s forced Europe's great powers to find another way to cling on to the vast resources of Africa.
The solution to these movements in the case of the Congo was for the Belgians (with help from UN troops, the CIA and Britain's Edward Heath) to kidnap and assassinate the most powerful nationalist leader the liberation movement in Africa had produced, Patrice Lumumba, in 196l.
Common imperial policy dictated that they partition the mineralrich province of Katanga, and install a friendly dictator, Mobutu. This ensured that they could continue to extract the copper, cobalt, diamonds and other minerals so profitable to the western multinationals.
Inter-imperialist rivalry between Europe and the US takes on a new meaning in contries like the Congo.
"We don't know the importance of coltan," said Martin Nkibatereza, leaning on his shovel. "I mean, how is it useful?" processed form, columbite-tantalite, also known as col-tan, is vital to the manufacture of mobile phones, jet engines, air bags, night vision goggles, fibre optics and capacitors, as well as the components that maintain an electric charge in a computer chip.
The price for a ton of col-tan can range from $100 - $200,000.
the rebel rebel group controls the particular mine. fighting that surrounds west of the town of Goma. and/or military training. In
For indirectly involved in the Congo war. lords, the dynamic is entirely driven by huge profits.
Martin is one of many miners working long shifts in wildly hazardous mines that are not owned by companies but worked in by miners who sell their day's work to many of
groups. According to the Washington Post, multinational mineral companies buy the ore directly from whichever
This is the direct cause for much of the
these mines. Recently, a hillside collapsed and buried at least 50 workers at a mine 30 miles northWhile the United States has been preaching peace in the Congo and supporting of cobalt and copper. every UN resolution to that end, the flow of US arms and military training has not ceased. Rwanda, Uganda, Namibia and Zimbabwe all continued to receive US arms
The World Policy Institute (WPI) tal. documents that out of the $19.5 million in US arms and training that was delivered to African armed forces in 1999, $4.8 million went to nations directly Corporation from the US. So whilst the hand-wringers of the west can attribute the conflicts to local war
ers already there.
The US-based Bechtel Corporation (the same company now plundering Iraq, with a Murdered in pursuit of corporate profit: Lumumba board including former US Secretary of State George Schulz) worked closely with Laurent Kabila to draw up the most complete mineral and geographic inventory of the Congo ever assembled.
country. ccording to one source, an executive from Bechtel became a close advisor to Kabila, travelling the country at his side and assisting him with information to determine his war strategy. US-based American Mineral Fields made the first mining deal with the victorious Kabila just after the overthrow of Mobutu, securing a US$I billion deal for the mining
"It is capitalism in its purest form," said Robert L. Raun, president of Eagles Wings Resources, a US-based company that began buying Congolese col-tan two years ago. Companies with interests in the Congo read like a Who's Who of international capiThey include names such as Anglo American, Barclays Bank and De Beers from Britain, Bayer A.G. from Germany and America Mineral Fields and Cabot
And to make things safe for the western multinationals, the European Union is to send its first ever deployment of troops to the Congo, as well as the UN 'peacekeepLast October, an independent panel of experts reported to the UN security concil that 85 multinational companies based in Europe, the US and South Africa had violated ethical guidelines in dealing with criminal networks. which have pillaged natural resources from the war-torn central African
According to the panel, a scramble for gold, diamonds, cobalt and copper by army officers, government officials and entrepreneurs from the Congo and neighbouring African countries had generated billions of dollars which found its way to mining companies and financial institutions
History has shown that the UN will do nothing to liberate Africa from the multinationals. Whilst the eyes of the world's press have been fixed on the latest imperial excursion into the middle east, Africa remains the forgotten continent.
One of the last things Patrice Lumumba wrote before his assassination still reverberates more than 40 years later:
'One day history will have its say. But it will not be the history they teach at the UN, in Washington, Paris or Brussels, but the history they teach in countries freed from colonialism and its puppets. Africa will write its own history. • Further reading: The Assassination of Lumumba, Ludo de Witte, Verso