THE CONGO CRISIS/WAR (The Democratic Republic of Congo)
Can you change this back into a text format hen you reblog this please. It’s really important that it’s seen in it’s entirety
(There are so many things that I wanted to add to this post but couldn’t so I’ve selected a few topics)
I always get asked these questions.
Is the conflict in Congo over?
well as of early 2015, the UN has planed to take their forces to drive out the Rwandan Hutu rebels. They are just waiting for the go ahead from president kabila. (I don’t know when it’s going to happen but It’s going to be bloody and thousands will lose their lives)[x][x][x]
Recommended articles and books:
- Obama’s conflict minerals law has destroyed everything, say Congo miners (US legislation aimed at damaging Congolese militias has inadvertently propelled millions deeper into poverty)
- BLOOD ON YOUR HANDSET: Is your cellphone made with conflict minerals mined in the Congo? The industry doesn’t want you to know.
- Congo’s ‘Mamas’ and Their Campaign Against Wartime Rape
- Chinese mining industry contributes to abuses in Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Child Soldiers in the East of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Lumumba: Africa’s Lost Leader by Leo Zeilig
- The Battle of Jadotville: Irish Soldiers in Combat in the Congo 1961
- The Congo, From Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History by Nzongola-Ntalaja, Georges
- “UN official calls DR Congo ‘rape capital of the world.’
- Battleground Africa: Cold War in the Congo, 1960–1965 by Lise Namikas
- Canada, the Congo Crisis, and UN Peacekeeping, 1960-64 by Kevin A. Spooner
- Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a continental catastrophe by Gerard Prunier
- Cold War in the Congo: The Confrontation of Cuban Military Forces, 1960-1967 by Frank R. Villafana
- Katanga The UNtold Story - G. Edward Griffin 1962
- Multinationals in scramble for Congo’s wealth
The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba
Patrice Lumumba, the first legally elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), on 17 January, 1961. This heinous crime was a culmination of two inter-related assassination plots by American and Belgian governments, which used Congolese accomplices and a Belgian execution squad to carry out the deed.
Ludo De Witte, the Belgian author of the best book on this crime, qualifies it as "the most important assassination of the 20th century”. The assassination’s historical importance lies in a multitude of factors, the most pertinent being the global context in which it took place, its impact on Congolese politics since then and Lumumba’s overall legacy as a nationalist leader.
For 126 years, the US and Belgium have played key roles in shaping Congo’s destiny. In April 1884, seven months before the Berlin Congress, the US became the first country in the world to recognise the claims of King Leopold II of the Belgians to the territories of the Congo Basin.
When the atrocities related to brutal economic exploitation in Leopold’s Congo Free State resulted in millions of fatalities, the US joined other world powers to force Belgium to take over the country as a regular colony. And it was during the colonial period that the US acquired a strategic stake in the enormous natural wealth of the Congo, following its use of the uranium from Congolese mines to manufacture the first atomic weapons, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.
With the outbreak of the cold war, it was inevitable that the US and its western allies would not be prepared to let Africans have effective control over strategic raw materials, lest these fall in the hands of their enemies in the Soviet camp. It is in this regard that Patrice Lumumba’s determination to achieve genuine independence and to have full control over Congo’s resources in order to utilise them to improve the living conditions of our people was perceived as a threat to western interests. To fight him, the US and Belgium used all the tools and resources at their disposal, including the United Nations secretariat, under Dag Hammarskjöld and Ralph Bunche, to buy the support of Lumumba’s Congolese rivals , and hired killers.
The assassination took place at a time when the country had fallen under four separate governments: the central government in Kinshasa (then Léopoldville); a rival central government by Lumumba’s followers in Kisangani (then Stanleyville); and the secessionist regimes in the mineral-rich provinces of Katanga and South Kasai. Since Lumumba’s physical elimination had removed what the west saw as the major threat to their interests in the Congo, internationally-led efforts were undertaken to restore the authority of the moderate and pro-western regime in Kinshasa over the entire country… [x]
Mobutu Sese Seko began his 32-year rule in 1965 when he ousted President Kasavubu in a coup with support from both the United States and Belgium. Mobutu brutally quelled new rebellions and personally dominated Congo. In 1971, Mobutu changed the name of the country to Zaire. He systematically used the country’s mineral wealth to co-opt potential rivals, and to enrich himself and his allies through a patronage system so wildly corrupt that many came to view Zaire as a “kleptocracy” – a country with a government whose principal aim was to loot public goods. Mobutu is conservatively estimated to have stolen at least $5 billion from his country, much of it moved to international banks and investments. With the end of the Cold War, his health failing, the suspension of international economic aid to Congo, and the global collapse of raw commodity prices, Mobutu began to loose his grip on power. Following the Rwandan genocide in 1994, Mobutu provided shelter and protection not only to the two million Rwandan refugees who had fled to eastern Congo, but also to the Rwandan Hutu army and militias that directed the genocide. This provoked Rwanda and Uganda to invade Congo in July 1996 in pursuit of Hutu military forces. The ailing Mobutu was finally ousted from Kinshasa in May 1997, and Congolese rebel leader Laurent-Désiré Kabila took over the country. [x]
the Congo Crisis was also a proxy conflict in the Cold War in which the Soviet Union and United States supported opposing factions. Around 100,000 people are believed to have been killed during the crisis.
The first Congo war (1996–1997)
This was a foreign invasion of Zaire led by Rwanda that replaced a decades-long dictator, Mobutu Sésé Seko with the rebel leader Laurent-Désiré Kabila. Destabilization in eastern Zaire that resulted from the Rwandan Genocide was the final factor that caused numerous internal and external factors to align against the corrupt and inept government in the capital, Kinshasa.
The new government renamed the country to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but it brought little true change. Kabila alienated his Rwandan and Ugandan allies. To avert a coup, Kabila expelled all Rwandan and Ugandan forces from the Congo. This event was a major cause of the Second Congo War the following year. Some experts prefer to view the two conflicts as one war.
The deciding event in precipitating the war was the genocide in neighbouring Rwanda, which sparked a mass exodus of refugees known as the Great Lakes refugee crisis. During the 100-day genocide, hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and sympathizers were massacred at the hands of predominantly Hutu aggressors. The genocide ended when the Hutu government in Kigali was overthrown by the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front.
Of those who fled Rwanda during the crisis, about 1.5 million settled in eastern Zaire. hese refugees included those who fled the Hutu génocidaires as well as those that fled the Tutsi RPF fearing retaliation. Prominent among the latter group were the génocidaires themselves, such as elements of the former Rwandan Army, Forces Armées Rwandaises (FAR), and independent Hutu extremist groups known as Interahamwe
Uganda also played a major role in the First Congo War. Prominent members of the RPF had fought alongside Museveni in the Ugandan Bush War that had brought him to power, and Museveni had allowed the RPF to use Uganda as a base during the 1990 offensive into Rwanda and subsequent civil war. Given their historical ties, the Rwandan and Ugandan governments were closely allied and thus Museveni worked closely with Kagame throughout the First Congo War. Ugandan soldiers were present in Zaire throughout the conflict and Museveni likely helped Kagame plan and direct the AFDL.
Lt. Col. James Kabarebe of the AFDL, for example, was a former member of Uganda’s National Resistance Army, the military wing of the rebel movement that brought Museveni to power, and French and Belgian intelligence reported that 15,000 Ugandan-trained Tutsi fought for the AFDL. However, Uganda did not support Rwanda in all aspects of the war. Museveni was reportedly much less inclined to overthrow Mobutu, preferring to keep the rebellion in the East where the former génocidaires were operating
Numerous other external actors played lesser roles in the First Congo War. Burundi, which had recently come under the rule of a pro-Tutsi leader, was supportive of Rwandan and Ugandan involvement in Zaire but provided very limited military support. Zambia and Zimbabwe also gave measured amounts of military support to the rebel movement. Likewise, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and the South Sudanese rebel army the SPLA were all financial or moral supporters of the anti-Mobutu coalition. Other than from UNITA, Mobutu also received some aid from Sudan, whom Mobutu had long supported against the SPLA, though the exact amount of aid is unclear and ultimately was unable to hinder the advance of opposing forces. [x]
The Second Congo War lso known as the Great War of Africa or the Great African War
This began in August 1998, little more than a year after the First Congo War and involving some of the same issues, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and officially ended in July 2003??? when the Transitional Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo took power. However, hostilities have continued since then in the ongoing Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency, and the Kivu and Ituri conflicts.
The deadliest war in modern African history, it has directly involved nine African states, as well as about 20 armed groups. By 2008, the war and its aftermath had killed 5.4 million people, mostly from disease and starvation. making the Second Congo War the deadliest conflict worldwide since World War II.
When Kabila gained control of the capital in May 1997, he faced substantial obstacles to governing the country, which he renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Beyond political jostling among various groups to gain power and an enormous external debt, his foreign backers proved unwilling to leave when asked. The conspicuous Rwandan presence in the capital also rankled many Congolese, who were beginning to see Kabila as a pawn of foreign powers.
Tensions reached new heights on 14 July 1998, when Kabila dismissed his Rwandan chief of staff, James Kabarebe, and replaced him with a native Congolese, Celestin Kifwa. Although the move chilled what was already a troubled relationship with Rwanda, Kabila softened the blow by making Kabarebe the military advisor to his successor.
Two weeks later Kabila abandoned such diplomatic steps. He thanked Rwanda for its help and ordered all Rwandan and Ugandan military forces to leave the country. Within 24 hours Rwandan military advisors living in Kinshasa were unceremoniously flown out. The people most alarmed by this order were the Banyamulenge Tutsi of eastern Congo. Their tensions with neighbouring ethnic groups had been a contributing factor in the genesis of the First Congo War and they were also used by Rwanda to affect events across the border in the DRC.
Two days after the war began, the Rwandans and their Ugandan
allies mounted a daring attack that almost ended the conflict before it gathered momentum. Two hundred soldiers were loaded into a Boeing
707 in Goma and flown across the DRC to the Kitona airbase, 250 miles
west of Kinshasa. When these troops landed, the soldiers at the base quickly defected from Kabila to join the rebellion.
The rebels sponsored by Uganda and Rwanda now had a convenient base to which they could send supplies for an assault on Kinshasa. At the same time, Rwanda hastily convened a meeting of disparate Congolese rebel leaders to once again provide their invasion a patina of legitimacy; as Filip Reyntjens ironically notes, what would become the Rassemblement Conglais pour la Democratie (RCD) was only given a name and leadership several days after the “rebellion” in eastern Congo had begun. [x][x]
Known locally as Kadogos which is a Swahili term meaning “little ones who fight” It has been estimated that the militia led by Thomas Lubanga Dyilo was 30 percent children. In 2011 it was estimated that 30,000 children were still operating with armed groups.
The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), released a report in 2013 which stated that between 1 January 2012 and 31 August 2013 up to 1,000 children had been recruited by armed groups, and described the recruitment of child soldiers as “endemic” [x]
Rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo has frequently been described as a “weapon of war,” and the United Nations officially declared rape a weapon of war in 2008. Eleven years after the Republic of the Congo gained independence in 1960, president Mobutu renamed the country Zaire in 1971 and ruled the nation under an autocratic and corrupt regime. Under Mobutu’s regime, sexual abuse was used as a method of torture
The epidemic of rapes seems to have started in the mid-1990s. That coincides with the waves of Hutu militiamen who escaped into Congo’s forests after exterminating 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus during Rwanda’s genocide 13 years ago. Mr. Holmes said that while government troops might have raped thousands of women, the most vicious attacks had been carried out by Hutu militias.
Margot Wallström dubbed eastern Congo the “most dangerous place on earth to be a woman" In October 2004 the human rights group Amnesty International said that 40,000 cases of rape had been reported over the previous six years, the majority occurring in South Kivu. This is an incomplete count, as the humanitarian and international organizations compiling the figures do not have access to much of the conflict area; only women who have reported for treatment are included. It is estimated that there are as many as 200,000 surviving rape victims living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo today
The rape of men is also common. More studies are coming out to show that both women and men are the victims and perpetrators of sexual violence in the DRC. Research conducted by The Journal of the American Medical Association in 2010 cites that 23.6% of men in the Eastern Region of the country have been exposed to sexual violence. And, a similar study also conducted in 2010 found that 22% of men (as compared to 30% of women) in eastern Congo reported conflict-related sexual violence. A cross-sectional, population-based study found that one in four men living in the eastern region of the country have been the victims of sexual violence. Moreover, at least 4 to 10 percent of all rape victims are male.
UNFPA reported that over 65% of victims during the past 15 years were children. The majority of this percentage was adolescent girls and roughly 10% of child victims are said to be under 10 years old. Many child soldiers, after being recruited from refugee camps, are often sexually abused. Over 12 percent of children in the eastern part of the DRC do not reach their first birthday, tens of thousands of children have been recruited as child soldiers, and rape of girls and gender-based violence of minors is widespread.[x]
If you own a mobile phone, or an mp3 player then it’s likely that you’ve got a little piece of the Congo in your pocket right now.
Coltan / Tantalum. Coltan is short for Columbite-tantalite – a black tar-like mineral found in major quantities in the Congo. The Congo possesses 80 percent of the world’s coltan, but only mines a fraction of it. When coltan is refined it becomes a heat resistant powder that can hold a high electric charge. It’s a vital component in a vast array of small electronic devices, especially in mobile phones, laptop computers, pagers, and other electronic devices.
Gold is the biggest source of conflict mineral trade in Congo and is most responsible for the ongoing bloody conflicts. Gold has soared in price on the commodity markets in recent years, and Congo is literally sitting on a gold-mine worth tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars. Despite promises by President Kabila to clean up the mining industry, corruption remains rife and thousands of small-scale unofficial mines scatter the country.
Tin / Cassiterite. Cassiterite is a tin oxide which is mined extensively in Congo. The refined tin is used in most household electronic items as it’s used as the solder for circuit boards.
Tungsten is a dense metal used in everything from light bulbs to TVs. Formula One cars to bullets. It’s also used in mobile phones.
It’s no coincidence that the mineral mines are situated in the areas home to the bloodiest violence and conflict. The mines are controlled by the government troops (FARDC) or the rebels they’re fighting (principally the FDLR), though both deny any involvement. The mines and the communities around them are controlled with an iron fist and conditions for the men and children who serve as the miners and porters are extremely tough.
Most miners only barely earn enough to survive. Many don’t even manage that. Few if any of the mines are large-scale industrial ones owned by international companies. They are hand-built artesan mines, with the only tools available being shovels and a lot of hard labour.
Virtually none of them are exported by Congo itself. Thousands of tonnes of the raw minerals are smuggled across the border into Uganda and Rwanda where they are exported to Asia and smeltered with minerals from all over the world - making it very hard to trace the origin of the metals and alloys produced.
The mineral trade is a valuable source of income for government soldiers and rebels alike – they often don’t receive any salary. But it’s only the people right at the top of the hierarchy – the war lords and army commanders - that are really making any money though. And that money is usually used to buy more weapons and ammunition to maintain their control of the territory and population. And so the cycle of violence continues.
Though the price on the world commodity markets of its vast gold, coltan and cassiterite has reached record highs in recent years, Congo’s economy and its population haven’t benefited in the slightest. One of the richest countries on the planet in terms of natural resources, Congo remains one of the very poorest by most economic measurements.[x]
Is China’s Increased Involvement in Congo NeoColonialism????
To single out Chinese companies for entering into shady business in the DRC is to miss a fundamental point: Western firms have been at it for centuries, and still are.
A 2011 study by the accountability NGO Global Witness reported that $24 million of that signing bonus was mysteriously diverted into an offshore account in the British Virgin Islands by Sicomines’ Congolese partners. Even in the DRC’s multibillion-dollar mining sector, $24 million is a lot of money to go unaccounted.
But does this then set China’s Congolese ambitions apart from the West’s? Is the $6.5 billion Sicomines deal in fact unprecedented in its lack of transparency and its potential to make its CEOs rich while the Congolese people remain poor?
To single out the Chinese companies as uniquely responsible for entering into shady business in the DRC is to miss a fundamental point: If the Chinese have learned how to leverage power over the Congolese government, they owe the lesson to the rogue businessmen from Western countries that preceded them. [x]
China’s inroads into Africa’s agricultural sector include the 20 demonstration centres that President Hu said will “help African countries increase production capacity.” But there was a backlash when the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo leased thousands of unutilized hectares of land to ZTE International, a Chinese company, in a deal that Oxfam, a UK charity, and others have labelled a “land grab.”
The “land grab” accusation may be overstated, according to a study by the UK’s Standard Chartered Bank. But the authors of the study believe that in the longer term China could well seek to import much more food from Africa which, by World Bank estimates, has 60 per cent of the world’s uncultivated land. “Given Africa’s potential, China is likely to turn towards it.”[x]
Japanese miners and nurses murder children in Katanga in the 70s
During the 1970s, an increased demand for copper and cobalt attracted Japanese investments in the mineral-rich southeastern region of Katanga Province. Over a 10-year period, more than 1,000 Japanese miners relocated to the region, confined to a strictly male-only camp. Arriving without family or spouses, the men often sought social interaction outside the confounds of their camps. In search of intimacy with the opposite sex, sometimes resulting in cohabitation, the men openly engaged in interracial dating and relationships, a practice mostly embraced by the local society. As a result, a number of Japanese miners fathered children with native Congolese women. However, most of the mixed race infants resulting from these unions died, soon after birth. Multiple testimonies of local people suggest that the infants were poisoned by a Japanese lead physician and nurse working at the local mining hospital. Subsequently, the circumstances would have brought the miners shame as most of them already had families back in their native Japan. The practice forced many native Katangan mothers to hide their children by not reporting to the hospital to give birth.
Today, fifty Afro-Japanese have formed an association of Katanga Infanticide survivors. The organization has hired legal council seeking a formal investigation into the killings. The group submitted official inquiry to both the Congolese and Japanese governments, to no avail. Issues specific to this group include having no documentation of their births, since not having been born in the local hospital spared their lives. The total number of survivors is unknown [watch video][x]
"Digging up Congo’s Dirty Gems” (The Lebanese diamond dealers during the late 90s and early 200s) BLOOD DIAMONDS!
Interviews with diamond dealers, intelligence sources, diplomats and investigators in Belgium, the United States and Western and Central Africa open a window on how such groups have exploited the corruption and chaos endemic to Congo to tap into the diamond trade and funnel millions of dollars to their organizations back home. The most prominent of these groups is the radical Lebanon-based movement Hezbollah, these sources said.
In some cases, the militant groups have worked in Congo with Lebanese diamond dealers who also conducted business in Sierra Leone with men identified by the United States as key operatives for Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, international investigators and regional diamond dealers said.
Diamond dealers and intelligence sources said Hezbollah and other groups buy diamonds in Congo — sometimes through middlemen, sometimes directly from miners, but always at a fraction of their market value. They are then smuggled out of the country. The best-quality stones are sold in Antwerp, Belgium’s diamond-marketing hub, while the bulk of the stones go to such emerging diamond centers as Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and Bombay.
Many of the diamonds bought by Hezbollah and other radical groups in Congo are sold in less-regulated diamond markets that have sprung up in countries where the organizations can operate relatively freely, such as Dubai, Mauritius and India, according to diamond dealers here and diplomats and intelligence sources monitoring the trade.[x]
