By Asad Ismi

Rarely has Western savagery been more destructive than in the Congo. After
115 years of Belgian colonialism and U.S. neo-colonialism, the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC) today is a war-ravaged, balkanized country where an
incredible 2.5 million people have died and 2.3 million have been displaced.
Oxfam calls this "the world's biggest humanitarian disaster." The
catastrophic war which began in August 1998 has been imposed on the
long-suffering Congolese by U.S. proxies Rwanda and Uganda, which have
occupied the eastern half of the Congo and are plundering and looting it,
with most of the proceeds going to the West.

King Leopold and the CIA
Genocide and plunder have been Western policy towards the mineral-rich Congo
since the Berlin Conference of 1885 when European nations divided Africa
between them, and King Leopold II of Belgium got the Congo as his personal
property.
Ten million Congolese were killed under Belgian rule, which lasted until
1960. The Congo's population was cut in half. Belgian domination was marked
by slavery, forced labour, and torture aimed at extracting the maximum amount
of ivory and rubber from the Central African country. The people of the Congo
"probably suffered more than any other colonized group." Their hands were cut
off for not working hard enough, and on one day 1,000 severed hands were
delivered in baskets to an official. Women were kidnapped to force their
husbands to collect rubber sap, and Congolese were shot for sport.

These atrocities were documented by George Washington Williams, an
African-American visiting the Congo, who invented the term "crimes against
humanity" to describe them.

The U.S. took over the Congo from Belgium in 1960-61 in a bloody coup, after
the CIA arranged the murder of Patrice Lumumba, the country's first elected
leader. In his place, the CIA installed its paid agent, Colonel Mobutu Sese
Seko, who continued the looting and killing started by King Leopold for
another 37 years.

The U.S. considered the socialist Lumumba to be pro-Soviet, and President
Eisenhower himself approved his assassination. The CIA sent Sidney Gottlieb,
its top scientist (under the code name "Joe from Paris"), to the Congo with
deadly biological toxins to use on Lumumba. This particular assassination
plot failed, but Lumumba was killed by Mobutu's troops on January 17, 1961.

Until his ouster in 1997, Mobutu was Africa's most brutal and corrupt ruler.
He massacred and tortured thousands of people, and plundered his country with
U.S. backing. From 1965 to 1991, Zaire (as Mobutu renamed the Congo) got more
than $1.5 billion in U.S. economic and military aid. In return, U.S.
multinational corporations were given much larger shares of Zaire's abundant
minerals.

Washington justified its hold on the Congo with the pretext of
anti-Communism, but its real interests were strategic and economic. The Congo
borders nine African states and, in terms of mineral wealth, it is the
richest country in Africa, holding the world's biggest copper, cobalt and
cadmium deposits. The Congo contains 80% of the world's cobalt (essential for
jet aviation, defense, and other high-tech production), 10% of its copper,
and one-third of its diamonds, in addition to possessing considerable
reserves of gold, uranium and manganese. Other resources include coltan (used
in cell phones, jet engines and fibre optics), timber, oil, coffee, tin,
zinc, and palm oil.

A Balkanized Congo
Mobutu's unlimited greed was his undoing. As long as he shared the looting
with the U.S., Belgian, French, British, Dutch, and other Western
corporations which dominated the Zairian economy, the U.S. supported him.
But, as one observer put it, "when he kept too much for himself and became an
embarrassment, the U.S. was ready to see him overthrown."
In October 1996, the Rwandan army, along with Ugandan troops, invaded Zaire
and by May 1997 had taken over the country and forced Mobutu to flee. To give
the invasion the cover of a local rebellion, the Tutsi Rwandan forces called
themselves the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of
Congo-Zaire (ADFL), and recruited Laurent Kabila, an exiled Congolese Marxist
opponent of Mobutu's, as a figurehead leader.

As The Wall Street Journal put it, "Many Africans [concluded that] the
Zairian rebellion was the brainchild of Washington from the very start."
Rwanda and Uganda are the U.S.'s "staunchest allies in the region." Paul
Kagame, the Rwandan leader, was trained at the U.S. Army Command and General
Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. U.S. Special Forces had been
training the Rwandan army since 1994 in counterinsurgency, combat and
psychological operations. This included instructions about fighting in Zaire.

Rwandan soldiers were also trained at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in
July-August 1996 (just before the invasion), in land navigation, rifle
marksmanship, patrolling, and small-unit leadership. Also in August 1996,
Kagame visited Washington to discuss his concerns about Hutu refugee camps in
eastern Zaire with U.S. officials. The Hutus are the majority ethnic group in
Rwanda (85%), while Tutsis make up the other 15%.

In April 1994, the Hutu government unleashed a genocide that killed 800,000
Tutsis and 50,000 Hutus in 89 days. Kagame's Tutsi rebel force, the Rwanda
Patriotic Army (RPA), then invaded Rwanda from Uganda and took power. A
million Hutus fled to eastern Zaire. Kagame considered the Hutu refugee camps
a "dangerous threat to his regime" because Hutu militia who had carried out
the genocide were among the refugees.

As one observer put it, "it was clear to the U.S...that Kagame was prepared
to act and that this was certainly in the U.S. government's interest.." Once
the Rwandans had installed Kabila in power, however, his relations with them
quickly deteriorated. In July 1998, Kabila expelled Rwandan and Ugandan
forces from the Congo. He cited as his reasons a failed assassination attempt
against him, and the Rwandan army's killings of Hutu refugees.

On August 2, Rwanda and Uganda invaded the Congo and occupied its eastern
half, where they remain today, having set up surrogate "rebel" armies called
Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD-Goma, created by Rwanda) and the Movement
for the Liberation of the Congo (MLC, created by Uganda). Angola, Zimbabwe
and Namibia sent their armies to support Kabila, and Burundi joined the
Rwandans and Ugandans. Thus began "Africa's First World War," involving seven
armies, which has killed 2.5 million people and further devastated a country
crushed by more than a century of Western domination.

This domination is being continued through Washington's use of Rwanda and
Uganda to partition the Congo and loot its resources. The U.S. backed the
Rwandan/Ugandan invasion of the Congo, according to Human Rights Watch. The
Washington Post has reported that U.S. soldiers were sighted in the company
of Rwandan troops in the Congo on July 23 and 24, 1998.

Susan Rice, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, pressured
Kabila into signing the Lusaka Accord, which treated the conflict as a civil
war and called for a step-by-step withdrawal of foreign troops (in 180 days),
rather than an immediate one. The result is a partitioned Congo, with Rwanda
and Uganda still occupying the eastern half, having ignored all deadlines for
leaving. The ceasefire is regularly violated.

Kabila accepted the Lusaka Accord only because of the implicit U.S. threat
that "refusal would be met by even greater assistance to the rebels and the
potential dismantling of the entire country." This message was dramatically
reinforced on January 17, 2001, when Laurent Kabila himself was assassinated
on the same day that Lumumba had been, 40 years earlier. Joseph Kabila,
Laurent's son, took over as President. Thus the U.S. has ensured continued
Western dominance of the Congo by destroying the country itself as it existed
when Mobutu was overthrown.

Just as in the Berlin Conference of 1885, the West is again redrawing the
Congo's boundaries, and this process is once more accompanied by plunder and
large-scale killing.

Armies of Business
According to a UN report released in April 2001, Rwanda and Uganda are
looting and plundering the resources of the eastern Congo and illegally
exporting them to the West. The eastern Congo contains most of the country's
minerals. The report, titled "Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal
Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo," details "mass-scale looting" and extraction carried
out by Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi in the occupied zones between September
1998 and August 1999.
During this time, the eastern Congo was "drained of existing stockpiles,
including minerals, agricultural and forest products and livestock." Rwandan,
Ugandan and Burundian soldiers visited banks, factories, farms, and storage
facilities to remove their contents and load them into vehicles. In November
1998, the Rwandan army transported seven years' worth of coltan stock (about
1,500 tons) to Kigali (Rwanda's capital).

Following the looting of stockpiles, Rwanda and Uganda have been extracting
diamonds, gold, coltan, timber and coffee from the eastern Congo and
illegally exporting these products to the West. Rwanda has made US$250
million in 18 months from coltan exports alone. According to The Christian
Science Monitor, every day cargo flights full of diamonds, gold and palm oil
leave the Congo for Kigali and Kampala (Uganda's capital). Seven to ten such
daily flights come into Kigali. Most of their cargo is loaded onto planes
bound for Europe.

Diamond exports from Rwanda and Uganda to the West have soared since 1998,
yet neither country has any diamond mines within its own borders. During
1999-2000, Uganda exported US$3 million worth of diamonds. Diamond dealers in
the Congo provide US$2 million a year to the Rwandan army.

The looting and extraction of resources has been accompanied by the
"constitution of criminal cartels" in occupied areas, created or protected by
top military commanders. The UN report blames Presidents Kagame and Museveni
(of Uganda) for "indirectly giving criminal cartels a unique opportunity to
organize and operate in this fragile and sensitive area." The document warns
that these cartels, which have "ramifications and connections
worldwide...represent the next serious security problem in the region."

Significantly, the UN report points out that the illegal exploitation of the
eastern Congo has been abetted by Western companies, governments,
multilateral institutions, and diplomats. Rwanda's coltan exports are
transported by Sabena, the Belgian national airline, while Citibank carries
out the required financial transactions.

Ramnik Kotecha, the U.S. Honourary Consul in the eastern Congo, promotes
deals between Rwandan coltan sellers and U.S. companies. Uncertified timber
from occupied Congo has been imported by companies in Belgium, Denmark,
Japan, Switzerland, and the U.S. Western governments rewarded Rwanda for
invading the Congo by doubling aid to the country from $26.1 million in 1997
to $51.5 million in 1999. The U.S., Britain, Denmark and Germany were the
bilateral donors. Rwanda could thus spend more money on the war.

The UN report also lists 35 companies illegally importing minerals from the
eastern Congo through Rwanda, but does not give the national origin of these
companies. Instead, the report specifies the destination of the material.
Twenty-six of the companies' destinations are in the West. The firms include
Cogem, Transintra, Issa, Finconcorde, Cogecom, Tradement, MDW, Sogem, Soger,
Cogea, Finiming, Cicle, Eagleswing, Union-Transport, and Banro Resources, a
Canadian company. Ten of the 35 companies are importing coltan to Belgium;
three are importing the same resource to the Netherlands, three to Germany,
two to Britain, and one to Switzerland.

Along with plundering the eastern Congo, Rwanda and Uganda have committed
"devastating human rights abuses," according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). The
Rwandan army and RCD Goma "have regularly slaughtered civilians in massacres
and extrajudicial executions," as well as tortured and raped villagers. As
Alison Des Forges of HRW put it in April 2001, "While Ugandan commanders were
plundering gold, looting timber, exporting coffee and controlling illicit
trade monopolies in the Ituri district, their troops were killing and
otherwise abusing the local population."

Uganda's encouragement of (and participation in) fighting between the Hema
and Lendu ethnic groups has resulted in 7,400 deaths. Human rights violations
are widespread on the Congolese government side, as well, including
"indiscriminate attacks on civilians, extrajudicial executions [and] rape."

Kabila's allies, Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia, are also profiting from the
war. However, the Kabila regime itself cannot be accused of being a foreign
military occupier; nor did it initiate the current war.

Canadian companies
Also benefiting from the war are ten Canadian mining companies with
investments in the Congo. These are: Barrick Gold, American Mineral Fields
(AMF), Tenke Mining, Banro Resource, Consolidated Trillion, First Quantum
Minerals, International Panorama Resource, Melkior Resources, Samax Gold, and
Starpoint Goldfields. These companies have been awarded valuable concessions
in mining copper, cobalt, gold, platinum and zinc deposits.
Even before Laurent Kabila came to power, he had signed deals with AMF and
Tenke Mining. In March 1997, Jean Raymond Boulle, founder of AMF, signed a $1
billion agreement with Kabila's rebel army to develop a zinc mine at Kipushi,
and a cobalt venture in Kolwezi; Boulle also received approval to sell
diamonds in Shaba province. As part of these arrangements, Boulle lent Kabila
a leased jet.

In early 1997, Kabila sent a representative to Toronto to speak to mining
companies about "investment opportunites." According to Dale Grant, editor of
Defence Policy Review, this trip "may have raised as much as $50 million to
support Kabila's march on the capital of Kinshasa."

On May 12, 1997, Tenke Mining announced that it had signed a deal with Kabila
confirming the terms of a contract the company had previously signed with
Mobutu's government in November 1996. At this point, Kabila had not yet taken
power. The urgent need to finance the war had compelled the Congo government
to reach quick agreements with mining companies over exploration rights. The
companies can thus gain resources for less than they would in peace
conditions.

According to The Christian Science Monitor, Laurent Kabila "adopted a circle
of Canadian advisers." One of the members of this "Congo inner circle" was
Joe Clark, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party and former Canadian
Prime Minister. In the mid-1990s, Clark became First Quantum Mineral's
special adviser on Africa. He stated: "The government of Congo knows that, if
it's going to make progress quickly in terms of using assets that create
jobs, mining is more likely to do it than other sectors."

Barrick Gold and Banro hold mining properties in eastern Congo under
Rwandan/Ugandan control. Banro has 47 mining concessions in Sud Kivu and
Maniema provinces, while Barrick got exploration and exploitation rights to
"a huge tract of land" (82,000 sq.km) in Orientale province. As reported in
Le Monde Diplomatique, Barrick and Banro have been accused of "funding
military operations in exchange for lucrative contracts."

Banro is also included in the UN list of companies involved in the illegal
exploitation of the eastern Congo. The company is importing cassiterites (tin
ores) from the rebel area into Canada.

Heart of Darkness
The destruction of the Congo says much more about the West than it does about
the Central African country. It reveals most clearly that the West is guilty
of participation in a criminal enterprise, the prosperity of which is based
on the genocide of Third World people and the theft of their resources.
The Congo is perhaps the worst example of this ruthless form of exploitation,
but the West has followed the same policy in Asia, Africa and Latin America
for centuries. In this sense, Western countries can be likened to an
international Mafia led by a "godfather" (the United States government) for
whom no amount of wealth, stolen or extorted from others, is ever enough.

Today, the direct perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide are being tried in
Tanzania. But the Western political and business leaders responsible for more
than a century of genocide and plunder in the Congo are not being put on
trial, or even accused. Their horrendous crimes against humanity continue to
go unpunished.

(Asad Ismi - [log in to unmask] - is a free-lance researcher who specializes in
foreign investment and human rights issues. He dedicates this article to the
memory of Patrice Lumumba.)
Taken from The CCPA Monitor, October 2001
http://www.policyalternatives

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