By Geena Paul
BRAZZAVILLE: African nations rich in minerals are bound to witness internal wars and unrest. Because, groups of people who want to take control of the minerals will always try to drive away others from the regions.

Minerals such as cobalt, coltan, cassiterite, copper, and Gold are rare in the world. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one nation which has an abundant stock of all these minerals. Congo is a country in central Africa with a small length of Atlantic coastline. It is the third largest country (by area) in Africa.

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For Congo, the biggest curse is its mineral resources. Rebel groups, governments and mining companies exploit mineral resources, fueling civil and interstate conflict as players vie for control over riches.

Countries such like Congo have fallen victim to rebels who use revenue from minerals such as diamonds, coltan and cassiterite to purchase arms and fuel conflict. Governments often establish repressive military regimes in mineral producing regions to protect their national interests, but local populations rarely see the profits and are subjected to environmental damage wrought by corporations.

Violence has plagued the Congo since its emergence from Belgian colonial rule in 1959. Congo’s rich natural resources, including timber, diamonds, copper, cobalt, gold, uranium and coltan, clearly fuel the conflict. Local militias, backed by Uganda, Rwanda and mining multinationals, get supplies of food, money, and military hardware in exchange for smuggled resource riches.

In October 2003, a UN panel of experts released a report accusing Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe of systematically exploiting Congolese resources and recommended the Security Council impose sanctions. Doubtless due to powerful political and economic interests, the UN never followed up on the report’s recommendations.

Congo is the centre of numerous exploitations of most diverse metals in a multitude of mines and quarries. Its soil harbours a wide variety of mineral species with facies of often very high esthetical quality.

The worked deposits are distributed over Precambrian massifs bordering, to the south, east and north-east, a vast sedimentary central basin.

Cutting the link between the minerals trade and the armed groups committing atrocities in eastern Congo is one of the most critical steps toward changing the logic of war in Congo.

The international community has spent billions on elections and peacekeeping in Congo, but despite the extensive documentation of Congo’s war economy by UN investigations, existing peacemaking efforts have failed to address the economic drivers of the conflict.

The economic benefits of fighting a war in this region remain one of the central motives of the warring parties. Fighting between the rebel group Congrès national pour la défense du peuple (CNDP), led by Laurent Nkunda, and the national Congolese army, the Forces armées de la République démocratique du Congo (FARDC), has escalated sharply. The civilian population has borne the brunt of the violence, as it has done throughout more than ten years of war. The latest fighting has caused mass displacement in North Kivu province. Both the CNDP and the FARDC have carried out serious human rights abuses against unarmed civilians.

Congo’s eastern provinces of North and South Kivu are rich in minerals, notably cassiterite (tin ore), Gold and coltan. The mineral trade has underpinned the war since 1998. Almost all the main armed groups involved in the conflict, as well as soldiers of the national Congolese army, have been trading illegally in these minerals for years, with complete impunity. Many have been taxing the civilian population and extorting minerals or cash along the roads or at border crossings.

For as long as there are buyers who are willing to trade, directly or indirectly, with groups responsible for grave human rights abuses, there is no incentive for these groups to lay down their arms.

The situation in eastern Congo today reflects a wider international failure to address the links between armed conflict and the global trade in natural resources. International community still lacks a common understanding of what constitutes a conflict resource.

Bodies such as the UN have neither adequate means, nor sufficient determination to break the resource-conflict nexus.

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