#congolese army

[tearsofrefugees]

Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo

Women gather on a hill in the Rusayo camp, home to tens of thousands of war-displaced people, on the outskirts of Goma. Since mid-2022, hundreds of thousands of Congolese have found refuge around Goma after fleeing fighting further north between the Congolese army and the Rwandan-backed M23 rebellion. Every month, more than 2,000 women are treated in camps around the city by Doctors Without Borders after being sexually assaulted, mostly by ‘armed men’ while trying to find food in the surrounding forests and fields.

Photograph: Alexis Huguet/AFP/Getty Images

[sayruq]

A rebel group with alleged links to Rwanda this week seized Rubaya, a mining town in eastern Congo known for producing a key mineral used in smartphones, the group said Thursday in a statement. In a statement shared with The Associated Press, a spokesperson for the M23 rebel group said the town was “liberated.” The Congolese army declined to comment on the situation. The decades long conflict in eastern Congo has produced one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with over 100 armed groups fighting for control of the mineral-rich area near the border with Rwanda. Many groups are accused of carrying out mass killings, rapes and other human rights violations. The violence has displaced about 7 million people, many beyond the reach of aid. The town of Rubaya holds deposits of tantalum, which is extracted from coltan, a key component in the production of smartphones. It is among the minerals that was named earlier this month in a letter from Congo’s government questioning Apple about the tech company’s knowledge of “blood minerals” being smuggled in its supply chain. “The fall of Rubaya is in a way the embodiment of this systemic plundering,” Ernest Singoma, a civil society activist in Goma, told the AP on Thursday. There’s been an upsurge in fighting in recent months between M23 rebels and Congo army forces, and it comes as the United Nations plans to withdraw peacekeepers from the region by the end of the year.

[fiercynn]

black & palestinian solidarities

if you support black liberation but are unsure of your stance on palestinian resistance, here’s a reminder that they are deeply intertwined. after the 1917 balfour declaration by the british government announcing the first support for a zionist state in palestine,  zionism and israeli occupation of palestine have followed similar ideologies and practices to white supremacist settler colonial projects, so solidarity between black and palestinian communities has grown over time, seeing each other as fellow anti-imperialist and anti-racist struggles. (if you get a paywall for any of the sources below, try searching them in google scholar.)

palestinians have been inspired by and shown support for black liberationist struggles as early as the 1930s, when arabic-language newspapers in palestine wrote about the struggle by black folks in the united states and framed it as anti-colonial, as well as opposing the 1935 invasion by fascist italy of ethiopia, the only independent black african state at the time. palestinian support for black struggles grew in the 1960s with the emergence of newly-independent african states, the development of black and third world internationalisms, and the civil rights movement in the united states. palestinian writers have expressed this solidarity too: palestinian activist samih al-qasim showed his admiration for congolese independence leader patrice lumumba in a poem about him, while palestinian poet mahmoud darwish’s “letters to a negro” essays spoke directly to black folks in the united states about shared struggles.

afro-palestinians have a rich history of freedom fighting against israeli apartheid, where they face oppression at the intersections of their black and palestinian identities. some families trace their roots back hundreds of years, while others came to jerusalem in the nineteenth century from chad, sudan, nigeria, and senegal after performing the hajj (the islamic pilgrimage to mecca) and settled down. still others came to palestine in the 1940s specifically to join the arab liberation army, where they fought against israel’s ethnic cleansing of palestinians during the 1948 nakba (“catastrophe”). afro-palestinian freedom fighter fatima bernawi, who was of nigerian, palestinian, and jordanian descent, became, in 1967, the first palestinian woman to be organize an operation against israel, and subsequently the first palestinian woman to be imprisoned by israel. the history of afro-palestinian resistance continues today: even as the small afro-palestinian community in jerusalem is highly-surveilled, over-policed, disproportionately incarcerated, and subjected to racist violence, they continue to organize and fight for palestinian liberation.

black revolutionaries and leaders in the united states have supported the palestinian struggle for decades, with a ramp-up since the 1960s. malcolm x became a huge opponent of zionism after traveling to southwest asia and north africa (SWANA), publishing “zionist logic” in 1964, and becoming one of the first black leaders from the united states to meet with the newly formed palestine liberation organization. the black panther party and the third world women’s alliance, a revolutionary socialist organization for women of color, also supported palestinian resistance in the 1970s. writers like maya angelou, june jordan, and james baldwin have long spoken out for palestinians. dr. angela davis (who received support from palestinian political prisoners when she was incarcerated) has made black and palestinian solidarity a key piece of her work. and many, many more black leaders and revolutionaries in the united states have supported palestinian freedom.

while israel has long courted relationships with the african union and its members, there has been ongoing tension between them since at least the 1970s, when all but four african states (malawi, lesotho, swaziland, and mauritius) cut off diplomatic ties with israel after the 1973 october war. while many of those diplomatic relationships were reestablished in subsequent decades, they remain rocky, and earlier this year, the african union booted an israeli diplomat from their annual summit in addis ababa, ethiopia, and issued a draft declaration on the situation in palestine and the middle east that expressed “full support for the palestinian people in their legitimate struggle against the israeli occupation”, naming israeli settlements as illegal and calling for boycotts and sanctions with israel. grassroots organizations like africa 4 palestine have also been key in the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement.

in south africa, comparisons between israel and south african apartheid have been prevalent since the 1990s and early 2000s. israel historically allied with apartheid-era south africa, while palestinians opposed south african apartheid, leading nelson mandela to support the palestinian liberation organization as "fighting for the right of self-determination"; over the years his statements have been joined by fellow black african freedom fighters like nozizwe madlala-routledge and desmond tutu. post-apartheid south africa has continued to be a strong ally to palestine, calling for israel to be declared “apartheid state”.

black and palestinian solidarities have continued into the 21st century. palestinian people raised money to send to survivors of hurricane katrina in the united states in 2005 (which disproportionately harmed black communities in new orleans and the gulf of mexico) and the devastating earthquake in haiti in 2010. in the past decade, the global black lives matter struggle has brought new emphasis to shared struggles. prison and police abolitionists have long noted the deadly exchange which brings together police, ICE, border patrol, and FBI agents from the united states to train with soldiers, police, and border agents from israel. palestinian freedom fighters supported the 2014 uprising in ferguson in the united states, and shared strategies for resisting state violence. over a thousand black leaders signed onto the 2015 black solidarity statement with palestine. the murder of george floyd by american cops in 2020 has sparked further allyship, including black lives matter protests in palestine, with organizations like the dream defenders making connections between palestinian and black activists.

this is just a short summary that i came up because i've been researching black and asian solidarities recently so i had some sources on hand; there's obviously so much more that i haven't covered, so please feel free to reblog with further additions to this history!

[zvaigzdelasas]

The DR Congo military said on Sunday it had thwarted an “attempted coup” near the offices of President Felix Tshisekedi in Kinshasa involving “foreigners and Congolese”.

19 May 24

[eretzyisrael]

by Peter Baum

Since the third but most  recent creation of the Jewish State of Israel in 1948 and the various conflicts she has faced since, the total number of deaths including those since October 7, has been no more than 200,000 inclusive of both sides and of various nationalities – Lebanese, Egyptian, Syrian , Jordanian , Israelis and Arab Palestinians. Averaging circa 2500 deaths per annum with a heavily swayed death total to the Arab Palestinian population.

Statistics only being identified by the Hamas Authorities state over 40,000 Arab Palestinians killed but this must include Hamas operatives, estimated to be nearly 20,000 perhaps more. If one compares this to the deaths of civilians during a similar period in Nigeria, Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Mali, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Mexico and Columbia then by equivalent statistical data these conflicts were also genocides – but not according to mainstream media, political commentators or the United Nations. Only the Palestinians apparently are victims of genocide. The only contemporary wearers of the Crown of Genocide.

So, let’s revert to the DRC and attempt to make sense of global conflicts, their victims and the role of our media and political leaders. By any intelligent research it is a truth that in less than thirty years over six million indigenous, black, African Congolese have been killed in internal conflict sometimes extending to the countries directly bordering the DRC. It is also an undeniable fact that a multiple of three to four times that number killed have been displaced from their homelands. Given the lack of knowledge about the country itself I would wager there is even less knowledge relating to the armed militias, groups or interested parties participating in this human tragedy. In all truth who of you have heard or read about the FARDC (Congolese Army) or the M23 rebel militia?

How can it possibly be in this day and age that six million black Africans can be slaughtered, and mainstream media totally ignores these tragedies. It is not only in the DRC a true genocide occurred. In Rwanda in 1994 nearly one million black Africans were butchered. And if I asked who butchered who, I would wager the majority don’t know the answer. Apart from a lack of knowledge of the two tribal protagonists, Hutus and Tutsis, I would wager that very few know who the perpetrators were and who were the victims. I’m not telling – dyor as we scribe lazily use such terminology.

So, two true genocides in Africa go unreported by our mainstream media. The six hundred thousand killed in Syria or the 250,000 deaths in Yemen have also gone similarly unnoticed. In Sudan, Eritrea and Libya the total death toll in the last five years is one million plus. But again, no media coverage.

And with lack of reporting there will be no protests, no outrage, no boycotts, no attacks on ordinary folk by activists, no UN sanctions, no political management.

So, four genocides occur but no outrage and a non-genocide receives global attention and political activism often bordering on criminality leading to the deaths of innocents. How can this be? I will tell you.

The global order which includes the Theatre of the Absurd – the United Nations, together with global mainstream media and an ever-increasing Muslim population with numerous countries subservient to that religion have adopted a truly successful agenda. Within that agenda money paid to corrupt African politicians has played a crucial role and has garnered support from the political left who are rabid anti-Semites and thus the saturation negative reporting on Israel as the aggressor and the Palestinian as victims. The fact that the Palestinians adhere to Charters demanding Jew extermination has been for decades conveniently ignored.

Atrocities in Africa are purposely overlooked and total concentration is beamed on Israel a state no bigger than New Jersey in the USA. Disproportionate, saturation negative reporting on Israel by mainstream media take total precedence above all other global conflicts.

[kemetic-dreams]

(5 clips) CIA gets busted today in the Congo while attempting to perform a coup d’etat against the Congolese government. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) armed forces repelled an attempted coup d’etat involving Congolese and foreign fighters on Sunday morning, a DRC army spokesperson said in a televised address..The army announces the arrest of American mercenaries.In the 2nd clip, you’ll notice Christian Malanga the DR Congo Coup Leader with the Zionist Jewish colonial/ occupation army in the occupied Palestinian territories. Christian Malanga was killed today in the unsuccessful coup attempt. The NY TIMES article we referenced here states that, only 4 days ago, the Biden administration was ready to lift sanctions on the Congo. Of course, they presumed this would coincide with a successful coup attempt. The connections between the genocide in Palestine and the genocide in the Congo are glaring (but these connections extend to many other parts of the world also). The passport photo pictured belongs to the CIA agent who was busted in the failed coup attempt. May Allah give the oppressed success over their oppressors everywhere. Ameen.

[mariacallous]

Last February, as the sound of automatic weapons erupted in the early hours before dawn, Amina Museni hurriedly packed a bag while her husband, Joseph, shook their three children awake. They were joining a group of neighbors fleeing their hamlet as the front line between the Congolese army and rebels of the March 23 Movement, or M23, crept closer. For days afterward, they walked across the hilly landscape of Masisi, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, before reaching one of the camps that have sprung up around Goma, the capital of North Kivu province. There, they pitched their tent, a young family of five among more than a million people displaced by the resurgence of a conflict that has ravaged Congo for nearly three decades.

When Foreign Policy visited the camp last July, Museni sat amid an undulating sea of white tarpaulins stretched over eucalyptus sticks. “When I was little, I lived in a tent with my parents,” Museni said, her youngest child, Nestor, cradled into her neck. “Now my children have to endure the same. It feels like a curse.”

Why Congo has been in a perennial state of upheaval since the mid-1990s has been the subject of much debate, but no other narrative has cut through as much as that of so-called conflict minerals. In the 2000s, the link between markets’ demand for minerals and the war in Congo helped bring attention to the conflict in an unprecedented way. Western organizations such as the Enough Project and Global Witness mobilized around the seductive proposition that the solution to one of the world’s deadliest conflicts was within the grasp of consumers and policymakers, triggering a series of laws and regulations beginning with, in the United States in 2010, Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act. The logic behind the legislation was simple. “Armed groups finance themselves through the exploitation of cassiterite, gold, coltan,” Fidel Bafilemba, a Congolese researcher who used to work for the Enough Project, told me at the time. “By stopping the export of these conflict minerals, we dry up their resources and lessen the violence.”

Section 1502 required companies to conduct due diligence checks on their supply chain to disclose their use of minerals originating from Congo and neighboring countries and to determine whether those minerals may have benefited armed groups. The legislation didn’t outright ban the sourcing of minerals from mines contributing to conflict financing but instead intended “this transparency and its attendant reputational risk” to pressure companies to stop buying them voluntarily, according to Toby Whitney, one of the authors of Section 1502.

What followed is an important lesson for a world rushing to secure critical minerals for the energy transition. Western advocacy led to policies focused on derisking supply chains and virtue signaling to consumers, rather than improving artisanal miners’ living conditions or addressing the conflict’s root causes. That narrative continues today: An Apple store in Berlin was vandalized last week by Fridays for Future activists accusing the tech giant of sourcing so-called conflict minerals from Congo.

ITSCI, the region’s leading private traceability scheme, is facing criticism about the validity of its work—and that it has not improved the lives of artisanal miners in the region. ITSCI stresses its limited mandate and that it is working as intended. But in a cruel twist, the cost of the due diligence program has been shouldered by Congolese miners themselves, effectively asking the world’s poorest workers to pay for the right to sell their own resources to Western companies.

This week, industry leaders and activists gathering at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris for the annual Forum on Responsible Mineral Supply Chains will need to reassess their approach. “We welcomed Dodd-Frank,” said Alexis Muhima, a Congolese researcher, during a meeting in a cramped office in Goma. “But what it did is outsource complex issues to the private sector, and we’ve been paying for it ever since.”

“The Americans didn’t think this through.”

There was a time in the 1970s when the quarries of Nyabibwe, a mining town in South Kivu province, were run with enough capital to employ 500 workers and to invest in semi-industrial machinery. Every month, the French company in charge shipped 20 metric tons of cassiterite ore—a component of tin—back to Europe for cans, wires, and solder. Safari Kulimuchi was a worker at the mines, starting at age 17, who quickly rose through the ranks to become a manager. “It was an exciting time. … Things seemed to be working out,” Kulimuchi recalled to Foreign Policy over dinner in Nyabibwe. But, he said, “it didn’t last.”

In the years that followed, Kulimuchi witnessed the economic unraveling of Congo (then Zaire), rotten under decades of rule by dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who presided over the country from 1965 to 1997. Amid a global economic downturn in the mid-1980s, the French company departed, abandoning its workers to fend for themselves. “Overnight, we had no wages, no tools, no structure,” Kulimuchi said. “We used to have a stone crusher. Now we had to crush rocks with a hammer.”

Nyabibwe was far from an exception. Across the country, as investment dried up and the state abdicated its responsibilities, people resorted to making ends meet any way they could. An informal economy based on débrouillardise, or resourcefulness, sprouted in the ruins of Mobutu’s derelict regime. That informal economy is estimated to account for more than 80 percent of Congolese economic activity today. Nyabibwe grew into a town as people came from far and wide to work in the mines. They replaced the industrial machinery with picks and shovels, a low-capital, labor-intensive extraction called artisanal mining, as opposed to industrial mining. “Artisanal mining is the heart of our economy. It’s the reason Nyabibwe became this big center,” Kulimuchi said. The World Bank estimated in 2008 that up to 16 percent of the Congolese population depended on the sector. “For us, it’s a lifeline,” Kulimuchi added.

Mobutu was finally ousted in 1997 by a coalition helmed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel army led by Paul Kagame. Kagame had just seized power in Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide there and was intent on chasing after Hutus responsible for the massacres, many of whom had crossed into Zaire. What became the First Congo War brought Laurent-Désiré Kabila, a Congolese rebel, to power.

Kabila’s allies in the RPF quickly turned into foes when they refused to relinquish control over an area where instability threatened their security and interests. The Second Congo War began in 1998 with the creation of the RCD, a Tutsi-led, Rwandan-backed armed group that quickly gained control of a large swath of eastern Congo. The rebels began shipping cargo loads of coltan and cassiterite ores out of mines such as Nyabibwe’s into Rwanda just as the price of coltan, a key component of capacitors used in mobile phones and most electronic devices, soared with the demand for electronic goods at the turn of the century. A 2001 United Nations report estimated that Rwanda made at least $250 million during a temporary spike in prices in late 1999 and 2000. A popular formulation in Western campaigns at the time linked the violence in Congo to “blood phones.”

Many experts have criticized the advocacy of the 2000s for sometimes going so far as to suggest that conflict minerals were the root cause of the violence, painting armed actors as merely bloodthirsty, greedy militias—instead of considering real, historical grievances. The Enough Project campaigns, leaning hard on celebrities such as Robin Wright and Ryan Gosling to spread the group’s message, obfuscated the nuances of the conflict and the vital place of artisanal mining in the local economy. “The ‘conflict minerals’ label was problematic,” said Sophia Pickles, a former Global Witness campaigner and U.N. investigator. “This isn’t just about Congo—it’s a global issue.”

The campaigns succeeded in putting the issue on U.S. legislators’ agenda, but Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act was both too specific—singling out the so-called 3T minerals (tin for cassiterite, tantalum for coltan, and tungsten) in eastern Congo—and extremely vague on execution. It deferred the drafting of rules to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), leaving companies with no clear guidelines to report on their supply chain.

The law created a panicked scramble in the industry, said William Millman, a former technical director at Kyocera AVX, a leading manufacturer of electronic components and major coltan buyer. “Everybody was ignorant about the specifics. We just relied on our smelters.” Unlike an oil company directly operating its wells or a sneaker company outsourcing production to a sweatshop in Asia, electronics companies have virtually no way of knowing where the minerals in their products come from upstream of the smelters or refiners that have turned them into smooth metal—unless the smelters themselves know. “I visited all my suppliers to gather information. They knew very little because it was all largely bought on the spot market with international brokers,” Millman said. As a result of Section 1502, companies liable to fall under the SEC rule demanded that their suppliers simply stop buying from eastern Congo.

The result? A de facto embargo dropped like a bomb on the mining communities of North and South Kivu, just as the region was emerging from its latest cycle of violence. Nyabibwe had navigated two major wars mostly unscathed, but when I visited in June 2012, the town was in the midst of an existential crisis. Businesses dependent on the cash flow generated by the mines were closing down one by one, unable to sell stockpiles of rubber boots and shovels, blacksmithing services, or simply food. Tellingly, the local nightclub had shut its doors. More concerning were thousands of families’ insufficient funds to access health care, forcing women to give birth at home. One study found that the boycott increased the probability of infant mortality in affected mining communities by at least 143 percent.

Kulimuchi, who was then 54, was still managing a small team of undeterred miners. “The Americans didn’t think this through,” he said. His team had three metric tons of ore stored in a warehouse in Bukavu, South Kivu’s capital, waiting to be bought and shipped. “School is about to start again. Where are we going to find the money to send our children?”

Though U.S. lawmakers had struck out on their own with Section 1502, industrywide talks to create guidelines for the responsible sourcing of minerals in high-risk areas globally were already underway at the OECD. The OECD guidelines, adopted later in 2010, ended up becoming the foundation for the SEC rules, released in 2012. “The choke point in the supply chain is the smelters—everything has to go through them, and there aren’t many smelters in the world,” Millman said. “The OECD came up with a standardized protocol to audit and certify the smelters on an annual basis to know that they have control and knowledge of their supply chain.”

According to Millman, a handful of downstream companies seemed genuinely interested in doing things right and getting involved at the mine level. In 2011, together with Motorola and the Washington-based NGO Resolve, what was then AVX launched Solutions for Hope, a pilot project in Congo’s Katanga (now Tanganyika) province, where there was no conflict. They created a closed-pipe supply chain, sourcing from artisanal mines through a company that sold directly to a Chinese smelter and then onward to AVX, which manufactured components for Motorola and Hewlett-Packard.

Solutions for Hope also decided to hire the services of ITSCI. Its “bag and tag” traceability scheme set up by the International Tin Association (ITA) promised to trace minerals from the mine and guarantee their origin to buyers through a paper trail associated with sealed tags affixed on bags. According to Millman, Solutions for Hope was successful largely because its integrated supply chain bypassed traders and brought end-user companies closer to the miners. Replicating it would take time and effort. But, Millman said, “what other companies who had sat back saw was that, suddenly, with ITSCI there was a way for their CEOs and CFOs to sign off on their SEC statements. … And so everyone piled in, and it became the easy option.” ITSCI’s first project in eastern Congo was implemented in October 2012 in Nyabibwe.

“Do you think these people stopped working?”

Ten years on from when we first met, Kulimuchi came down from the mountainside where he had been working with his son on a sunny day last July, his broad smile still intact. The mining site hadn’t changed much either. Around us, men wearing flip-flops were using the same basic tools to split the earth open, with no protective equipment.

Initially, Kulimuchi recalled, the artisanal miners had been relieved when a large delegation showed up to officially launch the traceability scheme. “It meant we could finally start selling again. All my financial worries would be a thing of the past,” Kulimuchi said he thought at the time.

Instead, an elaborate public-private bureaucracy emerged, driven in part by regional governments intent on bringing the artisanal mining sector under control but quickly superimposed by foreign private sector initiatives like ITSCI, responding to market demand for paperwork required by end-user companies to file their reports to the SEC.

“We started selling again, but it’s a cacophony. There is a ton of admin, taxes after taxes, and prices have gone down. We have been weakened by all this,” Kulimuchi said.

As the de facto embargo on eastern Congo’s minerals lifted, by 2012 thousands of small sites across the region found themselves effectively outlawed by a new mine site validation process. To be able to sell, Congolese mining sites must now be inspected by a delegation of government representatives, NGOs, and U.N. agencies. At sites given the go-ahead from that audit, the Congolese artisanal mining agency carries out its own checks while also tagging and recording the minerals in logbooks for ITSCI. There are other records kept by the provincial government’s Mining Division and a regional body. Many sites are still waiting for an audit. For those that don’t conform, the consequences are devastating: “You are destroying the livelihood of hundreds or thousands of people,” said Maxie Muwonge, who was a program manager for the International Organization for Migration between 2013 and 2018 when it was tasked with coordinating the validation process. “This excludes entire communities. What are they meant to do? Do you think these people stopped working?”

In fact, even under the de facto embargo, the minerals trade never really stopped. It just went further underground. Rwanda’s export statistics, which experts say don’t match its reserves, suggest that smuggling to neighboring countries spiked during the period. While the volume of trafficked minerals has fallen with the reopening of the legal market in eastern Congo, smuggling is still an issue, not least because of the market distortion caused by heavy regulation and taxation in Congo of small businesses. “Many collapsed because they couldn’t meet the requirements, and the investment in the sector decreased. It broke down artisanal miners even further,” Muwonge said.

Joyeux Mumpenzi followed in his mother’s footsteps when he decided to become a négociant, an intermediary who buys minerals from the creuseurs, or diggers, and transports them to export companies in large cities—a reflection of the highly organized division of labor in the artisanal sector. “To begin with, we have no say regarding the going price—the London Metal Exchange sets it, and it fluctuates constantly,” he said. “Then there are all the taxes, and finally, the export company retains a penalty on my payment for ITSCI.”

Today, 99 percent of ITSCI’s revenue comes from the levies it collects from upstream actors based on the volumes of minerals tagged and exported, ITSCI program manager Mickaël Daudin said in an interview. The organization says artisanal miners are not supposed to pay for the scheme. But the cost, or at least a percentage of it, is passed down the supply chain to the négociants and ultimately to the miners. “I have no choice” in doing so, Mumpenzi said. “I end up earning little more than they do, and I take huge financial risks.” The 33-year-old trader says he earns about $300 a month, while an artisanal miner’s household makes $200 on average.

ITSCI, which operates in both Congo and Rwanda, applies differentiated levies to businesses in the two countries. Daudin said that’s because “the cost of implementation … remains much higher” in Congo than in Rwanda but declined to disclose the levies’ rates; a Congolese government official called it a “conflict tax.” The rate discrepancy effectively encourages trafficking to Rwanda for Congolese mining operators keen to increase their margins.

A report published in 2022 by Global Witness cited “[s]ome industry sources” alleging that ITSCI was in fact set up to facilitate the laundering of Congolese minerals smuggled into Rwanda. Foreign Policy hasn’t been able to confirm the claim, but the tagging system that ITSCI created does offer the perfect cover for smuggling, in Rwanda or Congo. The integrity of the scheme relies entirely on the integrity of the people implementing it; the tags themselves offer no guarantee. In a statement released in response to the report, ITSCI wrote that it “strongly rejects all Global Witness’ stated or implied allegations of wrongdoing, facilitating deliberate misuse of ITSCI systems or illegal activity.” If ITSCI had aimed to maximize smuggling into Rwanda as alleged, a spokesperson wrote to Foreign Policy in an email, “ITSCI would not have launched in Katanga in 2011 nor in any other adjoining locations at other times. During 15 years of implementation, ITSCI has continued to expand the programme in [Congo], now supporting more than 1,500 sites across 8 Provinces.”

The Global Witness report also documented how the system can be breached without ITSCI’s cooperation. For starters, the tagging is not performed by ITSCI but by Congolese government agents who earn less than the miners themselves and sometimes go for months without pay at all. From bribing agents to trading in tags, the number of ways to circumvent the system is almost limitless—as Mumpenzi demonstrated to Foreign Policy. The négociant stood up from the sofa in his living room and walked to a corner where sturdy white plastic bags had been stacked. “See the tags? The bags were sealed by an agent before I picked them up yesterday,” he said. “The mineral sand now has to be washed, so when I’ll bring the bags to the washing station, the tags will be removed. When minerals are washed, the weight goes down, so this is a perfect time to smuggle in minerals before a new tag goes on. As long as the bag weighs less than it did initially, no one will say anything.”

ITSCI doesn’t rebuke such allegations categorically. The organization says it was aware of many of the incidents documented by Global Witness and had already addressed them. “The program isn’t perfect. There are issues, and there always will be,” Daudin told Foreign Policy. “But from my point of view, it wasn’t better before.”

Kulimuchi and other artisanal miners might beg to differ. Rather than improving their living conditions, the “increasing regulation of the artisanal mining sector and responsible sourcing efforts, have rather had a negative overall effect on the socio-economic position of artisanal miners,” analysts at the International Peace Information Service (IPIS), a leading minerals research institute, wrote in 2019. Guillaume de Brier, a researcher at IPIS, told me that “working in an ITSCI or a non-ITSCI site doesn’t change anything. Conditions are dismal in both cases. There’s no difference in terms of child labor, and miners don’t earn more.”

When asked by Foreign Policy about this criticism, an ITSCI spokesperson stressed the organization’s limited mandate as a traceability and due diligence not-for-profit initiative. “It does not function as a certification mechanism,” the spokesperson wrote, and the organization’s focus “does not extend to working conditions.”

However, evidence suggests that responsible sourcing efforts have failed to shift conflict dynamics. A 2022 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), part of its mandate to evaluate the impact of Section 1502, was titled “Conflict Minerals: Overall Peace and Security in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo Has Not Improved Since 2014.” Violence has instead risen, remaining “relatively constant from 2014 through 2016 but steadily [increasing] from 2017 through 2021,” GAO wrote.

Arguably, some measure of progress has been achieved at the 3T mining sites targeted by Dodd-Frank, where the presence of armed groups has decreased. But while ITSCI claims to have played a role, de Brier says the scheme merely implanted in sites where the situation was already better. Overall, this demilitarization has largely been the result of Congolese policies and the evolution of conflict dynamics themselves: The defeat of the M23 rebellion in 2013 (the armed group changed names multiple times as it successively integrated into and rebelled against the national army) led to the dismantling of one of the country’s most predatory mafia networks. Today, for instance, Bisie, once an iconic mining site under the control of Bosco “The Terminator” Ntaganda, is operated by the Canadian company Alphamin. (Ntaganda is serving a 30-year prison sentence in Belgium following his conviction by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.)

Now though, with the resurgence of the M23 rebellion since November 2021—which has displaced Museni, her family, and more than 2.5 million others—even that small measure of progress is under threat.

“This is how the armed groups are paid.”

Belgian colonial administration profoundly altered the Congolese relationship with the land, introducing private ownership and displacing people for commercial exploitation. Since independence, who has the right to own land—and by extension its resources—has remained an unresolved existential question. “The main resource driving conflict isn’t coltan,” said Onesphore Sematumba, an analyst at the International Crisis Group. “It is the land. It’s material ownership, of course, but also who has a legitimate right to be here.”

In the borderlands of eastern Congo, these questions have been exacerbated by intertwined histories with neighboring countries. Hutus and Tutsis, who arrived from Rwanda in successive waves throughout the 20th century—first brought by Belgian colonialists to work on plantations in the territories of Rutshuru and Masisi—have struggled to find acceptance and secure land rights. Rwanda, meanwhile, a small, densely populated country with little resources of its own, largely depends on economic ties and access to Congo’s resources. These two dynamics have helped create the vicious circle of the last three decades. Backed by Rwanda, the RCD rebellion and its successors claiming to fight for Tutsis’ rights have helped entrench tensions along ethnic lines while facilitating land grab by a small elite.

“Indigenous communities in Masisi were dispossessed of their land during the war,” said Janvier Murairi, a Congolese researcher. “Today’s farm and mine owners are people who had links to the RCD. Everything from Mushaki to Masisi town belongs to hardly more than 10 people.”

One such owner was Edouard Mwangachuchu, an aspiring Tutsi politician and a member of the RCD’s political branch, who was awarded a concession covering seven mines in Rubaya by the rebel administration in 2001. Two years later, the Sun City Agreement, a peace deal negotiated between rebel factions with little regard for social justice or community grievances, endorsed Mwangachuchu’s ownership over the mining sites as a prize of war for the RCD, granting his company, MHI (now SMB), control over what have become the most productive sites at Congo’s largest coltan mine. Today, Rubaya accounts for about 15 percent of global coltan production.

Rubaya is emblematic of the way ITSCI, and more broadly due diligence as it is practiced today, treats “conflictual issues, such as concessions and land ownership, … as a black box,” Christoph N. Vogel writes in his 2022 book, Conflict Minerals Inc., turning a blind eye to political issues around social justice and equity, even as those are drivers of the violence it means to help prevent.

In Rubaya, Mwangachuchu’s plan to turn the quarries into an industrial mine spurred a backlash from local communities. “The artisanal miners didn’t accept that this family [the Mwangachuchus] who had come into the possession of the mines through the conflict could take away their livelihood,” Murairi said. The government mediated a deal: The miners were allowed to continue mining SMB sites but had to sell exclusively to the company.

ITSCI began operating in Rubaya in 2014, tagging minerals from both SMB and peripheral sites belonging to a state-owned mining company, SAKIMA. But the situation unraveled as the scheme was embroiled in a tit-for-tat commercial war in the years that followed.

Suspecting that ITSCI’s tags were being used to launder the sale of its minerals to a rival trading company, SMB eventually turned to ITSCI’s main competitor in the tag-and-bag business, Better Mining. The move should have represented a major financial blow to ITSCI, the loss of roughly half its revenues for Congo. Instead, as production at the SAKIMA sites kept growing while SMB’s dwindled, ITSCI’s business was preserved. According to an internal U.N. report provided to Foreign Policy, “Only about seventeen percent of the production that officially originates from the SAKIMA concession has in fact been mined there.” The report noted that “[s]uch discrepancy between official data and reality is only conceivable if a structured mechanism of fraud is established.”

Daudin, the ITSCI program manager, responded that ITSCI is “confident about its data.” He argued that the production increase was due to the higher level of investment going to SAKIMA sites when local miners turned away from SMB.

The M23’s resurgence dealt the last blow to Mwangachuchu, who was arrested in March 2023 and charged with treason after weapons were allegedly found on the grounds of his company’s facilities in Rubaya. According to the prosecutor, Mwangachuchu intended to support the M23 rebellion. The government has since revoked SMB’s mining permits. Few people in North Kivu will feel sorry for Mwangachuchu, “but one of the protagonists was pushed out in favor of the other, and that never works,” said Achile Kitsa, a former private secretary to the provincial mines minister.

The Congolese army took full control of Rubaya last spring, leaving the former SMB concession at the mercy of local armed groups it used as proxies on the front line against the M23. “This is how the armed groups are paid,” said a Congolese researcher who spoke on condition of anonymity. ITSCI resumed its operations in June, tagging minerals from the SAKIMA perimeter up until November, when the road was cut off by the fighting, according to Daudin. “We relaunched our activities after evaluating each site with the government services,” he said in July. “There are no nonstate armed groups in our sites.”

In a December report, the U.N. Group of Experts on Congo contradicted Daudin, establishing that between June and November, the “production from [the former SMB] sites was either smuggled to Rwanda or laundered into the official supply chain using [ITSCI] tags for minerals produced in [the SAKIMA concession], where mining activities were still authorized.”

“ITSCI recognizes that there have been, and remain, ongoing risks regarding fraud and presence of both non-state and state armed groups in the area of Masisi territory, North Kivu,” the ITSCI spokesperson wrote. “These risks are regularly reported through ITSCI’s OECD-aligned systems.”

Muhima, the Congolese researcher, sees the possibility of tainted minerals in the ITSCI supply chain as inevitable, given its built-in conflict of interest. “Their income depends on the volume they export. They cannot stop tagging minerals, or their business will collapse.”

“We don’t need another scheme.”

Congolese activists were not pleased with the Global Witness report exposing the shortcomings of ITSCI when it was published in 2022. They felt that the research mostly rehashed criticisms and evidence that they had presented for many years without being listened to and that the report failed to draw the necessary conclusions, ending with tepid recommendations to reform ITSCI or consider options to replace it with another independent scheme. “We don’t need another scheme,” Murairi said. “We don’t need more foreigners who think Congolese can’t do anything.”

Global Witness’s cautiousness should perhaps not come as a surprise. The activist organization played no small part in paving the way for today’s conundrum, and the risk of triggering another de facto embargo on Congolese minerals hangs heavy. “We’ve learnt some very difficult lessons, and as an activist, I’m not the one who bore the consequences of bad policymaking,” said Pickles, the former Global Witness campaigner.

When I pressed Daudin last July about ITSCI’s resumption of its activities in Rubaya, even as armed groups were swarming the mining area, he dodged: “If we don’t start tagging again, mining communities will be the first ones to suffer from not being able to carry on their activities.”

ITSCI suffered a major setback in October 2022, when the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI), a member association of more than 400 of the world’s largest corporations, announced that it was taking the scheme off its list of recognized upstream due diligence mechanisms. ITSCI had failed to submit an independent assessment of its alignment with the OECD guidelines in time. When the organization eventually released an independent audit in June 2023, it failed to assess ITSCI’s activities in Congo, focusing solely on coltan production in Rwanda. The RMI has offered to pay for three site visits in Congo, including in Rubaya, but ITSCI has so far not agreed. (“Site visits outside alignment assessments are not explicitly required,” said the ITSCI spokesperson, who noted the terms of such a visit are nonetheless under negotiation with RMI.)

“They are holding everyone hostage,” an industry insider close to the RMI process told Foreign Policy. “There is so much pressure on the RMI to capitulate and say we need this system. But this isn’t a technical issue.” To many experts and industry insiders, the resurgence of the M23 conflict has at least had the benefit of clarifying the situation. “The system cannot withstand what it was built for. It can’t withstand the conflict. We are back to square one.”

Breaking ITSCI’s quasi-monopoly is often presented as the solution in minerals circles, but SMB’s switch to Better Mining solved none of the problems in Rubaya and only created more confusion. Better Mining’s for-profit business model and its reliance on technology make it hard to scale and mean it is explicitly designed for larger companies with capital, not artisanal miners. “The problem with all these initiatives is that no one is there to control them,” said de Brier, the IPIS researcher.

Who is supposed to exert this control is part of the problem. Much like the fragmented nature of the supply chain, the nebulous ecosystem of public and private actors involved in responsible sourcing means that responsibility befalls no one in particular. In a July 2023 report, the GAO noted that the number of companies filing conflict minerals disclosures to the SEC had been steadily declining year-on-year since 2014, in part because “companies perceive that they are unlikely to face enforcement action by the SEC if they do not comply.”

Pickles noted that, unlike Dodd-Frank, the European Union’s own conflict minerals regulation, which came into force in 2021, avoided the trap of focusing only on Congo but equally fell for industry schemes such as ITSCI. “I’ve spoken to the competent authorities of three member states, and they said that the reports they receive from companies don’t tell them anything. They don’t actually know what’s happening along the supply chain,” she said. “So where does that leave us?”

For Congolese, ending this hypocrisy is a necessary first step but requires trust and support on the part of international partners. “The Congolese government has its own traceability system. All the necessary documents are delivered by Congolese state agencies. They tell you where the minerals come from just as reliably as ITSCI’s tags, which is to say it’s not perfect but it’s no worse,” Muhima said. “The same state agents deliver these documents and implement ITSCI’s program—for free I might add, since ITSCI doesn’t pay for them. What needs to be improved urgently is their payment.”

These lessons are relevant beyond the specifics of the 3T supply chain. The attention around cobalt—the conflict mineral du jour thanks to its use in electric vehicle batteries—is a case in point. While there is no conflict in the area where cobalt is extracted, working conditions and child labor have been discussed in much the same way as conflict minerals were back in the 2000s: in decontextualized and sometimes inaccurate reports that fail to examine the complex ways in which minerals interact with people’s livelihoods. Instead, such reports paint artisanal mining as illegitimate, something to eliminate. They have been used to justify land grab by large mining companies whose supply chains are easily traceable for end-user companies.

“We haven’t learned from our experience with diamonds or 3T minerals. With cobalt, it’s as if those experiences never existed,” said Joanne Lebert, the executive director of IMPACT, a nonprofit organization working on natural resource governance. “Instead of supporting communities, we’re just monitoring. There is no connection in my view between a clean supply chain and governance and security outcomes. Maybe you take kids out of your supply chain, but they’ll go to agriculture, to domestic work. They’ll go to another mine. They’ll sneak in at night. Clean supply chain is about eliminating the risk and not necessarily about doing good. And it’s the doing good we have to get at.”

Following the same pattern, an EU law aimed at preventing products linked to deforestation from entering the European market is pushing coffee companies toward industrial producers able to generate the paperwork and sidelining small farmers from Ethiopia to Brazil. Private companies will always take the shortcut, while black markets, exploitation, and conflict feed on exclusion.

Whether Western consumers like it or not, artisanally mined minerals will continue to find their way into the supply chains that fuel the energy transition and consumer products. Investing in mining communities’ welfare, education, and businesses is indispensable.

Museni is still living in the refugee camp on the outskirts of Goma with her husband and young children. Surrounded, the provincial capital has been struggling to absorb and provide for the constant new waves of displaced families reaching the city as the M23 is inching closer.

Even as evidence of Rwanda’s support to the rebellion has been mounting, the country has still not been sanctioned. In February, the EU signed an agreement “to nurture sustainable and resilient value chains for critical raw materials” with the Rwandan government, calling the country “a major player on the world’s tantalum extraction.” Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi described the deal as a “provocation in very bad taste.”

In Nyabibwe, Kulimuchi took me on a final walk around the town, waving around at the myriad businesses and hard-working people in the streets. “No one here has a bank account, for example. We can’t save. We can’t build,” he said. “We don’t require much—a road to Bukavu, a little boost, you know. Then, we’ll take it from there.”

[legalkimchi]

Who is are the victims of these genocides?

It is a question we need to know the answer to if we want to formulate helping others. While my last big post was about the nature of the other conflicts happening, namely the Third war of the Congo and the Sudanese Civil War, I failed to answer a central question in that post.

Who is getting killed here?

People who call the situation in the Congo a "genocide" have a hard time telling you who is the victim of the genocide.

If you google "congo genocide" you will get the figure of 6 million dead in the wars of the Congo. These conflicts have been going on for about 30 years and we are entering the third war of the Congo now. But they won't mention the target. That's partially there are two groups that hate each other, but also other groups that hate all of them.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the wars in the Congo started because of spill over from the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s. That's where the hutu majority fought against the ruling tutsi minority. The Tutsi were the ruling elite and used as puppets of the belgium colonizers. The Belgians used these two ethnic groups against each other, fueling a hatred between them to their own benefit.

When Rwanda gained independence, the hutus took control. They treated the tutsi as second class citizens and eventually, during the Rwandan Civil War, extremist hutus killed tutsis and moderate hutus in the Rwandan genocide. But it isn't an easy binary. War crimes were committed by both sides and atrocities were commonplace.

Prior to that, many tutsis fled rwanda. Most going to places like Uganda or, then zaire,now the Drc. So you have a displaced tutsi population in the drc.

After the end of the Rwandan Civil War, hutu genociders, fearful of tutsi reprisals, fled into the Drc. They brought their war with them.

Rwandan government accused the drc of harboring genociders. They armed tutsi refugees in the drc. Hutus were trying to fight to take back rwanda, while also killing tutsis in the drc.

As the war escalated, neighboring nations joined in. Rwandas armies massacred hutu populations. (They also fight to control the Diamond and cobalt mines. If you hear about apple supporting genocide it is because of these cobalt mines. Cobalt is essential for modern computing and yes, children are mining in slave conditions to make your phone affordable)

DRC, angry at the Rwandan tutsi government fanning the flames of war, called upon the Congolese people to kill tutsis.

So the genocide here is of tutsis (like the Rwandan genocide) but also of hutus. All while a civil war is happening in the drc, which is being exacerbated by local African governments and "the west" (through the exploitation of the diamond and cobalt reserves.)

The Sudanese genocide is a little simpler. Sudans major ethnic group are sudanese Arabs. While there is a civil war happening, Darfur is where the genocide is happening. Why that area specifically?

Darfur means "home of the Fur people." You probably already guessed it. These people are black africans, not sudanese Arabs. While they speak Arabic and are generally muslim... they are darker skinned folks.

With this knowledge, I hope you have a better understanding of the situations and can press your politicians into action.

[thesilliestrovingalive]

Updated: November 4, 2024

Reworked Groups #5: Ikari Warriors

POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING: Viewer discretion is advised due to references to death.

Overview

A mysterious Japanese-German man known only as Heidern served as strategist for the esteemed Peregrine Falcons Squad. He’s also the founder and Supreme General of the Ikari Warriors. Heidern once enjoyed a peaceful yet militant life, living in the countryside with his wife. However, following the birth of his daughter, he contemplated retiring from the Peregrine Falcons Squad on good terms. However, tragedy struck when he lost his family. Consumed by grief and a desire for vengeance, he channelled his energy into founding the Ikari Warriors, an elite force determined to combat global injustices, crime, and terrorism.

With the backing of the Peregrine Falcons Squad's high command, Heidern implemented a rigorous military training program for his recruits. He went above and beyond to identify and refine each soldier's unique skills, recognizing that everyone approaches challenges differently.

After losing his sight in a surprise pirate attack during a Caribbean cruise and subsequently being diagnosed with lymphoma, Heidern relinquished his leadership to General Kawasaki. Following Kawasaki's brutal murder at the hands of a Mexican cartel, Heidern urgently sought a new successor. With the help of his mercenaries, Heidern spent weeks searching until he finally rescued Leona, a young Czech girl, from an unnamed town under siege by rogue militia forces. However, he soon discovered a dark truth: Leona had temporarily lost control of her esper abilities, resulting in the tragic death of her parents. The rogue militia, who were looking for her, intended to use her as a bioweapon.

Offering her a fresh start and a chance to fight against global injustices, Leona accepted, largely due to having no other options. Leona was trained by Heidern, Clark, Ralf, and other seasoned members of the Ikari Warriors, who oversaw her rigorous military training and moulded her into a skilled mercenary and capable leader.

Although Heidern has passed on his leadership to Leona, he remains actively involved with the Ikari Warriors, focusing on training recruits and developing tactical strategies. Notably, he played a pivotal role in training Clark and Ralf, recognizing their exceptional esper abilities—a talent previously unseen among Ikari Warriors recruits.

Following the Great Modern War, the Ikari Warriors joined the Regular Army to form its elite mercenary branch. As a private force for hire, they specialise in resolving extreme crises, while also undertaking smaller-scale missions. With a versatile rank structure, the Ikari Warriors can be contracted for a wide range of situations and danger levels.

Insignia

It features a lozenge-shaped silver-grey shield, outlined in shimmering luxor gold and trimmed with reseda chartreuse on the exterior. The shield's centre features the Japanese character “怒” (meaning “fury”) in alizarin red, painted in a bold, expressive style, with a horizontal bronze bullet below. A crimson-hilted silver dagger runs diagonally along its left side, while a bronze full moon is suspended above the shield. An ultramarine motto ribbon sits below the shield with the name of the special forces unit, Ikari Warriors, emblazoned in alizarin red.

Ikari Warriors Base

The Zorniger Mond Hideout is a rhomboid military complex situated deep within a Congolese jungle, its strategic location enhanced by a camouflage system expertly blending into the surroundings. The base's exterior is coated in a range of jungle green tones, including sulu, wild willow, asparagus, mineral green, and timber green. This stealthy design, combined with a state-of-the-art bulletproof system, provides the Ikari Warriors with a significant tactical advantage. They can launch surprise attacks on enemy forces without being detected.

The base boasts perimeter surveillance cameras and discreet, automated turret systems that detect and neutralise unauthorised personnel. They have a reinforced, electrified fence surrounding the base with strategically placed watchtowers featuring sniper positions. Additionally, they have a rooftop helicopter pad and four strategically positioned parabolic satellites, one at each corner of the base. The military complex comprises the following facilities:

A central command centre housing Heidern's and Leona's private quarters, a large strategy room with holographic display and tactical planning tools, communication arrays for secure global connectivity, and a situation room for real-time mission monitoring.

An intelligence room dedicated to gathering and analysing intel on potential missions and enemies, featuring computer systems for data analysis and cryptology, and secure storage for sensitive documents and classified information.

Simple, functional accommodations for mercenaries, including a barracks, mess hall, showers, a gym, a lounge, a game room, and personal storage lockers for gear and equipment.

An armoury with storage for weapons, ammunition, and explosives, and an adjacent repair workshop.

A fully equipped medical facility with an operating room for emergency surgeries, recovery ward, and medical supply storage.

A garage for storing and maintaining vehicles acquired through purchase, donation from the Regular Army or capture from enemies.

A commemorative wall honouring fallen comrades, alongside display cases showcasing the team's highest-achieving awards and medals.

A trophy room displaying captured enemy equipment and memorabilia with a secure storage room for valuable and sensitive seized assets.

A coliseum, cloaked in a muted blend of mossy green, olive drab, and earthy brown hues, is protected by a bullet-proof glass dome. By day, it's a training ground and hosts special tournaments. At night, the dome darkens to an inky black, and the interior shines a vibrant crimson under the moonlight.

Extra Information

Members of the Ikari Warriors are commonly known as "Soldiers of Fortune" or "Hired Ragers”, reflecting their reputation as elite mercenaries of the Regular Army and their fierce combat prowess.

Unlike other mercenary groups, the Ikari Warriors host biennial tournaments that are open to their members and anyone else interested in participating. These events serve as a platform to assess the physical prowess and mental strategies of both seasoned and new members, while also identifying potential recruits who may be interested in joining their ranks.

They’re the only branch in the Regular Army that doesn’t have dedicated soldiers wearing uniforms that identify them as part of the Ikari Warriors. To make things even more unusual, they have minimal interaction with members from other special forces units within the Regular Army, particularly the elite operatives, due to their singular focus on high-risk, large-scale and smaller-scale missions that typically fall outside the scope of the P.F. Squad, S.P.A.R.R.O.W.S., and Division 6.

Soldiers of Fortune, regardless of gender, receive double the average Canadian soldier's salary, acknowledging the high risks involved in their line of work. Heidern's policy ensures these elite mercenaries receive maximum financial support.

The handguns carried by Soldiers of Fortune are the Ultra Justitia Model-1977 .380 ACP or Justitia .380 ACP for short. This semi-automatic pistol is based on the Beretta Cheetah 80X, but features a distinctive grip that would later influence the design of the Walther PK380. Designed in 1977 to enhance the Beretta Cheetah's ergonomics, it offers a superior grip and hold, along with an increased ammo capacity of 15 rounds. It’s primarily used by private military companies, but it has also seen adoption by some Regular Army units.

[warningsine]

As world leaders scramble to avert a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah, there is another conflict on a scale perhaps unimaginable to many they should rush to prevent as well.

It is a repeat, like Israel-Hezbollah in 2006, of a war that raged between the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda between August 1998 and July 2003. By the time it ended, nine African countries and 20 rebel groups were involved. At least 5.4 million people died as a result of fighting, disease and malnutrition and 7 million were displaced. Africa’s World War — or the Great War of Africa, as it came to be known — was the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II.

Today, conflict between Congolese and Rwandan leaders has sharpened dangerously, peace initiatives have collapsed, an arms race is underway and deadly clashes between both sides and militias aligned to them are frequent. All the warning lights for a repeat of the 1998-2003 war are flashing.

Tensions have been simmering for years, with frequent reports of serious cross-border clashes in the eastern provinces of Congo. War talk and violence ramped up in the run-up to the Congolese election in December and have intensified over the past seven months. Weeks before the poll, Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi said Rwandan President Paul Kagame was behaving like Adolf Hitler and had ambitions to expand Rwanda into eastern Congo.

"I promise he will end up like Hitler,” Tshisekedi warned. Rwanda said the Congolese president’s words were a "loud and clear threat."

On July 9, a United Nations expert report confirmed widely circulated accusations that Uganda and Rwanda are backing the powerful M23 rebel group in eastern Congo. The report warned that the crisis "carried the risk of triggering a wider regional conflict." Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande Makolo responded that Tshisekedi had "consistently threatened to declare war on Rwanda" and that her country "will continue to defend itself."

The reasons for the fighting are decades-old and complex, yet currently boil down to various players’ bid to dominate Congo’s abundant mineral resources.

After the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which 1 million ethnic Tutsi were killed by mainly Hutu ethnic groups, militias implicated in the murders fled into eastern Congo. The Rwandan army pursued them, arguing that it had to arrest perpetrators of the genocide and destroy their networks. This happened again in 1998, triggering the great war and spawning a web of vested interests involving neighboring nations and armed militias, mercenaries, mining companies, local and regional politicians, China, the United States and other global powers seeking a toehold in the region. Large parts of Congo have since been occupied by ruthless armed groups profiting from illegal mining.

The country produces nearly 70% of the world’s cobalt, while the Great Lakes region that Congo is a part of is rich with tin, tantalum, tungsten, lithium and gold — all of which are key components of electric vehicle batteries, cell phones, refrigerators, jewelry, airplane parts, cars and other goods. As of 2020, Chinese firms owned or had stakes in 15 of the 19 cobalt producing mines in Congo. Between 2022 and 2050, demand for nickel will double, cobalt will triple and lithium rise tenfold, according to the International Energy Agency.

A conflagration will potentially affect or draw in other countries. Apart from Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, a plethora of armed groups is already in the region. The 11,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission (which goes by the French acronym MONUSCO) was supposed to leave the country by year-end, but has been asked by the Congolese government to stay on indefinitely.

South Africa, Malawi and Tanzania already have troops in Congo as part of the Southern African Development Community’s peacekeeping mission deployed there last December. Congo’s neighbors Angola, the Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Kenya and Zambia could be pulled into the fighting. An East African Community Regional Force exited Congo in December and may be drawn back in.

That’s not all. The Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, a nongovernmental organization, says that there are at least 120 armed militias operating in the region, while mercenaries such as those of Russia’s Wagner Group have been contracted by various players. And worryingly, Congo has been stocking up on arms. The country’s military spending experienced the highest increase in the world last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Spending on armored vehicles, drones and other military equipment more than doubled in a year to $794 million.

The 1998-2003 conflict ended because strong continental leaders intervened through dialogue. In 2000, African leaders adopted the Lome Declaration that expressly outlawed coups, thus giving the African Union the authority to stand up to belligerents.

The current political climate, called "an epidemic” of coups by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, makes it harder to intervene. Continental leadership of the type of the early 2000s is also lacking. In its last meeting on July 12, the African Union — its authority already undermined by swaggering coup leaders in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and other nations experiencing democratic backsliding — failed to even place the Great Lakes crisis on its agenda.

Attempts to strike a new peace deal have floundered. On July 27, Tshisekedi told a meeting in Paris: "There are two processes. There was the Nairobi Process driven by Uhuru Kenyatta which, unfortunately, was subsequently managed by the new president William Ruto. He managed it very badly. The process is almost dead."

The second initiative, the Luanda Process led by Angolan President Joao Lourenco, has made little headway after a disastrous meeting in February.

What now? At the request of the U.S., the belligerents have been observing a humanitarian truce for nearly a month, but clashes have continued. This truce should be used by international leaders — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has admirably been heavily involved with Lourenco — to encourage Tshisekedi and Kagame to dial down the rhetoric and come to the table.

China, which has sold arms to both sides this year and is the dominant foreign economic player in Congo’s mining sector, should do the same. Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates (both of which have mining interests in Congo) should also be acting. Crucially, other regional leaders such as South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya should be taking a leadership role alongside Angola’s president to avert a deterioration and assert Africa’s interests.

With 7.2 million people in the region already displaced by the war — 700,000 of them in just the first three months of this year — a further escalation would spell disaster for the continent.

[humanrightsupdates]

DR Congo: 2 Who Criticized ‘State of Siege’ Arrested

Uphold Rights to Free Expression, Opinion; Don’t Abuse Martial Law

(Nairobi) – Two human rights defenders who held a news conference to criticize the Democratic Republic of Congo’s “state of siege” in eastern provinces have been held without charge since August 1, 2024, Human Rights Watch said today.

Jack Sinzahera, 35, one of those held, a member of the citizens’ movement Amka Congo (Wake up Congo), is a longtime activist and campaigner who advocates lifting the “state of siege” imposed in the North Kivu and Ituri provinces. Gloire Saasita, 27, also held, is a member of the Génération Positive citizens’ movement, which fights for the defense of human rights in Congo. Neither has been taken before a judge, which Congolese law requires within 48 hours of an arrest. The government should immediately release them.

“Human Rights Watch is deeply concerned for the safety of activists Jack Sinzahera and Gloire Saasita,” said Carine Kaneza Nantulya, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Congolese authorities should release them and stop using the ‘state of siege’ to crack down on the rights to free expression and association.”

These arrests occurred at a time when armed conflict in eastern Congo has intensified as Rwandan-backed M23 continue to seize territory around the eastern city of Goma. In May 2021, President Félix Tshisekedi, who was re-elected in December 2023, declared martial law – a “state of siege” – in the North Kivu and Ituri provinces. The military has taken over civilian authority in both provinces since then, and martial law has remained in effect. Armed groups continue to attack civilians with little protection from the Congolese army despite the “state of siege.”

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

ISIS has claimed responsibility for recent attacks in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that resulted in the death of more than 80 Christians and the closure of several churches in the nation.

The Islamic terrorist group said through a post on their Telegram channel, "More than 60 Christians were killed, including a Congolese army officer, in an attack by Caliphate soldiers in eastern Congo."

It was the latest in a series of attacks where jihadists with the ISIS-affiliated Allied Democratic Forces launched coordinated assaults in North Kivu province.

Agence France-Presse reports nearly 150 people have been killed by the group since the beginning of June, including on June 7th when at least 41 were killed, some of whom were found "tied up" and "decapitated."

A Congolese spokesperson told Reuters there were additional attacks in other areas including Masawu village on June 4 that left 15 dead, Mununze village where six were found dead in a river...

[captain-price-unofficially]

The Congolese army and mercenary column advancing towards Stanleyville, 28 Nov 1964

[beardedmrbean]

KINSHASA (Reuters) -The leader of an attempted coup on Sunday in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been killed and some 50 people including three American citizens arrested, a spokesman for the Central African country's army told Reuters.

Gunfire rang out around 4 a.m. in the capital Kinshasa, a Reuters reporter said. Armed men attacked the presidency in the city centre, according to spokesman Sylvain Ekenge.

Another attack took place at the nearby home of Vital Kamerhe, a member of parliament who is tipped to become speaker, Kamerhe's spokesman, Michel Moto Muhima, and the Japanese ambassador said in posts on X.

Moto Muhima said two guards and an attacker had been killed in that incident. Ekenge also said one attacker was killed there.

A shell fired from Kinshasa hit the city of Brazzaville in neighbouring Republic of Congo, injuring several people, that country's government said in a statement, adding that one person had been hospitalised.

Ekenge named Christian Malanga, a U.S.-based Congolese politician, as the leader of the attempted coup.

"Malanga was definitively neutralised during the attack on the Palais de la Nation, a certain Aboubacar was neutralised during the attack on the residence of Vital Kamarhe [and] the others - around 50 including three American citizens - were arrested and are currently undergoing interrogation by the specialised services of the Armed Forces," Ekenge told Reuters.

He said Malanga first attempted and aborted a coup in 2017 and that one of the American citizens arrested was Malanga's son.

A Facebook page appearing to belong to Malanga posted a live-streamed video of what appeared to be the attack.

"We, the militants, are tired. We cannot drag on with Tshisekedi and Kamerhe, they have done too many stupid things in this country," Malanga said in Lingala in the video, which has not been independently verified by Reuters.

U.S. Ambassador Lucy Tamlyn said in a post on social media that she was "very concerned" by reports that American citizens had allegedly been involved in the events.

"Please be assured that we will cooperate with the DRC authorities to the fullest extent as they investigate these criminal acts and hold accountable any U.S. citizen involved in criminal acts," she said.

The U.S. embassy had earlier issued a security alert warning of "ongoing activity by DRC security elements" and reports of gunfire in the area.

The United Nations' stabilisation mission in the DRC said that its chief, Bintou Keita, condemned the incidents in the strongest terms and offered her support to the Congolese authorities in a post on X.

Tshisekedi was re-elected for a second term as president in December, but has yet to name a government, six weeks after appointing a prime minister.

Kamerhe was a candidate for speaker of parliament in an election that had been scheduled for Saturday but was delayed by Tshisekedi.