IMPERIALI$M'S PLAYGROUND
Middlemen siphon billions from war-ravaged DRC's Cobalt, Coltan trade.
How your phone may be fueling deadly fighting in Congo
Resource-rich Congo is the first battle in New Cold War. India can’t miss out on cobalt
• FEBRUARY 12, 2025
THE PRINT (INDIA)
From neck to waist, the young black man’s skin had been peeled by the metronomic application of a metal-tipped whip until his ribs showed through: The punishment for stealing a packet of cigarettes. “The air seemed filled with a bloody haze,” recalled a young American signals intelligence officer. Colonial Léopoldville’s black residents were clubbed off the sidewalk for not stepping aside for Whites. To amuse themselves, perhaps, white drivers who ran over a black person would sometimes turn around and do it again.
Even Americans shaped by segregation-era race values, historian Susan Williams records, were shocked by the brutality of Belgian-colonial Congo—but they weren’t there to build democracy. The uranium that would be used to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki was being mined in Katanga by slave labourers of the Belgian company Union Minière. The Americans needed the job done.
This week, as ethnic Tutsi M23 insurgents overran swathes of the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC, killing thousands, it’s become clear the cursed country is in the middle of potentially the most fateful battle of the New Cold War. The DRC is the world’s largest producer of cobalt—critical to producing batteries—and holds vast reserves of strategic minerals like niobium, tantalum and coltan.
For countries like India, the stakes are enormous. To participate in the post-hydrocarbon global economy, the country needs secure and fair access to these minerals. Even though India has troops in place in the DRC, their hands are tied by rules of engagement prohibiting active involvement in the conflict. This reduces United Nations peacekeepers to what the researcher Thierry Vircoulon has called a state of “exemplary inutility”.
Like many other post-colonial states, India lost out in the First Cold War and is again threatened with being cut off from access to critical resources by the China-West conflict.
An old Cold War
Led by the warlord and accused war criminal Sultani Makenga, M23 has the support of Rwanda and its president Paul Kagame—his regime, in turn, is held up by the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. For its part, China—whose dominance in industries like electric vehicles rests on its investments in the region—is backing the DRC and its military. The conflict has been underway since 1996, spawning what international organisations are calling the most significant humanitarian crisis in the world.
The imperial ambitions of King Leopold II of Belgium set the stage for the carnage in Congo. The 23 years of his rule, which ran from 1885 to 1908, is estimated to have cost the lives of 10 million Africans. Adam Hochschild’s majestic history, King Leopold’s Ghost, reveals that Belgian power rested on the chopping-off of hands and genitals, floggings, mass killings and the burning down of entire villages.
Figures like Alice Seeley Harris, Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad and Arthur Conan Doyle campaigned against these atrocities—but morals could not compete with the world’s greed for cheap rubber. Even though Nazi leaders would be punished for using slave labour in Europe, there was no trial for the Belgians who made America’s nuclear bombs possible.
The summer of 1960 finally brought independence to Congo—and, given its enormous natural resources, prosperity ought to have followed. The new state, however, simply did not have the tools for self-governance. Lawrence Freedman writes that “of 5,000 government jobs, only three were held by Congolese. There were no Congolese doctors, lawyers, economists, or engineers.” The commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Joseph Mobutu, had never been promoted past sergeant.
Led by one-time beer salesman Patrice Émery Lumumba, the new country found itself facing multiple crises. Following rebellion in the country’s fledgling armed forces, Belgian troops intervened on multiple occasions. The mineral-rich province of Katanga declared secession, followed by Kasai. Lacking revenues and an institutional apparatus, Lumumba turned to the Soviet Union for support.
The consequences were predictable. Lawrence Devlin, the Central Intelligence Agency chief in Léopoldville, now known as Kinshasa, warned of a looming communist takeover. The United States, an official document records, initiated plans to overthrow Lumumba, through assassination if necessary. Even as the United Nations tried to rein in an increasingly erratic Lumumba, led by the eminent Indian diplomat Rajeshwar Dayal, the country tipped towards the edge.
Lumumba, a Belgian parliamentary investigation later concluded, was murdered in 1961, under the supervision of high officers of that country. Army chief Mobutu now seized power and crushed efforts by Lumumba supporters to regain control, using the shadowy South African mercenary Mike Hoare. Estimates made by the economist Stephanie Mattie suggest Mobutu and his cronies embezzled between $4 billion and $10 billion of the country’s resources, leaving little for education or health. Enabled by the West, Mobutu’s long despotism continued until 1997.
Following the end of the First Cold War, the West lost interest in the DRC. Beijing was quick to step in. China’s involvement in Congo’s cobalt is staggering. Following a 2007 deal, two Chinese firms built roads and public infrastructure in exchange for a 68 per cent stake in the Sicomines copper and cobalt mine, one of the largest mines in Africa. From 2015 to 2020, China’s imports from the DRC of cobalt increased by 191 per cent, cobalt oxides by 2,920 per cent, and copper ore by 1,670 per cent. Of the 19 cobalt operations in the DRC, 15 are now owned or co-owned by Chinese entities.
Well over two-thirds of the world’s cobalt is mined in the DRC—and four-fifths of that is then sent for processing in China. As control of the Middle East’s oilfields underpinned American and European domination of cars, railways, and aeronautics for a century, the minerals of the Congo are the foundation on which China’s domination of electric power is being built.
The rise of China had its genesis in genocide, which swept Rwanda in 1994. Ethnic Hutu militia, following their defeat by Tutsi militia based in Uganda, fled the border into the DRC, then called Zaire. They used their new bases across the border to wage a war of attrition against President Kagame’s regime. Kagame responded by unleashing his army against the forces of his numerically superior but resource-strapped neighbour.
Laurent-Désiré Kabila, a one-time Left leader, was chosen by Kagame to lead the DRC from 1997 after the Mobutu regime collapsed. Trained at the People’s Liberation Army’s National Defence University, Kabila found Beijing willing to enable his kleptocratic regime. His son and successor, Joseph Kabila, who ruled from 2001 to 2019, consolidated the agreement.
The investigative journalists Michael Kavanagh and Dan McCarey revealed that the Kabila family was at the centre of a web of companies with stakes in the mining sector, siphoning off multi-million dollar revenues. Global Witness, another transparency watchdog, estimated that at least $750 million—about a fifth of Congo’s mining revenues—was misappropriated between 2013 and 2015.
From neck to waist, the young black man’s skin had been peeled by the metronomic application of a metal-tipped whip until his ribs showed through: The punishment for stealing a packet of cigarettes. “The air seemed filled with a bloody haze,” recalled a young American signals intelligence officer. Colonial Léopoldville’s black residents were clubbed off the sidewalk for not stepping aside for Whites. To amuse themselves, perhaps, white drivers who ran over a black person would sometimes turn around and do it again.
Even Americans shaped by segregation-era race values, historian Susan Williams records, were shocked by the brutality of Belgian-colonial Congo—but they weren’t there to build democracy. The uranium that would be used to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki was being mined in Katanga by slave labourers of the Belgian company Union Minière. The Americans needed the job done.
This week, as ethnic Tutsi M23 insurgents overran swathes of the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC, killing thousands, it’s become clear the cursed country is in the middle of potentially the most fateful battle of the New Cold War. The DRC is the world’s largest producer of cobalt—critical to producing batteries—and holds vast reserves of strategic minerals like niobium, tantalum and coltan.
For countries like India, the stakes are enormous. To participate in the post-hydrocarbon global economy, the country needs secure and fair access to these minerals. Even though India has troops in place in the DRC, their hands are tied by rules of engagement prohibiting active involvement in the conflict. This reduces United Nations peacekeepers to what the researcher Thierry Vircoulon has called a state of “exemplary inutility”.
Like many other post-colonial states, India lost out in the First Cold War and is again threatened with being cut off from access to critical resources by the China-West conflict.
Also read: Cobalt, copper, China: India should pay more attention to the savage violence in Congo
An old Cold War
Led by the warlord and accused war criminal Sultani Makenga, M23 has the support of Rwanda and its president Paul Kagame—his regime, in turn, is held up by the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. For its part, China—whose dominance in industries like electric vehicles rests on its investments in the region—is backing the DRC and its military. The conflict has been underway since 1996, spawning what international organisations are calling the most significant humanitarian crisis in the world.
The imperial ambitions of King Leopold II of Belgium set the stage for the carnage in Congo. The 23 years of his rule, which ran from 1885 to 1908, is estimated to have cost the lives of 10 million Africans. Adam Hochschild’s majestic history, King Leopold’s Ghost, reveals that Belgian power rested on the chopping-off of hands and genitals, floggings, mass killings and the burning down of entire villages.
Figures like Alice Seeley Harris, Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad and Arthur Conan Doyle campaigned against these atrocities—but morals could not compete with the world’s greed for cheap rubber. Even though Nazi leaders would be punished for using slave labour in Europe, there was no trial for the Belgians who made America’s nuclear bombs possible.
The summer of 1960 finally brought independence to Congo—and, given its enormous natural resources, prosperity ought to have followed. The new state, however, simply did not have the tools for self-governance. Lawrence Freedman writes that “of 5,000 government jobs, only three were held by Congolese. There were no Congolese doctors, lawyers, economists, or engineers.” The commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Joseph Mobutu, had never been promoted past sergeant.
Led by one-time beer salesman Patrice Émery Lumumba, the new country found itself facing multiple crises. Following rebellion in the country’s fledgling armed forces, Belgian troops intervened on multiple occasions. The mineral-rich province of Katanga declared secession, followed by Kasai. Lacking revenues and an institutional apparatus, Lumumba turned to the Soviet Union for support.
The consequences were predictable. Lawrence Devlin, the Central Intelligence Agency chief in Léopoldville, now known as Kinshasa, warned of a looming communist takeover. The United States, an official document records, initiated plans to overthrow Lumumba, through assassination if necessary. Even as the United Nations tried to rein in an increasingly erratic Lumumba, led by the eminent Indian diplomat Rajeshwar Dayal, the country tipped towards the edge.
Lumumba, a Belgian parliamentary investigation later concluded, was murdered in 1961, under the supervision of high officers of that country. Army chief Mobutu now seized power and crushed efforts by Lumumba supporters to regain control, using the shadowy South African mercenary Mike Hoare. Estimates made by the economist Stephanie Mattie suggest Mobutu and his cronies embezzled between $4 billion and $10 billion of the country’s resources, leaving little for education or health. Enabled by the West, Mobutu’s long despotism continued until 1997.
The rise of China
Following the end of the First Cold War, the West lost interest in the DRC. Beijing was quick to step in. China’s involvement in Congo’s cobalt is staggering. Following a 2007 deal, two Chinese firms built roads and public infrastructure in exchange for a 68 per cent stake in the Sicomines copper and cobalt mine, one of the largest mines in Africa. From 2015 to 2020, China’s imports from the DRC of cobalt increased by 191 per cent, cobalt oxides by 2,920 per cent, and copper ore by 1,670 per cent. Of the 19 cobalt operations in the DRC, 15 are now owned or co-owned by Chinese entities.
Well over two-thirds of the world’s cobalt is mined in the DRC—and four-fifths of that is then sent for processing in China. As control of the Middle East’s oilfields underpinned American and European domination of cars, railways, and aeronautics for a century, the minerals of the Congo are the foundation on which China’s domination of electric power is being built.
The rise of China had its genesis in genocide, which swept Rwanda in 1994. Ethnic Hutu militia, following their defeat by Tutsi militia based in Uganda, fled the border into the DRC, then called Zaire. They used their new bases across the border to wage a war of attrition against President Kagame’s regime. Kagame responded by unleashing his army against the forces of his numerically superior but resource-strapped neighbour.
Laurent-Désiré Kabila, a one-time Left leader, was chosen by Kagame to lead the DRC from 1997 after the Mobutu regime collapsed. Trained at the People’s Liberation Army’s National Defence University, Kabila found Beijing willing to enable his kleptocratic regime. His son and successor, Joseph Kabila, who ruled from 2001 to 2019, consolidated the agreement.
The investigative journalists Michael Kavanagh and Dan McCarey revealed that the Kabila family was at the centre of a web of companies with stakes in the mining sector, siphoning off multi-million dollar revenues. Global Witness, another transparency watchdog, estimated that at least $750 million—about a fifth of Congo’s mining revenues—was misappropriated between 2013 and 2015.
Endless suffering
The long and bloody conflict—which has seen Uganda and Zimbabwe forces fighting proxies for Rwanda—has been fuelled by greed for the DRC’s mineral resources. The DRC government uses its wealth to purchase military technology from China, as well as regional troops from South Africa and Tanzania, and a range of ethnic militia, including Hutu rebels. East European mercenaries have surrendered in large numbers to Rwandan forces, and some fear Russian mercenaries could also be involved in future fighting.
For his part, Kagame has recruited the support of Turkey and Qatar, as well as allies in Europe, especially France and Belgium. Even though the United States has called on Rwanda to withdraw from the DRC, it is leveraging its role as a counter-terrorism partner against jihadists fighting in Mozambique.
For most Congolese, however, life remained not much dissimilar to that under colonial rule. Three-quarters of the population live on less than $2.15 a day. Wealth has proved a curse.
The lessons aren’t hard to understand. The global order that US President Donald Trump says he wants to dismantle sought, among other things, to provide norms for nation-states to cooperate to protect resources of value to the global community. Even though the First Cold War routinely witnessed savagery—among them the slaughters of civilians in the Koreas, Vietnam or Afghanistan—the Great Powers also collaborated to ensure stable global access to resources like hydrocarbons and to build smooth transnational trade.
Like Congo, many regions of the world could fall into the abyss, pushed by superpower competition and greed. The price will be highest for countries like India, which is a good reason for New Delhi to push hard for new cooperative systems to keep the peace in the fragile regions that hold the world’s future.
Praveen Swami is contributing editor at ThePrint. He tweets @praveenswami. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)
The long and bloody conflict—which has seen Uganda and Zimbabwe forces fighting proxies for Rwanda—has been fuelled by greed for the DRC’s mineral resources. The DRC government uses its wealth to purchase military technology from China, as well as regional troops from South Africa and Tanzania, and a range of ethnic militia, including Hutu rebels. East European mercenaries have surrendered in large numbers to Rwandan forces, and some fear Russian mercenaries could also be involved in future fighting.
For his part, Kagame has recruited the support of Turkey and Qatar, as well as allies in Europe, especially France and Belgium. Even though the United States has called on Rwanda to withdraw from the DRC, it is leveraging its role as a counter-terrorism partner against jihadists fighting in Mozambique.
For most Congolese, however, life remained not much dissimilar to that under colonial rule. Three-quarters of the population live on less than $2.15 a day. Wealth has proved a curse.
The lessons aren’t hard to understand. The global order that US President Donald Trump says he wants to dismantle sought, among other things, to provide norms for nation-states to cooperate to protect resources of value to the global community. Even though the First Cold War routinely witnessed savagery—among them the slaughters of civilians in the Koreas, Vietnam or Afghanistan—the Great Powers also collaborated to ensure stable global access to resources like hydrocarbons and to build smooth transnational trade.
Like Congo, many regions of the world could fall into the abyss, pushed by superpower competition and greed. The price will be highest for countries like India, which is a good reason for New Delhi to push hard for new cooperative systems to keep the peace in the fragile regions that hold the world’s future.
Praveen Swami is contributing editor at ThePrint. He tweets @praveenswami. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)
Fighting in Africa’s mineral-rich DRC killed over 3,000 in less than 2 weeks. Here’s how your phone plays a part
By Nimi Princewill,
Related video‘I don’t know’: Rwandan president on if his country’s troops are in DR Congo
Much of the international community, including the Congolese government, has accused neighboring Rwanda of backing M23 and aiding the plunder of DRC minerals.
UN experts believe that an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 Rwandan soldiers are supervising and supporting M23 fighters in eastern DRC, outnumbering the rebel group’s forces in the country. A December report by the UN Group of Experts on the DRC revealed that “at least 150 tons of coltan were fraudulently exported to Rwanda and mixed with Rwandan production.”
DRC Communications Minister Patrick Muyaya told CNN last week that “Rwanda’s mineral exports surged after its forces took control of key mining zones in DRC.”
Rwanda is one of the world’s top suppliers of coltan and has surpassed DRC’s export of the mineral in recent years.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame told CNN last week that his country gets coltan from its mines and said that he didn’t know whether Rwandan troops were in DRC.
Where do DRC’s plundered minerals go?
Laborers work at an open shaft of the SMB coltan mine near the town of Rubaya in eastern DRC, on August 13, 2019. Baz Ratner/Reuters
In a public address that drew outrage last year, Kagame admitted that Rwanda was a transit point for minerals smuggled from DRC, but insisted his country was not stealing from its neighbor.
“Some people come from Congo; whether they smuggle or go through the right channels, they bring minerals. Most of it goes through here (Rwanda) but does not stay here. It goes to Dubai, Brussels, Tel Aviv, (and) Russia. It goes everywhere,” Kagame said, without providing evidence or specifying what minerals were being smuggled.
CNN has reached out to his government’s spokesperson for comment.
In 2022, the United States Treasury Department said that over 90% of DRC’s gold was being “smuggled to regional states, including Uganda and Rwanda” where they are “refined and exported to international markets, particularly the UAE,” and sanctioned a Belgian businessman for facilitating the trade.
For DRC’s other valuable minerals including coltan and cobalt, the scale of the plunder remains unclear.
In December, DRC sued subsidiaries of Apple in Belgium and France, accusing the company of sourcing conflict minerals. Apple denied the accusation.
Every year, tech giants such as Apple and Microsoft publish reports saying that they demand responsible sourcing of minerals from their suppliers.
In an earlier filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission in 2023, Apple said that while it continued to source 3TG (tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold) and other minerals such as cobalt and lithium from DRC and other countries, it was “committed to meeting and exceeding internationally accepted due diligence standards for primary minerals and recycled materials in our supply chain.” It added that its due diligence efforts had “found no reasonable basis for concluding that any of the smelters or refiners of 3TG determined to be in our supply chain as of December 31, 2023 directly or indirectly financed or benefited armed groups in the DRC or an adjoining country.”
Is there a solution to the conflict?
DRC’s mineral wealth has presented itself as a “curse,” according to analyst Okenda, who explained:
“These resources create wars, create rebellions, expose local populations, and also create serious ecological problems,” he told CNN.
Last week, a humanitarian ceasefire announced by M23 fell apart almost immediately after it was declared, as the rebels swiftly advanced into Nyabibwe.
More than 150 female inmates raped and burned to death during Goma jailbreak in DRC, UN says
While regional and global leaders ponder solutions to ending the crisis, Okenda believes that DRC’s government needs to reinvent itself if it hopes for lasting peace.
DRC “has a governance model that if it does not change, the Congolese population will gain absolutely nothing, whether there is war or not,” he said.
“If the Kinshasa government improves its governance, invests in the army, ensures a fair sharing of resources between citizens in the country, and conducts elections that are of better quality, I still think that peace can return (to DRC),” he said.
By Nimi Princewill,
CNN
Thu February 13, 2025
CNN —
A rampaging rebel group has claimed the capture of another mining town in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a little over a week after it took control of the region’s largest city Goma.
Clashes between the rebel coalition Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC) and Congolese forces have left more than 3,000 people dead in less than two weeks, according to DRC’s government.
The AFC, of which the M23 armed group – which claims to defend the interest of minority Rwandophone communities – is a key member, took over resource-rich Nyabibwe last week after Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu, fell on January 27.
It comes less than a year after the rebels seized Rubaya, a mining hub also in the country’s east, which harbors one of the world’s largest deposits of coltan, a valuable mineral used in the production of smartphones.
Here’s what you need to know.
Is my phone fueling the conflict?
For decades, DRC, a Central African nation of more than 100 million people, has grappled with bloody militia violence, including ethnic and resource-driven armed rebellion by M23 and dozens of other armed groups.
Roughly the size of Western Europe, the war-riven country is endowed with vast mineral wealth, including the world’s largest reserves of cobalt and coltan – both critical to the production of electronics. Cobalt is used to produce batteries that power cell phones and electric vehicles, while coltan is refined into tantalum, which has a variety of applications in phones and other devices.
However, according to the World Bank “most people in DRC have not benefited from this wealth,” and the country ranks among the five poorest nations in the world.
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Much of DRC’s mineral wealth is split between its government and armed groups who control swathes of the resource-rich east.
“Access to natural resources is at the heart of this conflict,” Jean Pierre Okenda, an analyst specializing in extractive industries governance, told CNN about the M23-led takeover of territories in the east.
“It’s not a coincidence that the zones occupied by the rebels are mining areas,” Okenda said, adding that global demand for cobalt and coltan has fueled the crisis.
“It takes money to wage war. Access to mining sites finances the war,” he added.
Why do the rebels want the minerals?
M23 fighters stand nearby as an estimated 2400 Congolese (FARDC) soldiers surrender en masse to the rebel group at the Stade de l'Unite on January 30, 2025 in Goma, DRC. Daniel Buuma/Getty Images
Victor Tesongo, a spokesperson for the AFC-M23 rebel alliance, told CNN that the group was in control of the coltan-rich Rubaya and Nyabibwe mines, but stopped short of saying how much money it has derived from them or what it has been spent on.
But a top United Nations official has an idea.
Bintou Keita, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative to the DRC, told the Security Council in a September briefing that coltan trade from Rubaya’s mines is estimated to supply over 15 percent of global tantalum production and generates an estimated $300,000 in revenue a month for M23.
M23 denied these claims, insisting its presence in Rubaya was “solely humanitarian.”
CNN —
A rampaging rebel group has claimed the capture of another mining town in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a little over a week after it took control of the region’s largest city Goma.
Clashes between the rebel coalition Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC) and Congolese forces have left more than 3,000 people dead in less than two weeks, according to DRC’s government.
The AFC, of which the M23 armed group – which claims to defend the interest of minority Rwandophone communities – is a key member, took over resource-rich Nyabibwe last week after Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu, fell on January 27.
It comes less than a year after the rebels seized Rubaya, a mining hub also in the country’s east, which harbors one of the world’s largest deposits of coltan, a valuable mineral used in the production of smartphones.
Here’s what you need to know.
Is my phone fueling the conflict?
For decades, DRC, a Central African nation of more than 100 million people, has grappled with bloody militia violence, including ethnic and resource-driven armed rebellion by M23 and dozens of other armed groups.
Roughly the size of Western Europe, the war-riven country is endowed with vast mineral wealth, including the world’s largest reserves of cobalt and coltan – both critical to the production of electronics. Cobalt is used to produce batteries that power cell phones and electric vehicles, while coltan is refined into tantalum, which has a variety of applications in phones and other devices.
However, according to the World Bank “most people in DRC have not benefited from this wealth,” and the country ranks among the five poorest nations in the world.
Enter your email to sign up for CNN's "Meanwhile in the Middle East" Newsletter.
close dialog
Much of DRC’s mineral wealth is split between its government and armed groups who control swathes of the resource-rich east.
“Access to natural resources is at the heart of this conflict,” Jean Pierre Okenda, an analyst specializing in extractive industries governance, told CNN about the M23-led takeover of territories in the east.
“It’s not a coincidence that the zones occupied by the rebels are mining areas,” Okenda said, adding that global demand for cobalt and coltan has fueled the crisis.
“It takes money to wage war. Access to mining sites finances the war,” he added.
Why do the rebels want the minerals?
M23 fighters stand nearby as an estimated 2400 Congolese (FARDC) soldiers surrender en masse to the rebel group at the Stade de l'Unite on January 30, 2025 in Goma, DRC. Daniel Buuma/Getty Images
Victor Tesongo, a spokesperson for the AFC-M23 rebel alliance, told CNN that the group was in control of the coltan-rich Rubaya and Nyabibwe mines, but stopped short of saying how much money it has derived from them or what it has been spent on.
But a top United Nations official has an idea.
Bintou Keita, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative to the DRC, told the Security Council in a September briefing that coltan trade from Rubaya’s mines is estimated to supply over 15 percent of global tantalum production and generates an estimated $300,000 in revenue a month for M23.
M23 denied these claims, insisting its presence in Rubaya was “solely humanitarian.”
Related video‘I don’t know’: Rwandan president on if his country’s troops are in DR Congo
Much of the international community, including the Congolese government, has accused neighboring Rwanda of backing M23 and aiding the plunder of DRC minerals.
UN experts believe that an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 Rwandan soldiers are supervising and supporting M23 fighters in eastern DRC, outnumbering the rebel group’s forces in the country. A December report by the UN Group of Experts on the DRC revealed that “at least 150 tons of coltan were fraudulently exported to Rwanda and mixed with Rwandan production.”
DRC Communications Minister Patrick Muyaya told CNN last week that “Rwanda’s mineral exports surged after its forces took control of key mining zones in DRC.”
Rwanda is one of the world’s top suppliers of coltan and has surpassed DRC’s export of the mineral in recent years.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame told CNN last week that his country gets coltan from its mines and said that he didn’t know whether Rwandan troops were in DRC.
Where do DRC’s plundered minerals go?
Laborers work at an open shaft of the SMB coltan mine near the town of Rubaya in eastern DRC, on August 13, 2019. Baz Ratner/Reuters
In a public address that drew outrage last year, Kagame admitted that Rwanda was a transit point for minerals smuggled from DRC, but insisted his country was not stealing from its neighbor.
“Some people come from Congo; whether they smuggle or go through the right channels, they bring minerals. Most of it goes through here (Rwanda) but does not stay here. It goes to Dubai, Brussels, Tel Aviv, (and) Russia. It goes everywhere,” Kagame said, without providing evidence or specifying what minerals were being smuggled.
CNN has reached out to his government’s spokesperson for comment.
In 2022, the United States Treasury Department said that over 90% of DRC’s gold was being “smuggled to regional states, including Uganda and Rwanda” where they are “refined and exported to international markets, particularly the UAE,” and sanctioned a Belgian businessman for facilitating the trade.
For DRC’s other valuable minerals including coltan and cobalt, the scale of the plunder remains unclear.
In December, DRC sued subsidiaries of Apple in Belgium and France, accusing the company of sourcing conflict minerals. Apple denied the accusation.
Every year, tech giants such as Apple and Microsoft publish reports saying that they demand responsible sourcing of minerals from their suppliers.
In an earlier filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission in 2023, Apple said that while it continued to source 3TG (tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold) and other minerals such as cobalt and lithium from DRC and other countries, it was “committed to meeting and exceeding internationally accepted due diligence standards for primary minerals and recycled materials in our supply chain.” It added that its due diligence efforts had “found no reasonable basis for concluding that any of the smelters or refiners of 3TG determined to be in our supply chain as of December 31, 2023 directly or indirectly financed or benefited armed groups in the DRC or an adjoining country.”
Is there a solution to the conflict?
DRC’s mineral wealth has presented itself as a “curse,” according to analyst Okenda, who explained:
“These resources create wars, create rebellions, expose local populations, and also create serious ecological problems,” he told CNN.
Last week, a humanitarian ceasefire announced by M23 fell apart almost immediately after it was declared, as the rebels swiftly advanced into Nyabibwe.
More than 150 female inmates raped and burned to death during Goma jailbreak in DRC, UN says
While regional and global leaders ponder solutions to ending the crisis, Okenda believes that DRC’s government needs to reinvent itself if it hopes for lasting peace.
DRC “has a governance model that if it does not change, the Congolese population will gain absolutely nothing, whether there is war or not,” he said.
“If the Kinshasa government improves its governance, invests in the army, ensures a fair sharing of resources between citizens in the country, and conducts elections that are of better quality, I still think that peace can return (to DRC),” he said.
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