Congolese Blood Soaks Your Pocket [OPINION]

Correspondent Johann Hari sets the record straight about Congo, in his cutting reporting from the front-lines of the world’s bloodiest civil war, which has killed 5.4 million people. The conflict is about the coltan used in your cell-phone, the cassiterite used in the tins you open, the gold and diamonds you buy, he writes. It is about business and western markets, not about tribalism. (The Independent) A UN report listed 100 multinational corporations involved in the “armies of business,” including Anglo-America, Standard Chartered Bank, and De Beers.

The official government story that the war resulted from Rwandan troops chasing Hutu murders is demonstrably false, Hari says, as is the story that Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda (aided by Rwanda) is protecting Tutsis.

Instead, Rwanda and troops from five other nations poured into Congo to seize natural resources near Goma and Kivu. Nkunda is funded by Rwandan businessmen; 99% of the mineral resources are exported. Congo has a near-monopoly on the coltan used in every cell-phone worldwide. 17,000 UN forces are not enough to stop the slaughter, the mass rapes (50,000 annually), genital torture, child abuse.

Movements to boycott Congolese minerals and the firms who exploit them have not caught on, and the crisis has not received as much global attention as Darfur. Hari calls for war crimes prosecutions against the firms involved.