The Democratic Republic of the Congo is cursed with something which, in a less brutal reality, would be considered a blessing: lots and lots of minerals. Gold, diamonds, lithium, cobalt, tin ore, coltan—it’s all there in abundance, but it is lustily coveted from afar. The world wants the minerals of the DRC, and, if obtaining them comes at the cost of the people who actually live there, so be it. The scramble for resources is on, and it is edging the region towards catastrophe.
Towards the end of January this year, the March 23 Movement (M23), a rebel militia with a reputation for brutality, began to rip through the North Kivu province of the DR Congo, which lies in the east of the country and shares borders with Uganda and Rwanda. The M23 has already captured the regional capital of Goma, which is home to about two million people, and reports suggest it could now move on to Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province. The M23 assault on Goma alone is believed to have taken almost 3,000 lives, but reports of other militias committing massacres elsewhere in eastern DRC have emerged, too. The whole region is becoming increasingly unstable.
Tens of thousands of Congolese have fled their homes as the M23 advances, fearing the group’s fighters who, as Human Rights Watch has documented, are known for committing “unlawful killings, rape, and other apparent war crimes.” This surge in displacement only exacerbates an existing crisis within the DRC as a whole, where around seven million people are believed to be internally displaced within the country. Many of those people are unable to access proper food, water and medical care, while the World Health Organization has warned that conditions are rife for the spread of disease. Bodies are literally rotting in the streets.
The M23 is just one armed militia of maybe 250 operating in the eastern DRC today, but its influence is proving profound. That, in all likelihood, may have something to do with the force allegedly backing it. The M23, according to the United Nations, is a proxy of Rwanda, which apparently funds, trains, and arms it. The Rwandan government denies that, but it seems to be an open secret at this stage that it backs the group.
Both the Rwandan government and the M23 group are dominated by members of the Tutsi ethnic group, which, during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, was systematically targeted by ethnic Hutu militias. In just three months of their genocidal campaign, the Hutus are believed to have slaughtered about 800,000 people, most of whom were Tutsi. This was not an especially long time ago, so clearly the horrors of that campaign cast a shadow over the situation today.
Rwanda and the M23 oppose the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu militia operating in the eastern DRC today. Some members of the FDLR are believed to have helped perpetrate the Rwandan genocide in 1994, so, clearly, the Tutsis consider them to be a grave threat. The government of Rwanda openly considers it a risk to national security, while the M23’s stated reason for operating in the DRC is to ensure the protection of Congolese Tutsis from the FDLR.
Ethnic tensions are clearly a factor in this spiraling conflict, but the extreme mineral wealth of the D.R.C. is hardly incidental to what’s happening. It seems that Rwanda is using its security concerns as a smokescreen to conceal its exploitation of the DRC’s mineral resources. Its alleged proxy M23, after all, has seized control of several mining areas over the years, which it exploits for minerals before sending them to Rwanda itself.
Rwanda’s mineral exports, in turn, have increased in recent years, leading, inevitably, to the suggestion that its minerals did not originate in Rwanda but in the DRC. It’s a shady business, but one that Rwanda has, to an extent, managed to avoid real condemnation for. The government has managed to ingratiate itself with some powerful players within the international community, while, at the same time, cleaning its image with a good ol’ sportswashing campaign of sponsoring major soccer teams like Arsenal, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain.
While certain individual European Union member states, like France, have called out Rwanda’s role in supporting the M23 and its destabilization of the DRC, there is little substance to those calls when the EU itself is so closely aligned with the Rwandan government. In addition to directly supporting the Rwandan military’s peacekeeping operations in Mozambique, the EU is also a market for its minerals. A deal was signed a year ago, in which the EU committed to providing Rwanda with more than €900 million (about $940 million) to develop its mineral mining infrastructure, in exchange for a steady supply of the minerals it extracts. But, a proportion of those materials making it to Europe will surely be “blood minerals” stolen from the DRC.
Congolese demonstrators have taken to the streets of Brussels recently to make that very point, calling out the EU’s complicity in the chaos engulfing the DRC. But whether the pressure they generate will be sufficient to change EU policy remains to be seen. Given this is precisely how the EU tends to operate — wringing its hands over the protection of human rights, until it directly benefits from turning the other cheek — one sadly fears not.
The situation in the DRC is extremely dangerous, and millions of lives are on the line as this scramble for resources plays out. But, for as long as Rwanda is allowed to act with impunity, further carnage seems inevitable. It will mean yet more blood on Europe’s hands.
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