The Enough Project, a leading Washington, DC-based advocacy group focusing on genocide and crimes against humanity, is stepping up efforts to end conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo fueled by minerals used in electronic devices. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's trip to the troubled eastern region last month has put a spotlight on the humanitarian crisis in the area and inevitably raises questions about what the U.S. government can and will do. In an interview, Enough co-founder John Prendergast talks about changing the economic equation for conflict minerals and the role that Uganda and Rwanda can play in ending the crisis. Excerpts:
Why the increased focus on Congo by your organization?
As urgent as Sudan is, there is a deadlier conflict that has raged in the jungles of eastern Congo for the last dozen years. It is my paramount priority in the coming months to try to raise the profile of the conflict and clarify to policymakers and the broader public that there are clear and specific policy options that can be pursued by the Obama Administration and the UN security council and others that would have a meaningful impact on the ground.
The problem we have seen in the past is that people look at this issue and see that it is so bewilderingly complex. We have humanitarian aid, we have peacekeeping forces. [So they say] let's just send more aid and more troops, which is completely and utterly apples and oranges to dealing with the root causes of the conflict. We're spending a billion and a half [U.S dollars] a year globally to treat the symptoms of the Congo's extraordinarily deadly conflict without dealing with the causes.
I was very encouraged by Secretary Clinton's visit. I had the opportunity to have dinner with her before she left. She was already focused in on this like a laser beam. Her ambassador-at-large for Global Women's Affairs, Melanne Verveer, is a significant influence on the secretary on the issue of Congo.
The secretary demonstrated that she wasn't going to be just another official who went to eastern Congo, gave out a few million dollars to treat the symptoms of these horrific injustices, and then walked away without addressing the issues that these women have to deal with. She said, 'We're going to zero in on the root causes'. She talked about conflict minerals, she talked a lot about the FDLR [Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda, the largely Hutu militia that crossed the border into Congo after the genocide] and we're going to deal with this Congolese army, which is one of the biggest perpetrators of human rights abuses. So she nailed down some of the big directions of U.S. policy.
Now our old friend Howard Wolpe has become the U.S. envoy. We hope that he'll be able to target specific actions to begin to take on this most deadly war in the world. We are also working with another friend [Assistant Secretary of State for Africa] Johnnie Carson, who we saw before the trip, and we hope they would be able to address the root causes.
Speaking of the Congolese army, is it salvageable? Can they ever really become the protectors of the Congolese people?
The effort has to be comprehensive. The security forces require a broader approach than just a military one. We have to get underneath why the Congolese army is such a predatory, parasitic institution, and you can write dissertations about the collapse of government in Congo. But at the end of the day, there is a great deal of money being made by military officers, the militias, and the neighboring governments - Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi - in the illicit mineral trade in eastern Congo.
Everyone's vested interest is in the status quo. The rule of law, rules of engagement and where companies can protect their investments and there's a legal trade to export and pay the taxes - none of that stuff happens in eastern Congo. It's a mafia state run by a collusion of these predatory institutions - the government army and the militia groups and neighboring governments and their armies. And they make about U.S.$180 million a year from the tin, tantalum, and tungsten. It is in the interests of the Congolese government for the state to remain in this semi-collapsed condition, because it is a perfect system for personal enrichment rather than state reconstruction. There is an economic logic to state collapse, to smuggling and illicit exploitation in eastern Congo. Therefore, if we are going to address that, we don't go in and deal with the institutions that are victimized by the status quo. You have to go in and deal with the economic situation.
Our view is focused on conflict minerals. They are the cause and fuel of the war. Just like Sierra Leone with diamonds, just like Liberia with diamonds and timber, just like Angola with the diamonds - when you take away or somehow begin to alter the ease with which those guys were able to export, illegally, high-value commodities, and you change the logic of profit from instability to stability, from war to peace, then you can stop conflict. Look at those countries now: They're economic miracles.
That's why we're going straight at the electronic companies. We've got to force Apple, Intel, all those companies to change the way they're procuring downstream their raw materials that allow for the electronics to work, because our electronics are funding the conflict in the Congo and producing this kind of human misery. Unacceptable! We've got to change that. It's going to be hard.
How do you do that? Can legislation play a role?
You can go right to the mine. You can follow the trail from the mine to the buyers in Bukavu or Goma. Those buyers know where it comes from: the ore content is very different from anywhere else. Even on the basis of who's giving it to them. We can find out where the stuff is from, and believe me, if they have to, they'll figure out a system real fast. But we're not there yet.
So for now, folks can still work in the darkness. What the legislation is doing simply is a starting point is to create some light. Where is that stuff coming from? If it's coming from eastern Africa, we have to say, what mine is that coming from? Because if that mine is creating conflict, and we're going to have to fine you.
Ultimately, what we want to see is a certification system for those four minerals [tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold]. It's going to be really hard. And I don't know where its going to end up. But already we have three people in the field in eastern Congo talking to the people who are doing the trading, and they're all very nervous. We're not pushing for a ban or a boycott, but that's what's going to happen de-facto. And soon you'll see a change. And the FDLR, and the government army, CNDP factions - all those people who run mines - are going to say: 'We've got to clean up our act or the party is over'.
That is where you create the pressure. Do it any other way and it's not going to work. IF you cut off the money supply, disrupt the gravy train, suddenly everyone would want to play a different way. We're going to work really hard with the electronics companies to get rid of this most grievous situation.
To play devil's advocate - if you begin to regulate the minerals, the price of everything electronic would increase. With increased transparency would come profit for the Congolese people, which would lead to increase in the cost of production for technologically intensive goods here.
The price of electronic goods would not go up. None of the market shares Congo has for any of these companies is higher than 10 percent. IF tomorrow - and we don't want to see this happen, we just want to see legal, peaceful exploitation of Congo - the trading houses decide they can no longer buy from Congo, they would buy from somewhere else. It would be a temporary problem; the price of tin would go up a little bit; the price of tantalum would go up a little bit. Then Australia would say, 'Now that the unfair dealers are out of the picture we're going to open the flood-gates', and the prices would go right back down. It's international supply and demand.
If the natural resource base in the Congo were producing 40 to 50% of these resources, we'd be in trouble. We'd have a different strategy. We don't want a situation where Apple would double the price of an i-pod. If they do it right, we should see no impact. The impact it would have is on the mafia. That's what happened in Liberia, and Sierra Leone and Angola.
Some of the key actors, such as those from neighboring states, don't have any right to those minerals. The only people with legal rights are the people of Congo. So you still have an incentive for a bunch of the actors to keep the war going for as long as it can. How do you assess the current roles being played by Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Uganda President Yoweri Museveni.
Eastern Congolese would be passionately supporting what I just said. But what I'm about to say now probably diverts from eastern Congolese points of view. I actually believe that Kagame wants to normalize. He has exploited the eastern Congolese mineral base. Museveni has funded militias in Ituri and, directly or indirectly, caused thousands of deaths. These two - and to much less extent Burundi - benefited enormously. I would say Rwanda's growth rates are partially predicated on the minerals that they are smuggling or buying from smugglers across the border. It has fueled the economic miracle in Rwanda. But he wants to go legal.
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If Secretary Clinton starts putting together stakeholder meetings and Kagame is sitting across the table, and Global Witness and Congo human rights workers say: 'We need to see some transparency out of these people', I think we'll get it. Kagame has a lot riding on his 'Singapore of Africa' approach. Museveni has come a long way from fighting in Kisangani. That is done. His troops aren't massing across the border. It has completely changed from the dark days of the 1990s, when I was working in government.
This is the time where leadership in the Obama Administration could significantly change the way business is being done in eastern Congo and therefore create an incentive for peace. And guess who can have as much credit as they want? Paul Kagame, Museveni, and some of these militias who, if they take the stars off their uniforms and civilianize, can be the ones that say: 'We made peace in eastern Congo. When's the next election? Vote for us.'
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