Congo DRC: A Country cursed by natural resources

As I wrote in a short story about Congo, the line about following the money does not seem to be very distant. Even if we go back as far as 1885 the main reason for the problems has been Congo's natural resources. It would be very naive to think that money and outside powers intrests are not the main drivers of the continued instability Congo faces, even as I write this today.

1885 - 1908 Congo Free State
King Leopold II created the Congo Free State as his private possession, his private playgarden through the creation of a dummy NGO with him as the sole shareholder. Mainly to exploit the country on its Rubber. About 10 million people died either of deceases or due to the practice of chopping of peoples legs if they could not harvest rubber fast enough for his taste.

Rubber mainly exported to USA and a few other Car producing countries, as rubber tires is the invention of the day. This in addition to other inventions which came with rubber. Hoses, Insulation for electical wires and so forth.

1908 - 1960 Belgian Congo
The Belgian government was more or less forced by the international community to annex the Congo Free state as the cruelty of Leopolds management was far beyond what could be accepted at the time.

The Belgians built up a society of expats in Congo who ran the country and exploited the countrys resources. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs are built with Congolese Uranium and a large part of the US cold war warheads are supplied by congolese uranium. There was some people among the rulers at the time who actually wanted to raise the standard of the Congolese and make sure they could develop in a more productive way but it was voted down by a large margin. Why change a winning concept they thought.

1960 - 1961 Congo gain independence
Patrice Lumumba together with Kasavubu and Mobutu manages to gain independence and Lumumba becomes president. Unfortunately he does not manage to gain control fast enough as there are lot of parties including the Belgians who were making the changeover as difficult as possible.The Belgians had large mines in the Katanga region so they started supporting a split off of that region from the country, well knowing that it is probably the richest mining area in the Country. Lumumba was seeking US support then asks UN for support to stabilize the country but was denied in both cases. Thus he turned to the Soviets who was more than eager to help. This by default sealed his fate as the US wanted him removed by any means after that. There are traces that even the US President through CIA was planning to remove or even kill Lumumba as they claimed he was a communist. Something Lumumba denies on the strongest and history has concluded he was not. (note. seems the intelligence of USA keep repeating the same mistakes?! over and over and over)

While trying to fight the Katanga region Lumumba lost the initial battles and was deposed by Mobutu and Kasavubu and Kasavubu then took control of the Country.

1961 Lumumba is under house arrest and is later for his own protection?! flown down to Katanga. ther he was held in the hands of Belgian troops and the party he was fighting against and is executed. Years Later the Belgian government formally apologizes to the Congolese for the role they played in the assasination.

1961 UN moves in and on request of various parties attacked Katanga but the leader managed to escape to Rhodesia.

1961Dag Hammarskjoeld dies in mysterious ways while enroute to Rhodesia to negociate a seize fire with the Katanga rebel regime. (Who had most to gain from his death I wonder?! I dont believe it was an accident)

UN attacks once more in 1962 and Katanga is finally reunited with Congo again in 1963.

1965 - 1997 Congo transforms into Zaire
Mobutu takes over after a military coup and start his 30 odd years reign of terror. He is supported by USA as its suits their purpose of not allowing Congo to become a communist state and are very happy to help mine the resources as they are still in the cold war era and in need of the Uranium and other resources. Mobutu has made concessions and is not concerned about the exploitations of the country as long as he can get his share. 60% of the worlds uranium exportation takes place from Congo to USA via Belgium. 80% of the worlds Industrial Diamonds are exported from Congo. And a large amount of copper is mined and exported mainly to USA and Europe.

Already in 1965-66 L. Kabila start various rebel activities and the Chinese are very happy to support with finances as Kabila has communist ideas. There is an autonomous area around Kivu which thrives under the communist rule until 1988 when it is finally crushed. Meanwhile the Chinese has been able to exploit the area against continued support with arms and funding.
In the late 70s and early 80s Kabila meet up with Museveni, Nyerere and Kagame who are all about to become presidents are all starting to support L. Kabila. Everyone thinks Kabila is dead as he vanishes in 1988.

In 1990 with the fall of the Soviet union and end of the cold war the US regime withdraw any support of the Mobutu and his regime as it is no longer on their intrest to support him. But exploitation of the country for the resources continues at an undiminshed rate.

With the Rwanda genocide and the influx of refugees in Kivu there is a new wave of rebel activities coming in and this is supported by Kabila's friends in Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania. Behind the scenes USA is also supporting the rebel activities as Mobutu is becoming an old unpredictable dictator and change of rule is a matter of time only. At the same time it is known that USA can not trust a Kabila who in the roots leaned towards communism.

1997 Congo's First war
In 1997 Kabila finally mange to overthrow Mobutu. Unfortunately for L. Kabila he does not necessarily play the game as his supporters had planned and Rwanda, Uganda and the USA instead help fund Bemba, a new rebel leader in the Kivu area. This leads to what they call they Second Congo war.

1998 Congo's Second war
Kabila is backed by new found allies in Angola, Chad, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Sudan . A seize fire is agreed in 1998. By this time there is a large amount of various foreign troops in Eastern Congo who help to exploit the resources.

2001 Kabila is assassinated and his son takes over the presidency. UN moves in and create the MONUC to maintain the peace in the country.

2003 all countries except Rwanda agrees to remove their troops from Eastern Congo. This after more than 5 years of massive illegal expolitation of the resources. Uganda and Rwanda continue with outspoken support for the rebels in Kivu area. Due to the rich Coltan mines in the Kivu/Katanga area the support for the rebels is reaching far beyond the shores of Africa.

2007 - 2009 The third Congo war?
With about 1,5 million people suffering in the Kivu region, the findings of Oil in Kivu and continued illegal exploitation of the mines including Coltan the fuel is at the critical mass to create another full scale war in Congo. Once again the foreign policy of various countries are being heavily lobbied by commercial corporations to support one or the other side. All depending on which "horse"they think will give them the best concessions for easy access to the natural resources. Yet again the people who rightfully should be getting a share of the cake will be left out unless the World finally WAKE UP!!! and is determined to stop this slaughter of people for greed.

I have been many times to then Kivu area. It could be paradise on earth with all the beautiful nature that is there and the friendly people that you will keep running into. Yet they continue to live in despair and are just trying to survive one more day.

People are tired of having to donate to this cause yet unless the same people stand up and say enough is enough everyone will keep having to give support (weither they like it or not) so that a number of corporations and their shareholders can continue to do major profits at the expense of the people in Congo as well as from you.

People suffer - YOU pay direct or in taxes -Corporations exploit and get rich- People suffer - YOU pay - Corporations get even richer

Civil Defence cars Dubai style :-)

I was on my way to Abu Dhabi from Dubai one day. The highway between the towns is a nice 4 lane road in each direction so it is not uncommon that cars drive fast. In UAE you better learn fast that its very important to look in the rear view mirror or you might end up with a Ferrari or Lambourghini in the back of your car. People coming fast normally flash their headlights repeatedly and it would be unwise not to move a side as who knows if the breaks really work that good. UAE has the highest number of fatal road accidents per capita in the whole world.

As I was speeding along I saw a car not flashing lights but having the blue light flashing ontop. I have seen that many times but not from a low yellow car moving as fast as this one was coming. I was driving probably around 180 Km/h and this car was approaching me very fast so I knew it had to do something between 250 - 300 km/h.

The car passed and I could not quite figure out what it was. It looked like a Corvette but never had I seen a Civil Defence Corvette.

It vanished infront of me as fast as it had caught up. I told some friends but they could not believe it either. About a month later we went to the Dubai Airshow and to our amazement the Corvette was there. So it had not been a mirage in the desert :-)


The car does 0 - 100 km/h in 3.9 seconds. Has a top speed of 320 km/h with 512hp in a 7 liter V8. (unless they have asked for a special tuned version which would not be unlikely as the normal Z06 dont have a spolier in the back)

They will for sure get very fast to a fire or accident but knowing that the only rescue equipment it has is the bumpers and a 5 liter fire extingisher there aint much they can do once on the scene..

It should also be noted that most times when there is a fire in Dubai it means a building is burned down to the ground as there is little chance of actually being able to extinguish the fires. I have seen labourcamps, shoppingmalls, warehouses burn on many occasions. Fire-department simply too late, too little.

The Worlds biggest Shopping-mall = The Worlds biggest flop?

I saw that the worlds biggest shopping mall just opened up in Dubai. I have seen it being built for the last 2 or so years as it is just next to our office in Dubai. The road I have taken to work was changed just about every week to make space for the mall. Now it is opened but at the same time the world economies are having a major crisis. So far the reporting in Dubai in general has been positive and spending has been continuing. The signs have though been there that a change was on the way.

About one and a half year ago EMAAR ,one of the largest construction companies, suddenly decided to sell of a larger amount of the apartment blocks they had built for rental. The tenants were basically informed that they had to purchase their apartment within 2 weeks cash or face eviction. Knowing that EMAAR is a multi billion dollar company trying to do a move like that with over 4000 apartments was strange. There was very little to no news reporting about this and other similar strange moves in Dubai.

The minister of Finanace in the UAE still seems very positive as the GDP and inflation has been in the double digits for the last 2 years so even if there was a decline in the overall costs and sales it would not potentially hamper operations in Dubai too much as per their predictions.

Within the last 24 hours there are though a multitude of news reports popping up that houses on the Palm island has dropped over 40% in value and people even try to use SMS spamming to try find buyers. About 40,000 Mobile phone users received a SMS with an offer to buy cheap?! if they were fast. In other places heavily loaned house buyers are trying to sell of fast. Probably not at a loss yet if they purchased about 5 years ago as then their prices where much lower than now.

The market in Dubai have over the last 6 years expanded so extremely that about 20% of the world construction cranes sit in the country. A massive amount of loans have been given and small time investors have purchased several apartments on speculation with full intention of selling them at a much higher price even before they were finished.

Already when I arrived in Dubai in 2002 there was apartment blocks completely empty. Not because people did not want to rent but due to that the owners simply refused to lower the rent and rather kept the apartments empty. But this meant that whole buildings with 200- 300 apartments could stand empty. The boom is now starting to shake in its foundation fast.

Banks are refusing to give loans to expats all over the country. Simply because they expect that there will be larger layoffs off people in large portions of the businesses. Even if Dubai by itself has a lot of money to invest in construction, based on oil and the profits from the Iraq wars the main part of the companies working in the country is companies that have their HQ somewhere else in the world. Dubai by itself do not have any raw material thus it is built on the trade and potential refinement of raw material imported.

The main travel companies in Europe are seeing a stop in the holiday bookings and are cutting down fast among the destinations and booking of hotel for charters, thus the influx of tourists for the shopping malls and hotels in Dubai will shortly also take a big hit. The newly opened Atlantis hotel has dropped the room rates from 400+ USD to around 44 USD per night with less than 30% occupancy rates.

Gulf news
By Suzanne Fenton, Staff ReporterPublished: November 22, 2008, 23:27
Dubai: Business at Atlantis, the $1.5 billion (Dh5.5 billion) hotel on the Palm Jumeirah is slow, with room rates slashed dramatically and occupancy low.
Despite the grand opening of the resort on Thursday night, which saw stars and celebrities descend on the Palm, causing actual residents difficulty accessing their own homes, business is not so impressive. Full story

With all this I would guess that there is a quite big chance for Dubai taking a Guiness World Record Title they probably would not want to see nor ever expected. The Largest Shopping-Mall in the world becoming the Largest shopping flop in the world in the shortest time ever. Over the last week alone the retail business has dropped over 20% in some areas.

Congo DRC, History repeating itself

I just read a piece on the BBC and was actually more interested in the comments around the article than the article/debate item itself.

Can Congo be saved from crisis?
More than 3,000 extra UN peacekeepers are needed in the eastern DR Congo to protect civilians there. Will this help the crisis?The head of UN peacekeeping, Alain Le Roy, said current peacekeeper numbers were not enough to protect civilians from violence perpetrated by rebel groups and the Congolese army. There are 9,000 UN peacekeepers in the region, out of 17,000 nationwide.The latest crisis began in August when rebels advanced towards Goma, which is now ringed with refugee camps. What can be done to stabilise eastern DR Congo? Are you satisfied with the performance of the UN peacekeepers? Are you in DR Congo or Rwanda? Read the story


The news reporting itself is the same as it always has been. There are no new angles to find in a story that has gone on for almost 50 years or is there? Somehow the basic facts of what is behind the story somehow always get lost. Maybe because it would hit too close to home for comfort??
I personally do not really believe an increment of 3,000 soldiers on top of 9,000 would do even a slight difference when there is about 1.5 Million people who are running away from their homes. I would believe that those 12,000 or so soldiers would be trampled to death if the hoard of people fleeing actually were set in motion, even if they had no bad intentions. During the Rwanda Genocide UN had even more soldiers in Rwanda and they could do nothing when the violence started.

There are so many angles on should EU, US, Nato, UN help the people in Congo DRC with the current crisis. Some people say, give the various tribes their own land so they can live in peace. Other say they (the Congolese) dont want us (Europeans) help anyway so lets just not care. They did after all throw the Belgians out in the 60s. Let them solve it themselves. The range of comments basically goes from a full scale intervention by an army to get all arms out of the hands of the population/ rebels/ freedomfighters/ tribes to simply just leave it be and see what happens, after all it is their problem?




”It is easy to turn the responsibility over to others or, perhaps, to seek explanations in some kind of laws of history. It is less easy to look for the reasons within ourselves or in a field where we, all of us, carry major responsibility. However, such a search is necessary, because finally it is only within ourselves and in such fields that we can hope, by our own actions, to make a valid contribution to a turn of the trend of events.”
– From speech by Dag Hammarskjöld at the University of Cambridge, 5 June 1958 (Falkman 2005, p. 193).

I sometimes wonder what the best approach would be, but no matter how its done there will be a lot of people that suffer. People that are affected yet they have no part whatsoever in what is going on around them. Pure victims to a situation they can not get themselves out of.

Its easy to say ”Let them solve it themselves as we are no party to it and they dont want our help.” But that aint the truth in any circumstance...

Unfortunately the First world countries ARE the problem.

Congo is one of the richest countries in the world when it comes to natural resources. But in most cases the population never see a cent of anything that is mined, neither will they ever.
Rwanda is the biggest exporter of Coltan which is used in batteries and capacitors for Ipod's, Laptops, mobiles and so forth. Yet they actually dont have that material in Rwanda?! It is stolen from Congo. The Road to the Horizon has an article on this called "Did your laptop cause the war in Congo?"
There is Oil in Eastern Congo which has not yet even been explored. This does however not mean that no one is trying. There are large copper mines and other mines galore in the country. The land itself is so fertile that if you eat an orange and spit the seeds out, the seed will grow in a few weeks. Both problems as that mean people might be in the way of the treasures that lie benieth.
To say that we should leave the Congo alone to solve their own problems means that you first have to remove the greed for the resources in the country, by all other countries. I have worked in the region between 1997 -2001 and keep following up on what is going on even though I dont work there anymore.

Already then I saw a lot of strange things going on.

- Unmarked US planes flying in military "advisors" and "material" via Uganda
-”Advisors” from South Africa
-”Advisors” from Russia
-”Advisors” from France
-”Advisors” from China
-”Advisors” from India

Ugandan military commanders flying in with foreign business partners?

This was already happening in 1998 when a plane with the brother of the current Army boss of Uganda, crashed and died while on a gold trading mission in Congo. Well the current aint so current as he was charged and convicted of a large fraud with Army funds... I just found out now when reading up again on the story.

The list seems endless.It is not that these ”advisors” necessarily had any plans to try help the population in Eastern Congo, it was rather that they were trying to negociate contracts for mining that would see the full potential once there was finally peace in the area?, or is it? Maybe it is actually better that there is continous instability in the area so that companies supported by some rich countries can loot the treasures without paying decently for any of the resources being taken out? Afterall, people that are fleeing and starving will not see or care about the looting of the resources, will they?! Can it be that cynical? I actually think it is as all the non- mainstream information when looked at keep pointing glaringly in that direction.

There is ban on buying Elephant husks, war Diamonds.. But that was only because the general public discovered the looting?!

The problem that the people in Congo are facing is thus not their own. It is actually a problem that to the most extent is created and kept alive by the rich countries around the world. To stop sending aid to the area can only happen once the same governments get fully transparent about their real motives for being in the country in the first place. In the 50s and 60s it was easier for a few countries to loot the resources. The African states around Congo had so many internal problems they did not have to many stakes in Congo. However since the last 20 years even the surrounding countries in Africa want to claim their part of the Congo wealth.
While sending aid and advisors there is also Arms dealers like what was shown in ”Lord of War”. While the movie is intended as good entertainment the fact is it is actually very close to the truth. Arms dealers sanctioned by various countries governments. Ofcourse they cant be seen as doing this kind of trade so it happens behind the scenes. All disguised while the countries officially is helping the poor African country and takes the positive credits for the donations and loans given.

Congo is a particularly interesting country for historical reasons.

• Belgian colonization.


• The Congo war with UN involvement in the 50-60s while trying to obtain freedom.


• Killing of the UN Secretary General under mysterious circumstances.


• The obscure ways of the rich powers putting Patrice Lumumba in power only to be assasinated and replaced by Mobutu. Mobutu a very cruel but smart dictator. Himself part of a puzzle not created necessarily by the Congolese but rather by the rich countries exploiting Congo.
  
  

All this is part of various schemes of accessing the rich natural resources in Congo by parties among developped world countries, sometimes through proxy countries in Africa itself. It has absolutely nothing to do with actually trying to help the population. It might sound cynical but in this case the rich powers are extremely cynical. In some countries it is simply called "Foreign Policy". That the policy is then created to actually help companies exploit countries in the best possible way for the market back home is not very visible but not less cynical.

It is however very easy to see what is actually happening. 3 words sums it all up. 3 words which was also put in a movie many years ago.

"Follow the money" Classical words in the movie about the Watergate scandal. These days it though seems like the media for the most part is more interested in being in the hands of the powers that rule rather than being critical at looking at the full scope of the news they create.

In many cases the Dictators and corrupt governments in the poor countries are blamed for not being able to build up their standards. But who can blame them when they are shown the full potential by their counterparts who simply apply their "foreign policy" and encourage corruption through advisors and companies. It seems easier to teach someone how to become corrupt than to teach someone to build a proper functioning country where the citizens can thrive. The intrest is definetely on the former as it gives quicker gains for the lucky few.