RWANDAÕS SECRET WAR
U.S-Backed Destabilization of Central Africa
Special Report from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
by keith harmon snow
A slightly edited version of this story first appeared
in World War 4 Report (www.ww4report.com)
in November 2004; republished by Z Magazine February 2005.
KINSHASA—December 30 2004 -- Following days of
repeated threats by President Paul Kagame to send Rwandan Defense Forces to
attack Hutu rebels based in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),
television stations in Kinshasa, DRCÕs capital, began broadcasting alerts Nov.
26 that RwandaÕs invasion was underway.
Belgian and US military sources in Kinshasa said that
at least five battalions (1,500-3,000 troops) had penetrated the provinces of
North and South Kivu from five different points.
ÒThis is a sizeable advance force for the Rwandan
army,Ó said one military source in Kinshasa.
With RwandaÕs government continuing to deny their
invasion, some 6,000 Rwandan troops had reportedly penetrated eastern DRC by
December 4, making this tiny RwandaÕs third major invasion of its huge neighbor
to the west.
According to the DRC government, troops of the Armed
Forces for the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) had clashed with the RDF at
numerous locations by early December. The Monitor newspaper in Uganda Dec. 6
reported that RDF troops passing illegally through Ugandan frontier areas had
clashed with Ugandan soldiers. The Monitor reported thousands of Congolese
refugees fleeing into Uganda.
Thousands of Congolese civilians, especially women and
children, were fleeing North Kivu province as of Dec. 6, according to IRIN,
news network of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,
with civilians claiming executions and massacres as RDF troops burned and
looted everything in their path. NGO staff in the region are bracing for the
flood of tens of thousands of internally displaced persons.
Rwandan guerrilla groups based in DRC echoed the
claims. ÒAccording to our sources five Rwandan battalions are already in the
DRC ready to create chaos,Ó reported Jean-Marie Higiro, former leader of the
Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). ÒKagameÕs regime
maintains its sponsorship to rebel DRC forces. Under all kinds of tricks,
KagameÕs regime is able to continue to pull the strings in the DRC.Ó
He also rejected claims that the Rwandan military is
acting in self-defense from DRC based guerrillas. ÒRwanda and its proxy armies
in DRC maintain an absolute cordon sanitaire at the Rwandan-Congolese border,Ó
Higiro says. ÒHow can Hutu rebels break through this cordon sanitaire and
strike Rwanda, then retreat into the DRC without being intercepted?Ó
Higiro reports that powerful interests in Washington
had as early as 1989 delineated the now-apparent Tutsi strategy of annexation
of eastern DRC and that there is a very powerful Tutsi lobby in Washington DC.
RwandaÕs latest bid to annex DRCÕs Kivu provinces was
called the ÒThird War of Occupation of Eastern CongoÓ by Congolese students who
took to the streets of Kisangani in protest on Dec. 4.
Despite RwandaÕs official denials of aggression,
Rwandan leaders had issued unambiguous warnings in recent days. ÒYou have to
make war to have peace,Ó RwandaÕs President Paul Kagame told United Nations
ObserverÕs Mission. In Congo (MONUC) peacekeeping forces on Nov. 23. ÒWe are
preparing to return our forces to the DRC,Ó RwandaÕs Regional Cooperation
Minister Protais Mitali said on the 25th, according to Reuters. ÒWe cannot
watch as these extremist forces advance onto our territory.
Reuters correspondent David Lewis in Kinshasa reported
Nov. 26 that the Congolese army has told the United Nations that its soldiers
had clashed with Rwandan troops inside Congo. UN peacekeepers found no signs of
any fighting, according to LewisÕ U.N. sources. Lewis also reported that
clashes had taken place earlier in the week.
In Kinshasa, long-time Mobutu opposition party leader
Etienne Tshisekedi from the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS)
issued a communiquŽ Nov. 26 warning that if Rwanda has again invaded DRC then
the Congolese people must demonstrate against MONUC.
May and June 2004 saw major demonstrations across DRC
where MONUC vehicles and homes rented by MONUC personnel were destroyed in
protest of MONUC's perceived failure to defend the city of Goma from the
invading forces of pro-Rwandan rebel groups in Congo. There are no US military
on the ground with the MONUC force in DRC.
Rwandan and Ugandan guerrilla groups continue to maintain
a destabilizing presence in eastern DRC, including the ex-Force Armee Rwandais
(ex-FAR, the former Rwandan army), Interahamwe (the militia largely responsible
for the1994 genocide), Allied Democratic Forces for Uganda (ADF), and the
PeopleÕs Redemption Army (PRA). The DRC government and international community
have failed to implement the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration
(DDR) process called for by international peace accords.
Rwanda has repeatedly threatened to invade DRC to
attack Hutu rebels accused of genocide—Interahamwe and ex-FAR. The
ÒgenocidiaresÓ fled Rwanda in 1994 and established themselves in Hutu refugee
camps in eastern Zaire (as DRC was then known), with the help of the French
intervention force Operation Tourquoise and support from ZaireÕs 32-year
dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Rwanda also claimed that it must defend the
Banyamulenge—Congolese Tutsis—from ongoing genocide.
MONUC entered DRC in 1999 after peace agreements
signed in Lusaka, Zambia. Subsequent peace accords in Sun City, South Africa,
and negotiations with rebels and militias in eastern DRC, ushered in a peace
process under a transitional power-sharing government, implementing a joint
UN/DRC program of ÒDDR,Ó and the promise of elections in 2005.
The DDR program has largely been an empty promise. The
DRC was formally cited at the UN Security Council on Nov. 23 for its lack of
cooperation in the arrest of people accused of taking part in the 1994 genocide
in Rwanda.
In a UN press statement, the Prosecutor of the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Hassan Bubacar Jallow from
Gambia, told the Security Council that 14 indicted people were still at large
and Òthe bulk of the fugitives continued to be based in the Democratic Republic
of Congo.Ó
The press release stated that the US ambassador to the
UN John Danforth called upon the DRC and Kenya to arrest fugitives accused
inciting conflicts in the Great Lakes region on the border of DRC and Rwanda.
Impunity for government soldiers and guerrillas alike
remains endemic in the eastern DRC provinces of Orientale, Equateur and the
Kivus. According to a recent alert by SurvivorÕs Rights International, reports
from isolated areas across the country indicate that populations continue to
suffer wholesale extortion, racketeering, theft, rape and other violence.
Rights groups accused all sides of exploiting ethnic
conflict in the region, including RwandaÕs government. ÒRelations between the
Banyamulenge and other Congolese groups have been strained and are frequently
manipulated by politicians in both Rwanda and the DRC,Ó wrote Human Rights
Watch in a June 2004 report, War Crimes in Bukavu. ÒThe past six years of war
have contributed to hostility against them as they are increasingly identified
as ÔRwandanÕ by other Congolese. Rwanda has often justified its presence in DRC
in part as an effort to protect the Banyamulenge people, though this was
challenged in 2002 when they attacked the Banyamulenge homelands killing scores
of Banyamulenge civilians, shooting some of them from Rwandan helicopters.Ó
In a bold article that caught major international
press on December 4, BBC journalist Robert Walker, who overflew the North Kivu
region in a MONUC helicopter, reported that ÒPresident Kabila is getting away
with a crimeÓ because the DRC government was fabricating reports of war and
Rwandan involvement in eastern DRC.
However, by December 20, 2004, UNICEF was reporting
Òmillions displaced by recent fighting.Ó
Central AfricaÕs Ongoing Genocide
Paul KagameÕs Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA)
invaded Rwanda from Uganda in 1990, launching a four-year campaign of guerrilla
warfare. Open support for RwandaÕs then-Hutu-led government from French
paratroopers failed to prevent the RPA victory of August 1994, following the coordinated
genocide of hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Tutsis by hard-line Hutus, Force
Armee Rwandaise (FAR) and affiliated Interahamwe (Hutu) militias from April to
July.
Critics such as Wayne Madsen, author of Genocide and
Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999, assert that Kagame and the RPA
orchestrated the April 6, 1994 assassination of the presidents of Rwanda and
Burundi – shooting down their plane on approach to Kigali airport with
SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles taken from Iraq by France in 1991, then delivered
by the US military to Uganda, the base for RPA guerrilla operations against
Rwanda prior to 1994.
Evidence was provided at a special hearing held by
then Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney at DCÕs Rayburn House Office Building on
April 6, 2001, the seventh anniversary of the assassinations. Journalist
Charles Onana of Cameroon, author of The Secrets of the Rwandan Genocide, also
aired claims of RPA involvement in the incident, and was sued for defamation by
Paul Kagame. A Paris court found in favor of Onana. Defense attorneys working
at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) maintain that the
standard figure of 800,000 Tutsis killed in the 1994 genocide is grossly
inflated. At least three major films continue to circulate in the US, all
furthering the pro-RPA and pro-Tutsi perspective of the Hutu genocide.
Paul Kagame, who was trained by the US military at
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, has been a regular visitor at Harvard University, at
the James Baker III Institute in Houston Texas, at the White House and the
Pentagon. US, European and South African military interests have continued to
support various factions in Central Africa, arming militias and rebel groups
through proxy armies from Uganda (UPDF), Rwanda (RPA), Burundi and the Sudan PeopleÕs
Liberation Army (SPLA) in south Sudan. FranceÕs presence in Central Africa is
based out of Gabon, the major point of French military penetration on the
continent.
Terror continued in Rwanda under the new RPA
government of Paul Kagame, with Amnesty International documenting a pattern of
assassinations, arbitrary imprisonment and Òdisappearances.Ó Nearly all
political opponents—Tutsi or Hutu—have been labeled ÒgenocidiaresÓ,
and Amnesty has protested that some trials and executions of accused genocidiare
collaborators have been tainted and politically motivated.
The first Rwandan invasion of its huge neighbor to the
west occurred in 1996. According to the influential Africa Confidential
newsletter, Major Gen. Paul Kagame visited the Pentagon in August of 1996,
conferring with Washington prior to launching a grand plan to unseat Mobutu
Sese Seko. While the US public was consumed with the 1996 presidential
elections, Rwanda was preparing its war against Zaire—and it began with
the shelling of Hutu refugee camps in eastern Congo with Katusha missiles,
killing non-combatant men, women and children.
RPA joined with Ugandan PeopleÕs Defense Forces (UPDF)
and the guerrilla army of Laurent KabilaÕs Alliance of Democratic Forces for
the Liberation of Congo (ADFL) in the ÒWar of LiberationÓ that subsequently
ended the decades long reign of President Mobutu Sese Seko in Congo (Zaire).
Sources in DRC quickly add that American military personnel were seen on the
ground advising the joint UPDF/RPA invasion which swiftly moved across the vast
forested territory of Zaire.
MobutuÕs generals were reportedly contacted in advance
by high-level US officials in the region; most of those who agreed to support
the US invasion when it came remain in high posts in DRC today; other of
MobutuÕs highest military were sacrificed one way or another.
Wayne Madsen reported that the US established major
communications and listening stations in UgandaÕs Ruwenzori Mountains.
Witnesses interviewed in Kampala, UgandaÕs capital, support this claim.
Communications equipment was also seen on Idjwe Island in Lake Kivu, on the
DRC-Rwanda frontier.
Recent interviews with survivors across the country
document crimes against humanity and acts of genocide committed against
Congolese civilians by all sides in the ensuing war.
ÒIn May 1997, hundreds of unarmed Hutu refugees were
massacred in the town of Mbandaka by soldiers of KabilaÕs Alliance of
Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (ADFL), operating under apparent
Rwandan Army (RPA) command,Ó wrote Human Rights Watch in June 1998. In an
October 1997 report (ÒWhat Kabila is Hiding: Civilian Killings and Impunity in
CongoÓ),
Human Rights Watch concluded ÒRwandan troops had a
role in some of the killings of Rwandan Hutu refugees on Zairean territory.Ó
Thousands of Hutu refugees were slaughtered in Mbandaka in May 1997, on the day
that the Allied Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Congo (AFDL) arrived
there. One eyewitness told this reporter: ÒWe ran down to the beach [port]
because we heard the shooting. I saw two people shot but there were bodies all
lined up on the beach. The soldiers were also throwing dead bodies in the
[Congo] river. There were a lot of Tutsi soldiers but we couldnÕt distinguish.
I saw soldiers question one woman. The woman was not able to talk in
[Congolese] Lingala. He said, yes you are among the Rwandais Hutus. He said to
the woman, ÔTurn, face the river, prey your God, because you are about to meet
your God.Õ Then he shot her in the back with an automatic weapon.Ó
ÒUS Special Forces were involved,Ó asserted one DRC
army captain interviewed recently in Kinshasa. The AFDL forces included UPDF,
RPA and US military advisers, he claimed.
Colonel James Kabarebe, now Chief of Staff of the
Rwanda Defense Forces, is said to have led the campaign to annihilate fleeing
Hutu refugees. Kabarebe has been sited in UN reports for massive violations in
Ituri. ÒKabarebe was reportedly the biggest advocate of Rwandan support to
[ethnic] militias,Ó wrote UN investigators in MONUCÕs Special Report on Events
in Ituri, January 2002-December 2003. Rwanda armed, trained, and advised
militias in Ituri, as it has in North and South Kivu provinces, the report
found. The Ugandan military was similarly cited for atrocities.
The RPA joined with the UPDF to invade DRC again in
1998 after ADFL leader Laurent Kabila rejected U.S. and Bechtel Corporation
plans for the newly liberated country, annulled mining contracts signed with
some powerful western companies before he had even taken power in Kinshasa—including
America Mineral Fields (AMF), based in Hope, AK, and said to be linked to
then-President Clinton through ÒFriend of BillÓ investors—and ejected the
Rwandan and Ugandan military allies that brought him to power.
The Congolese people call it the ÒWar of Aggression,Ó
but it was dubbed ÒAfricaÕs First World WarÓ by the western press, as it
involved six regional nations as well as arms and advisers from western
countries. Troops from Rwanda and Uganda (now backing anti-Kabila rebels) as
well as Zimbabwe (allied with the DRC government) worked with commercial agents
pilfering DRCÕs ivory, diamonds, gold, timber, cobalt and other natural
resources.
Foreign agents moved these plundered resources onto
the international market, as militia groups raked in local profits. At least
3.5 million people died due to warfare in DRC, according to the International
Rescue Committee (IRC) report on the region for the period from 1998 to 2001.
From 1999-2001, through networks of Rwandan military and commercial agents,
Rwandan interests aligned with the state earned at least $240 million in the
sale of coltan (columbo-tantalite) -- a precious ore essential to Sony
play-stations, laptop computers and cell-phones. In December 2000 alone, the
main RPA-supported rebel group in DRC earned some $600,000 in coltan sales.
Coltan moved through criminal syndicates to American, Swiss, Belgian and German
clients. Rwandan syndicates continue to dominate the coltan trade out of
eastern DRC, local sources claim.
Friends of the Earth and the UK-based group Rights and
Accountability in Development (RAID) filed a formal complaint with the US State
Department on August 4, 2004 against three US companies accused by the UN Panel
of Experts of fuelling war in DRC. The UN panelÕs three-year investigation
implicated Cabot Corporation (Boston), Eagle Wings Resources International and
George ForrestÕs OM Group (Ohio) in collaboration with various rebel groups
trafficking in coltan from DRC. Current deputy director of the US Treasury
Department, Samuel Bodman, was CEO and chairman of Cabot from 1997-2001.
It is important to note that the conflict in Central
Africa revolves not around ÒgovernmentsÓ so much as militarized power blocks
and multinational corporate alignments which are transnational. Thus while
powerful US government interests may back the Kagame and Museveni regimes in
support of destabilization of Central Africa and the annexation of the Kivu and
Orientale provinces, other powerful interests—such as the International
Rescue Committee (IRC) -- maintain a constant international media presence
which appears to be in conflict with that agenda but which nevertheless exists
as a major lobby in support of or defense of certain interests at the expense
of certain others. Notable personalities on the IRCÕs Boards of Directors and
Overseers include Morton Abramowitz, Tom Brokaw and Henry A. Kissinger.
An Unraveling Peace Process
The DRC frontier with Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi has
remained the locus of instability and guerrilla warfare since at least 1994 --
long before the first Rwandan invasion of Congo in 1996 -- and the rising
insecurity and terrorism has all but annihilated the local civilian
populations. North and South Kivu provinces continue to suffer from widespread
violence, and killings in the Goma and Bukavu areas are rampant.
The Ituri region of Orientale Province, bordering on
Uganda, Sudan and Central African Republic, is cited as one of the bloodiest
corners of the world by numerous human rights agencies.
The UN Security CouncilÕs Special Report on Ituri,
January 2002-December 2003, outlines the history of conflict in Ituri, the role
of Ugandan and Rwandan government forces in arming factions, bombing villages,
massacring and torturing civilians, and provoking and, at times, abetting, acts
of genocide. Given the rising insecurity in Ituri in recent months, with
assassinations and nightly shootings, the population in Bunia increasingly sees
MONUC as a hostile and aggressive force of foreign military occupation.
Said one Bunia resident formerly employed by MONUC:
ÒPublic opinion is that MONUC has done nothing. People thought that MONUC came
here to bring peace but to their surprise people find that MONUC is like a
spectator in a football match. But people are dying in their presence. People
are being terrorized in their presence. People are being killed in there
presence. And MONUC is doing nothing.Ó
ÒFiring incidents occur daily,Ó admitted one public
information officer for MONUC. ÒI donÕt think there is any area except maybe in
Bunia [town] where the human rights situation is improving.Ó
Reports of MONUC personnel buying and transporting
contraband goods—leopard and okapi skins, gold, ivory—are also
widespread; one western photojournalist witnessed Belgian troops openly purchasing
ivory; troops are immune to customs search and seizure.
Arms continue to flow into the region. UgandaÕs
government newspaper the New
Vision Nov. 23 reported that arms shipments reportedly
destined for the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), a regional militia aligned
with Rwanda, were seized by the Armed Forces of the Congolese People (FAPC), a
rival Congolese militia in control of the lucrative Ituri Province customs
posts in northeastern DRC. The story was picked up by a Chinese news service
only.
ÒAccording to local sources, local government
officials have delivered firearms to civilians in Masisi, North Kivu, long the
site of conflict between different political and military groups,Ó wrote Human
Rights Watch on November 19. ÒOther shipments have been delivered to Ituri,
another persistently troubled area in northeastern Congo. U.N. sources reported
that some 300 Congolese high school students, refugees in neighboring Rwanda,
abruptly left their schools and are said to be undergoing military training.Ó
According to recent reports from northern Ituri, the
FAPC has reportedly executed child soldiers seeking to enter the DDR process,
and attacked the families and looted the homes of reintegrated ex-child
soldiers.
ÒAll armed groups in Ituri have integrated children
into their ranks,Ó wrote MONUC investigators in Special Report on Events in
Ituri, January 2002-December 2003. MONUC conservatively estimated Òat least 40
percent of each militia force are children below the age of 18, with a
significant minority below the age of 15.Ó
The MONUC investigation found that Ugandan and Rwandan
military were frequently training children abducted and forcibly or willingly
recruited into DRC militias. MONUC documented cases where hundreds of children
were taken by road or plane to Uganda or Rwanda for military training. Child
soldiers were sometimes ÒtrainedÓ by child soldiers. Some children have been
passed from one group to another.
The UPC and the Front for National Integration (FNI),
another militia, continue to extort a weekly war tax from citizens, persecute
those who refuse to comply, and terrorize the citizenry. ÒThe UPC is collecting
money. They say, Ôeither you pay 100 francs Congolese or we come at night.Õ
Then when they come they cut off your hand or violate women.Ó
ÒSexual violence is a national epidemic in DR Congo,Ó
wrote Survivors Rights International (SRI) in a December 5 2004 alert,
Òinvolving all military factions, both current and past military forces
involved in the internal affairs of the DRC, and it appears to be sanctioned by
all levels of military command. SRI research completed in Equateur and
Orientale (Ituri) from September to November 2004 indicates that the scale and
frequency of sexual violence committed during the successive wars (1996-2004)
is unprecedented and unquantifiable.Ó
SRI also reported that the presence of hundreds of
internally displaced girls and women currently resident in Mbandaka has spawned
commerce in prostitution and survival sex involving both Armed Forces of
Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) and MONUC troops. ÒFARDC further prey on
female sex workers by forcing sexual relations, raping those who refuse, and
universally robbing desperate females of their livelihood,Ó SRI wrote. ÒFARDC
soldiers in rural areas and population centers continue to steal and abduct the
wives of civilians, and to abduct women and adolescent girls many of whom are
impregnated and abandoned.Ó
SRI called on the UN, MONUC and the international
community to define and implement a new strategy for dealing with widespread
and ongoing sexual violence, noting Òthat the societal effects will be
long-lasting, and that accountability for sexual violence could be easily
countered given greater international attention to gender violence in the DRC
and a campaign to end impunity and bring the perpetrators to justice. The MONUC
communications infrastructure installed nationwide in DRC (Radio Okapi)
provides an excellent and functioning tool for raising the awareness of sexual
violence and the growing campaign to hold perpetrators to account through the
International Criminal Court.Ó
On November 28, 2004, a group of seven young women
arrived in Mbandaka -- after trekking hundreds of miles from EquateurÕs
easternmost city of Lisala reporting that they were raped in the past week by
government soldiers (FARDC). Other girls are also being raped, the seven
survivors said.
AllAfrica.com, the preeminent on-line Africa news
service based out of Washington, DC, refused to publish the SRI alert on DRC;
Allafrica.com has become increasingly selective, excluding major reportage in
the region that does not fit with the interests of the predominant powers.
Forgotten Resource Wars
Rwanda and Uganda continue to benefit from high-level
military arrangements with the United States. Entebbe, Uganda, is a forward
base for US Air Force operations in Central Africa. According to the Global
Policy watchdog, there are eleven US servicemen permanently stationed in
Entebbe. Sources on the ground in Uganda and DRC confer that weapons move
freely through Entebbe airport from US interests.
The BBC reported March 23, 2004 that US General
Charles Wald confirmed that the US is directly involved in the fight against
the LordÕs Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda. ÒI have met with [UgandaÕs] President
Museveni,Õ the BBC reported, ÒI have heard personally that he is very pleased
with the support we are giving him... Its not just moral support... But many
things need to be kept a bit more private.Ó
In July 2004, members of the DRC military flew to
Tampa, Florida to participate in an unfolding US Ôanti-terrorismÕ military
program called ÒGolden Spear.Ó
The Canadian mining firms Barrick Gold and Heritage
Oil & Gas arrived with Ugandan (UPDF) and Rwandan (RPA) military during the
ÒWar of AggressionÓ to exploit mining opportunities in the north. Barrick
principals include former Canadian premier Brian Mulroney and former US
president George H.W. Bush. Heritage has secured contracts for the vast oil
reserves of Semliki basin, beneath Lake Albert, on both the Congolese and
Ugandan sides of the border. Heritage is reportedly tapping the Semliki
petroleum reserves from the Ugandan side, where a huge pipeline to Mombasa,
Kenya, worth billions of dollars, is now in the works.
According to a petroleum futures report (Africafront),
Heritage Oil was poised to exploit the northern Lake Albert basin, southern
Lake Albert basin, River Semliki basin, and Lake George and Lake Albert basin
areas in partnership with the Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau (ZPEB) of
China. Heritage is currently exploiting petroleum in neighboring war-torn
Congo-Brazzaville in partnership with ZPEB. Notably, ZPEB is the petroleum firm
currently operating behind the genocide of indigenous Anuak people in
southwestern Ethiopia (See the December 12, 2004 report by Genocide Watch:
OPERATION SUNNY MOUNTAIN?). Ashanti Goldfields has reportedly secured a
contract for the vast gold reserves at Mongwalu, north of Bunia. Ashanti has
ties to South Africa and the British Crown and some sources in Bunia report
that the Ashanti interest in nearby Mongwalu is guarded by Nepalese Gurkhas,
possibly of the Gurkha Security Group based in Britain.
The Clintonite multinational America Mineral Fields in
May 2004 changed its name to Adastra Minerals, and the corporation has
multi-billion dollar copper and cobalt mining projects underway, in partnership
with the Kabila government, in Katanga province. Elsewhere in DRC, major
foreign mining and logging contracts are underway.
The death toll in CongoÕs war has easily exceeded 6
million people.
End.