Having said that, Anderson’s
article is very much current, about imperial wars by proxy masked by
the media as “ethnic conflict,” part of what we might call a
twenty-first century Scramble for Africa. Indeed, anthropology has been
at the forefront of the demystification of the politics of the “tribe”
since the 1960s, that to see this logic reinvented in the case of the
mass media’s reporting on Afghanistan tells us how little we have
progressed in furthering public understanding, even when journalists
themselves are confronted with these arguments (as they were here on this blog).

AFRICOM
(the U.S. military’s new Africa Command, which promises to incorporate
new Human Terrain Teams), is firmly situated within this neo-colonial
imbroglio between the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Uganda,
U.S. mining corporations, and China. Anderson’s detailed research and
careful analysis is well worth reading.

Given the copyright restrictions governing the article, I will only post select extracts below with my own annotations.

•••••••

Rwanda
is one of the military contenders for securing access to Congo’s rich
mineral deposits that are illegally extracted and provide vital inputs
from everything from cell phones to jet turbines and Tomahawk missiles.
With reference to Rwanda, Anderson points out:

Rwandan
president Paul Kagame is essentially a US military asset planted in
central Africa, having been trained at US military command school in
Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas up until the Uganda-backed invasion of Rwanda
by the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) in 1990. The invasion led to the
installation of Kagame as president. He remains firmly entrenched in
Kigali, with enthusiastic US support.

A United Nations panel that was charged with documenting
the illegal extraction of mineral wealth from the Democratic Republic
of Congo (DRC), pointed to a complex array of military and corporate
interests behind the violence in the region, noting there is,

an
array of 119 different companies involved in mining operations and
transportation of minerals, including 12 companies based in the United
Kingdom, 9 United States firms, 21 companies based in Belgium, 12 in
South Africa, 4 in Germany, 5 in Canada and 2 in Switzerland.  Many of
the 29 companies that were found in violation of law, though registered
in Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe, were really just front operations
for western firms operating in conjunction with local Ugandan, Rwandan
and Congolese government officials.  Israeli firms operating in the
Congo mining theatre had close ties to the government in Kinshasa, as well as to luminaries of the Democratic Party in the United States.

The
so-called renegade armies operating in the region fund themselves by
acting as gatekeepers for illegal resource extraction, while the
Congolese national treasury crumbles and, with it, social spending.
Anderson proceeds to criticize the narratives produced by dominant
Western media, governments, and even some NGOs in producing “cover for
western corporate involvement in the virulent, deadly corruption that
sits at the heart of the Congolese wars.”

In
2006, when a reformist Joseph Kabila won office, a commitment was made
to review all contracts with Western mining companies operating in the
DRC. The result of the DRC’s review the following year came with a
realignment of the DRC’s international connections, favouring China
because China in return favoured local economic development without the
political conditionalities of agencies such as the International
Monetary Fund:

Subsequent to the announcement of the mining contract review, Kabila’s government announced that it would sign a multi-billion dollar agreement with the Chinese government
(now standing at $9 billion) that would give the Chinese direct access
to mineral resources in exchange for a host of infrastructure projects,
including roads, hospitals and health care centers, schools, railroads,
housing, and two hydroelectric projects.  This is not altruistic,
obviously. The Sino-Congolese agreement consigns
the Chinese a 68% share in the joint venture and the rights to two
large cobalt and copper concessions, while the proposed road and rail
systems will obviously be used for mineral transport.  Opposition
parties criticized the deal, claiming that Kabila intended to “sell off
our natural heritage to the detriment of several generations,” words
that ring hollow in light of the organized plunder of recent years. In
fact, considering how little Congo has received from western interests
in the region, China’s planned expenditures would be a veritable boon
to the country.  True to China’s diplomatic and business form in Africa
and elsewhere, the deal came with no imposition of the kind of
“political reform” that usually accompanies financial investment from
western institutions such as the IMF.

As
Western mining companies, which had benefited from illegal extraction
within Congo, and that had recruited private militias, suddenly saw
their stocks crumble, a new development occurred. In came AFRICOM, and
competition against China was critical to this supposed “humanitarian”
and “development” effort in the hands of the U.S. military and some
suspiciously compliant American development NGOs (the term
“non-governmental” is getting to be seriously abused beyond repair):

US State and Defense Department advisor, Dr. J. Peter Pham, informed Congress
that AFRICOM necessarily would be focused on China’s movements in
Africa and that China was the only “near-peer competitor” to the United
States.

China
is currently importing approximately 2.6 million barrels of crude per
day, about half of its consumption; more than 765,000 of those barrels,
roughly a third of its imports, come from African sources, especially
Sudan, Angola, and Congo (Brazzaville). … Chinese President Hu Jintao
announced a three-year, $3 billion program in preferential loans and
expanded aid for Africa. These funds come on top of the $3 billion in
loans and $2 billion in export credits that Hu announced in October
2006 at the opening of the historic Beijing summit of the Forum on
China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) which brought nearly fifty African
heads of state and ministers to the Chinese capital. Intentionally
or not, many analysts expect that Africa, especially the states along
its oil-rich western coastline, will increasingly become a theatre for
strategic competition between the United States and its only real
near-peer competitor on the global stage, China, as both countries seek
to expand their influence and secure access to resources.

 

The DRC is a vital source of coltan ore, possessing 80% of the
world’s supply, from which both niobium and tantalum are derived. The
U.S. military exhausted its stockpile of tantalum in 2007, and has only
refurbished it two thirds of its 2006 level. Tantalum is used in the
manufacture of electronic capacitors.

As
for some of the “rebel” armies, Anderson notes that while proclaiming
their interest in defending themselves against ethnic violence and
ethnic injustice, they occasionally add some “unusual” items to their
lists of demands, such as this one, where in an interview a rebel
general,

voiced his opposition to a $9 billion US deal that allows China access to Congo’s vast mineral reserves in exchange for infrastructure improvements.

Toward
the conclusion of his article, Anderson is unsparing toward the
mainstream media in the West and the hypocrisy of those will spare no
passion in denouncing 19th century colonization of Africa, while
turning a blind eye to the current wave of recolonization:

Current
conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo are only the latest in a
long and shameful legacy of western misemployment and exploitation.
 Millions suffer, millions die, and our political class and complicit
media organs shout and cry about all the ethnic tension they claim
leads to this suffering.  Never are the operations and fortunes of
western corporate interests mentioned, nor too the presence of US and
European military troops who are there, aiding and abetting the
slaughter.

Indeed,
so ready are the powers that be, and their supporters, ready to absolve
themselves that, as Anderson notes, Condoleeza Rice, adding to her
repertoire of scandalous distortions, said that the U.S. was
“dragged” into Iraq. We all need to do whatever we can to “drag” them
out of their chosen interventions and wars of conquest. May severe
economic crisis and worldwide resistance visit some “birth pangs” in
the imperial household.

•••••••

Coltan Mining in the Congo