19.09.09 AllAfrica: Peace Campaigners Turn up Heat on Apple, Intel Over Conflict Minerals

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 befoe 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, and she, i think, agreed and
demonstrated that she wasn't going to be just another official that
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 not going anywhere, we have to zero in on the focus'. 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, and we hope that he'll be able to target specific actions that
the U.S. can take to begin to take on this most deadly war in the
world. 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. Where there is the
rule of law, where there are rules of engagement and 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 and Savimbi 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 being 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 trace them right to the level. 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 differnt 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.

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 of 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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