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Created: Wednesday, 03 October 2012 10:11

Written by Charles Chinweizu

Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 229 October/November 2012

Another war has broken out in the eastern part of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In April 2012 about 600 soldiers of the Congolese army mutinied and seized weapons and territory in eastern DRC. Within four months the mutineers had swelled to over 2,000 soldiers. Over 270,000 people have been displaced. The total number of displaced people since 2009 is now 2.2m. There are reports of systematic massacres of civilians. Behind the rebellion is Rwanda, an important regional ally of Britain and the US.

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Created: Sunday, 20 September 2009 14:33

Written by FRFI

On 30 July 2006, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, formerly Zaire) will go to the polls for presidential and national assembly elections against a background of a war that has ravaged the country since 1998 and in which over four million people have died. IRENEE KAYEMBE reports.

The DRC, in central Africa, is the third biggest country in Africa with a population of approximately 60 million; it borders nine other countries. The British media occasionally reports the war as an ‘ethnic’ war – this is not true. The DRC has the world’s largest deposits of copper, cobalt, coltan and cadmium, as well as chrome, timber, tin, rubber, oil, uranium, germanium, diamonds and gold and the war is to control these resources.

In 1998 DRC’s eastern neighbours, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, illegally invaded the country with the tacit backing of the US, EU and UN. Armed groups from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zimbabwe, and Angola, plus the Congolese army, have been fighting ever since for control over mining rights. American William Swing, UN ambassador to the DRC, commands 17,000 men; Belgian Louis Michel leads an 1,600-strong EU mission. These ‘peacekeepers’ are more powerful than presidents.

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Created: Thursday, 14 May 2009 14:51

Written by Charles Chinweizu

The subsoil of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, formerly Zaire) is so gorged with minerals that it is Africa’s richest country. DRC has the world’s largest deposits of copper, cobalt, coltan and cadmium, as well as chrome, timber, cassiterite, rubber, oil, uranium, germanium, diamonds and gold. Mongbwalu, capital of the north-eastern Ituri district, contains Africa’s largest gold seam. Control over these vast resources, not ‘ethnic rivalry’, is behind the civil war which started in 1998 soon after the US and British-backed dictator Mobutu died, and which has cost over 3.8 million lives, mostly from starvation and disease.

Looting the gold
Every month, hundreds of kilograms of gold are extracted from the mines around Mongbwalu, taken illegally to neighbouring Uganda and then flown to Europe, usually to Metalor Technologies in Switzerland, a leading European dealer in precious metals. (Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2005). DRC ministers are directly involved in the smuggling, with stolen wealth, worth millions of dollars, stored in offshore bank accounts. In 2003, although local Ugandan gold production was worth $23,000, gold exports were worth $45 billion. Gold is Uganda’s second biggest export after coffee.

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Created: Thursday, 14 May 2009 14:17

Written by FRFI

In December 2002 a peace agreement to put an end to five years of war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was signed in South Africa. It set five main targets:

• reunification of a country torn apart by different rebel factions
• rebuilding the country
• restabilising state power across the whole country
• national reconciliation
• formation of a trained and integrated national army.

These were preconditions for the organisation of free, transparent and democratic elections in 2006 to bring about new and reliable structures for a safe and stable country.

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Created: Thursday, 14 May 2009 14:12

Written by FRFI

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Created: Tuesday, 14 April 2009 13:20

Written by Charles Chinweizu

FRFI 206 December 2008 / January 2009

Rwanda invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, formerly Zaire) in 1996, 1998 and 2004. Rwanda’s fourth major incursion into DRC in 12 years, in October 2008, signalled an intensification of imperialist rivalry between the European Union (EU), which backs current President Joseph Kabila, and Britain and the US, which support Rwanda. The imperialists are battling for domination of mineral-rich DRC and for a stranglehold on the resource-rich region of central and eastern Africa. To camouflage the real reasons for the conflict, once again the distraction of ‘ethnic conflict’ is being promoted. Failure to remove Kabila from power may lead to the de facto annexation of eastern DRC and the balkanisation of the country. CHARLES CHINWEIZU reports.

Rwanda invades again
On 9 October Rwandan tanks entered eastern DRC via the North Kivu province on its border, to aid former Congolese army general Laurent Nkunda, leader of the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP). The fighting between the CNDP, the DRC army (FARDC), the UN (MONUC) and various paramilitaries actually resumed on 28 August. Since then over 100 people have been killed, including more than 50 massacred at Kiwanja in November. Over 250,000 people were driven from their homes, fleeing south towards the provincial capital Goma, as shelters, clinics and homes were burnt down, refugee camps emptied, women and girls raped and property looted. At one stage 50,000 refugees went ‘missing’, their fate unknown. 12,000 have fled to neighbouring Uganda. This area of eastern DRC is clearly being depopulated – the people driven away in terror – and repopulated by people brought in from Rwanda and Uganda. The presence of Rwanda in eastern Congo is being consolidated so it becomes de facto part of Greater Rwanda.

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