During the last two weeks the United Nations has issued warnings that the Democratic Republic of Congo’s richest province, Katanga, stands at the brink of a “humanitarian catastrophe.” The local security situation continues to deteriorate as Mai Mai rebels fight to wrest control of the profits from Katanga’s vast mineral wealth – by some estimates it holds a tenth of the world’s copper and a third its cobalt. The ongoing violence has already displaced 400,000 people. Martin Kobler, head of MONUSCO, the UN mission in the DRC, has said that part of the reason the situation in Katanga had become so critical was that the UN had concentrated most of its military activity elsewhere in the Congo, particularly in the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu – where much of the DRC’s worst violence in recent years has occurred.
Katanga’s crisis may seem remote from the rest of the world, but it isn’t. For one thing the conflict there is directly related to our fondness for smartphones and other hi-tech devices. The Congo contains more than half of the world’s tantalum, a precious metal that is one of the essential components of modern mobile phones. It also holds large reserves of cobalt, diamonds, gold, oil, silver and uranium. Western companies reap huge profits from Katanga’s resources but have shown little concern for the local economy. Last month the Guardian reported that during the last five years foreign mining companies have chalked up nearly US$4 billion in unpaid fines and customs with the DRC government ‒ many of these companies have lucrative operations in Katanga.
In addition to foreign cynicism, Katanga is also forced to contend with an acquisitive national government hundreds of miles away. Mobutu Sese Seko, the dictator who ruled Zaire for thirty years reportedly said that in his country “we do not loot, we merely displace” – since the money was not being exported to foreign countries. This attitude remains entrenched and it defines the relationship between Kinshasa and its provinces, making a more equitable distribution of profits from the country’s resources unlikely, unless achieved at the end of a gun barrel, as the rebels are trying to do.
The current crisis is also consistent with a larger historical pattern. In the latter half of the nineteenth century King Leopold II extracted rubber from the Congo Free State with unconscionable brutality. But far from shaming its perpetrators, Belgium’s genocide merely emboldened its contempt for the Congo in later years. In June 1960 shortly after Patrice Lumumba won the Congo its independence, Brussels supported Katanga’s secession from the new state, and even sent Belgian troops to fight against the Congolese army. When Lumumba sought help from the UN, and was refused, he turned to the Soviet Union. This development prompted the West to back Mobutu and to launch one of the most ruthless and extravagant dictatorships, even by African standards.
Later Western interventions in the Congo, even well-intentioned ones, have produced other catastrophes. Among these were the UN’s relief efforts which allowed Rwanda’s genocidaires to regroup after their military defeat at the hands of the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Here the international community’s lack of a coordinated response proved crucial. Instead of confronting the roots of the crisis, it chose the easier task of treating the symptoms with humanitarian aid. As John Prendergast, a fellow at the United States Institute of Peace has written: “In the absence of the political will to address the crisis, humanitarian agencies furnished aid that, though it saved lives, reinforced the authority structures of the perpetrators of genocide. In short, the immediate response to the genocide and resultant refugee crisis was an unmitigated disaster.”
As another humanitarian crisis looms in the Congo, the political will to seek long-term solutions remains critically important. Obadias Ndaba, a Congolese journalist persuasively argues that “The trouble [in Katanga] springs from this old-age source: the utter failure and lack of government. Tragically, that very failure is what the international community continues to support and make possible.” The crisis in Katanga is a distressing reminder of how failures to address the underlying dysfunctions in places like the Congo ‒ dysfunctions the West has often created and energetically reinforced ‒ merely perpetuates a cycle of strongmen and violence.