“Plunder, Criminalization of the State and Decline in the World System: the Case of D.R.Congo”

“Plunder, Criminalization of the state and Decline in the world System: the case of D.R.Congo”

Presented at the 10th General Conference of EADI 19-21 September 2002 for the WG ”Rise and decline in the World System”

S.Marysse,

University of Antwerp Institute of Development Policy and Management

(Not for publication - first draft - comments welcome)

Abstract

The International Rescue Committee (Washington) estimated the (indirect) death toll of the ongoing first international African War from August 1998 up to the end of 2001, to more than two and a half million people. In this media silent-war people die not so often by bullets but by an amazing lack of concern by contesting foreign armies, rebel groups, armed “resistance” groups and, last but not least, an ambiguous attitude of the international community.

All these groups are characterized at the political level by changing alliances that do not coincide with any long term political ideology or strategy. The once close allies like Museveni’s Uganda and Kagame’s Rwanda fought already bitter wars at Kisangani , 1000 km from their frontiers . How can one understand their official common standpoint that they fight this war and invade the Congo to secure their frontiers from incursions of ‘negative elements’ (these groups thus defined by the Lusaka peace agreement include Interahamwe, ex- FAR soldiers and Maï-Maï) ? The thesis of this paper will be that this war has to be understood by an intricate cluster of phenomena.

The long term erosion of elite power and finance in some African countries, caused by the changing international geopolitics in Africa, led to different new strategies. Reconstruction of the state in some, resistance, criminalisation and war in other countries. This latter strategy seems to be more the case in those countries with rich natural endowments that can be exploited on a small scale by petty producers, weak states and deteriorating infrastructures. Those countries seem to be an easy pray for commercial military groups and factions to engage in plunder and criminal activities. War and violence seem to be viable paths and indeed strategies to conceal the enrichment of these elites. Needless to say that this strategy goes to the detriment of the population who dies, flees or survives in inhumane conditions. From Angola (from 1975 on) over Congo (from 1990 on), Sierra Leone, and Nigeria(?), to Rwanda (from 1990 on ) and Somalia, wars and internal strife seems to be there for quite a while. So natural rich endowments seem to be more of a curse than a blessing for a country.

This argument also runs against a deeply anchored set of convictions that Africa’s underdevelopment is due to international economic interests and globalization processes. It seems to be more the lack of serious foreign investors interests that strangles Africa than a new scramble for the riches of Africa.

We will develop these points by analyzing one case- study: that of DRCongo.

2 Contents

Introduction:

1) The rhetoric on the bright future, the gloomy reality and theoretical explanations 1.1.The rhetoric on the bright future and the gloomy reality 1.2.Theoretical explanations 2) Criminalisation of the state and economic regress in the DRCongo : a prelude to the first international African war 2.1. A historical digression 2.2. Explaining the collapsed state and economic regress 3) The second scramble for Africa’s resources or plunder of Africa by Africans? 3.1.On the problematic definition of plunder and illegal exports 3.2. Plunder and illegal exports in peace-and wartime 3.3.The commodity chain of coltan

Introduction

The first international African war is going on. From august 1998 on 2.5 million people have been killed directly or indirectly in this media-silent war, this is more than a third of the holocaust or almost one tenth of all ‘casualties’ incurred by the Soviet Union during the second world war [International Rescue Committee, 2001:1]. At least, this dramatic headcount is the figure advanced by that international NGO and by the Kabila government. Other sources estimate the death toll even higher at 73000 a month bringing the total number to more than 3.5 million deaths [Blaire Harden, 2001:36]i.

A first important but partial explanation for this increase in warfare and violence is the change within the world-system after the demise of the Soviet Union. I.Wallerstein wrote immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall that with the end of the cold war violence and international warfare would change in nature because ‘ The emperor (the US or capitalist hegemony) stood naked after he lost his figleaf (of the communist countries)’ [Wallerstein 1989: 3] The end of the east-west competition would open new arena’s of threats to peace and in his almost prophetic analysis he predicted that violence and new conflicts would rather increase because underdevelopment and regress could not anymore be imputed to the wrong policies.

However since the same international environment (the so-called globalization) leads to very different outcomes in this world-system, the geo-political explanation should be complemented by other factors. Why do most of the violent conflicts occur in Africa where also economic regression is most prominently going on? We shall explore some of the recent and influential theories in the first part of our paper.

In the second part of the paper, I will focus and apply these theoretical insights on one of the once key-peripheral countries of the African continent: DRCongo. More specifically, we’ll explain how the warp and weft of external and internal factors have produced the collapse of the state and the economy plunging the population in misery and ultimately in war. The third and last part of the paper tackles some questions concerning the first international African war. Is this war the product of the new geo-political role of Africa in the world-system? Translating the Huntinghton thesis on the « Clash of Civilisations » that means that the unconditional help for the invading countries Uganda and Rwanda by the US and Great Britain is nothing else than reinforcing the regional agents of US-hegemony against the increasing influence of Islam fundamentalism (Sudan). The increasing rivalry between the two new African leaders however denies this simple and massive thesis. Should this war then rather be seen as a second scramble for Africa’s wealth with African military regimes as middlemen, reproducing the old good world imperialism thesis? We’ll see that history never reproduces itself but is continually old and new producing new and unforeseen realities. We will open that discussion by criticizing the definition of plunder by the UN Panel on “Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo” and substitute it for a less problematic economic definition of plunder. From there on we shall estimate the extent of the plundering and their economic significance for the financing of the war. Finally we are illustrating our thesis by analyzing one case study in the plunder, that of the coltan commodity chain.

1. The rhetoric of the bright future, the gloomy reality and theoretical explanations

1.1. The rhetoric of the bright future and the gloomy reality

There is a well-known African saying or proverb which is, at first sight, particularly suitable to describe the fate of a continent in the capitalist world-system before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. ‘ When two elephants fight each other it is the grass that suffer’ and one could paraphrase the saying to fit the post-cold war era as follows : ‘ and when two elephants make love it is again the grass that suffers’ We know that structural positions in the world-system are determined by positions of hegemony, dominance and dependency and that these positions do determine in part the « path dependency », to use the vocabulary of the now fashionable school of institutional economics, of a country. The theoretical problem and weakness of the world-system paradigm is however to analyze, understand and predict change and diversity between countries. Indeed the whole school of dependency and world-systems approach is very much penetrated by the idea that the structural position is determinant which leaves very little room for change and especially underestimate the way the local and the global interact with more autonomy to influence at the local level than is sometimes believedii. The interaction of nationals , local power groups , traditional bonds and cultural heritage with the external environment can produce substantial differences without which we could not take into account or understand, the rise of certain countries and decline of others in the world-system. That this interaction does not give way to pseudo racist explanations, by explaining the rise of Asian countries by eg a better cultural fit to the globalization process, can easily be demonstrated by the fact that differences within the same cultural horizon can be bigger than between different « civilizations » . The performances e.g of African countries like Botswana and Mauritius with a growth per capita of 7 per cent and multi-partyism contrast enormously with the general tendency of decline in other African countries and perform much better than certain Asian or Latin-American countries. We therefore very much subscribe the sentence of J .F.Bayart that « Africans here have been active agents in the ‘mise en dépendance’ of their societies, sometimes opposing it and at other times joining in it” [Bayart, 1993: 21]. This sentence means that of course African elites and powerful individuals can not by themselves change their peripheral position but that within this context they were as much an actor influencing their destinies and historical trajectories by « joining » or « opposing » dependency than were other dominant actors.

Certainly the fall of the Berlin Wall has altered fundamentally the matrix of action for the players on the African continent. The combination of, the debt-problem , the structural weak position of Africa in the world system and the end of the cold war plunged Africa in a deep crisis that has been reflected in the thesis of Afro-pessimism and the thesis of the so-called marginalisation of the continent.

5 That the crisis is deep and that the structural position of Africa in the world economy is weak is beyond discussion. Just a few data. The income per capita has decreased with one to two per cent since the end of the seventies. Thirty- five years after decolonization the income per capita of SSA was 20 per cent lower. At independence Sudan had the same income per head as South- Korea. The Korean income per head is now 15 times higher than that of Sudan. These tendencies find its corollary in the international position of SSA. The total value of the exports of Sub-Saharan Africa with 540 million inhabitants to the rest of the world equals that of Singapore with three million inhabitants. Africa ‘s share of world-exports declined from 3.8 % in 1980 to 1.3 % in 1996 [N.Van De Walle, 2001:6] . The continent has a regional production that equals that of Belgium with ten million inhabitants. Total foreign investment in SSA fell dramatically in the eighties and beginning of the nineties and were redirected towards Asian destinies. There costs were half that of Africa and profits on foreign direct investment nine times higher while property rights were respected. This deep crisis was also reflected in other non-economic data. Most of the world refugees are to be found in Africa and aids and other epidemia seem to be more prevalent in these crisis-ridden environment.

The international response to that crisis and possible instability has been more rhetoric than real up to now. Consider and contrast these realities with the speech of the Clinton adminsitration launched at Denver for the G-7group and repeated at the Afro-American summit in Harare in 1997 ‘ …but there really is a dynamic new Africa out there…Since 1990, the number of democracies in Sub-Sahara Africa has more than quadrupled . Now more than half the region’ 48 states have freely chosen their leaders. Many are embracing economic reform, opening markets, privatising… Growth has more than tripled since 1990.The economies in such countries as Senegal, Mozambique, Côte d’Ivoire are expanding at rates up to 7% a year. Ethiopia was not long ago gripped by famine; it grew by 12% last year. Uganda , once a byword for tragedy has become a magnet for investment ; it grew by almost 10% last year’iii

The new discourse and international policy on Africa is clear; the so called Washington consensus consisting in the triad of economic reform (structural adjustment), opening up of markets and privatization and lastly by promoting democracy is seen as the remedy for the crisis and countering instability in the region. This new discourse on Africa does not reflect the reality . Indeed we have had more violence in the nineties - Angola, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan, Tchad , congo Brazzaville, the genocide in Rwanda and the first international african war breaking out one year after the discourse of the bright future for Africa - than before. There are however two fundamental reasons why this policy is not leading to more peace and prosperity. The first is that the Washington consensus policy is not complemented by sufficient concessionary financial flows and second that the policy underestimates the consequences of the post-cold war changes on the behaviour of African elites. The first reason is easily understandable. Since the weak structural position of Africa in world trade it is very improbable that this continent with low value-added activities will gain sufficiently by opening up their markets, it will rather weaken their balance of payments position. Moreover since states are weak or collapsing and markets very imperfect direct investment will not be sufficiently attracted. Therefore if the crisis has to be softened in Africa more concessionary financial flows will be necessary. If one looks to what the US was engaging in that region (approx.1 billion $ compared to the 3 billion $flowing to Israel) under the Clinton administration and that the Bush administration is not likely to increase that amount, then the future of the « new Africa » seems much less bright. In order to understand the second fundamental flaw in the Washington consensus policy we turn to some theoretical explanations.

6 2.2. Some theoretical explanations

Economists reviewing the performances of African economies came to the conclusion that almost half of the dismal performance could not be explained by the conventional development wisdom (lack of productivity, productive investments, human capital etc.)iv The “African dummy” as it has been called points to the prevalence of political factors. ‘In sum , the peculiar evolution of the african political economy over the last twenty years has to be understood as the fruit of the marriage of neo-patrimonialism and the international development business.’[Van De Walle, 2001: 51] . Economists were therefore lagging behind, the political scientist G.Hyden explained almost twenty years ago that Africa’s crisis was mainly due to the working of the ‘economy of affection’ whereby deep vested networks of traditional bonds paralysed the good functioning of markets and government [G.Hyden, 1984] If there is now a large academic consensus on the role of political factors in explaining Africa’s deep crisis there is less agreement on the role of foreign aid and its influence on the political elites and the economic regress. Different authors would argue that Africa in terms of aid have had relatively the largest access among developing countries. ‘In 1995 aid represented the equivalent of over 50 percent of African government revenues and 71 percent of their public investments ‘[Van De Walle , 2001:220] If aid flows stagnated thereafter it is not so much its magnitude but the way it is managed and impact on society that is disruptive and diminish the state capacity to run its affairs. For those authors foreign aid was more than abundant but fuelled neo- patrimonialism and during the period of adjustment (from mid eighties) it forced elites to seek ways to capture the aid rent in other ways but that rent seeking undermined at the same time the capacity of the state v. What these analyses do not explain is that instability and violence increased in the post cold war era . Other authors therefore try to go beyond the analysis of the expalantion of crisis in order to include an understanding of how crisis leads to conflict. In his most recent work R.Bates, a well known economic scholar on Africa, writes that the study of the political economy of development is the study of prosperity and violence. The Great Transformation of society (to use the words of K.Polanyi) depends critically on economic and political development. ‘Economic development occurs when persons form capital, making present sacrifices in order to reap future gains. It occurs when they form economic organizations that productively combine…such that the product of the « whole » - be it a city or a firm- exceeds the sum of what can be produced by the parts.. When people invest and combine, the city then displaces the village, the firm displaces the farm…prosperous societies emerge from the great Transformation. Political development occurs when people domesticate violence, transforming coercion from a means of predation into a productive resource. Coercion becomes productive when it is employed not to seize or to destroy wealth, but rather to safeguard and promote its creation. The political roots of development productively join with the economic when specialists in violence realize that they can best survive and prevail by promoting the prosperity of their economic base.’ [Bates, 2001:101-102]

For Bates the prevalence of violence and predation in the political sphere and the regression in the economic arena are linked. But not as an intrinsic feature of peoples or cultures but very much linked with the history of the world-system after the Second World War. Economic crisis and violence occurred ‘…where the state system that prevailed after world war II provided sufficient safeguards that political elites did not tend to treat economic policy–making as a matter of political survival. …Lacking the spur of the risk of survival (because during the east- west geo-political competition, elites were flooded with financial aid flows = our addition) , in most developing countries , those with power confronted few incentives to render coercion

7 economically productive. …Variations in the incentives faced internationally thus help to account for differences in the behaviour of states over time and , within the modern era, over place’ [Bates, 2001:104]

This explanation by Bates accounts certainly for a more complete picture of the crisis or the so called marginalisation of Africa. In order to weave cloth and create differences you need a different pattern of warp and weft. In order to explain differences between peripheral countries you need the articulation of both 'internal' and 'external' factors. What Bates does not explain is why violence and economic regress seem to be more prevalent and on a larger scale in Africa after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

One explanation is given by Wallerstein. Experiences of regress, poverty and social exclusion will be part and parcel of the world-system and people will look for a scapegoat and salvation. Since globalization will fuel unattainable dreams and frustration for many it seems possible that modernization is looked upon as the cause of their frustration and turn to the lost paradise of the traditional values. If these frustrations and aspirations are mobilized it can lead to internal violence and wars.

Bayart adds another interesting hypothesis more specifically for the evolution of the state system in Africa after the cold war [Bayart, 1998 and 2000]. The international scene has dramatically altered the ways elites in Africa respond to that new phase in dependency. The introduction of the Washington Consensus – economic and political reform, liberalization and privatization –after the fall of the Berlin Wall has impeded for many regimes the easy access for African elites to financial funds. Since the transition from predation to economic productive taxation is impossible (argument against Bates’ analysis) in most countries, because of the weak state and market structures ; war and the criminalisation of the state are the new strategies of extraversion in order to secure vested interests . In an exceptional case the transition to a succesful democracy, where the elites have been able to ‘… productively join with the economic when they as specialists in violence realize that they can best survive and prevail by promoting the prosperity of their economic base ‘ [Bates 2001:111] can be realised. This insight is in sharp contradiction with the official discourse on ‘ the bright future of Africa’ heralded by the Clinton administration. Our case study on the first international African war in DRCongo seems at first sight to confirm Bayarts’ thesis.

2. Criminalisation of the state and economic regress in the DRCongo : a prelude to the first international African war

2.1. A short historical digression

Congo got its political independence on June 30th of 1960. The colonization has been a brief period in the history of a territory populated by some 450 different ethnic groups with as many languages.

8 A first period of colonization from 1875 to 1908 was characterized by brutal predation and violent coercion on the population by the Belgian King , Leopold II. He was able to convince all hegemonic powers at the 1885 Berlin Conference to grant this huge country, 80 times bigger than Belgium, the status of ‘Etat indépendent du Congo’. This was a private territory under the exclusive governance of the King and on condition that commerce would be free for all hegemonic states and that slavery be abolished. . Further plans of developing infrastructure, policing the territory and investment in the exploitation and processing of raw materials however, drove up the costs of the empire. This led the King to hand over the territory to the Belgian state, after leaving the vault of the « Etat Indépendant du Congo » empty. The territory became officially a Belgian colony in 1908. This short period was an apparent break with African civilization and introduced the country into modernity. The specific articulation of tradition and modernity has been termed ‘paternalistic capitalism’[Bézy , Peemans and Wautelet, 1984]. If by 1960 Congo was the second industrialized country of the African subcontinent after South Africa, it did so thanks to the efforts of many but largely based on coercion and not internalized by most of the Africans who had to work and perform in one world and live in another . This dual system visualized by the opposition European ‘ville’ and indigenous ‘cité’, black and white , modern and money economy versus use value production , etc. Hence modernity – state, money, wage labor, Christianity - were superficially introduced and with few strong roots in traditional society. At independence there were only 18universtary graduates representing a very small base for the governance of a huge, resource-rich country. The post-independence period has been very heavily influenced by the international environment of cold-war rivalry . The first five year period of multi partyism characterized by a struggle of the African elites for state power further stimulated by the old metropole. Indeed Belgian economic interests tried to divide the country in order to separate and control better the copper rich province. These tendencies led to a chaotic environment. The threat of communism led the so-called triad (US, France and Belgium) in Congo to adapt a counter revolutionary strategy. This was not only the case in Congo but also in the two other key peripheral countries (Brazil and Indonesia). Revolutionary and elected regimes/persons were either eliminated (Lumumba in Congo) or neutralized (Goulart in Brasil) and replaced by military regimes under the auspices of the West. The lack of internal legitimacy was compensated by the western support and access to international money . Development paths of these key peripheral countries diverged since then. If all patron and clients of these regimes enriched themselves fabulously (The military colonels in Brazil, Mobutu in Congo/Zaire and Suharto in Indonesia) and if inequality was on the rise in all of these countries they did so in a different manner. The state apparatus and real investments rose in Brazil and Indonesia where Congo/Zaire has been characterized after a brief period of apparent prosperity (1965-1974) by economic regress and state collapse. These divergent paths can only be explained by a different ‘warp and weft’ of a different response of strategy to the same international environment, finally leading to the first international African war. Without this state collapse -whereby the military had to fend for themselves by exacting the population and did not anymore perform as an army - the civil war in Rwanda and its spill-over to Zaire would never had the detonating effect for the war as it had been the case now.

2.2. Explaining the collapsed state and economic regress

Table 1 shows the post independent record of economic growth and the income per capita. A first period up to 1974 was characterized by growth and a lot of new investment by competing international economic interests eager to exploit the mineral rich country. Playing on that rivalry , president Mobutu attracted in that period a lot of foreign capital and nationlised the Belgian Union Minière that became Gécamines . This company called the ‘mother ‘ and ‘the father’ of

9 all inhabitants of the Katanga province produced up to 500.000 tons of copper a year in 1974, represented 50 % of all exports and financed the state up to 75 % of all state revenue. Beginning of the nineties, although African cadres were multiplied by ten, the production dropped to a dismal level of 30.000 tons because of lack of spare parts, reinvestment and maintenance. Although the bankruptcy of the state mining company was somewhat compensated by the rise of diamond production in the eighties and the nineties, it was not able to finance the state because diamond production and exports are much more difficult to control and can be ‘informalized’ from the digger to the exporter. The African elite confusing property with production, underestimated the problems of organization, production and management and used these resources in a predatory way . The consequences can be read from the disastrous record of economic regression.

Table 1 : GDP growth rate and income per capita in period Average yearly growth Income per head in $ rate 1965-1974 2.7 1974-1983 -3.5 1980-1984 -4.6 1986 -0.1 1990 -6.6 168 1991 -3.4 157 1992 -13.4 146 1993 -16.5 122 1994 -7.0 113 1995 -2.5 110 1996 -4.3 106 1997 -8.3 97 1998 -5.0 92 1999 -13.4 80 2000 -14.3 68

Source : BANQUE NATIONALE CONGOLAISE , condensé de statistiques, différents n°, Kinshasa, 2000-5/2001,

That the formal sector and modernity in terms of wages or formal employment can be derived from the fact that these wages became insignificant after 40 years of independence. They crumbled from 1500 USD a year in 1967 to less than an insignificant 50USD in 1999. However as one can observe nobody would really work for such a wage, but in Zaïre/Congo the wage is only a small part of the real wage cost , since formal employment gives access to transport , indemnities, health insurance or access to healthcare, sometimes food and school fees for children. Therefore wage employment in the formal sector stays important for sustaining livelihoods. Unfortunately, notwithstanding the extremely low wages, formal employment as a percentage of total population declined in the same period from 2.7 per cent to a world low figure of 1.7 per cent. [De Herdt, 2000: x ; De Herdt and Marysse, 1996:ch.1] If wages become insignificant, social security does not exist and retreat into use-value production impossible for urbanized people, how can one survive ? What kind of popular strategy can one invent? The informalisation of society. Chart 1 depicts what has happened.

10 Chart 1: Collapse of the state, economic regress and survival in DRCongo

Accumulation

1980

Modern Wild sector capitalism Not Controlled by controlled by Survival Informal petty the state the state activities producers

Simple reproduction

2000 Accumulation

Wild Modern capitalism sector Not Controlled by controlled by Informal the state Survival the state petty activities producers

Simple reproduction

11 Chart one depicts the circular link between economic regress, state collapse and popular counterstrategy. Predatory behaviour of the post independent elite without any concern for sustainable growth condoned by cold war logic emptied the formal economy. This in turn diminished the financial base of the state which was less and less able to finance basic public goods. The collapse of the formal economy, the ensuing fall in formal employment and the failing state drove the population to fend for themselves by all possible means. This unprecedented regress of the state and the formal economy- Zaire fell from the second industrialized nation in SSA to the position of a country after decades of civil war- was partially compensated by the rise of the informal economy that has its links across the frontiers of Zaïre/Congo right into the capital cities of Europe and northern America [Mac Gaffey, 2000] . It is however useful from the standpoint of development analysis to distinguish three sub-sectors in this informal sector although members of a family can be operating in all of these sectors. Fraudulous diamond exports are two times bigger than the official exports[De Herdt and Marysse, 1996:ch.2] . As far as the money put on foreign accounts is not re-invested in the country it means that the country is impoverished by that amount and that this part of informal economy, that we termed ‘wild capitalism’is surely further undermining the country. But not all informal activities are detrimental to the development of the country. Petty producers more adapted to the needs and the small purse of the citizens do produce . Some of these petty producers are even able to save and invest without it being noticed in national accounts. I call it the blind angle of certain economists and nationals who are unable to perceive the accumulation of capital in this rather despised sector. Sure a lot of these informal activities do not have a growth potential and are purely survival strategies that will disappear if the formal economy is recovering.

As can be seen from the growth figures in table 1 and from some data in table 2 the main period of steepest decline was however situated in the nineties and thus in the post cold-war era.

Table 2 A few other economic indicators units 1980 1999 Population Millions inh. 27 50 Domestic Product Millions US$ 14922 5200 Domestic Product In % of 1980 100 35 Exports In mio$ 2507 1050 Imports In mio $ 1117 540 Copper In 1000 tonnes 468 (in year 1988) 35 Cement In 1000 tonnes 485(in year 1988) 149 Diamond In 1000 carat 18163 (in 1988) 26084

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators en Lukusa, CEDAF, 1999

President Mobutu tried to cling to power after he was sacked by the west. Since he had never had an incentive to finance his voracious appetite for ostentatious wealth out of increased production that had completely collapsed, there was little room for maneuver. Since formal production could not be taxed anymore, he used the money press as a last means . The printing of « real/false » money was so massive that by 1993 a hyperinflation of 32000% a year was the result, thereby taxing the poorest hardest, since those masses who had too little could not flee in diamond or dollars. That chaotic period led also to the impossibility of financing an army. Soldiers had to fend for themselves, meaning that they were ‘taxing’ every lorry or had to find clients in order to sell their security services. Zaire had become by 1997 a giant on clay feet and

12 any exterior or interior enemy could wage a war without great risk. Since the east of Zaire/Congo was not military controlled it was a territory where; Rwandan refugees fleeing the new Tutsi regime in Kigali found a safe haven, rebel groups fighting Ugandan, Rwandese and Burundese regimes found an easy retreat area. But the region was attractive for other reasons. Fertile and abundant land was in contrast with the very densely populated areas of the neighboring countries Rwanda and Burundi. Moreover the region harbored (new) mineral wealth (diamond, gold, coltan, timber ). The scene was set for the first international African war as Susan Rice, the former US secretary of state responsible for African affairs , termed the conflict that started on the fourth of August 1998. And that has been responsible for so many human suffering and death toll.

3. The second scramble for Africa’s resources or plunder of Africa by Africans?

In 1997 armed opposition found easy and direct military support in Rwanda and Uganda to overthrew the Mobutu regime. A self-pronounced political heir of Patrice Lumumba, Laurent Désiré Kabila, with a long standing record of armed opposition and dubious economic activity, was leading the military campaign and entered triumphantly the capital Kinshasa in may 1997. His army was however controlled by Rwandese officers and when he tried to recover his autonomy and sent them home a second war was started in august 1998 again by so-called internal opposition opposing the dictatorial regime of the new president. Rwanda and Uganda denied first their invasion but had to admit afterwards when their massive involvement became too obvious. Meanwhile Kabila had been able to mobilize Angolan and Zimbabwean military support thereby dividing the country. The western and southern part was controlled by the government and his allies (Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia) whereas the rebels controlled by Uganda and Rwanda dominated the north and the east of the country

Officially Uganda and Rwanda justified their intervention, stressing the need to secure their borders. However these countries defend their borders by invading a neighbouring country and occupying a zone more than 1000 kilometers away from their borders. Other motives and a hidden agenda is therefore suspected. First expansion of territory is a possible motive but that seems difficult because the invading forces are seen as such confronting a strong national feeling.vi. Moreover there is an international consensus that borders, although artificially constructed in Africa, must not be questioned because this would generate a domino effect of violence and war. However this motive must not be dismissed off. The alleged expansionist plans have been more attributed to the Rwandan regime than to the Ugandese. Not only has the tough military Rwandan occupation not ceased but their control of the territory (one third of Congo) has even been expanded by the compulsory use of the Rwandan currency even after the Pretoria agreement in July 2002 between president J.Kabila and president Kagame. Another hidden motive is that a military-commercial class is using the war as a means to enrich themselves . And since a war is by essence a period where activities and actions are not transparent and kept silent, it is an exceptional opportunity for predation. Thus plunder at the terrible social cost for the population, seems to be an underlying drive for the continuation of the war. Another factor pointing in the same direction is the fact that the invading Ugandan and Rwandan armies were fighting each other in August 1999 for the control of Kisangani , Congos third city who has become the second centre for diamond and gold finds and trade. Some deeply anchored beliefs in the collective African conscience is the idea that this war was behind the scene brokered by powerful international capitalist centers in order to lay their hands on the mineral wealth of Congo by using Rwanda and Uganda as interested intermediaries .A commentator of the involvement of Zimbabwe in RDCongo and the new Pretoria agreement

13 writes : ‘I must be realised that South Africa , which has been used as a conduit of Western commercial interests in the DRC, has all along been waiting in the wings to dictate terms to the DRC factions’ [Sunday Mail,18/8/2002:9] We do not only find these ideas in press and popular beliefs and radical essays but also in learned journals [Dena Montague, 2002:103-118]. A proof for this thesis on ‘the second scramble for Africa’ is seen in the position of the US and Great Britain , who supported uncritically the Rwandese and Ugandese presidents and imported mineral ores that came fro these countries , although Uganda did not produce any coltan before the war Dena Montague, 2002: 115]. The allegations and rumors about the plunder of Congolese mineral resources ultimately led to the commissioning of a UN Panel to see if there was plunder and if there was a relation between the plunder of Congolese resources and the financing of the war. In order to scrutinize the aforementioned motivations and theses we will first look into the panel’s definition of plunder or “illegal exploitation of natural resources and other forms of wealth” [UN Panel, 2001:2]. On the basis of an own definition, calculations and report of one particular commodity chain (coltan) we shall than revisit these theses and motivations.

3.1.On the problematic definition of plunder and illegal exports

The UN panel had as its main objective and task ‘to research and analyse the links between the illegal exploitation of the natural resources …and the continuation of the conflict’[UN Panel, 2001:3] In its interesting analysis the panel based itself mainly on a juridical definition. ‘In the panel’s view , the understanding of illegality is underpinned by four elements all related to the rule of law, namely : (a) violation of sovereignty…(b) respect by actors of the existing regulatory framework …(c) The discrepancy between widely accepted practices in trade and the way business is conducted...this includes forced monopoly in trading, the unilateral fixing of prices of products by the buyer…(d) the violation of international law…’[UN Panel,2001:5] . This definition and starting point can be seriously questioned. Indeed one point of criticism was the fact that the legitimacy of the government of Kinshasa came out of the barrel of a gun and not from elections. Second the leading political movement in Kinshasa , the ‘Alliance des Forces Démocratiques et de Libération (AFDL)’ headed by self elected preident L.Kabila , behaved as a one-party system and therefore contested by the rebels and the internal political opposition. The third pillar in the definition on illegality; ‘the discrepancy between widely accepted practices in trade and existing ones in the occupied zones such as forced monopoly in trading , the unilateral fixing of prices …’ were also all practiced by president L.Kabila even before they practiced it in the occupied territories. He installed a monopoly on diamond trading, used an extremely overvalued exchange rate in order to lay hands on the scarce forex , signed onerous business agreements between him or his firm (Comiex)and Zimbabwean top-military personnel etc. [Marysse, 1999 : ..] . The same practices in financing the war have largely been used by all actors involved. That makes the definition hinge on legitimacy problematic. This criticism does not imply that the panel’s exercise has been useless. At the contrary no other researchers could , without such an official UN mandate, have found such a lot of interesting and detailed material to show how war covers practices and impose suffering that could have been avoided. We think that in order to prove the link between plunder and the financing of the war, another starting point and definition would be useful. Indeed you have to prove that economic transactions such as the production and exports of diamonds, coltan, gold and timber generate value added for those directly or indirectly commanding the war. The mere fact that exports leave via Kampala and Kigali is in itself not a sign of illegal exploitation. Merchandise exports in that part of Congo will inevitably always transit via these trade routes, in peace and wartime. So the problem is not illegal exportation but the control and stealing of a part of the value added that in peacetime

14 would benefit Congo and the Congolese. If the economic surplus is now taken directly or indirectly by warlords then there is a link between economic activities and warfare. Therefore we propose the following definition: There is plunder if an economic resource, after deduction of the value added that is spent in the country, leaves the country without compensation by imports of goods or money [Marysse and André,2001:314] . From the data of the UN Panel we learn that it in this sense profits and ‘taxes’ have indeed been stolen by warring stakeholders and never benefited the Congolese. What the panel has not done is define that portion that has been withheld by the military-commercial nor what has been invested in the continuation of the war and what served for the personal enrichment of the ‘stakeholders’ military and (international) traders alike. On the basis of this definition and data from the panel and ours we’ll make a rough estimate of the extent and pillage and their relative economic impact for the occupying countries. The case study on coltan refines this methodology.

3.2. Plunder and illegal exports in peace-and wartime

Of course plunder, defined as we did above, of the mineral resources existed before the war and is not limited to war situations. Everywhere a class or group of people has discretionary power and has no accountability towards a third party it can use that power to enrich itself at the detriment of others. As can be seen from the following table Zaire/Congo was a case in point.

Table 3 : Trade Balance of DRCongo and fraudulous exports of diamond (in mio.USD)

Year 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 Exports 1.562 1.546 1.448 1.442 749 685 .official exp of 331 347 341 399 237 200 diamants (1) Fraudulous exp.of 400 417 411 480 284 239 diamant Exp.diamant/exp en 47% 49% 51% 60% 69% 64% % Imports 870 1.089 769 1.102 568 596 Solde 692 457 697 320 180 89 . BANQUE NATIONALE CONGOLAISE, condensé de statistiques, différents numéros, Kinshasa, 2000-5/2001.

This table shows that the Zairian /Congolese state was already weakened in the nineties. Diamond smuggling was estimated by the national bank as high as the official exports. We have shown elsewhere that this is a low estimate. Diamonds from Congolese origin entering Antwerp (a world trade center for diamond) are already twice as important as the legal diamond export from Congo. What the table doesn’t show is that there is not a very comprehensive control in Congo since high ranking officials control often the illegal circuits of diamond smuggling. This is an example of what Bayart calls the ‘rhizome state’. There is the official state and then an invisible one, often circumventing the laws of the official state. This ‘criminalisation’ of the state did not start with the invasion of Uganda and Rwanda. But there are a few differences. First as can be seen from table 4, during the war years 1999 and 2000 diamond production and smuggling went down as reported by the national bank . Since the occupied territories do not report their exports it means that the plunder went on but to the benefit of another militaro- commercial group. Second the ruthlessness of the occupation can be seen from table 5. Indeed not only are the benefits of the plunder going to the Rwandan-Ugandan military and commercial class with their links in international trading houses, but the scale of plunder has been increased significantly. The plunder by these two neighbouring countries is exceeding the total revenu of the Congolese state. The direct or indirect support from the US and the Bretton Woods institutions for these two African allies who have got full access to international financial flows

15 is known (They are both elected in the HIPC debt reduction exercise). It is also a testimony that although Africa is more and more the affair of the Africans and direct military intervention of the hegemonic states less likely, their role in shaping and directing wars and violence is still present.

Table 4 Estimate of the Mineral exports from Congo plundered by Rwanda and Uganda

In mio.USD RWANDA UGANDA 1999 2000 1999 2000 DIAMANT Official Exports 0,4 1,8 1,8 1,3 Non declared diamond exports for Rwanda 40 40 1,8 1,3 and reexports in the case of Uganda GOLD(1) Official exportss 0,1 0,1 95,0 89,9 Non declared gold exports*Rwanda and 29 29 95,0 89,9 reexports Uganda COLTAN Official Exports 24 16,6 13,9 - Non declared coltan exports* 240 240 13,9 -

Total declared exports of minerals(2) 61,2 68,4 438,8 380,5 Total exports declared and non declared 309 309 110,7 91,2 En % of declared exports. 505% 452% 25% 24%

Total value added of plundered diamond, 119 119 61,1 45,3 gold and coltane En % PIB (3) 6,1% 5,2% 1,1% 0,8% En % dép. Militaires (4) 146% 137% 53% 43% Sources: [S.Marysse and C.André, 2001:323-327]vii (1) we estimate the value of goldexports by multiplying the reported kilo’s by the gold-price as of April 30 , 2001 (8.300 USD/kilo). (2) IMF, Rwanda. Staff report for the 2000 article IV consultation and requests for the third annual arrangement under the poverty reduction and growth facility and for extension of commitment period, Washington, IMF, 12 December 2000, p.39 ; IMF, Uganda. Staff report for the 2001 article IV consultation, Second review under the third annual arrangement under the poverty reduction and growth facility and request for waiver of performance criteria, Washington, IMF, 19 January 2000, p.43. (3)IMF, Uganda. Staff report for the...., op. cit., 12 March 2001, p.8, 37. (4)IMF, Uganda. Staff report for the...., op. cit., 12 March 2001, p.8, 40.

Several observations can be deduced made from this table. First , the stakes of Rwanda in this war in terms of non declared exports are more important than for Uganda. So ending the war for Rwanda is seen from that angle less interesting and we must insist that we did not inflate our figures. The UN Panel e.g. estimated the net value accruing to the APR( Armée Patriotique Rwandaise) by the sole sales of coltan at 250 mio.USD during 18months in 1999 and 2000 [UN Panel,2001:36]. Second the plunder is of course considerably less than total non declared exports because a large part of it is value added that is paid for the costs of the production. Third , the value added that would have benefited Congolese traders and producers in times of peace is however sizeable. Finally, since there was a limit on military expenditure for Rwanda and Uganda as a condition for access to the financial flows from the Bretton Woods institutions, it is now clear that the plunder in the war has certainly helped to finance it and therefore has unduly prolonged the suffering. The ostrich policy of a number of bilateral donors and of the IFI’s (International Financial institutions) continuing to finance the invading countries and knowing that funds are fungible, has therefore indirectly condoned the continuation of the war.

16 In order to make the mechanism of plunder by a militaro-commercial class more visible we now turn to one commodity chain that has been extremely important in terms of financing the war effort of Rwanda especially in 2000 and 2001: the coltan commodity chain

3.3.The commodity chain of coltanviii

“Coltan” is a contraction of “colombo-tantalite”, the name of an ore combining two rare metals with similar atomic structures: niobium (Nb), also known as columbium, and tantalum (Ta). Before it can be used, coltan needs to be refined. The tantalum or niobium are separated through a chemical reaction from their ore and transformed into a metal powder. A very small group of companies in the world is capable of processing coltan. These include H.C. Starck (Germany), Cabott Inc. (U.S.), Ningxia (China), Ulba (Kazakhstan)(see Chart two) . Tantalum and Niobium powder are in great demand by a number of industries. Tantalum powder is used to manufacture highly heat-resistant electronic components needed for mobile phones, laptop computers, play stations,... Tantalum is also used in the aviation and atomic energy industries. Niobium is mostly used in heat-resistant steel and glass alloys in the construction industry. Until recently the majority of the world’s production of tantalum was from the discard slags of tin smelters. The tin mineral cassiterite is frequently associated with coltan ore. Following the gradual decline of the tin industry, new sources have emerged. The biggest coltan mines, which account for approximately 60% of the world’s production are located in Australia (Greenbushes, Wodgina, Sons of Gwalia). It is generally believed that 80% of the world’s reserves are in Africa, with DRC accounting for 80% of the African reserves. In DRC, coltan is mostly found near rivers and in riverbeds or hidden in the vast natural reserves of eastern Congo in the two Kivu provinces and in Maniema. At the end of 2000, the population of Kivu was suddenly dragged into an unprecedented “gold rush for coltan”. In a few months’ time, the price of coltan rose tenfold. In January 2000, an international trader paid between around 20 USD for a kilo of unprocessed coltan ore. By December 2000, the price peaked to approximatively 200 USD. This increase was caused by an the technology market triggered by a new generation of mobile phones (UMTS) and a rush on computer games (Sony Playstation II), causing a sudden and steep rise in the demand for tantalum powder. However, the coltan boom was short-lived and prices rapidly decreased to where they were before the “coltan gold rush”, i.e. around 20 USD/kilo. In the meantime however, thousands of destitute Congolese people had gone digging for the precious ore, a few international traders had made a fortune and millions of dollars had flowed to the parties waging war. We can’t however determine precisely what part of the value goes to which stakeholder in the commodity chain. This has different reasons. Prices are not published on the London Metal Exchange and the prices paid by the international traders is expressed in dollars per pound tantalum pentoxide contained [www.tanb.org] and this contents tantalum differs from production site to production site. Many sources give different prices even for the same period and this is mainly due to the fact that they conflate coltan with the price paid and expressed for a certain percentage of tantalum in coltan ore [BBC, 1 August 2002and ABCNews.com, 21 jan.2001]. So it is only by information from the field and from traders that we can reconstruct the puzzle and try to approximate the value added that is going to the warring parties. An example of this information with skewed results as a consequence is the estimate by the UNPanel of the money accruing to the APR (see above). The sales of Rwanda Metals , a trader immediately under the control of the Rwandan army (see Chart two) , would have brought net proceeds of 250 million USD during 18 Months in 1999 and 2000. This was based on the hypothesis that local traders fetched only 10 USD whereas the price sold by Rwanda metals was 200USD [UN Panel 2001: 36]. Moreover sales or exports were counted as net proceeds for Rwanda metals and the APR. We now know that the informal diggers - and that was only the

17 first actor in a very long local chain of traders, transporters, analysts, mine inspectors, owners of the land etc - fetched between 40 and 60 USD per kilo coltan when prices were at their highest (end 2000) . From other data we find that the price paid at the informal digger constitutes approximately half of the total value that stays in the country to pay all intermediairy services. This brings the amount of the plunder at approximately half of the UN estimate still an impressive amount of around 100 to 120 million USD , as high as the budget revenue of RDCongo. Possible large margins of error because of the secrecy surrounding the illegal exports of mineral wealth and natural resources make us only indicate the points in the commodity chain where value added ‘disappears’. Chart two depicts this commodity chain. Most coltan digging is informally done by a group of five to six mostly young people with a leader who was able to detect possible coltan finds. The group, if successful, can dig about five to six kilo a week. Since half of the production goes to the leader of the group, the owner of the land and some ‘taxes’, that leaves the informal diggers with a weekly income of about 30 USD a week if prices are high to 5 dollar if prices are at their lowest. Not really high wages, but better than other alternatives explaining the rush on coltan [de Failly , 2001:297] . There is one important exception to the rule that most coltan production is the work of informal petty producers. Certain coltan ore mining sites (Punia, Walikale and Numbi in Kivu province) known for their high tantalum content and so for their high prices is directly under the control of the APR. Rwandese prisoners work there under their control for subsistance mainly and as a kind of forced labour. From there it is transported immediately to Kigali were it is exported by an army controlled trader. Of course, needless to say that the plunder content in these cases is maximal but we do not have data on quantities produced [de Failly,2001:295] . After this first stage in the commodity chain and for the first most important variant of the digging, a myriad of actors enter the chain up to the trading posts or ‘comptoirs ‘ in the main trading centers of the region, mainly Bukavu and Goma. First, in bags of 30 kilo, coltan is transported by feet as far as twenty to thirty kilometers to a local trading center, were a first refining, weighing and definition of tantalum contents is estimated. Of course mining agents of the controlling rebel groups watching and taxing closely each stage in the commodity chain. Than these local traders transport and sell it to the regional and accredited ‘comptoirs’ who of course do pay for their license to the new political class except for those in complete control of the Rwandan army such as Rwanda Metals and Grands Lacs Metals. They further refine the coltane and let laboratory tests determine exactly the contants tantalum in the coltan ore. For the Rwandese controlled comptoirs analyses are done in Kigali or even in Europe. These ‘comptoirs’ sell it to international traders who order and offer prices in line with what they expect to fetch on the international market. It is probably in this part of the chain ; the difference between the prices that the international traders pay (or say they pay) to the comptoirs and what they get from the tantalum processing plants - mainly the four big ones H.C.Starck (Germany), Cabot (USA), Ningxia (China)and Shoa-Cabot (Japan) that most of the value added is realised . We reached this conclusion after several interviews with independent traders in Europe and the puzzling fact that all of the proceeds that the comptoirs officially get from their international traders , the price faxed to them , is almost entirely needed for paying all the stages in the local commodity chain . So except for the directly or indirectly controlled production by the APR and the taxation (almost 20 per cent ) the value added is realised elsewhere. Indeed our hypothesis is the follow and based on business practices in the sector. The four big Tantalum processing plants normally have long term contracts with large mining companies (see above), not with the informal diggers and ‘comptoirs ‘of the DRCongo. The prices of these long term contracts can be twice as high as those paid to the comptoirs by the international traders especially in the sudden price rise due to the technological hype in 2000 . So most of the

18 Chart 2: Coltan: from the Congolese war zones to the mobile phone

Trading posts (‘comptoirs’) Analysts: Alex Stewart (worldwide), Local traders Diggers - traditional: e.g. MDM, Alfred Knight (London) working in Gemicom, Copimar riverbeds Coltan - military controlled: e.g. and mines Military circuits SOMIGL, Rwanda Metals, Grands Lacs Metals International traders e.g. Cogecom, Sogem, Masingiro, Finmining,

EWR

Tantalum Tantalum processing plants powder Approx. 20 worldwide, e.g. Ulba Metallurgical International expedition and Plant (Kazakhstan), Trinitech (USA). transport companies 4 of these are capable of making tantalum e.g. ABAC, Steinweg, TMK, Ulba powder for the electronics industry: H.C. Aviakompania, Flight Line, DAS High-tech industry Starck (Germany), Cabot (USA), Ningxia Air, Sabena/SwissCargo (China), Shoa-Cabot (Japan) e.g. Alcatel, Compaq, Dell, Ericsson, HP, IBM, Lucent, Motorola, Nokia, Siemens

Mobile phones, computers, play stations…

Sources: see J.Cuvelier and T.Raeymaekers, ‘European companies and the coltan trade: supporting the war economy in the DRC’, IPIS International Peace Information Service, Antwerp, January 2002 :10 ; Kristi Essick, ‘A call to arms’, The Industry Standard Magazine, 11/6/01; E. Bruyland, ‘Bloed aan uw GSM?’, Trends, 19/4/01; Tantalum- Niobium International Study Center (www.tanb.org); Didier de Failly, “Coltan, pour comprendre...”, in L’Annuaire des Grands Lacs, Antwerp, November 2001. value added is realized by traders who sell on the spot market to the big refining companies . This rent is then shared with the regional traders by underinvoicing or other accounting practices . We have up to now no hard evidence for these assertions, except that certain international traders like Eagle Wing Resources (EWR see chart 2) who is a Dutch-American trading venture with the Rwandan president’s brother-in-law on its payroll [J.Cuvelier and T.Raeymaekers, 2002:23]. Does this final remark - that value added is probably been realised by international traders without being ploughed back in the Congolese economy - bring us back to the thesis tat the war is being fought to foster the interests of international capital with the Rwandese and Ugandese regimes as the local smokescreen ? It is certainly true that some international and regional (commercial and military) traders have benefited from the coltan rush and reaped most of the windfall profits ? However in terms of total sales for the worldwide sector of tantalum processing, the east of Congo served as an interesting , flexible response for the sudden rise in demand for coltan but was not counted upon as a long term source of stable supply, therefore long term contracts were signed with other more stable partners in Australia and Brazil. Overall RDCongo was economically as marginal as before not attracting serious long term investment because of its instability . Even for a small northern country like Belgium with important historic economic links, RDCongo has fallen in 40 years from the first trading partner in the Third World to the 25 place. Moreover Belgium has not been substituted by other industrialised nations, thereby exemplifying the contrary of the famous ‘second scramble for Africa’. It is true that a lot of junior companies looking for a quick profit had shown interest with the change of power in Kinshasa, but most of these companies are already gone without having invested in a country where ‘transaction costs’ for foreign companies are extremely important. DRCongo’s economic crisis is not so much due to the greediness of international capitalist interest but to its lack of (serious) interest.

Notes i Numbers are sometimes living a life of its own.. Based on very few observations an estimate is repeated and taken for granted. Very few sources bother to verify such dramatic figures. If one compares it to the accuracy of the 11th September death toll it is as if for African deaths we can do with approximations of a few hundreds of thousands . This has been the case with data on the Rwandan genocide and civil war and it is again the case with the casualties estimated for this first African war. This number is now estimated on an extrapolation of the former figure to be 3.5 million deaths ‘Congressional testimony of Les Roberts, Director of health Policy at the International Rescue Committee » , 107 th Cong., 2nd. Session, 7 May 2001, 2. ii Although these dependency theses are now much less fashionable in contemporary development thinking and almost disappeared they still have a large audience in some developing countries in explaning underdevelopment putting much of the blame for the suffering and their crisis on new forms of imperialism by the power centres in the world. These theses also survive in the anti-globalisation movement where they are part of the theoretical patchwork . An example can be found e.g. in A.G.FRANK, Reorient : Global economy in the Asian age ( Uinv.of California Press, Berkeley, 1998. An excellent review article on this strand of thought is G.Palma, World Development, 1989 iii The overall per capita growth picture was less optmistic than the well chosen examples in Clinton’s speech. The World Bank predicted at that time an overall – 0.5 percent growth for 1998 and 0.4 per cent for 1999. [Nicolas Van De Walle , African Economies and the politics of permanent crisis :, 1979-1999 Cambridge University Press, 2001 :4] iv See for that analysis in particular the review article by P.Collier and Jan Willem Gunning ‘Explaining African Economic performance’ Journal of Economic Literature,37(1999) :64-111. Also Pierre Englebert ‘Solving the Mystery of the african Dummy’ in World Development , 2001 v During the post independence period , governments in Africa had more or less direct access to the aid flows. Because of disenchantment with the poor development results and the African crisis that set in during the eighties

20 foreign aid became available after promises of economic reform and in the post coldwar era also tied to promises of more democratic and participatory practices. Direct access for the elites was therefore more difficult but different actions (fungibility of funds, projects off budget, car allowances, per diems, securing job opportunities in international institutions and northern NGO’s etc) that secured the access to the aid rent at the same time undermined state capacity. See for that analysis, Nicolas Van De Walle, o.c., chapter five. vi The agreement of Pretoria between the two belligerent countries was largely due to the efforts of UN secretary general Kofi Annan and president Mbeki . However many doubts on the implementation of this agreement that in principle would end this war are permitted. How could president Kabila succeed to track down and disarm the ’negative elements’ (Interahamwe and ex-rwandan army fighters) in 90 days in a territory that he does not military control , where president Kagame after four years of warfare with one of the most ‘efficent’armies in the region has not succeeded? Is the almost impossible implementation of the Pretoria agreement an argument to continue the occupation and de facto annexation of the east of Congo by Rwanda? vii Taking into account more recent and detailed information on prices in each of the stages of the coltan commodity chain we have revised our estimate of plunder in comparison with the earlier estimate published in 2001. viii I refer for a more extensive survey of this topic to two sources where we mainly draw on for this section The first in depth analysis on the importance of coltan for the Kivu by a close observer for more than 20 years of the region see A second source is Didier de Failly ’Coltan: pour comprendre…’ in S.Marysse and F.Reyntjens, L’Afrique des Grands Lacs: annuaire 2000-2001, Harmattan , Paris , p.279-306. For an account of western companies involved in the coltan business see J.Cuvelier and T.Raeymaekers, ‘European companies and the coltan trade: supporting the war economy in the DRC’, IPIS International Peace Information Service, Antwerp, January 2002 :1-27.

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