News

November 17, 2008

DRC Disaster Could Spell Serious Supply Disruptions To Tin, And Serious Issues Of Conscience To The World’s Mobile Phone Users

By Alastair Ford

Who knows how it will go, up there in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where rebel soldiers marching in the name of their leader and aspirant leader of the whole of the Congo Laurent Nkunda now control large swathes of land in country that’s rich in tin, tungsten and tantalum. Now that Angolan and Zimbabwean troops are reported to be active on the ground up there it looks like the start of the whole Congo civil war all over again. Whether the UN, or more pertinently the US and the EU will let it come to that remains somewhat open to doubt, but there’s no doubt the situation up there is fluid, to say the least.

The UN negotiator, former Nigerian president Obasanjo, appears to have negotiated a peace that’s been about as viable as the anti-corruption drives he initiated back in his own country, just a few short years ago. So the so-called “general” Nkunda is back on the march, and his troops are causing all manner of chaos. In television media interviews he denies involvement in any atrocities, although he does admit that collateral damage is inevitable in a civil strife like the one he’s helping to...