Congo, The Dark Side

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:Table Normal; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Times New Roman; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Times New Roman; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} It was just recently that Steve Hege, the coordinator of the UN’s Group of Experts, was exposed in the media as the pro-FDLR revisionist that he is; the term used was ‘Ideological Warrior’, if memory serves me right. How, you may ask, did he secure that job then? He is no stranger to the UN. Before this ‘gig’, he worked as a consultant in Nepal and Lebanon and as an adviser on the UN Security Program in the DRC (military and police). He is, indeed, quite an influential “expert” in both the UN and NGO circles. This is where the story gets interesting… the year was 2009 when Steve Hege and his ‘buddy’, Jason K. Stearns, saw the great potential for making billions of dollars on the backs of the suffering masses in the East of the mineral-rich DRC and its never-ending wars. In and out of Congo since 2001, Jason Stearns is no stranger to the Congo wars and their opportunities for profit. A former employee of the United Nations’ Mission in Congo-MONUC, he was appointed by the UN Secretary-General to lead an investigation on the violence in this Central African country in the year 2008. Together, these two gentlemen, undoubtedly, form a dynamic duo with unparalleled influence in the highest circles of the UN and… the US Congress. Using their affiliation with the very influential American Think Tank, CIC (Center on International Cooperation), Hege and Stearns proposed a plan to put in place an organ, referred to hereafter as the “Enterprise” in this article, to be in charge of overseeing the extraction and distribution of 4 of Congo’s most sought after minerals: Gold, cassiterite, coltan and tungsten… all of which are found in the two Kivu provinces affected by the ongoing conflict. The idea is to create a ‘conflict-free’ label controlled by the “Enterprise” and imposable on all min erals extracted in the DRC, if all goes according to plan in the Kivu region; this plan would effectively turn the DRC into the new Eldorado of young foreign entrepreneurs eager to make a serious buck. For funding, the partners thought out the perfect scheme under the hood of the United Nations and the European Union; a Great Lakes conference to give it a framework and the seal of approval of the United Nations to throw dust in the eyes of the major donors and facilitate raising millions of dollars needed for a startup with such a scale of ambition. For the sake of political correctness, the “Enterprise” was disingenuously dubbed “Project for independent supervision of eastern Congo’s mines”. The mission, as stated, is to fight the militarization of resources, a noble goal that everyone would be proud to support. To help convince donors of the importance of such an organ, the “Enterprise” enlisted the help of friendly NGOs that would help do the groundwork by producing cascades of alarmist reports on the situation in the Great Lakes region… easy when dealing with a region that has known only chaos for the last two decades. On the side of big multinationals, including U.S. based ones, the plan was thought out perfectly; they would, indeed, find themselves in support of such a plan whether they liked it or not, or risk being at the receiving end of heavy criticism from lobbyists and NGOs for being immoral and avid consumers of Congolese minerals at the expense of human suffering for profit. Accusations which would, of course, hurt their brands; in other words, show me the money and I will show you the immunity! Nintendo knows all too well what I’m talking about. The duo was able to petition the “Friends of Congo”, and well-meaning US Congressmen lobbied actively passing laws imposing the concept of “corporate responsibility”. The “Enterprise” was able to hijack the humanitarian values of American policies in DRC. To justify their project, our dynamic duo argued that Congolese institutions are too corrupt and inefficient, by definition, to handle this kind of ‘gargantuesque’ task. Is Africa such a backward place that every time someone claims that locals lack the ability to deal with their own problems, western societies don not find the need to question the absence of unequivocal evidence to substantiate such a claim? Pushing such an argument, the “Enterprise” proposed that it be given all the necessary independence to operate freely as, and I quote, ‘the famous Group of Experts of the UN’… in fact, the “Enterprise” can easily be called the avatar of “The Group”! And why think small; on behalf of the Congolese Government, they are setting the standards of legal and illegal minerals. Under this plan, the ‘Enterprise’ will also be able to report suspicious intermediaries, based on eyewitness accounts, just like the ‘Group’. Even though the enforcement is left to the Congolese Government, the “Enterprise” will also have the power to have anyone detained on the basis of eyewitness accounts. And to top it off, the “Enterprise” will enjoy the ultimate comfort of being under the protection of the UN in the DRC and its annual $ 1.5 billion budget. Understandably, they will also be in charge of the, so-called, ‘dynamic mapping’, which means, in lay man’s terms, that they will be able to assess the situation in real-time and review their areas of operation whenever they see fit. To this end, a command and control center will be put in place to oversee the entire system by centralizing information collected by special cells deployed in nine strategic cities. Useful precision, these cells will operate in total symbiosis with the NGO Human Rights Watch and others. The “Enterprise” takes care of its friends. After considering the mountain of evidence pointing to the true intentions of Steve Hege and Jason Stearns, it is now clear that their, so-called, ideology was only a smokescreen to shield us from a much bigger and gruesome picture: a modern-day neo-colonial venture ring “legally” exploiting one of the richest regions of the world! Steve Hege and his pal, Jason Stearns, are not the neutral observers and impartial investigative experts they would want us to believe they are; quite the contrary! They are the mastermind of a shady “Enterprise” that aim to, with their friends,indirectly control ofthe minerals in Congo. Unfortunately, the attainment of this objective has been unintentionally facilitated by the newly-adopted securities rules requiring public companies to disclose the exact source of minerals procured from DR Congo. Yet the new rule, part of the broader Dodd-Frank package of mostly finance industry regulations, is aimed at supporting efforts to curb the exploitation of mines by rebel groups and militias in eastern DR Congo. But it is having the opposite effect, as trade in minerals is being pushed underground, creating windfall profits opportunities for militias and smugglers. A noble cause that has been hijacked! In other words, it seems the “Enterprise” is usurping the laudable cause defended by the US Congress and administration, for the personal benefit of a few. It is now also crystal clear that the tsunami of accusations against Rwanda is part and parcel of this grand scheme. With R wanda trapped in the game, Hege could eventually give a clean bill of health to his friends in the FDLR and, through them and others, gain complete control of the minerals in this sea of chaos and despair. The author is a practicing journalist and media owner in Rwanda Domique Bourra, an information and cyber war-fare specialist has contributed to this article.