Saturday, December 13, 2008

U.S. & British Ally Fuels Conflict in the Congo

The United Nations published a report by its expert panel that supports what the Congolese people have known and been saying for the longest. Now that the world has acknowledged the nature of the 12 year conflict in the Congo, we may finally start to see policy prescriptions that reflect the truth and include what the Congolese have argued for some time now.

The U.N. panel of experts was lead by Jason Stearns and consisted of Dinesh Mahtani, a British finance expert; Mouctar Kokouma Diallo, a Guinea customs experts; Peter Danssaert, a weapons trafficking expert; and Sergio Finardi, a military logistics expert for a nonprofit group in Italy and the U.S. that monitors arms deals.

Some of the highlights from the report include the following:
1. Extensive evidence of high-level communication between the government of Rwanda and the Tutsi rebel group known as the Congress for the Defense of the People.

2. Rwandan soldiers helped bring recruits, some of them children, to Congo’s border to fight in General Nkunda’s rebellion.

3. Congo's military is collaborating with the FDLR

4. Rwanda has facilitated the supply of military equipment and has sent officers and units

5. Laurent Nkunda's CNDP has used Rwanda as a rear base for fundraising meetings and bank accounts

Click here to download (PDF) the entire UN report.

2 Comments:

At 5:50 PM, Blogger Ann Garrison said...

YES!!! Finally. The New York Times, Der Spiegel, and the UN all say Rwanda is behind Nkunda but then refuse to say the obvious, that the U.S., and Britain, or, more precisely, the U.S. and its Anglophone allies, including Canada and Australia, the 51st and 52nd state, are behind Nkunda.

Canada is the new mining superpower in Africa. Vangold-Canada is driling for oil and natural gas in both Lake :Abert and Lake Kivu. Vangold's drilling contracts are with Rwanda, even though both lakes are on the Rwandan/Congolese border.

Cabot, which refines and markets more tantalum, from coltan, than any other corporation in the world, is also a Canadian company. However, Cabot says that they purchase no coltan that they know to have been mined in Congo or Rwanda, which is very hard to believe.

 
At 2:22 PM, Blogger James said...

Exactly, I think the western media underestimates the influence that western governments and mining companies have on these conflicts.
Do you know where to find more information on what companies are operating in eastern the DR Congo?

 

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