Comments on: Three Problems with the 60 Minutes Story on “Congo Gold”

By: Ntal

Ntal — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:52:18 +0000

re: 2 – John Prendergast is certainly overlooking the role he and his former boss, Susan Rice, played under the Clinton Administration in enabling the conflict. He knows that in the Kivus coltan, tin ore, zinc have been financing the conflict from the beginning, including when their favorite thesis was ethnic strife.

In the end, the Enough Project should be careful not to “darfurize” the conflict in the Congo.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:25:30 +0000

Ken Harrow–My statement simply points out how 60 Minutes did a poor job of describing and analyzing the war. I also wanted to highlight how oversimplifying the conflict can lead to a false understanding of its causes and therefore flawed policy initiatives to end it.

One thing I think should be done is for the UNSC to sanction the Ugandan and Rwandan governments, or high officials in those governments, who are directly or indirectly enabling and profiting from the trade in minerals from eastern Congo. That said, I also think there is a misplaced faith in the ability of “outsiders” to promote peace in Congo through DC-based lobbying.

Ituri had virtually the same problem set as the Kivus–land issues, gold mines, manipulation of ethnicity, foreign intervention, difficult terrain–but Ituri is largely peaceful now, thanks mainly to MONUC. Perhaps there should be a second look at what worked in Ituri to see how it could be replicated in the Kivus. But I will leave such an analysis to people who know that area much better than me.

By: ken harrow

ken harrow — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 03:20:37 +0000

i have difficulty accepting your conclusions, dan. not b/c your statements are not more or less true, but b/c they avoid the one hard truth, which is that the arms that have made the conflict so deadly are acquired by various groups whose financing comes from controlling, or acquiring, the minerals. what do you propose to end the conflict? if it is extreme to punish miners and their dependents for financing the conflict that is occurring in othe regions, it is equally extreme to say that we will not try to stop the exchange of money acquired by minerals, or timber, or whatever, for weapons.

it seems clear to me that there are two major elements in this that outsiders can address: the flow of arms into the region, and the flow of valuable minerals out to companies who are indirectly paying militias for the weapons.

what do you propose to stop this? as i said, if it is extreme to place a boycott on the entire region, it is equally extreme to avoid taking the necessary measures that would ultimately protect the lives of tens of millions of congolese.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 07:19:43 +0000

Excellent, very thoughtful and very true; I could not see the 60 minutes special, but your takedown is pretty on-point about the natural resources hypothesis that seems to be in vogue these days. Its definitely true that gold and other mines are violent places (even ones in ‘peaceful’ areas like Katanga), and some gold funds the rebels as is well known, but it really is really an exaggeration to claim that it is a ’cause’ — land rights, citizen rights, people looking for political positions, etc. are where the solutions lie – as well as broader change in the state. And doesn’t most gold exported from DRC go to industrial uses anyway? I can’t imagine much ends up in the US jewelry market.

By: News About Congo

News About Congo — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:49:46 +0000

Three Problems with the 60 Minutes Story on “Congo Gold”…

After watching the 60 Minutes program, I was left a little confused and lost, too. I could not believe that “gold” was the source of conflicts in eastern Congo. I had never heard about the gold conflict. I thought 60 Minutes was trying to dumb-down t…

By: Laura @ Texas in Africa

Laura @ Texas in Africa — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:19:03 +0000

Thanks for the link, Alex, and thanks for the excellent thoughts on the piece, Dan. So many of us are concerned that the oversimplification of a quite complex issue is resulting in bad policy that makes no one better off in the long run.

By: Dino Mahtani

Dino Mahtani — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 21:07:20 +0000

Sanctioning those who deliberately engage in trade with networks linked to armed groups may be a more sensible way of doing things. Alas the UN Security Council has not lifted a finger against a single guilty party to the conflict since at least December 2008.

By: Alex de Waal

Alex de Waal — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:42:25 +0000

There is an interesting discussion of the issue of violence and minerals over at "Texas in Africa": http://texasinafrica.blogspot.com/2009/12/show-me-data.html that makes many of the same points. There is simply no good evidence on which to argue that the extraction of minerals in Congo is a cause for violence against civilians, and advocating that the trade in minerals should be choked off, supposedly in the name of human rights, is dangerous nonsense.