vruz:
“What keeps the war going is eastern Congo’s vast mineral wealth—gold, diamonds, tin and coltan, a vital component in mobile phones. Nkunda imposes a tax on illegal miners in his area; other militias do their own digging. Either way, the puny salaries offered if fighters disarm and join the national Army provide scant incentive to give up mining. Most of the take is smuggled out through Rwanda—and that may be a key. Enforcing a ban on minerals from militia-held areas might at least slow the fighting. Still, it’s a tall order. ‘If there were something easy that could fix the Congo, it would have been done,’ says Anneke Van Woudenberg of Human Rights Watch. ‘There’s no magic bullet.’” - Africa’s Other Holocaust
— via robot-heart-politics