Today the Democratic Republic of Congo celebrates 50 years of independence from Belgium colonial rule.
Today the Democratic Republic of Congo celebrates 50 years of independence from Belgium colonial rule.
And today the conflict continues to rage in the DRC. According to Friends of the Congo, the fighting has claimed nearly 6 million lives since 1996, making it the deadliest war since World War II.
While other conflicts in the world have tended to garner much more attention in the American media, including the fighting in Darfur and the ongoing occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, there has tended to be a lack of interest in what is happening in the DRC. The United States has had a very large role in continuing the conflict over the years, including providing millions of dollars in arms and trainings
to those interested in exploiting the millions of tons of minerals in the country.
We as consumers also have a responsibility to demand that we put a system in place to trace, audit and certify the minerals in our electronic devices. The hundreds of millions of dollars we spend on our cell phones, laptops and digital cameras enable militias and government soldiers to buy weapons to continue the fight for these valuable resources. Check out this video to learn more about how electronics continue to fuel the war.
We in the antiwar movement need to ensure that we fight against not only those wars in which our troops are directly involved, but also those which we directly and indirectly fund.
The US War Addiction: Funding Enemies to Maintain Trillion Dollar Racket
By David DeGraw, www.alternet.org
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been labeled "the richest patch of earth on the planet." The valuable abundance of minerals and resources in the DRC has made it the target of attacks from U.S.-supported neighboring African countries Uganda and Rwanda.
The DRC is mineral rich with millions of tons of diamonds, copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese, uranium, niobium, and tantalum also known as coltan. Coltan has become an increasingly valuable resource to American corporations. Coltan is used to make mobile phones, night vision goggles, fiber optics, and capacitators used to maintain the electrical charge in computer chips.
The DRC holds 80% of the world's coltan reserves, more than 60% of the world's cobalt and is the world's largest supplier of high-grade copper. With these minerals playing a major part in maintaining US military dominance and economic growth, minerals in the Congo are deemed vital US interests.
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