The Bleeding Elephant in the Room - Investigation of the DR Congo, Part One

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a country located on the Western coast of Africa, surrounded by many countries including Rwanda, Uganda and the Congo. It is a country involved in decades long conflict, most of which can be traced to the end of the Rwandan genocide, when many Hutu rebels responsible for acts of genocide fled to the DRC - then called Zaire and ruled by Joseph Mobutu, a former army chief. Rwanda invaded Zaire to exterminate the rebel leaders in 1997, and this incited Congolese anti-Mobutu rebels - with the help of external sources, primarily Uganda and Rwanda - to up-rise and replace Mobutu with Laurent Kabila (for whom support was not unanimous) and rename Zaire the DRC. Before long, troops were in, rebel groups were formed, and war was raging. Since then, Laurent Kabila was assassinated, to be replaced with his son, Joseph Kabila, who was later elected democratically in 2006. Joseph signed peace accords with Uganda and Rwanda in 2001, and when they pulled out, the UN peacekeeping mission (MONUC) went in. However, a year later, troops were back inside the DRC.



The conflict in the DR Congo is further incited by the wealth of resources the country holds. Everyone is fighting to gain control of some of it, and many North American consumers endorse the bloody harvest of minerals and wealth daily without knowing it. The biggest example of this is the mining of coltan, which is used in cellphones, iPods, laptops, DVD players and almost all of our other consumer electronics. The DR Congo is a major supplier of this mineral world wide, and although the government of the DRC claim to control 80% of the mines, most of them are clearly in the control of rebel groups with guns. Those that are not are being run by the Congolese army, who - although officially opposing the rebel groups and their practices - tax workers illegally and in many ways mimic the rebel groups.

This conflict, the struggle for wealth between armies and rebels, has caused as many as 5 million civilian deaths. Congolese are displaced every day, forced into refugee camps that the government is currently trying to close as they attempt to get foreign troops off their soil. Citizens are raped, abused, robbed and ignored by most of the world. The conflict is consistently on the "Top Ten Humanitarian Crises" list from Docters Without Borders, and is rising to the attention of the international community once more.

This leads us to enquire, what is Canada's position in the DRC?