Africa

Suffering in the Congo
Behind the numbers

By keith harmon snow & David Barouski 

The British medical journal Lancet recently took greater notice of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). A group of physicians reported that about four million people have died since the “official” outbreak of the Congolese war in 1998. The BBC reported the war in Congo has claimed more lives than any armed conflict since World War II. Experts working in the Congo, and Congolese survivors, count over 10 million dead since war began in 1996—not 1998—with the U.S.-backed invasion to overthrow Zaire’s President Joseph Mobutu.

War in the Congo is driven by the desire to extract raw materials, including diamonds, gold, columbium tantalite (coltan), niobium, cobalt, copper, uranium, and petroleum. Mining in the Congo by western companies proceeds at an unprecedented rate and it is reported that some $6 million in raw cobalt alone—an element of superalloys essential for nuclear, chemical, aerospace, and defense industries—exits the DRC daily. Also, heterogenite, a cobalt ore, was departing the DRC in 2004 at a rate of 6,000 tons per month at about $20 per pound or $268 million per month. Therefore, any analysis of the geopolitics in the Congo requires an understanding of the organized crime perpetrated through multinational businesses to see why the Congolese people have suffered unending war since 1996.

Some people have lauded great progress in the exposure of illegal mining in the DRC, particularly by Human Rights Watch (HRW) whose 2005 report “The Curse of Gold” exposed Ugandan officials and multinational corporations smuggling gold through local rebel militias. The cited rebel groups were the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI) and the People’s Armed Forces of Congo (FAPC). The western companies targeted by HRW were Anglo-Ashanti Gold, a company headquartered in South Africa, and Metalor, a Swedish firm. However, the HRW report failed to mention that Anglo-Ashanti is partnered with Anglo-American, owned by the Oppenheimer family and partnered with Canada-based Barrick Gold. London-based Anglo-American Plc. owns a 45 percent share in DeBeers, another Oppenheimer company that is infamous for its near monopoly of the international diamond industry. Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, a director of Anglo-American, is a director of Royal Dutch/Shell and a member of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s Advisory Board. The report also suppressed the most damning evidence discovered by HRW researchers—that Anglo-Ashanti sent its top lawyers into eastern DRC to aid rebel militia leaders arrested there.

Several multinational mining companies have rarely if ever been mentioned in any human rights report. One is Barrick Gold, which operates in the town of Watsa, northwest of the town of Bunia, located in the most violent corner of the Congo. The Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF) controlled the mines intermittently during the war. Officials in Bunia claim that Barrick executives flew into the region with UPDF and RPF (Rwanda Patriotic Front) escorts to survey and inspect their mining interests.

George H.W. Bush served as a paid advisor for Barrick Gold. Barrick directors include: Brian Mulroney, former PM of Canada; Edward Neys, former U.S. ambassador to Canada and chair of the private PR firm Burston-Marsteller; former U.S. Senator Howard Baker; J. Trevor Eyton, a member of the Canadian Senate; and Vernon Jordan, one of Bill Clinton’s lawyers.

Barrick Gold is one of the client companies of Andrew Young’s Goodworks International lobbying firm. Andrew Young, former mayor of Atlanta, is a key organizer of the U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council. Young was chosen by President Clinton to chair the Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund in October 1994. Goodworks’ clients—or business partners in some cases—include Coke, Chevron-Texaco, Monsanto, and the governments of Angola and Nigeria (note weapons transfers from Nigeria cited below). Young is also a director of Cox Communications and Archers Daniels Midland—the “supermarket to the world” and National Public Radio sponsor whose directors include Brian Mulroney (Barrick) and G. Allen Andreas, a member of the European Advisory Board of The Carlyle Group.

Barrick Gold’s mining partners have included Adastra Mining—formerly named America Mineral Fields (AMFI, AMX, other names), formerly based in Hope, Arkansas, Bill Clinton’s hometown. Adastra had close ties with Lazare Kaplan International Inc., the largest diamond brokerage firm in the U.S., whose president, Maurice Tempelsman, has been an advisor on African Affairs to the U.S. government and has been the U.S. Honorary Consul General of the Congo since 1977.

Maurice Tempelsman accompanied Bill Clinton during his African tour in 1998. He serves on the International Advisory Council of the American Stock Exchange and is a director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, a “scientific” front for his offshore diamond mining—raking the seabed into oblivion.

Adastra also purchased a diamond concession on the Congolese-Angolan border from the Belgian mercenary firm International Defense and Security (1998) and currently has cobalt and copper concessions in Congo’s Katanga (Shaba) province. Adastra is a member of the Corporate Council on Africa, along with Goodworks, Halliburton, Chevron-Texaco, Northrop Grumman, GE, Boeing, Raytheon, Bechtel, and SAIC—the latter two being secretive intelligence and defense entities involved in classified and supra-governmental “black” projects.

In April 1997 Jean-Ramon Boulle, a co-founder of Adastra (then AMFI), received a $1 billion dollar deal for mines in the Congo at Kolwezi (cobalt) and Kipushi (zinc) from Laurent Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Zaire (ADFL) before they were even officially in power. The ADFL were even allowed to use Boulle’s private jet. Directors of Adastra are also former directors of Anglo-American. Other Clinton-connected founders of Adastra include Michael McMurrough and Robert Friedland—both involved in shady, criminal, offshore businesses in Indonesia, Africa, Burma, and the Americas.

Barrick sub-contracts to Caleb International, who has also partnered with Adastra in the past. Caleb is run by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s half-brother Salim Saleh, the former General of the UPDF. When Uganda withdrew from the Congo in 2002 following a so-called “peace” agreement, Saleh began training paramilitary groups to act as proxies to sustain the flow of minerals into Uganda.

Salim Saleh is a shareholder in Catalyst Co. of Canada which has a 100 percent interest in Uganda’s Kaabong goldfields. He is part owner of Saracen, a private military company created by the mercenaries-for-hire firm Executive Outcomes. The UN Panel of Experts on Illegal Exploitation of Congo’s Mineral Resources recommended Salim Saleh be put on a travel ban and have his assets frozen, but nothing was done.

Recent interventions by the armed UN peacekeeping mission in the Congo (MONUC) have concentrated on disarming or eliminating the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a rebel group that opposes the Rwandan government, and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a rebel group that opposes the Ugandan government. (Note that the Rwanda military has partnered with its erstwhile “enemies,” the FDLR, when necessary to secure resource plunder while Uganda has its own pattern of complicity with its “rebel” enemies. Rebel alliances are perpetually shifting.) The removal of these rebel groups will effectively clear the eastern Congo for further large-scale multinational mining. The Mai-Mai militia, whose stated goal is “to protect Congo from Rwandan and Ugandan invaders,” has committed documented human rights abuses, yet they appear to be off the agenda for MONUC. The Mai-Mai operate in the northern Katanga (Shaba) province and in the Kivus.

Katanga’s militias and racketeering are connected to criminal networks of businesspeople, including Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, Billy Rautenbach, John Bredenkamp, and Marc Rich. U.S. diamond magnate Maurice Tempelsman has profited from Katanga concessions since the Kennedy era. Lawrence Devlin, the CIA station chief of Lubumbashi under Eisenhower, maintained Tempelsman’s criminal rackets with direct ties to Zaire’s former President Mobutu and was subsequently employed by Tempelsman.

The Forrest Group has the longest history of exploiting the Congo, gaining its first mining concessions before the Congo declared independence from the Belgians. The group, which includes the Ohio-based OM Group, has numerous concessions in Katanga (Shaba). Chairperson George Forrest is the former chair of the Congo’s state-owned mining firm GECAMINES, and owner of the New Lachaussee weapons manufacturing company. His empire also includes munitions/arms factories in Kenya and Tanzania.

Coltan ore is widely used in the aerospace and electronics industries for capacitors, superconductors, and transistors after it is refined to tantalum. The U.S. is entirely dependant on foreign sources for tantalum, an enabling technology for capacitors essential to aerospace weaponry and every pager, cell phone, computer, VCR, CD player, PDA, and TV. U.S. import records show a dramatic jump in purchases from Rwanda and Uganda during the time they were smuggling tantalum and cobalt out of the Congo. Heterogenite

Sony dramatically increased their importation of coltan following the release of Playstation 2, while Compaq, Microsoft, Dell, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Nokia, Intel, Lucent, and Motorola are also large-scale consumers. Sony’s current executive vice-president and general counsel, Nicole Seligman, was a former legal adviser for Bill Clinton through the DC firm Williams and Connelly, LLP, whose clients also included Oliver North. Sony executive vice-president and chief financial officer, Robert Wiesenthal, is a former banker with First Boston, a supporter of Refugees International’s “humanitarian” relief efforts at Rwandan refugee camps in Eastern Congo, just before the fall of Mobutu in 1995. Wiesenthal was also financial adviser to Cox Communications, OM Group, Time Warner, and the New York Times.

Walter Kansteiner, the son of a coltan trader in Chicago, is assistant secretary of state for Africa and former member of the Department of Defense Task Force on Strategic Minerals. Kansteiner’s speech at the Forum for International Policy in October 1996 advocated partitioning the Congo (then Zaire) into smaller states based on ethnic lineage. Ironically, while the speech was being delivered, Laurent Kabila and his ADFL were beginning their march to overthrow Mobutu with the aid of Rwanda, Uganda, and the U.S. Kansteiner is a trustee of the Africa Wildlife Foundation—another euphemistic front for resource acquisition in Congo.

Bechtel, a U.S. aerospace and construction company, provided satellite maps of reconnaissance photos of Mobutu’s troops for the ADFL invasion of Congo in 1996. They also created infrared maps of the Congo’s mineral deposits. The Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) led by Paul Kagame, the current Rwandan president and graduate of the U.S. Army officers school at Fort Leavenworth, used Bechtel’s NASA maps to locate Rwandan Hutu civilians that fled the cataclysm in Rwanda in 1994. An estimated 800,000 refugees were hunted down and killed in the Congo’s forests. Bechtel’s friends in high places include former Secretary of State George Shultz (board of directors), former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger (Bechtel counsel), and retired USMC General Jack Sheehan (senior vice president) who is also a member of the Defense Policy Board at the Pentagon. Riley P. Bechtel is on the board of J.P. Morgan. Bechtel’s Nexant Company is the prime contractor on the Uganda-Kenya pipeline project, believed to ultimately facilitate petroleum transport out of the Semliki Basin of Lake Albert.

The UN Panel of Experts named New England-based Cabot Co. for conducting unethical business practices. Cabot is one of the largest tantalum processors in the world. The current deputy director of the U.S. Treasury, Samuel Bodman, was CEO and chair of the board for Cabot from 1997-2001. Current director John H. McArthur is a senior advisor to Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank.

Private military contractors (PMCs) are also big business in Africa. Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, helped build a military base near Cyangugu, Rwanda next to the Congo-Rwandan border. “Officially,” Brown and Root was there to clear landmines, but instead housed mercenaries from Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) who trained the RPF and Laurent Kabila’s ADFL for the 1996 invasion of the Congo, and the Rwandan army’s re-invasion in 1998, after Laurent Kabila threw out the Rwandans, Ugandans, Bechtel, and the IMF. The French intelligence service reported that U.S. Special Forces and mercenaries from MPRI participated in the murder of Rwandan Hutu refugees on the Oso River near Goma in 1996 and even claims to have turned over the bodies of two U.S. soldiers killed in combat near Goma. The circumstances surrounding the unofficial recovery of these soldiers remain very mysterious.

MPRI is based in Arlington, Virginia and is staffed by 36 retired U.S. generals. It is contracted by the Pentagon to fulfill the African Crisis Responsive Initiative (ACRI). This program includes the Ugandan military and it supplied military training in guerrilla warfare to Ugandan officers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina in July 1996. During the invasion of the Congo in 1998, Ugandan soldiers were found with ACRI equipment while Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have implicated Ugandan battalions trained by ACRI in rapes, murders, extortion, and beatings of Ugandan civilians.

Executive Outcomes founder Tony Buckingham has established other PMCs around Africa. Buckingham’s Heritage Oil & Gas works closely with his PMC Sandline International to manipulate the petroleum options around Lake Albert and is believed to have signed concession deals with warring armies and governments on both sides of the Uganda-Congo border. Branch Energy is another Buckingham affiliated company operating in the Great Lakes region.

Investigations of illegal weapons sales to Rwanda last year, in violation of the UN arms embargo on the region, have been hampered by the Rwandan government’s refusal to provide a list of serial numbers of the 5,000 AK-47s delivered there. The shipping country, Bulgaria, also refused to provide serial numbers and would only confirm that the weapons were sold legally to a non-embargo country, Nigeria, en route to Rwanda and DRC. The governments of Uganda, Congo, South Africa, and Equatorial Guinea—a major U.S. petroleum protectorate—are equally culpable in supporting the clandestine arms sales to the region.

Weapons shipments arriving by boat from Tanzania and Tanzania’s role in supporting war in DRC are never questioned. This may have something to do with Barrick Gold’s mining licenses in Tanzania’s Masaai territories. Aircraft flying between Tanzania, the DRC, and Kenya, are allowed to do so without proper documentation, record-keeping, or customs oversight.

Another “untouchable” arms dealer operating behind the scenes in the region is an Indian-American named Mr. Kotecha. Kotecha’s interests in South Kivu are substantial and he is openly fingered as dealing in money laundering, arms, coltan, and diamonds. After the first U.S.-sponsored invasion of the Congo in 1996, Kotecha is known to have repeatedly boasted of being the “United States Consulate” in South Kivu. Kotecha holds a U.S. passport and owns a mansion in California.

When an outspoken local defender of human rights working for a small NGO (Pascal Kabungulu of Heritiers de la Justice) was assassinated during the summer of 2005 in Bukavu, the alleged killers, including a local Congolese military commander, were identified, but MONUC and the international “community” took no action. The killing revolved around his role in exposing Congolese commanders’ involvement in contraband smuggling (which continues today).

A UN Panel of Experts in a recent report challenged many airlines and companies for undertaking illicit flights (illegal, secret, unregistered, or falsely registered) into and out of the DRC. One of many notable companies apparently connected to Victor Bout’s arms trafficking networks is Simax, an Oregon-based company using an address in Sierra Leone. However, the UN Panel of Experts has once again ignored certain western agencies —with histories of illicit activities —whose flights remain equally surreptitious and unaccountable. At the top of the list is the International Rescue Committee (IRC)—whose directors include Henry Kissinger and whose flights in and out of the Congo and internal flights to and from isolated airports in eastern DRC are completely unmonitored by MONUC arms embargo inspectors. In Bukavu, for example, all light aircraft are subject to MONUC arms embargo inspections, but IRC flights are not within the MONUC mandate.

Similarly, while the UN Panel of Experts have investigated and reported on certain illegal criminal networks and activities in Congo, they never attend to the top-level deals brokered behind closed doors by executives from Adastra, Anglo-American, the companies of Sweden’s Adolph Lundin (a close friend of George H.W. Bush), who have control of mining concessions in the Lubumbashi, Kolwezi, and Mbuji Mayi areas in the Katanga (Shaba) and Kasai provinces. U.S.-based Phelps Dodge is partnered in Katanga copper/cobalt mining projects with Lundin’s Tenke Mining. Phelps Dodge director Douglas C. Yearly is also a director of Lockheed Martin, and the World Wildlife Fund—partnered with USAID and CARE in “conservation” (read: acquisition) projects all over the Congo while CARE’s “humanitarian” agenda is also funded by Lockheed Martin.

“Conservation” interests provide the vanguard of western penetration in Central Africa. USAID, WWF, AWF, and Conservation International lead the charge. Evidence from USAID cases all over the Congo quickly contradicts all fanfare about USAID bringing “sustainable” or “community development” projects. Most notable are the Central Africa Region Partnership for the Environment (CARPE) and Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP), two programs pressing hidden military, intelligence, and economic agendas. One of the most unaccountable organizations working in the eastern DRC and western Rwanda is the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (DFGFI), which is allied with state department interests and ever pleading for gorilla conservation funds. DFGFI has ties to the western intelligence, mining, and defense establishment and is under investigation (along with USAID) for seome $5 million in USAID allocated funds from 2002-2005. Additionally, National Geographic is involved in furthering the mythologies of conservation, democracy, community development, or the lip service paid to respecting and supporting indigenous people.
 

Some people have suggested the reason that there isn’t greater awareness and equitable intervention in the Congo is because “we simply don’t know what to do” to remedy the situation. However, it is fairly clear what needs to be done, the west is just unwilling to do it because of powerful economic and geopolitical reasons. Here are some suggestions:

1. U.S. military training programs must have an oversight committee and total transparency. Western governments must end their hypocritical stance and ensure they don’t train any “rebel” or “dissident” groups, especially if they are against a democratically elected government (provided the elections weren’t fraudulent), even if the elected government isn’t politically aligned with the western ideology and/or economic ideals. To do otherwise would refute claims that the west is intervening to “spread democracy.” 
2. In parallel with number 1, a committee must be set up to ensure the same doesn’t occur for the private military companies. As multinational corporations, these firms aren’t subject to the laws of warfare of established countries. The UN must pass resolutions mandating the World Court and International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute such corporations. Lastly, when such companies are exposed for conducting illegal activities, such as aiding coups or trafficking human slaves, the corporations who conduct these activities must be blacklisted from receiving government contracts, domestic or international, and the guilty parties must be prosecuted.
3. In the arms arena, more substantial efforts must be created to intercept and prosecute “embargo busters,” illegal brokers, and arms sellers. Furthermore, those selling, transporting, brokering, funding, or wiring arms transactions for weapons specifically intended for children should receive the harshest penalties. (Certain “small weapons” are modified to reduce their weight to make it easier for a child to carry.) Firms that participate in arms shipments, transport, and/or the flow of the money generated from these sales with countries, people, or organizations that are embargoed or act against national or international law should be held accountable for their crimes. Assets can be frozen, travel bans imposed, and all government and economic business ties with such firms severed. These penalties must also have an assurance of enforcement.
4. Debt relief is essential, but ways must be found to protect IMF and World Bank loans from being used for military expenditures. The motivations of World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz are suspect as he is a former deputy secretary of defense under George W. Bush, a former ambassador to Indonesia under Ronald Reagan, a PNAC member, and a dual citizen in Israel. Likewise, the World Bank and IMF must shift their policy of privatization as a stipulation for loan approval in order to stimulate business growth within the state instead of having the business sector growth be almost entirely from multinational corporations. The World Bank and IMF must also provide debt relief to the counties that need it most according to economic indicators. Some countries receiving debt relief, like Uganda and Rwanda, are among the biggest spenders of their loans in the military sector. A majority of spending should occur on infrastructure and public services and this should not benefit the standard set of “embedded” western corporations.

     The loan money should be used in areas that need development the most. For example, in Uganda, the loan money Museveni has used for development has focused in the south in Kampala, the capital, and in Mbarra, his hometown. Meanwhile, the Acholi people, who always vote against Museveni’s party in the polls, are ignored and the situation in the Lira, Gulu, and Kitgum districts continues to deteriorate. In addition, individual countries must examine the aid they give to countries that spend a high percentage of capital on military, as well as commit human rights abuses. Lastly, it should be noted that debt relief has not harmed banks that gave the loans in the first place and collected on interest rates, not to mention the U.S. businesses that profit on the privatized businesses as part of the loan deal while the debt is eventually transferred to taxpayers. Thus transparency is needed to insure that costs are also incurred by the firms granting the loans (if they want credit for their “humanitarian” debt relief).
5. Western countries must end the impunity for those responsible for looting minerals from the Congo. Firms that purchase smuggled minerals and/or purchase concessions from illegitimate rebel groups must be prosecuted. The World Court recently made a start by convicting Uganda and fining the government, but Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe remain unaccountable for their direct pirating, as are the western firms that purchased the minerals and western individuals supporting them. The Kimberly Process, established with the support of academic and intelligence experts at Harvard University, is a perfect example of the gatekeepers policing their own gates: the huge, entrenched, but secretive interests like the Oppenheimer/DeBeers and Maurice Tempelsman owned companies, are legitimized as dealers of “clean” diamonds, while the other, far less connected competitors and challengers of the status quo, including Congolese children sneaking into mines and being shot for “stealing” diamonds off their own starving families’ former lands, are demonized as dealers of “blood” diamonds.
6. The World Court and International Criminal Court must hold all military and civilian leaders that are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity —African, U.S., European—accountable for their actions. The west must not be allowed to shield criminals from prosecution by virtue of their economic and political alliances with western governments. Governments that harbor these criminals should be subject to prosecution. Economic sanctions may not be proper, as poor nations generally suffer severe civilian casualties as a result, but specific involved individuals in government and the military must be held accountable.
7. “Peacekeeping” forces, in particular MONUC, must be examined to ensure that their mission is being conducted with the interests of promoting stability in the country. As illustrated, elements of MONUC have used the mission as a cover to further the agenda of the west and its corporate sponsors under the banner of “peacekeeping,” causing the death of civilians in the process. Those responsible should be tried and prosecuted. The investigations should not stop at individual soldiers or brigades committing crimes, but uncover the motivations behind MONUC operations. There have been reports of MONUC troops looting ivory, gold, and animal skins in national parks. Villagers say that they have seen murders occur right in front of MONUC soldiers who didn’t act to prevent the killings. MONUC soldiers have raped Congolese women. When pro-Rwandan rebel leaders Laurent Nkunda and Jules Mutibusi, both war criminals wanted by the UN, took over Bukavu by force in May 2004, MONUC provided them with weapons and vehicles. Nkunda has stated the head of MONUC, William Swing, personally gave him a telephone to use during the raid.
8. The international media is completely silent on virtually every major issue of significance with respect to war in the DRC—and the international and criminal networks behind it. A boycott of key publications should include the most offensive: Boston Globe, Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, US News & World Report, USA Today, New York Times, the New Yorker (Conde Nast Publications), Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly (highly subsidized by Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman) and, especially, National Geographic.  
9. The fog of war needs to be cleared away from so-called ”humanitarian” and “human rights” programs, organizations, and individuals currently aligned with the western corporate enterprise. Notables in this category include: Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, CARE, USAID, Norwegian People’s Aid, International Crises Group, International Rescue Committee, Refugees International, the Genocide Intervention Fund, and many UN bodies, but especially UNHCR. Most of these agencies appear to exist merely to perpetuate their own survival. Doctors Without Borders also deserves scrutiny for their recent actions in the DRC.
10. The peace and justice community remains unaccountable for its failure to take any significant actions to mitigate war in the Congo and expose the reasons behind it. A first step should be to open up the spaces to alternative voices currently excluded by major social justice media venues. Second is to declare a boycott on diamonds and gold and an organized campaign to protest and economically castigate diamond stores where Lazare diamonds are sold. A third action is the commitment of meaningful funds—both from individuals and organizations—to support the vibrant grassroots organizations and individuals working for human rights, women’s health, disarmament, education, food security, rainforest, and environmental defense in Congo. Fourth, people need to break through their fear (inculcated by the western media) of taking action to help people in the Congo. There is no reason—except the unacceptable—that westerners cannot establish a Witness for Peace program there.
11. Rights groups with missions pertinent to the Congo’s needs must expand their missions to include the Congo. Rape is endemic in the Congo. Survivors often give birth to HIV positive children with no prospects for medical or financial help. This has lead to an insurmountable need for aid to care for the orphans. Mothers of children conceived of rape are often disowned by their village and families. Western feminist and women’s rights activists and organizations must get involved and provide resources for the victims of rape in Congo. Those responsible for rapes must be tried and punished. Indeed, evidence from rape cases shows that sexual violence is significantly reduced simply by holding military officers accountable for their troops’ actions—but this is not happening.
12. MONUC’s Radio Okapi is the lifeline of news in the DRC today, but is largely comprised of UN programming. The United Nations needs to be pressured to open up the Radio Okapi network, eliminate the “fluff” pieces, and diversify and deepen its programming. As a simple example of how things could easily be improved, programs that sensitize the public to the issue of rape and sensitize the military to the punishment for it could easily be implemented. Such programming is never considered.
13. The transitional government in the Congo is comprised of military leaders and government officials. They must be held accountable for their crimes. Like the individuals, organizations, corporations, and governments that have supported them, all are responsible for crimes against humanity.

     The current profiteering in the DRC is enabled by these key players at the highest levels of the DRC government and whose crimes remain hidden by the western press. The transitional government must not be allowed to appoint war criminals to cabinet or parliamentary positions, as well as local governor positions in the province.

keith harmon snow is a journalist and photographer who has worked in 17 countries in Africa (allthingspass.com). David Barouski is a journalist and nursing student focused on mitigating suffering in the DRC.

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