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Beneath Congo’s soil lies an estimated (at 2011 prices) <https://news.un.org/en/story/2011/10/390912-dr-congo-un-advises-prudent-use-abundant-resources-spur-development> $24 trillion in natural resources, including rich supplies of oil, gold, diamonds, the coltan used in computer chips, the cobalt and nickel used in jet engines and car batteries, the copper for bathroom pipes, the uranium for bombs and power plants, the iron for nearly everything. This wealth is the source of untold suffering. Today, more Congolese are displaced <http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/briefing/2017/10/59eefe3e4/unhcr-warns-worsening-displacement-democratic-republic-congo.html> from their homes than Iraqis, Yemenis, or Rohingyas. Yet their miseries are all but invisible, in part because the identities and aims of Congo’s myriad combatants are mystified by layers of rumor and misinformation, which serve the interests of those profiting from the mayhem. Congo’s chronic instability has always been rooted in external interference. Created in the ninteenth century by Belgian imperialists, the country was ruled during the cold war by the flamboyant, leopardskin-draped dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who, in exchange for billions of dollars in CIA cash, kept the nation’s riches under Western control. After the Berlin Wall fell, the US, alarmed by Mobutu’s warming relations with Sudan’s Islamist leadership, backed an invasion by the armies of Uganda and Rwanda that toppled Mobutu and occupied over 1,000 square miles of eastern Congo, which they proceeded to plunder for its natural resources. Most of the dirty work was done by Congolese proxy forces armed, trained, and supported by Uganda and Rwanda. http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/02/19/congo-for-the-congolese/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
