Dancing in the Glory of Monsters

by Jason Stearns

  At the end of the day, and despite the considerable profits that some Zimbabwean businessmen and officers made, Operation Sovereign Legitimacy did not get a good return on its investments in the Congo. Lured by the promise of vast mineral deposits, the Zimbabwean generals did not realize that rich veins of turquoise copper and blue cobalt were locked up in layers of granite and slate. Unable to finance the billions of dollars of infrastructure rehabilitation and investment needed, Zimbabwe had to content itself with smaller deals—slag heaps, artisanal diamond production, and small-scale mining. Many loans given to the Congolese government were never paid back, and Rautenbach, like other clever businessmen, preempted much of his profits going to Harare through some accounting technicalities. He would sell the ore to one of his offshore holding companies at production price, reducing any profits that could have been taxed by the Congolese state or shared with his Zimbabwean backers to almost zero.34 “Zimbabwe ended up with the dirty end of the stick,” Professor Kampata, an official in the Congolese ministry of mines, told me. “The Congo, at least, got what it wanted: military assistance.”35

  The Zimbabweans did not want to invest the billions of dollars needed to get the various diamond mines, copper processors, and timber mills up and working again. In the Senga Senga diamond mine, the Zimbabwean-appointed managers tried to run the elaborate mining equipment on diesel, which they imported over thousands of kilometers, instead of investing in repairing the nearby hydroelectric plant. At the Kababankola mine, Bredenkamp’s managers contented themselves with carting off and processing the tailings and slag heaps that were left over from previous mining operations; any further excavation was deemed too expensive. The Zimbabwean Electricity Supply Authority thought it could make money through hydroelectric power production on the Congo River, but here again they would have had to invest billions in refurbishing turbines and setting up power lines.36 As for the enormous logging concession in northern Katanga, the Zimbabwean managers could not attract the investors they needed to buy trucks and, above all, fix the hundreds of miles of roads that were needed to export the timber.

  The promised mining El Dorado failed to materialize.

  As Kinshasa leveraged its copper, cobalt, and diamond mines to obtain Zimbabwean support, the Rwandans and their RCD allies funded their military operations in the Congo largely by trading in Congo’s gold, coltan (used for capacitors in cell phones and video game consoles), tin, and diamonds. The key difference is that a racket run largely by Rwandans and their allies, not by Kinshasa, was perceived as foreign exploitation, a strange distinction given that Laurent Kabila had been brought to power by the Rwandans and had not been confirmed by elections.

  To understand mining in the eastern Congo, airports are a good place to start. Given the collapse of roads and railways in the country, planes were often the only way to get from one place to another.

  Pierre Olivier was an institution in Goma.37 The son of a local chief who had worked for the Belgian colonial administration, he has chestnut-colored eyes and big, muscular features that make his limbs seem oversized, almost bloated. I got to know him over several years; he could often be found on local soccer fields on the weekend, protecting the goal line and chatting with friends. He had been taught to fly by his father, who had had a passion for hunting. In the late 1970s, when the hinterlands of the Kivus only hosted a quarter of its current population, they would take a small Cessna to overgrown airstrips in the jungles of Walikale and Maniema to camp out in the wilderness and hunt for antelope and hippopotamus. In some places, pygmy trackers with bows and poison arrows would accompany them; once, he remembered, a local chief with a feathery headdress came to meet them, borne on a palanquin.

  By age fourteen, Pierre had learned to fly and shoot a double-barreled shotgun. When he was sixteen, he and his father founded their own airplane company, flying merchandise into jungle towns to the west of Goma and taking bags of minerals and palm oil out. They would land on roads and on bumpy, dirt airstrips overgrown with elephant grass. “Back then, our only problem was paying off Mobutu’s thugs,” he said, laughing. “That was problem enough.”38

  As soon as the second war started in August 1998, it was clear that there had been a shift in motivation. “Business,” Olivier said emphatically. “The first war had been about getting rid of the refugee camps and overthrowing Mobutu. The second was about business.”

  The security imperative was still present for Rwanda. The northwest of their country was engulfed in a brutal insurgency, led by Rwarakabije’s Hutu rebels. But the second war was a much more costly exercise, involving up to 35,000 Rwandan soldiers who became bogged down in trench and counterinsurgency warfare hundreds of miles into the Congolese jungle. In addition, some Rwandan businessmen, together with leading RPF politicians, had become aware that there were hefty profits to be made in the Congo, particularly in the minerals trade.

  Rwanda’s shifting priorities became clear to Pierre in his flights. He flew their troops into mining areas, where Rwandan commanders would be in charge of loading tons of tin and coltan into airplanes. Pierre proceeded to count towns off on his thick fingers: “Lulingu, Punia, Kalima, Kindu, Walikale—we emptied the minerals stockpiled there at the beginning of the second war. There was so much ore, it took us weeks.”39

  This first phase of profiteering targeted the low-hanging fruit, assets that were easily converted into cash. Between November 1998 and April 1999, the Rwandan army and its RCD allies removed between 2,000 and 3,000 tons of tin ore and up to 1,500 tons of coltan from the warehouses of SOMINKI, a state-run mining company active in the Kivus, worth between $10 and $20 million, depending on the grade of the ore.40 The Congolese commander of the RCD troops, Jean-Pierre Ondekane, brazenly entered the Central Bank offices in Kisangani and seized between $1 million and $8 million in Congolese francs, which he then dispatched to Kigali.41 Similar looting was carried out in the area controlled by the Ugandan army.

  For the most part, this initial pillage targeted state companies and large businessmen. In many towns the Rwandan troops were relatively disciplined and even arrested or executed soldiers who stole. The occupying army, however, had a difficult time maintaining logistics chains into the deep Congolese forest, and they often granted advancing columns the right to sustain themselves through pillage. A Belgian missionary based in Kongolo, northern Katanga, described the arrival of Rwandan troops there:Going from house to house, they first stole everything they could find for food, including goats and chickens. For firewood, they took furniture that they found in the houses, even the cradles! Afterwards, as they were installing themselves for a long period, they stole beds, mattresses and sheets. They also got their hands on generators and heavy material, sending these home to Rwanda by road and air.... They took more than five hundred gallons of fuel and two vehicles belonging to the medical service, not to mention the beating and injury of the parish priest and the theft of his belongings.42

  The occupying forces then set up structures through which they could extract new resources. In the area occupied by the Rwandans, this was done systematically, by controlling all stages of mineral production, from the digging to air transport to the export company in Kigali. The Rwandan army sent hundreds of prisoners—mostly Hutu who had been accused of taking part in the genocide—from jails in western Rwanda to work in coltan, gold, and tin mining pits. “You should have seen the look on the faces of those people,” Pierre said, recalling the ones he transported. “They were sad, exhausted, depressed.” Elsewhere, the diggers came voluntarily and were paid for their work, but were often supervised by soldiers. At the landing strips, it was always Rwandan soldiers or their RCD allies who accompanied the shipments of coltan and cassiterite (unrefined tin ore).

  According to Pierre, only several businessmen close to Kigali were allowed to ship minerals out from the Rwandan-controlled mines. “They monopolized the mines,” he insisted. Benjamin Serukiza, the former RCD vice governor of South Kivu, confirmed this: “I had to mediat
e between local businessmen and the Rwandan brigade commander here. He only wanted to allow one Rwandan trader, who was close to the Rwandan government, to have access to the mine. He said it was for security reasons, but we knew it wasn’t.”43

  The initial profits, however, were nothing compared to what was to come. “Everything changed in 2000, when the coltan price soared,” Pierre Olivier remembered. It was a fluke. That year, the information technology bubble coincided with heightened demand for cell phones and the Christmas release of a Sony PlayStation console. Demand for tantalum, the processed form of coltan, had been rising steadily for years, but now the markets got caught up in a buying frenzy. Within months, the local market price of tantalum shot up from $10 to $380 per kilo, depending on the percentage of ore content, while the world price peaked at $600 per kilo of refined tantalum.44 Dozens of comptoirs—mineral trading houses—opened up in Bukavu and Goma to take advantage of the coltan rush.

  That rush injected millions into the local economy. Exports from the eastern Congo and Rwanda soared to somewhere between $150 and $240 million in 2000 alone, and profit margins were high.45 Cities in the region were flush with cash, and wild rumors circulated of small-time traders becoming millionaires within months. As most Congolese do not have domestic bank accounts, their investments went overseas or were put into local real estate, fueling a construction boom. Everywhere you looked there was scaffolding made out of eucalyptus saplings, especially along the popular lakefront properties. The nightclubs were full, and patrons paying in hundred-dollar bills were not uncommon.

  Olivier had his own stories of opulence. In 2000, in the middle of the coltan boom, he flew to Kigali, where a sullen man in a cheap suit boarded the plane with a jeep-load of battered cardboard boxes, sealed with cheap tape. It was evening, and the man insisted on sleeping onboard the airplane, along with several of his bodyguards, before flying to Bukavu the following day. It was only when his customer was disembarking that the strange man approached him with an impish smile and confided to him: He had been sleeping on $15 million in Congolese and U.S. bills, he cackled, and hurried off. “Cash flow,” Olivier said, shaking his head, “was always a huge problem. The banks didn’t work, so people had to travel with tens of thousands of dollars on them.”

  The coltan price stayed high between June 2000 and July 2001, producing record profits for the RCD, the Rwandan government, and their business associates. Some researchers estimate that net profits made by Rwandan companies could have been as high as $150 million for this period for coltan alone, while other researchers calculate total profits made off the minerals trade at $250 million per annum throughout their occupation.46 For Rwanda, whose entire annual budget was $380 million at the time, this income made its expensive involvement in the Congo possible. President Kagame himself described their involvement in the Congo as “self-sustaining.”47 He was more than right. Rwanda’s official military budget was $55 million in 2001, almost a third of total spending, but the London-based International Institute for Security Studies put the real amount at $135 million.48

  But was it just about sordid greed? Were the vampires sucking blood just to quench their grisly thirst, or was there a more nuanced explanation? Individual Rwandan commanders did get rich—it was difficult not to notice the influx of luxury SUVs and the construction of elegant houses in Kigali during the war. Nevertheless, for the most part, the profits facilitated the war. The Rwandan government had an army of 60,000 soldiers to pay and supply. At the same time, the regime was facing its own political challenges. Its first two prime ministers had defected, along with dozens of high court judges, ministers, diplomats, army officers, and even soccer players. They all protested widespread abuses by the security services, a repressive political climate, and a general authoritarian drift. Like many one-party regimes that faced stiff opposition, the Rwandan Patriotic Front increasingly resorted to patronage and repression to deal with dissent.

  “It would be a mistake to see this just as personal greed,” the former high-ranking RCD officer told me. “They were very organized; they provided military escorts to mineral shipments so that we couldn’t stop them at the border; they decided which businessmen could do business. But I also saw Rwandan officers jailed and beaten for having stolen money!”49 Indeed, according to one human rights report, despite the profits coming out of the Congo, civil servants in Rwanda were asked to give up to one month’s salary per annum as contribution to the war effort.50 For many Rwandans, from the presidency down to the school teacher, the war in the Congo was an ideological project, not just an opportunity to plunder.

  The government set up a Congo Desk within the external intelligence office that dealt with all aspects of Congo operations. Anyone interested in doing business in the Congo would have to pass through the Congo Desk, which would help them with security and to obtain tax exemptions. “There were many Rwandan businessmen who came to the Congo to do business—this is true,” Patrick Karegeya, who as intelligence chief played a key role in providing protection, told me. “But it was all legal business, there was nothing illegal about it.”51

  Nonetheless, many of these companies had close family or financial ties to the Rwandan government, employing army officers as directors or allotting substantial shares to the party. Rwanda Metals, a company that the ruling party controlled, was the main buyer of minerals from the eastern Congo, and the managing director was appointed directly by the presidency. There was also a host of smaller companies, such as Great Lakes General Trade, which was comanaged by Major Dan Munyuza, an influential RPA officer who worked for the external intelligence office. The chief of security for Rwanda in the Congo, Major Jean Bosco Kazura, was a partner in another Kigali-based company that imported coffee and diamonds from the Congo. According to UN investigators, General James Kabarebe himself would sometimes coordinate the purchase and transport of coltan, tin, and gold through Rwanda.52

  “I was just doing business,” Pierre responded when I asked him if he had any regrets about working with the rebels and mining companies during the war. That is the usual refrain echoed by businessmen throughout the war zone. “In any case,” the burly pilot continued, “all the flights for the rebels we did were pretty much at gunpoint.”

  It was difficult not to believe the good-natured pilot. He laughed. The subtext read: Of course you had to cut corners, bribe people, deal with dubious clientele. But this is the Congo—if we didn’t get our hands dirty once in a while, we would be out of business.

  He had a point. According to a World Bank study, if you paid all of your taxes in the Congo—a full thirty-two different payments—you would be dishing out 230 percent of your profits.53 In other words, you can only survive by cutting corners. The tax system had lost its overall coherence, as revenue-collecting agencies had proliferated over the years, each using exorbitant tax rates as blackmail to obtain bribes. The tax code was never intended to be followed; the state had created regulations that begged to be broken and had dreamt up its own subversion, pushing a large part of the economy into the informal sector so that individuals could profit.

  The individuals who profited were, obviously, those in charge. During rebel rule in the eastern Congo, the businessmen who prospered were, for the most part, those who curried favor with the political and military leaders. “We all had our friends in the rebel high command we could call up when we had problems,” Pierre Olivier said. “They needed us because we flew for them. We needed them because they were the bosses.” Did he feel uncomfortable about this symbiosis? “That’s the way things work. Did I have a choice?”

  Business in the Congo required a healthy dose of pragmatism. For many, cutand-dry morality was out of place here. This conundrum became clear to international charities, as well, which set up their bases in Goma to provide food and health care to victims of the violence. Many rented the houses of businessmen close to the rebels, as they, of course, had the nicest compounds with sumptuous gardens, often overlooking the lake. Humanitarian groups a
lso used trucking companies and shopped for groceries in stores linked to the military enterprise. It was almost impossible to avoid.

  Similar moral dilemmas affect affluent western consumers, as well. It wasn’t just Congolese and Rwandans who made a fortune. The minerals were transported, processed, and consumed by companies and consumers elsewhere, especially in Europe, Asia, and the United States. In some cases, these companies had close relationships with rebel groups. For example, the Belgium-based company Cogecom bought tin and coltan directly from the RCD monopoly, sending money into RCD coffers. Another joint venture by American and Dutch businessmen, Eagle Wings Resources, engaged Paul Kagame’s brother-in-law as its local representative, which gave it easier and cheaper access to the Congolese minerals. These companies then sold their minerals on to large processing companies, including U.S.-based Cabot Corporation, Chinese Ningxia, and German H. C. Starck. The transport was assured by multinational logistics companies such as the state airline of Belgium, Sabena, while financing was supplied by large regional banks and, in one case, by Citibank.54

  This supply chain was unearthed by UN investigators and other analysts, triggering an immediate reaction from international business circles. Some denied allegations outright; others protested that there was nothing illegal about buying or transporting minerals from the eastern Congo. This is partly true. International law does little to regulate human rights abuses associated with trade. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) put forward Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, but these are voluntary, and violations have few consequences. Some countries, like the United States, have domestic laws that can be used to hold companies based there responsible for their conduct overseas. A wave of lawsuits, for example, was filed in U.S. courts in the 1990s and 2000s based on the Alien Torts Statute, but plaintiffs have to prove that companies had not only knowledge of abuse but also intent, which is difficult to prove even about companies directly involved with rebels, let alone those four steps removed along the supply chain. Some international lawyers argue that companies can be held liable under international law for buying misappropriated goods, much the way one can be charged in domestic courts for purchasing stolen goods, but this logic has not gained much traction outside of UN tribunals.55