Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Johann Hari: How we fuel Africa's bloodiest war

Un articolo interessante su quello che avviene in Africa, e sul perché 
avviene.
-------------------------------------------------------
Johann Hari: How we fuel Africa's bloodiest war
What is rarely mentioned is the great global heist of Congo's resources
The deadliest war since Adolf Hitler marched across Europe is starting 
again – and you are almost certainly carrying a blood-soaked chunk of 
the slaughter in your pocket. When we glance at the holocaust in Congo, 
with 5.4 million dead, the clichés of Africa reporting tumble out: this 
is a "tribal conflict" in "the Heart of Darkness". It isn't. The United 
Nations investigation found it was a war led by "armies of business" to 
seize the metals that make our 21st-century society zing and bling. The 
war in Congo is a war about you.
Every day I think about the people I met in the war zones of eastern 
Congo when I reported from there. The wards were filled with women who 
had been gang-raped by the militias and shot in the vagina. The 
battalions of child soldiers – drugged, dazed 13-year-olds who had been 
made to kill members of their own families so they couldn't try to 
escape and go home. But oddly, as I watch the war starting again on CNN, 
I find myself thinking about a woman I met who had, by Congolese 
standards, not suffered in extremis.
I was driving back to Goma from a diamond mine one day when my car got a 
puncture. As I waited for it to be fixed, I stood by the roadside and 
watched the great trails of women who stagger along every road in 
eastern Congo, carrying all their belongings on their backs in mighty 
crippling heaps. I stopped a 27 -year-old woman called Marie-Jean 
Bisimwa, who had four little children toddling along beside her. She 
told me she was lucky. Yes, her village had been burned out. Yes, she 
had lost her husband somewhere in the chaos. Yes, her sister had been 
raped and gone insane. But she and her kids were alive.
I gave her a lift, and it was only after a few hours of chat along on 
cratered roads that I noticed there was something strange about 
Marie-Jean's children. They were slumped forward, their gazes fixed in 
front of them. They didn't look around, or speak, or smile. "I haven't 
ever been able to feed them," she said. "Because of the war."
Their brains hadn't developed; they never would now. "Will they get 
better?" she asked. I left her in a village on the outskirts of Goma, 
and her kids stumbled after her, expressionless.
There are two stories about how this war began – the official story, and 
the true story. The official story is that after the Rwandan genocide, 
the Hutu mass murderers fled across the border into Congo. The Rwandan 
government chased after them. But it's a lie. How do we know? The 
Rwandan government didn't go to where the Hutu genocidaires were, at 
least not at first. They went to where Congo's natural resources were – 
and began to pillage them. They even told their troops to work with any 
Hutus they came across. Congo is the richest country in the world for 
gold, diamonds, coltan, cassiterite, and more. Everybody wanted a slice 
– so six other countries invaded.
These resources were not being stolen to for use in Africa. They were 
seized so they could be sold on to us. The more we bought, the more the 
invaders stole – and slaughtered. The rise of mobile phones caused a 
surge in deaths, because the coltan they contain is found primarily in 
Congo. The UN named the international corporations it believed were 
involved: Anglo-America, Standard Chartered Bank, De Beers and more than 
100 others. (They all deny the charges.) But instead of stopping these 
corporations, our governments demanded that the UN stop criticising them.
There were times when the fighting flagged. In 2003, a peace deal was 
finally brokered by the UN and the international armies withdrew. Many 
continued to work via proxy militias – but the carnage waned somewhat. 
Until now. As with the first war, there is a cover-story, and the truth. 
A Congolese militia leader called Laurent Nkunda – backed by Rwanda – 
claims he needs to protect the local Tutsi population from the same Hutu 
genocidaires who have been hiding out in the jungles of eastern Congo 
since 1994. That's why he is seizing Congolese military bases and is 
poised to march on Goma.
It is a lie. François Grignon, Africa Director of the International 
Crisis Group, tells me the truth: "Nkunda is being funded by Rwandan 
businessmen so they can retain control of the mines in North Kivu. This 
is the absolute core of the conflict. What we are seeing now is 
beneficiaries of the illegal war economy fighting to maintain their 
right to exploit."
At the moment, Rwandan business interests make a fortune from the mines 
they illegally seized during the war. The global coltan price has 
collapsed, so now they focus hungrily on cassiterite, which is used to 
make tin cans and other consumer disposables. As the war began to wane, 
they faced losing their control to the elected Congolese government – so 
they have given it another bloody kick-start.
Yet the debate about Congo in the West – when it exists at all – focuses 
on our inability to provide a decent bandage, without mentioning that we 
are causing the wound. It's true the 17,000 UN forces in the country are 
abysmally failing to protect the civilian population, and urgently need 
to be super-charged. But it is even more important to stop fuelling the 
war in the first place by buying blood-soaked natural resources. Nkunda 
only has enough guns and grenades to take on the Congolese army and the 
UN because we buy his loot. We need to prosecute the corporations buying 
them for abetting crimes against humanity, and introduce a global 
coltan-tax to pay for a substantial peacekeeping force. To get there, we 
need to build an international system that values the lives of black 
people more than it values profit.
Somewhere out there – lost in the great global heist of Congo's 
resources – are Marie-Jean and her children, limping along the road once 
more, carrying everything they own on their backs. They will probably 
never use a coltan-filled mobile phone, a cassiterite-smelted can of 
beans, or a gold necklace – but they may yet die for one.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-we-fuel-africas-bloodiest-war-978461.html

.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-.
..
persio, non postare stronzate. Il Daily Heil e Lord Scurzon hanno già
deciso che è tutta colpa dei cinesi


Lord Curzon ha deciso che il suo posto nel mondo è tra la carne da cannone.

 cannone.
#_carne tenera-tenera da lattonzo e`un peccato consumarla cosi` , meglio il 
Porceddu alla sarda! :)
G. 

 G.
in effetti l'orco sa come mangiare carne umana... ;-)) 

 ha scritto nel messaggio 
news:bo2Pk.11638$8%.4408@tornado.fastwebnet.it...

un altro che si sente risentito perchè qualcuno gli ha detto chiaro e tondo 
come stanno le cose... 

 persio, non postare stronzate. Il Daily Heil 
Continui a seguirlo con attenzione, eh caghella?
Tb

 Continui a seguirlo con attenzione
lo fa il tuo nuovo adepto, camerata...

giovanni ha scritto:

Beh dovresti capirlo.
Anche tu postavi quella merda lě.
Purtroppo tu non sei eugenio, e LC non č giovannino.
Altrimenti ti obbedirebbe.
Tb

 Altrimenti ti obbedirebbe.
fatti ubbidire tu, ce sei tanto bravo, invece di difenderlo quando
continua a dire che per lui il DH non è di estrema destra