When people hear the word “genocide”, they probably think of Gaza, maybe Sudan as well. But the world’s worst genocide has occurred over nearly three decades in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) during viciously fought wars for power — including control over critical minerals.
In the wars from 1998 to 2012, the national army fought local militias as well as the armies of neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda, while six African countries intervened as a peacekeeping force. Estimates of the number killed in that conflict range from four to six million. Now the violence has erupted again, with the Rwanda-backed M23 militia driving the national Congolese army out of Goma, in January. In February, the South Kivu capital, Bukavu, was surrendered to the M23 without a fight.
Violence against the civilian population is widespread, with huge levels of sexual violence against women. Twenty years ago it was said that the DRC was the world capital of rape. But today the term rape goes nowhere near describing the unspeakable atrocities committed against women by all the forces involved, including the DRC’s national army. Sexual violence has a precise function — causing dread among the civilian population and forcing obedience or flight. Tens of thousands have fled Goma, adding to the estimated 750,000 people in refugee camps.
When the M23 took Goma, they also captured 300 foreign mercenaries, mainly from Romania, who have been "allowed" to cross into Rwanda to meet an uncertain fate.
North and South Kivu, along with Katanga further to the south, are the site of vast amounts of critical minerals including gold, diamonds, coltan, cobalt and the 17 so-called Rare Earth minerals that are needed in electronic devices of all kinds, plus other minerals like lithium, needed in electric car batteries.
Critical minerals and inter-imperialist competition
In 2023 European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Kigali for a meeting with Rwandan president Paul Kagame to discuss EU mineral deals. Luxembourg-based company Traxys is regarded as the main conduit of so-called "blood minerals" to EU manufacturers. In April the NGO Global Witness accused Traxys of knowingly trading coltan from militia-controlled areas of North Kivu.
Demand for the minerals listed above is rapidly increasing not only because of the accelerating demand for the electronic devices that depend on them, but also because of the dominant models of green transition that depend on batteries and magnets in vast numbers. Wind turbines are widespread, and there will be 1.4 billion electric cars by 2050. Simultaneously the intensification of high-tech weapons production (and the cloud computing needed to support it) require vast amounts of Rare Earth and other minerals.
We have reached the threshold of a new period of catastrophic wars in which ultra high technology is used to find targets — weapons systems, soldiers, civilians, public infrastructure — and destroy them with what the US military terms "maximum lethality". This has tipped the world into a new arms race, which exceeds the old Cold War in the extent to which there is a constant invention and use of new and more lethal weapons.
The imperial powers’ utter disdain for human life can be seen in the Russian use of white phosphorus in Syria, the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons against the Islamist hold-out areas in northern Syria, and the plethora of drones and missiles used by Russia in Ukraine. At the same time Israel has been given 14,000 of the US’s 500lb (230kg) bombs.
Since the M23 militia invaded North and South Kivu provinces, and captured their capitals Goma and Bukavu, it is reckoned that 3000 people have been killed. Local journalists said that the streets of Goma were littered with bodies, with many appearing to be civilians.
'Green transition'
Today, there are many questions about the possibility that the green economy of the future will be built around machines which need critical minerals that are finite, and will eventually run out. Infinite demand for finite resources could lead to another catastrophe in the future. By 2050 the vast energy consumption of electronic devices and data centres will pose major questions about the model of green transition that has been adopted by energy and computing corporations, as well as by governments.
Donald Trump is facing in two directions on this question. On the one hand, he says that climate science is rubbish; on the other hand he wants the USA to join in the fight for critical minerals needed for the green transition.
At the Singapore regional security conference on 30 May, French president Emmanuel Macron called on Asian and European countries to stand together against the attempt by major powers (obviously China and the US) to control resources like minerals and fisheries, pushing out smaller nations. Macron was focusing his appeal to countries like Indonesia and the Philippines.
The very next day, American defence secretary Pete Hegseth argued that the US had always been an Indo Pacific power and made the claim that China could be on the verge of launching an attack on Taiwan. Hegseth was trying to swivel the debate onto the military/security terrain. His pitch was to stress that only by standing shoulder to shoulder with US militarism could Asian countries secure their defence.
Domination
The effect of imperialist domination of the Congo can be seen in the contrast between the extraordinary mineral wealth of the country and the dire poverty of most of its inhabitants. In terms of mass poverty, the DRC is rated 5th in the world. The average income per person is just $449 a year, and 75% of the population lives on less than $2 a day. The mineral wealth of the country is effectively shared between the corrupt rulers of the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda, and of course the capitalist class in all these countries, a narrow band of people with a stake in trading the mineral wealth, through their links to the army, militias and governmental state apparatuses.
If we contrast the situation in the DRC with what has happened with Norway’s massive mineral wealth — oil and to a lesser extent gas — then the price of imperialist intervention becomes clear. Norway’s oil industry was nationalised from the moment of the discovery of North Sea oil in 1969. It financed the creation of a sovereign wealth fund, now called the National Investment Fund. The value of this fund is now just under $1.8 trillion. The average Norwegian salary is more than $60,000 a year, and the country has the highest income per capita of any country on the planet. The imperialist seizure of the DRC’s wealth has brought its population poverty, continual displacement and endless violence.
The capitalist classes of the poorer countries who trade away their national wealth, and enrich themselves in the process are what Marxists have called, “comprador capitalists”. Rwanda president Paul Kagame has a neat twist on this, which is to enrich himself and the Rwandan capitalist class with selling off the wealth not only of his own country but that of a neighbouring country with much bigger reserves of minerals — the Congo.
The battle over the possession of critical minerals is part of a new phase of imperialism. Donald Trump, as the figurehead of the fascist MAGA movement, is attempting to sabotage the globalisation phase of world capitalism.
At the same time the major capitalist states have embarked on a green transition that involves the use of huge quantities of critical metals. But these metals are finite. For capitalists around the world seizing on the green transition to make money, this means the continual production of new commodities, spurring ever larger consumption of finite resources. The spectacle of contemporary capitalism continually generates the delusion that people can, through the accumulation of things, fast fashion, and fast cars and home ownership, live like rich celebrities. But they can’t. Not now and not under socialism.
[Abridged from LINKS — Journal of Socialist Renewal.]