Viktor Bout, the Merchant of Death, captured in DEA sting operation

I woke up this morning to amazing and wonderful news that fits right in with my latest post about the Charles Taylor trial in The Hague. Viktor Bout, the most notorious of international arms dealers, was being paraded in handcuffs by Thai police before CNNI & BBC news audiences around the world. Viktor, nicknamed The Merchant of Death and the Lord of War, is arguably one of the most dangerous men in the world. He and his cronies are responsible for illegal arms and drug shipments that fueled bloody wars all across Africa (Liberia, Sierra Leone, DR Congo, Angola, and Sudan), Asia (Afghanistan), and South America (Columbia).

A favorite son of certain high-ranking east European government leaders and officials, Viktor received protection and sanctuary within Russia for years while he evaded arrest and prosecution for his complicity in the deaths of millions of innocent people. His capture as the result of a US DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) sting operation in Thailand this week is simply astounding; an event that few experts who track and analyze international arms trafficking and drug smuggling networks thought they would ever see in their lifetimes. This is a Red Letter Day in international law enforcement and a major blow to illegal arms traffickers.

Viktor Bout has a lot to worry about while sitting in his high-security prison cell in Bangkok. Priority No. 1 for Viktor will be how to stay alive long enough to tell his side of the story. My guess is that he may never be extradited to the United States to face trial___ because he will not live that long. Any number of government intelligence agencies, military organizations, corrupt regime officials, and shady businessmen around the world are hard at work to quickly “silence the canary before he sings”.

The journalists Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun published a book about the life of Viktor Bout titled “Merchant of Death”. Doug has also written extensively at his personal blog about Viktor. Following is an excerpt from a September 2007 interview with Douglas Farah at Mother Jones magazine online:

Meet Viktor Bout, the Real-Life ‘Lord of War’ by Laura Rozen, 09/13/07

Former Soviet military officer Viktor Bout, the inspiration for Nicholas Cage's character in the Lord of War, remade himself as an international arms dealer and blood diamonds trafficker following the break-up of the USSR. Using his air charter business to smuggle weapons into the world's conflict zones (circumventing U.N. embargoes), Bout traveled the world with a precious gems expert and accountant in tow, supplying arms to a notorious clientele: Liberia's Charles Taylor, a cast of Congolese warlords, and the Taliban, among others. More surprising, journalists Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun report in their new book on Bout, Merchant of Death, is that the shadowy Tajik-born arms dealer has also provided his services to the U.S. military and several U.S. contractors in Iraq, including Halliburton parent company Kellogg, Brown & Root. Laura Rozen interviewed Farah via email.

Mother Jones: How did Viktor Bout get his start as an international supplier of arms, ammunition, and transport services?

Douglas Farah: Viktor Bout was a unique creature born of the end of Communism and the rise of unbridled capitalism when the Wall came down in the early 1990s. He was a Soviet officer, most likely a lieutenant, who simply saw the opportunities presented by three factors that came with the collapse of the USSR and the state sponsorship that entailed: abandoned aircraft on the runways from Moscow to Kiev, no longer able to fly because of lack of money for fuel or maintenance; huge stores of surplus weapons that were guarded by guards suddenly receiving little or no salary; and the booming demand for those weapons from traditional Soviet clients and newly emerging armed groups from Africa to the Philippines. He simply wedded the three things, taking aircraft for almost nothing, filling them with cheaply purchased weapons from the arsenals, and flying them to clients who could pay. His background is difficult to ascertain. He is said by U.S. intelligence officials to be the product of an "immaculate conception." He was not, and then he was. He has provided no stories of his youth, very few personal details. He was, according to his multiple passports, born in 1967 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, the son of a bookkeeper and an auto mechanic. He graduated from the Military Institute on Foreign Languages, a well-known feeder school for Russian military intelligence, and is known to have a true gift for languages.

MJ: What is the evidence of a relationship between Bout and Russian military intelligence, the GRU?

DF: It is highly unlikely he could have flown aircraft out of Russia and acquired huge amounts of weapons from Soviet arsenals without the direct protection of Russian intelligence, and, given his background, the GRU seems the most likely candidate. He was providing not solely AK-47s and massive amounts of ammunition, as his competitors were, but attack helicopters, anti-aircraft systems, anti-tank mine systems, sniper rifles, and items that are much harder to acquire. The clearest, most recent direct tie came through an obscure investigation in the United States carried out by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Last year the ATF was investigating sales of $240,000 worth of night vision scopes and paramilitary gear from a small sporting goods store in Pennsylvania, and discovered that the items had been illegally shipped to a company that is controlled by an elite Russian intelligence counterterrorism group. The money was paid through a Bulgarian holding company controlled by Bout.

MJ: Your reporting indicates that Bout has supplied not only the Taliban, Liberia's Charles Taylor, and Congolese warlords, but the U.S. Army and its contractors as well. Can you describe how the U.S. government and U.S. contractors have responded to revelations about who they are doing business with?

DF: The U.S. government response to revelations of the use of Viktor Bout to fly for government contractors in Iraq (not just a few flights, but hundreds, and perhaps a thousand) has been mixed. Bear in mind most of these flights occurred after President Bush had signed an executive order making it illegal to do business with Bout, because he represented a security threat to the United States. The State Department, under a congressional inquiry initiated by Senator Russell Feingold, found it had used Bout companies, acknowledged it, and stopped. Paul Wolfowitz, while at DOD, did not respond to queries for nine months, then acknowledged that DOD contractors had subcontracted to Bout companies. Despite the public revelation, the congressional inquiry, the executive order, and a subsequent Treasury Department order freezing the assets of Bout and his closest associates, the flights continued for many months, at least until the end of 2005. The Air Force cut him off immediately, but other branches of the military continued to use him.

MJ: Any evidence that Bout is authorized by governments to play this murky role because he is as useful as he is dangerous?

DF: Bout, through an intermediary, approached the CIA and FBI immediately after 9/11, and offered his services in helping to oust the Taliban if he were paid tens of millions of dollars for his efforts. Negotiations were serious and lasted several months, but we do not know what, if any, parts of the deal he offered were accepted. There is no doubt he has benefited from the schizophrenic policies of the U.S. government (the Treasury and State departments going after him, while DOD pays him money to fly), but it is difficult to say whether that is the result of calculation or just sloppiness.

End excerpt___ Read more by following links in Mother Jones article below

Here’s an excerpt from the July 2007 Men’s Vogue interview with Stephen Braun and Douglas Farah about covering one of the world’s most dangerous men:

Men's Vogue: You've both covered some pretty treacherous territory in your careers. How risky was reporting on Bout?

Douglas Farah: When I was covering the wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia, I wasn't aware of him as a threat, although of course he was arming the people who were a threat. He and Charles Taylor, the president of Liberia, put a contract on my life, and that made me nervous and I had to be evacuated with my family from West Africa. We had a few instances where Viktor's people were threatening people that were talking to us about him. In some cases, he knew who our sources were.

MV: They were in his organization?

DF:They were in and out, but he still had the facility to be aware of some of their movements. As far as we know, everyone is still alive, but I think it was hairier for them than it was for us.

Stephen Braun: On the other hand, Bout has long tried to present himself as just a simple businessman who does, at times, carry legitimate cargoes as well as contraband cargos. Having a foot in both worlds has made him reluctant to get his hands too dirty. If you want to do business with the U.S. government—as he ultimately did—you have to stay somewhat on the up and up.

MV: So how did you get people to cooperate when they had everything to lose, especially their lives?

DF: Some people, especially in the intelligence communities and the law enforcement communities in both the U.S. and Europe were incredibly frustrated by their inability to get him. There were feelings of bitterness and deep unhappiness that they had lost Bout—that he had ultimately won. Some of the people inside his organization in Africa were motivated by a revenge factor against him and Taylor. When they looked back after the wars were over, they were just really unhappy that their country had been destroyed—and they viewed him as an integral part of that.

End excerpt____ Read more by following links in Men’s Vogue article below

Related news articles and additional online resources

Douglas Farah’s blog
Viktor Bout Arrested in Thailand in a Perfect Storm, 03/06/08

The New York Times
Russian Charged with Trying to Sell Arms, 03/07/08

The Guardian (UK)
‘Lord of War’ arms trafficker arrested, 03/07/08

International Herald Tribune – Managing Globalization blog
A Very Globalized Arms Dealer by Daniel Altman, 03/07/08

CNN International
Thai authorities parade alleged Russian arms dealer, 03/07/08

Merchant of Death – official website for the book by Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun

Counterterrorism blog, Global Policy Forum
Douglas Farah in ‘New Republic’ on Viktor Bout’s operations, 01/17/06
Full text (HTML) of the New Republic article “Air America: Viktor Bout and the Pentagon” co-authored by Douglas Farah and Kathi Austin, 01/23/06

Foreign Policy magazine online
The Merchant of Death by Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun, Nov/Dec 2006
Arms Around the World, Nov/Dec 2006

Excerpt from the Foreign Policy feature article “The Merchant of Death”:

Russian entrepreneur Viktor Bout has made millions as the world’s most efficient postman, able to deliver any kind of cargo—especially illicit weapons—anywhere in the world. How was he able to build his intricate underground network? By exploiting cracks in the anarchy of globalization.

In many ways, Viktor Bout is a prototypical, modern-day, multinational entrepreneur. He is smart, savvy, and ambitious. He’s good with numbers, speaks several languages, and knows how to seize opportunities when they arise. According to those who’ve met him, he’s polite, professional, and unassuming. Bout has no known political agenda. He loves his family. He’s fed the poor. And through his hard work, he’s become extraordinarily wealthy. During the past decade, Bout’s business acumen has earned him hundreds of millions of dollars. What, exactly, does he do? Former colleagues describe him as a postman, able to deliver any package virtually anywhere in the world.

Not yet 40 years old, the Russian national also happens to be the world’s most notorious arms trafficker. He, more than almost anyone else, has succeeded in exploiting the anarchy of globalization to get goods—usually illicit goods—to market. He’s a wanted man, desired by those who require a small military arsenal and pursued by law enforcement agencies who want to bring him down. Globe-trotting weapons merchants have long flooded the Third World with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, and warehouses of bullets and land-mines. But unlike his rivals, who tend to carve out small regional territories, Bout’s planes have dropped off his tell-tale military-green crates from jungle landing strips in the Congo to bleak hillside runways in Afghanistan. He has developed a worldwide network of logistics, maneuvering through a maze of brokers, transportation companies, financiers, and weapons manufacturers—both illicit and legitimate—to deliver everything from fresh-cut flowers, frozen poultry, and U.N. peacekeepers to assault rifles and surface-to-air missiles across four continents.

Arms Around the World

What would the global flow of weapons look like without Viktor Bout? Dozens of traffickers wait in the wings.

His client list for weapons is long. In the 1990s, Bout was a friend and supplier to the legendary Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, while simultaneously selling weapons and aircraft to the Taliban, Massoud’s enemy. His fleet flew for the government of Angola, as well as for the UNITA rebels seeking to overthrow it. He sent an aircraft to rescue Mobutu Sese Seko, the ailing and corrupt ruler of Zaire, even though he had supplied the rebels who were closing in on Mobutu’s last stronghold. He has catered to Charles Taylor of Liberia, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and Libyan strongman Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

Bout’s customers are not exclusively corrupt Third-World leaders. He built his fortune by flying tons of legitimate cargo, too. These included countless trips for the United Nations into the same areas where he supplied the weapons that sparked the humanitarian crises in the first place. He’s done business with Western governments, including the United States. Over the past several years, the U.S. Treasury Department has tried to put Bout out of business by freezing his assets and imposing other sanctions on him, his business associates, and his companies. But the Pentagon and its contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan have simultaneously paid him millions of dollars to fly hundreds of missions in support of postwar reconstruction in both countries. In an age when the U.S. president has divided the world into those who are with the United States and those who are against it, Bout is both.

International officials believe that Bout’s business practices—in particular, his refusal to discriminate among those who are willing to pay the right price—are, in fact, illegal. Peter Hain, then the British Foreign Office minister responsible for Africa, stood in Parliament in 2000 to lash out against those violating U.N. arms sanctions. He singled out Bout, dubbing him Africa’s “merchant of death.” But Bout’s deals often fall into a legal gray area that global jurisprudence has simply failed to proscribe. It’s not for lack of trying. His peripatetic aircraft appear in little-noticed U.N. reports documenting arms embargo violations in Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, and Sierra Leone. U.S. spy satellites have photographed his airplanes loading crates of weapons on remote airstrips in Africa. American and British intelligence officials have eavesdropped on his telephone conversations. Interpol has issued a “red notice,” requesting his arrest on Belgian weapons trafficking and money-laundering charges.

Yet Bout has managed to elude authorities over and over again. Laws simply do not address transnational, nonstate actors such as Bout. His most egregious illegal acts have included multiple violations of U.N. arms embargoes, a crime for which there is no penalty and for which there is no enforcement mechanism. Today, Bout lives openly in Moscow, protected by a Russian government unconcerned by the international outcry that surrounds him and his business empire.

International man of Mystery

Much of Viktor Bout’s early history is either unknown or of his own making. He is married and has at least one daughter; that much is true. His older brother Sergei works for him. But any other personal information is clouded in mystery. Even his place of birth is unclear. According to his official Russian passport, Bout was born on Jan. 13, 1967, in the faded Soviet outpost of Dushanbe, Tajikistan. But during a 2002 radio interview in Moscow, Bout said he was born near the Caspian Sea in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. A 2001 South African intelligence report lists him as Ukrainian. He is known to carry more than one passport and use an array of aliases, including Vadim S. Aminov, Victor Anatoliyevitsch Bout, Victor S. Bulakin, and the sardonic favorite of his American pursuers, Victor Butt.

The deliberate obfuscation has made it difficult to track Bout, his partners, and his business. He says he was an Air Force officer and has acknowledged graduating from the prestigious Soviet Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow in the late 1980s. He reportedly speaks fluent English, French, Portuguese, Uzbek, and several African languages. U.N. officials say he worked as a translator for peacekeepers in Angola in the late 1980s. Several reports tie him to Russian organized crime. Although British and South African intelligence reports say that Bout was stationed in Rome with the KGB from 1985 to 1989, he has strenuously denied any intelligence background. But military language school was a known training ground for the GRU (or Main Intelligence Directorate)—the vast, secretive, Soviet military intelligence network that oversaw the Cold War flow of Russian arms to revolutionary movements and communist client states in the Third World.

Whether or not he was a secret agent, by the time the Cold War ended, Bout had struck out on his own and was ready to salvage the remaining scraps of the Soviet empire. The entire Soviet Air Force was on life support, as money for maintenance and fuel evaporated. Thousands of pilots and crew members were suddenly unemployed. Hundreds of lumbering old Antonov and Ilyushin cargo planes sat abandoned at airports and military bases from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, their tires frayed and their worn frames patched with sheet metal and duct tape.

Moving quickly, Bout acquired cargo planes destined for the junkyard. By his own account, Bout, then 25, bought his first trio of old Antonovs for $120,000, hiring crews to fly cargo on a maiden flight to Denmark, then on longer-distance routes to Africa and the Middle East. But his business and financial associates tell a different version. “The GRU gave him three airplanes to start the business,” said one European associate who knew Bout in Russia and worked with him in Africa. “He had finished language school, but he had learned to fly. The planes, countless numbers of them, were sitting there doing nothing. They decided, let’s make this commercial. They gave Viktor the aircraft and in exchange collected a part of the charter money.”

Bout’s initial stock in trade was the supply of guns and ammunition abandoned in arsenals around the former Soviet bloc. Many had airstrips built inside their compounds, making loading easy. Guards were often unpaid and their commanders were willing to sell the weapons for a fraction of the market value. This availability of weapons was married to an instant clientele of former Soviet clients, unstable governments, dictators, warlords, and guerilla armies clamoring for steady supplies across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. “He had a logistics network, the best in the world,” says Lee S. Wolosky, a former staff member at the National Security Council (NSC) who led the United States’ interagency efforts to track Bout in the late 1990s. “There are a lot of people who can deliver arms to Africa or Afghanistan, but you can count on one hand those who can deliver major weapons systems rapidly. Viktor Bout is at the top of that list.”

By the late 1990s, Bout had perfected his modus operandi—the ability to move his aircraft ahead of government efforts to ground them. To obtain permission to fly internationally, an aircraft must be registered in a country where its maintenance records and airworthiness are certified. Each country in the world has a series of call letters assigned to it, so the country of origin of any aircraft should be immediately identifiable by matching call letters on a plane’s tail. By repeatedly registering planes in different countries, Bout was able to avoid local aviation rules, inspections, and oversight. According to a December 2000 U.N. investigation, Bout often registered his planes in Liberia, a nation that had sold its aircraft registry to business associates who helped Bout set up the aviation and holding companies he used for arms trafficking. Run from Kent, England, the Liberian “Aircraft Registration Bureau” offered a full range of services, without anyone ever inspecting the aircraft. This included the “creation of a company name; air operator’s certificate (no restrictions); full aircraft/company documentation; ferry permits and crew validations,” the U.N. report noted. That same group controlled the registry of Equatorial Guinea, so when international pressure mounted on Liberia to decertify Bout’s aircraft, he simply reregistered them, a process that took only a few hours through a series of phone and computer transactions.Although Bout’s aircraft were registered and re-registered in far-flung corners of the world, they almost all operated out of Sharjah, a small desert sheikdom in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that serves as a central base for flights to and from the former Soviet bloc, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. There, Bout continued to muddle his company structures. The aircraft registered in Equatorial Guinea operated under the name Air Cess, and those registered in the Central African Republic flew for Central African Airlines. Although the two airlines had different addresses, they had the same Sharjah phone numbers.

Bout’s first known weapons flights were to Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance in 1992. Three years later, a MiG fighter jet, flown by the Taliban, intercepted a hulking freighter leased by Bout for delivery of several million rounds of ammunition to the government in Kabul. Taliban soldiers seized the aircraft’s cargo and imprisoned its crew. Bout negotiated with the mullahs for months. Finally, after a year, the crew pulled off what appeared to be a miraculous escape, outwitting their captors by flying the Ilyushin out of Kandahar. But skeptical Western intelligence officials and Bout’s rivals later suggested the crew’s release was tied to Bout’s secret work for the mullahs. After all, in 1995, Sharjah had established a free trade zone that soon became known for its lax oversight and close ties to Islamist radicals. Because the UAE was one of only three countries (along with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) to recognize the Taliban government in Afghanistan, Sharjah became the main shopping center for the regime, where it was able to purchase everything from weapons and satellite telephones to refrigerators and generators.

Soon, a covert business relationship was established between the Taliban and Bout’s network. Bout’s avionics and maintenance crews serviced planes flown by Ariana Afghan Airways, the national carrier then controlled by the mullahs. Starting in 1998, according to aircraft registration documents found in Kabul by Afghan officials, Bout’s operation and allied air firms based in Sharjah sold the Taliban military a fleet of cargo planes that was used to haul tons of arms and material into Afghanistan. U.S. officials concluded that the planes also ferried militant operatives, narcotics, and cash. It was a lucrative venture. Western officials estimate the Taliban paid Bout more than $50 million during the years it ruled Afghanistan.

End excerpt_____

Harper’s Magazine online
Six Questions for Stephen Braun on Gunrunner Viktor Bout, 07/26/07

Men’s Vogue – Black Book – July 2007 issue
Making a Killing: Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout runs guns and reaps millions
Interview with Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun, co-authors of The Merchant of Death, about taking on one of the world’s most dangerous men

Mother Jones magazine
Meet Viktor Bout, the Real-Life ‘Lord of War’ by Laura Rozen, 09/13/07
Dealing with the Merchant of Death by Michael Scherer, 09/20/04

The New York Times
Arms and the Man by Peter Landesman, 08/17/03
(A detailed 9-page profile of Viktor Bout including personal interviews in Moscow)

John Fenzel’s blog (U.S. Army Special Forces officer, Naval War College)
Viktor Bout, the World’s Most Notorious Arms Merchant, 03/23/07
(John’s analysis of the Aug 2003 New York Times Magazine article Arms and the Man by Peter Landesman)

PBS - Frontline World - Rough Cut
Congo: On the Trail of an AK-47, China’s Calling Card in Africa (08/30/07)
Arming Africa by Benjamin Pauker,
Sierra Leone – Gunrunners (May 2002 special report)

Excerpt from “Congo: On the Trail of an AK-47”

In the spring of 2006, reporter Benjamin Pauker traveled to Congo to discover how small arms are still making their way into one of the world's most deadly conflict zones. Despite a UN peace treaty that officially ended a brutal war in 2003 — and despite a UN arms embargo on parts of the country — guns still show up inside Congolese borders, and violence continues to erupt in Congo's volatile eastern region. There is no shortage of machine guns for rebel hands in the east, but, as a UN expert notes in the film, there aren't any arms factories in Congo — "everything that comes in here is coming from the outside."

From a tour of a UN weapons cache full of dusty machine guns to the purchase of an AK-47 directly from rebel soldiers, Pauker crosses Congo to find the story behind the guns. What he learns is that more and more small arms arriving in Congo are not from Russia or ex-Soviet countries in Eastern Europe, but from China. He also learns that Chinese conglomerates are buying up mining rights all over resource-rich Congo. Pauker's journey turns up a crucial connection: the link between China's small arms trade and its ever-quickening economic expansion.

China's involvement in Africa and across the globe is an increasingly important story — one that grabs international headlines, inspires analysis by economists all over the world, and raises concern in many human rights communities. As China scrambles to access resources outside its borders, it threatens to unleash a new wave of economic colonialism. The film takes on this global story through a local focus, and yields an unexpected and hard-hitting look at the dark side of the next superpower's expansion in one of the world's most fragile places.

End excerpt_________

Global Witness – Press Releases
Liberian Timber Industry and Sanctions Busting Under International Scrutiny, 03/22/05 (Arrest of Dutch illegal arms smuggler Gus Kouwenhoven)
War Crimes Trial of Gus Kouwenhoven to Commence in The Hague, 04/21/06

Howard French (New York Times bureau chief, Shanghai)
Congo’s Daily Blood: Ruminations from a failed state by Brian Mealer, May 2006

IANSA – International Action Network on Small Arms
IANSA and small arms at the UN
Control Arms – campaign for tougher controls on the arms trade

Technorati tags:Africa Europe Asia international crime terror war law enforcement Viktor Bout child soldiers blood diamonds arms trade Global Voices

Liberia's Abundant Natural Resources: A Blessing and a Curse and Surf's Up

For my dear friend Steve who through his own courage and support from the government of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf can begin the long journey home to help rebuild Liberia.

“In Liberia, there is an immense territory
rich with resources. Notwithstanding this,
there are no improved or advanced methods
of agriculture; the soil is scarcely stirred;
there are no carts, wagon or other wheeled
vehicles, no railroads; the mineral wealth
remain almost untouched; and I am told on
good authority that, in spite of all this
wealth right at the very door steps of these
people, even school teachers and ministers
wear clothing manufactured in the United
States or Europe, and eat canned goods that
come from Chicago or Germany.”

– Booker T. Washington, The Negro in the
South: His Economic Progress in Relation to
his Moral and Religious Development, 1907


I have been working on a piece about Chinese investments in Africa and the resource curse that continues to plague the people of the countries where China is most active on the African continent when a BBC News article caught my eye. Anything that can help the government of Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf gets my immediate and undivided attention.

BBC News World Affairs Correspondent Mark Doyle published an article about the resource curse and challenges facing the country of Liberia recently. This small West Africa nation is of very special interest to me (and hopefully many other people) for a great number of reasons, not least of which is the leadership and courage of Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and the Liberian people who helped get her elected to office.

In my opinion America, Europe, and democratic nations worldwide strong economic and diplomatic support for the country of Liberia at this critical stage is as important as any other challenge facing us in Africa or the Middle East. The same goes for the people of Sierra Leone who have just completed the first round of a violence-free, democratic election for the country’s parliament and the presidency. Congratulations to the voters of Sierra Leone and especially to my good friend Bimbola of the Visit Sierra Leone website and blog.

Mark Doyle’s article for the BBC summarizes a July 2007 study “Land Grabbing and Land Reform: Diamonds, Rubber and Forests in the New Liberia" co-authored by the Canadian advocacy group Africa Partnership Canada and the Association of Environmental Lawyers of Liberia.

Excerpts from "‘Curse’ of Liberia’s Resources" by Mark Doyle, 22 August 2007

A few miles outside Monrovia, capital of the West African state of Liberia, the humid scrubland gives way to seemingly endless vistas of tall, geometrically spaced rubber trees.

This is one of the largest rubber plantations in the world. Drive on, and after a few hours you will find yourself in deep virgin forest full of tropical hardwoods. It is the largest remaining portion of the once-great Upper Guinea Forest, which used to spread across West Africa.

Look carefully through the forest cover and you will find miners panning for gold and diamonds. Soon enough, you will then come across a railway that was built solely for the evacuation of iron ore. It leads to a vast iron-ore mountain range in the north of the country that is currently being rehabilitated with a $1bn investment. Welcome to a resource-rich, but still dirt-poor Liberia.

A new report has highlighted the economic dangers facing countries that rely heavily on the export of raw materials. The report concentrates on Liberia, but other economists say it highlights a problem prevalent in countries as diverse as Venezuela, Burma and Russia.

The study of Liberia - by the Canadian lobby group Partnership Africa Canada and a group of Liberian lawyers called Green Advocates - looks at the country's history of plantation-style and mining-camp exploitation of tropical timber, rubber and minerals.

It concludes that the raw materials sector requires a major re-organisation so that more of the population has a stake in it. And it warns that Liberia has an urgent, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to address this issue, with its first democratically-elected government protected by a temporary United Nations peacekeeping force.

End - Begin New Excerpt----------------------

Liberia's modern-day economy was developed and exploited by expatriates and the small elite of "Americo-Liberian" freed slaves who colonised the country in the 19th Century and ended up dominating the indigenous Africans.

"The elites and the government structures they erected," the report says, "came to be seen as illegitimate, engendering first resentment, and in time hatred. "The support given by rural youth to several of the militia groups early in the civil war," the authors write, "is testimony to this fact."

In this sense, the war was not the cause of the poverty of Liberia but a consequence of it, and the reliance on the export of raw materials was a factor in creating that poverty. Some economists go further, saying the endowment of natural resources in both poor and middle-income countries is one of the "traps" that prevents them from growing as rich as developed nations.

In his recently-published book The Bottom Billion, British economist Paul Collier argues that resource riches are rarely a path to sustained growth - except perhaps in places with a low population and massive windfall wealth such as the Gulf oil states. More typical examples of the so-called "resource curse" are in countries like Nigeria, Venezuela or Russia.

Here, oil and gas resources - relatively easy pickings for the governments and elites - have "crowded out" the potential for economic growth brought about by manufacturing or service industries that have created so many jobs in countries like China and India.

Economists have a term for this crowding-out. They call it "the Dutch disease" after the effects of North Sea oil on the Dutch economy.

"It goes like this," explains Mr Collier. "The resource exports cause the country's currency to rise in value against other currencies. This makes the country's other export activities uncompetitive." Yet these other activities - manufacturing for export, for example - might have been the best vehicles for sustained economic growth. The volatility of prices of other raw material exports from poorer countries - especially but not exclusively in Africa - is also not conducive to long term investment and growth.

End BBC News Excerpt (external links to above article added for clarity)

Excerpts from “Land Grabbing and Land Reform: Diamonds, Rubber and Forests in the New Liberia”, edited by Ian Smillie and Alfred Brownell. July 2007


Introduction
Liberia’s Natural Resources: A Blessing and a Curse

Liberia is a country blessed with natural resources. Its natural endowments include diamonds, gold and iron ore, extensive stands of tropical timber, abundant water and cropland, and a climate and soil conditions conducive to the cultivation of cash crops such as rubber, cocoa and coffee. Thanks to very recent discoveries, Liberia can even boast oil and gas reserves, of undetermined but potentially sizeable proportions.

And yet despite this vast storehouse of natural wealth – or because of it – Liberia remains one of the poorest and least developed places on earth, with per capita GDP income of US$152 (2004), 40% of the adult population illiterate, and life expectancy at birth of under 40 years.

Liberia, arguably more than anywhere in the world, is a darkly resplendent example of the resource curse, the phenomenon by which countries blessed with natural resources grow more slowly, stay poorer and offer less to their people than their comparatively resource poor neighbours.

The mechanisms driving this counterintuitive situation include the volatility of revenues from the natural resource sector, currency appreciation that renders non-resource sectors uncompetitive, and the political corruption that often results from the continuous inflow of windfall resource sector revenue. All of these conditions – especially corruption – are or were present in Liberia, and all contributed in greater or lesser measure to its impoverishment. But to all these can be added one other, greater than the rest: war. This too was arguably a result of the very richness of the country.

Widespread public anger at the mismanagement of the country’s natural resources was one of the proximate causes of the Liberian civil war. In the capital an economic and political elite, many though not all of American descent, grew wealthy from resource contracts, or by appropriating in a variety of questionable ways the funds derived from resource royalties. In the Liberian hinterlands, the broad mass of people saw resources vanish, with no roads, schools, or health care clinics coming back in return. The elites and the governing structures they erected came to be seen as illegitimate, engendering first resentment, and in time hatred. The support given by rural youth to several of the militia groups early in the civil war is testimony to this fact.

While the corrupt appropriation of natural resource wealth helped engender the civil war, the sheer richness of Liberia’s natural treasures served to prolong it. Diamonds and especially timber provided Liberia’s various warlording factions with the hard currency for continued weapons purchases, providing the means to sustain their control over these resource-rich areas, and a reason to continue fighting.

The fighting which began in 1989, ceased only in 2003, with the departure of Charles Taylor and the arrival of UN forces. The peace, however, remains fragile, threatened by ethnic divisions, generational and gender strife and, most importantly, the unresolved issue of who will exploit, and who will benefit from Liberia’s natural resources.

The election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf as President of Liberia has provided a brief window of opportunity, during which reform of Liberia’s natural resource sector can be undertaken. Given the clear link between natural resources and conflict, the importance of these reforms cannot be underestimated.

But just as the importance of reform should not be underestimated, neither should the challenge facing the president, nor the power of the opposition arrayed against her. For the country’s elite, the civil war was a tragic aberration, a nightmare best forgotten. Well-represented in the Liberian congress, and installed in many of the key posts in Liberia’s civil service, many in the Liberian elite see the return of peace as simply a chance to return to business as usual, an opportunity to re-create the Liberia they and they forebears knew, and exploited, for more than a century.

Resource Sector Reform

In its first year in office, the administration of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf made significant progress in reforming Liberia’s resource-based and other industries. A key executive agency, the Public Procurement and Contracts Commission (PPCC), reviewed 95 of the 98 contracts signed by the 2003-2006 National Transitional Government of Liberia (NTGL).1 Of these, the PPCC recommended approving 52 contracts unchanged, canceling 27 outright, and renegotiating 16 contracts, including those for Mittal Steel, Firestone rubber, and a further eight contracts involving Liberia’s nascent oil industry.

In the forestry sector, the Forest Concession Review Committee examined all of the numerous outstanding concessions and claims to Liberian public forest lands, and determined that not one conformed to Liberian law. Accordingly, on February 6, 2006 as one of her first acts in office (Executive Order #1) President Johnson-Sirleaf declared void each and every one of the numerous “concession agreements”, “management contracts”, “non-concession operator permits”, “forest management utilization contracts”, and “salvage permits”.

End excerpt – Begin new excerpt

Diamonds
History

When the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on the export of rough diamonds from Liberia in 2001, it did so in the knowledge that diamonds were being used to keep the murderous regime of Charles Taylor in power, and to finance destabilizing incursions into Sierra Leone. The sanctions would be lifted only when Liberia could show significant progress towards compliance with the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), which has governed all international rough diamond transactions since 2003.

In the years since the sanctions were imposed, continued monitoring by a UN Panel of Experts and local civil society organizations, and periodic inspections by the Kimberley Process, were largely successful in bringing an end to medium and large scale mechanized mining in Liberia. The end of hostilities in Sierra Leone meanwhile and the resumption of legitimate exports from Freetown seem largely to have ended cross-border smuggling of Sierra Leonean diamonds.

Small scale alluvial mining continued in Liberia under the sanctions regime, at times disguised, other times in plain sight. In Sinoe County, miners at the BOPC site mined and sold diamonds openly, with little or no fear of government interference. Alluvial miners in more accessible parts of the country such as Lofa and Nimba counties also continued to mine for diamonds, making use of the cover of class C (artisanal) gold mining licenses. Diamonds and gold often occur together in Liberia, so the pursuit of gold provided a convenient cover, even when it was clear from the equipment being used that the main target of the operation was diamonds. Inspectors from the Ministry of Lands and Mines seemed to turn a blind eye to such activity.

The sale of rough diamonds does fall under government scrutiny, with the result that – at least in Lofa and Nimba counties – the rough diamond trade went underground during the sanctions period. Diamonds mined in these counties still travelled to Monrovia, where the usual collection of exporters shipped them out to overseas markets, or held onto them until the sanctions might be removed. With the end of sanctions, the hope is that most of these diamonds will re-surface and will be exported legally with Kimberley Process certificates attesting to their origin.

How many diamonds will surface is an open question. The lack of accurate statistics makes estimating the size of Liberia’s diamond sector an exercise in guesswork. Data from the 1980s – the last decade before war broke out and before statistics-gathering broke down – show annual exports of 200,000 – 300,000 carats per year, worth approximately US$20 million to US$30 million. About half of these diamonds are thought to have been smuggled in from Sierra Leone and other parts of West Africa.

A best guesstimate then, following sanctions, and assuming that most of Liberia’s diamond production comes out into the open, is that the diamond sector is likely to produce on the order of $10 million to $15 million worth of rough diamonds each year. The export tax has been set at a rate commensurate with those of neighbouring countries to discourage smuggling, particularly from Sierra Leone. Combined with permit fees and assorted other levies, total government revenues from the diamond sector are likely to come in at around $500,000 to $750,000. This will be enough to cover the costs of regulating and administering the sector, but not much more.

Barring the discovery of a major new diamondiferous Kimberlite pipe, the diamond sector is thus unlikely to greatly enrich government coffers. Managed improperly, however, the artisanal diamond sector has a vast potential to negatively affect both the external image of Liberia and the internal peace and security of the country. Avoiding the latter two outcomes will require careful management by the Ministry of Lands, Mines, and Energy, and much greater coordination and cooperation with the diamond sector’s civil society stakeholders.

End excerpts from "Land Grabbing and Land Reform: Diamonds, Rubber and Forests in the New Liberia". Download the full report from the Partnership Africa Canada website to read more.

08/26/07 This Just In: Tell Charles Taylor We Are Surfing!

While double-checking links and content in my post above I came across a blog by a development worker in Liberia named Kevin. In my additional resources links below there is a TIME.com article by Johnny Dywer titled Postcard from Robertsport: Tell Charles Taylor We’re Surfing. The piece is about the great surfing to be found at Robertsport, Liberia and how some of the local youth are trying to get involved in the sport despite their problems with poverty and lack of materials to build high-quality professional surfboards. Note in the TIME.com article how the surfers from the various NGO's and UN staffers treated the locals during Dywer's visit to the area.

My Liberian friend Steve and I have discussed Robertsport ever since I had read that June 2007 article at TIME, as I have been fascinated with how beautiful it must along that coastline and the commercial development potential for the area. Robertsport for me exemplifies the outstanding tourism potential for both Liberia and Sierra Leone along the Atlantic Coast, home to some of the finest tropical sandy beaches and most beautiful coastlines to be found anywhere on the planet.

Kevin (the lucky dog) has been down to Robertsport in Grand Cape Mount County and has posted photos and text about this former seaside resort at his blog. To boot he has a great video trailer (YouTube) of a soon-to-be-released documentary film about surfing the fantastic waves off the coast of Liberia at Robertsport. Don’t miss Kevin in Liberia posts Sliding Liberia Trailer, Surfing Robertsport, and The South African Concept of ‘Ubuntu’ Present in Liberia. Thanks Kevin, thanks loads for these valuable photos and your insights.

The background story about the documentary Sliding Liberia, a film produced by Stanford Ph.D. candidate Nicholai Lidow and undergraduate student Brian Caillouette can be found at Stanford University’s The Cardinal Enquirer. Both of these guys grew up near the Pacific Ocean in California and are avid surfers who are using their love of the sport to help generate interest in sustainable tourism in Liberia. They organized a small but world-class team of filmmakers and professional surfers and kayakers for this project. Read “A Distant Shore: For two socially-conscious surfer dudes, Africa is more than just a perfect wave” by Marissa Osterkamp.

Also visit the Sliding Liberia project blog at MySpace for video trailers, photo slideshows and info on how the documentary post-production and release is progressing. The pro surfer news site Mixed Plate Special published an article about the documentary Sliding Liberia this past August. The Afro-Jazz soundtrack for the documentary is from the Chicago Afrobeat Project, and they really rock along with Liberia’s “perfect waves” off the coast of Robertsport.

“Tell Charles Taylor we’re surfing off Robertsport dude, where the Liberian people and the waves are just perfect without him!”

Related articles, blog posts and other online resources

Partnership Africa Canada – The Diamonds and Human Security Project
Diamonds and Human Security Publications: Occasional Papers Series
Land Grabbing and Land Reform: Diamonds, Rubber and Forests in the New Liberia

BBC News
Curse of Liberia’s resources by Mark Doyle, 08/22/07

Association of Environmental Lawyers of Liberia
Green Advocates Liberia

Global Witness: breaking the link between natural resources, conflict, and corruption
Natural resources in conflict: Liberia
Global Witness media library: Liberia
To Have and Have Not: Resource Governance in the 21st Century
War crimes trial of Gus Kouwenhoven to commence in the Hague
Timber, Taylor, Soldier, Spy
Dangerous Liaisons Liberia

Center for Global Development (CGD)
Address by Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, 03/20/06
Liberia’s Progress, Potential, and Challenges for the Future (video and text)

Council on Foreign Relations
A conversation with Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (audio and text), 03/21/06
CFR Liberia reports and articles

TIME.com
Postcard from Robertsport: Tell Charles Taylor We’re Surfing, 06/05/07

The Entrepreneur (Cameroon)
Liberia joins Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)

Global Policy Forum
Timber in Conflict: The Dark Side of Natural Resources
New Dawn for Liberia’s Forests (BBC News, 08/12/06)

E-LAW Impact Newsletter
Protecting Natural Resources in Liberia (features Green Advocates Liberia)

UNMIL (United Nations Mission in Liberia) – Environment and Natural Resources

Natural Resource Issues in Liberia

Financial Times (UK)
Book review of Oxford economist Paul Collier’s “The Bottom Billion”


Special reports on natural resource extraction and armed conflicts in the DR Congo

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele (fellow at Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting)
In Search of Congo’s Coltan, 08/08/07 (Pambazuka News)
Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting: Mbemba Dizolele
Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting: Africa projects
Mvemba’s personal blog Eye on Africa and his bio

Technorati tags:AfricaLiberiaSierra Leonedemocracy governance economics development economics environment natural resources conservation Global Voices

Congo's Tin Soldiers: How you and I may be supporting modern-day slavery in central Africa

This is a ‘heads up’ post about a special CNN report on modern-day slavery and the misery that it causes for men and boys in the eastern DRC. Congo’s Tin Soldiers will be airing tonight, March 30th, on the new CNN weekly documentary series the World’s Untold Stories. In a preview about tonight’s show CNN writes,

It doesn't glitter like a diamond or burn like oil but cassiterite is another natural resource that is causing more pain than profit for the majority of Africans that try to extract it from their soil. Demand for cassiterite - a tin ore used in computer circuitry -- is on the rise. So too is illegal mining of the ore in the Democratic Republic of Congo where militias are forcing laborers to work in atrocious conditions with little or no pay. Reporter Jonathan Miller treks deep into the jungle to see how it works.

The CNN report is based upon an award-winning TV investigative news report by the same name, Congo’s Tin Soldiers, produced by Channel 4 News (U.K.) and Global Witness and reported by Channel 4 News foreign correspondents Jonathan Miller and Elizabeth Jones on June 30, 2005. Below I have included links to detailed reports and articles at the Global Witness website about illegal mining and child & slave labor in Congo’s mining industry so that you may learn more about how natural resources and armed conflicts in Africa have brought nothing but death and misery to people there.

Cassiterite (a tin oxide mineral) is the primary source of Tin, a metal which among other things is used to produce electrical and electronic products. As of lately tin has been in huge demand for the production of integrated circuit boards as a replacement for lead oxides, a substance that has been banned by national and international environmental laws in the manufacture of electronic products and parts. Tin is at present the highest traded metal on the London Metal Exchange and prices have more than tripled since the year 2000.

Some of my readers may remember my post about illegal resource exploitation in the Democratic Republic of Congo titled Diamonds are NOT a Girl’s Best Friend (Sep 2005), and the work that several journalists and online authors and bloggers have done to draw attention to this serious crisis in central Africa and other regions of the world i.e. Asia and South America. More than18 months have passed since I wrote and published that brief “heads up” post, and even more time has passed since the publication of several detailed reports and news articles from a variety of international organizations and news networks that have been attempting to bring this horrendous problem to the attention of the world audience for years. Over the past few months I have noticed the buzz around the December 2006 release of the Hollywood blockbuster film Blood Diamond, about the disaster that befell the people of Sierra Leone and Liberia during West Africa’s bloody civil wars period of the 1980’s, 1990’s, and right up to the present day (Cote d’Ivoire).

The documentary filmmaker icon Sorious Samura, a native of Sierra Leone who had witnessed the violence and killing in his home country firsthand, released his shocking documentary film Cry Freetown and a second documentary Return to Freetown years before producer/director Ed Zwick addressed the subject in Blood Diamond. CNN International aired a series of specials last month about conflict diamonds and the misery and suffering they have caused in West Africa. One program hosted by CNN Insight’s Jonathan Mann included interviews with Sorious Samura together with the lead actors Leonardo DiCapprio and Djimon Honsou. Insight News TV’s Sorious Samura and CNN aired on March 3rd, 2007 Samura’s latest work “Blood on the Stone”, a film that shows how illegally mined diamonds and the exploitation of children and young people continues in Sierra Leone and other West African countries to this very day.

I’ve also noticed that the film Blood Diamond has captured the attention of the “Bling-bling” crowd and other groups of young people worldwide. Hopefully the film and Sorious Samura’s documentaries and the follow-up efforts in the blogosphere and in the media (i.e. VH1’s bling’d: blood, diamonds, and hip-hop) will help to raise awareness, anger and downright revulsion toward supporting the trade in conflict diamonds and illegally obtained resources and slave labor in Africa and elsewhere around the globe.

The CNN/Channel 4 News special “Tin Soldiers” should do the same for the “Click-click” global crowd, those millions upon millions of people worldwide who purchase and use computers and cell phones (mobile phones) and a host of other electronic gadgets that may contain components made from the near slave labor used to mine cassiterite or coltan or gold or other minerals and metals in Central and West Africa. Just as governments, organizations, and activists worldwide are demanding that the mining and jewelry industries come clean in their sourcing of diamonds and gold, the same should apply to the electronics and engineering industries and their related businesses in the sourcing of metals and minerals used to manufacture their products. Let’s spread the pain here, let everybody feel what it is like to be a “Tin Soldier” in Katanga or in North and South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo.

The fine independent journalist and author Mvemba Phezo Dizolele of the Eye on Africa blog has written articles and produced video reports (“Congo’s Bloody Coltan”) about the miserable conditions that men and boys work under in mining cassiterite and other minerals in his home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mvemba is a research fellow at the renowned Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting and he has written articles and appeared in interviews on several press and media networks including the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, National Public Radio (NPR), Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria, BBC World, Voice of America, and other noted media outfits. In other words, Mvemba is one of the hardest working guys in online news and he knows what he is talking about when it comes to the Congo and its neighboring countries in Central Africa.

So, since I am working on the subject of SLAVERY this month and next, let’s not forget about the people around the world who are still entrapped and suffering from 21st Century Slavery, like Congo’s Tin Soldiers. Enjoy the program and don’t miss it!

Update March 31st:

I watched the CNN program last night at 2000 CET and realized after the first 5 minutes that it was a verbatim re-broadcast of the original 2005 Channel 4 News report "Congo's Tin Soldiers". The CNN host for the World's Untold Stories program, Colleen McEdwards, should have pointed out this important information to CNN's international viewers but she didn't.

Nonetheless, it was both interesting and disturbing for me to watch this excellent documentary report again, so if you missed it last night, check the CNN program schedule (see link below) for repeat broadcast times this weekend in your region of the world.

On a somewhat unrelated note, Robert Mugabe, arguably one of the most disgusting and corrupt heads of state on the African continent, has left many in the international community in shock after he emerged victorious from an emergency session of the Southern African Development Committee conference in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania this week.

In the wake of the Blood Diamonds and Conflict Diamonds buzz over the past few months Mugabe & Co. (formerly the Republic of Zimbabwe) has come up with a new and lucrative twist on human and natural resource exploitation in Africa: Starvation Diamonds! Here is the latest about Zimbabwe's Starvation Diamonds from an AP report of March 09, 2007:

Police move to curb diamond rush in eastern Zimbabwe by Angus Shaw, AP

HARARE, Zimbabwe: Police said they had tightened a cordon sealing off diamond diggings in eastern Zimbabwe to "restore sanity" and stop profiteers, including politicians and powerful officials, buying the stones cheaply from peasants and smuggling them out of the country, state radio reported Friday.

Checkpoints sealed off the diggings at Marange, 220 kilometers (140 miles) southeast of Harare, and all visitors needed official police clearance documents to enter the area, it said. The measure was to "restore sanity" to the remote district where seams of industrial diamonds and gemstones were found close to the surface last year, provincial police chief Obert Benge told the radio.

Only genuine relatives of villagers living in the area qualify for clearance documents, he said.

"Senior officials who might intend to bulldoze their way into the fields will prosecuted," he said.

Last week, a top official in President Robert Mugabe's office, William Nhara, the principal director in Mugabe's Ministry without Portfolio, was arrested with a woman, identified as Lebanese national Carole El Martni, allegedly in possession of a bag of diamonds estimated at about 10,700 carats at the main Harare airport. Nhara was also accused of offering a US$700 (€ 530) bribe to airport security men who found the diamonds in baggage....

...The Marange diamond find led to a frantic Klondike-like rush to the district last year. In the past six months police arrested more than 30,000 illegal prospectors in a countrywide operation against unlicensed gold and diamond mining and smuggling. Most were fined and released.

Earlier this month, Gideon Gono, governor of the state central bank, estimated the nation lost up to US$50 million (€37 million) a week in mining revenues through illegal smuggling of precious metals and stones.

Nhara was the first government leader arrested, but witnesses repeatedly reported others and foreign nationals, traveling to the area in luxury cars and off-road vehicles, buying diamonds well below their real value from impoverished and illiterate villagers. The diamonds were smuggled to neighboring South Africa for massive profits....

Now you have to ask yourself, is this an example of good governance and looking out for the interests of the people of Zimbabwe or what? No wonder leaders like Robert Mugabe and Thabo Mbeki (South Africa) are such good friends and all smiles.

Also checkout the excellent March 27th Hot Seat Debate on Zimbabwe hosted by SW Radio Africa correspondent Violet Gonda. The debate and interview program includes prominent figures such as the renowned economist and African scholar Dr. George Ayittey , Dr. Sehlare Makgelaneng (head of the Southern Africa and SADC program at South Africa's Africa Institute - Pretoria), and Ralph Black, the U.S. deputy representative for Zimbabwe's MDC opposition party. You can read the transcript from the debate courtesy of the Association of Zimbabwean Journalists in the U.K. website Zimbabwejournalists.com. Why is Africa turning its back on Zimbabwe?.

CNN, Channel 4 News (U.K.) and Global Witness resources:

CNN World’s Untold Stories official blog
CNN World’s Untold Stories schedule for March 30 thru April 1st

Anderson Cooper 360° blog
(the official blog of the popular CNN investigative news program)

Gang raped and mutilated but still praising God, 05/26/06

Congo’s Tin Soldiers: a report by Jonathan Miller and Elizabeth Jones
Channel 4 (U.K.), 06/30/05 News article and video report

Global Witness Media Library

Global Witness welcomes television award for Congo news report, 02/23/06

DRC elections delayed as demand for tin continues to fuel conflict in the east of the country, 06/30/05

Under-mining peace: Tin – the explosive trade in cassiterite in the eastern DRC
A Global Witness special report, 06/30/05

Complaint against Afrimex Ltd. (U.K.) plus other Global Witness reports on the illegal exploitation of resources (cassiterite) in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Widespread fraud and abuse in Katanga’s copper and cobalt mines, 07/05/06

Millions of dollars vanish in Congo’s cobalt rush, 09/29/04

Rush and Ruin: the devastating mineral trade in Southern Katanga, DRC
Global Witness report, September 2004

Other related articles and resources:

National Geographic magazine
21st Century Slaves – a special edition issue September 2003

CNNMoney.com (Fortune magazine)
Congo’s Tin Men, 04/27/06

Business and Human Rights (in partnership with Amnesty International)
Congo’s Tin Soldiers, 06/30/05

Global Policy Forum
War, Murder, and Rape… all for your cell phones, 09/15/06

Radio Open Source
Coltan in the Congo podcast, 10/24/06

NPR Expeditions (National Public Radio)
Coltan Mining and Eastern Congo’s Gorillas. 12/20/01

Insight News TV (U.K.)
Films by Sorious Samura and other INTV filmmakers

Wikipedia
Blood Diamond (the film)

Technorati tags: Africa Congo DR Congo Zimbabwe mining corruption conflict-diamonds gold human rights slavery Global Voices CNN journalism