The Curse of Gold
The northeast corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is home to one of Africa's richest goldfields. Competition to control the gold mines and trading routes has spurred the bloody conflict that has gripped this area since the start of the Congolese war in 1998 and continues to the present.
Soldiers and armed group leaders, seeing control of the gold mines as a way to money, guns, and power, have fought each other ruthlessly, often targeting civilians in the process. Combatants under their command carried out widespread ethnic slaughter, executions, torture, rape and arbitrary arrest, all grave human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law. More than sixty thousand people have died due to direct violence in this part of Congo alone. Rather than bringing prosperity to the people of northeastern Congo, gold has been a curse to those who have the misfortune to live there.
When Uganda, a major belligerent in the war, occupied northeastern Congo from 1998 to 2003, its soldiers took direct control of gold-rich areas and coerced gold miners to extract the gold for their benefit. They beat and arbitrarily arrested those who resisted their orders. Ignoring the rules of war for the conduct of occupying armies, they helped themselves to an estimated one ton of Congolese gold valued at over $9 million. Their irresponsible mining practices led to the collapse of one of the most important mines in the area in 1999, the Gorumbwa mine, killing some one hundred people trapped inside and destroying a major livelihood for the residents of the area.
The Ugandan army withdrew from Congo in 2003, following Rwanda, another major belligerent, which had withdrawn the year before. Each left behind local proxies, the Lendu Nationalist and Integrationist Front (Front des Nationalistes et Intégrationnistes, FNI) linked to Uganda, and the Hema Union of Congolese Patriots (Union des Patriotes Congolais, UPC), supported by Rwanda. With continued assistance from their external backers, these local armed groups in turn fought for the control of gold-mining areas and trade routes. As each group won a gold-rich area, they promptly began exploiting the ore. The FNI and the UPC fought five battles in a struggle to control Mongbwalu, each resulting in widespread human rights abuses.
Human Rights Watch researchers documented the slaughter of at least two thousand civilians in the Mongbwalu area alone between June 2002 and September 2004. Tens of thousands of civilians were forced to flee from their homes into the forests to escape their attackers. Many of them did not survive.