Georges is at it again. Now there’s nothing wrong with his basic point, that the Congo is in the grip of a fearful war, that the Govt of Rwanda has a great deal to do with it and that we ought to do something about it. As he also points out, more deaths in this war than any since WWII. Fully support him on all those points. Just what we should do is a little less clear. No mention of sending troops for example. We should cut aid to the Rwandan Govt perhaps?

Rwanda is a tiny, frail state, which would collapse without foreign aid, over one third of which comes from Britain.

This may or may not be true, not sure myself, but it does seem to be contradicted by this in the same piece:

By 1999, according to a
report for the UN security council, 80% of the Rwandan military budget
– around $320m a year – was coming from minerals stolen from the DRC.

It’s our old friend economics again, the one Georges has such problems with. If both those budget numbers are correct, that it is a tiny state reliant upon aid and also paying for its military through looting, then the incentive for the generals is to keep looting. Sad but true.
I’m also a little worried that he’s been taking notes from one or other of the NGOs without actually checking with the metals industry (sorry, but this is a subject I know a little about):

Better armed than the
other forces in the region, the Rwandan army concentrated on seeking to
monopolise the trade in diamonds and coltan.

Diamonds, yes. Cobalt and copper as well. But whenever I see "coltan" a red mist descends. Firstly, there is in reality no such thing. It’s columbite or tantalite (the two are very similar ores, both containing niobium (columbium for Americans, thus the name) and tantalum. If the Ta level is higher than the Nb then its tantalite and vice versa) and it is the source of the tantalum powder that makes the capacitors in your mobile phones work. Coltan is the abbreviation used by those in the NGOs.
Now, it is true that there was a huge spike in the price of this material some 4-5 years ago. People really were going out into the bush with a spade and a sack and making $100 a day. That’s the sort of thing the NGOs are talking about, and no doubt there were vile slavish practices associated with it. However, what gets missed is that it doesn’t actually happen any more. For two reasons.
1) The price has dropped. Tantalum prices are way way down and so are the ore prices. It simply isn’t effective for people to mine the material in this manner any more. There are two reasons for the price drop…the capacitors now use a fraction of the tantalum that they used to as we’ve moved to Surface Mount Technology (think tiny chips instead of the older things that look like diodes). So while phone sales still rise, each uses less Ta. The second is that the peak in price was an over reaction by the market itself, something we all know about, it was simply a temporary boom.
2) Much more importantly, it is almost impossible to sell tantalite gathered in this way any more. It’s a complex ore to process and I can only think of three or four major companies that are set up to do so on any scale. These companies have all announced that they will not accept ore from the various small scale African operations. Now, we might argue with this, looking at it as a method of protecting the large scale capitalist operations at the expense of the small scale entrepreneur, or we could say that it is a welcome sign of corporate responsibility, refusing to buy from slave owners. Your choice. But it has happened.

Sorry for the slight ranting there, it just really gets up my nose when my industry is blamed for a problem it solved several years ago, via voluntary action. Coltan is old news.

Update. Apparently, despite appearances, I am insufficiently cynical. I’m told by a trade insider (obviously more so than myself) that DRC tantalite does still make its way to the large refiners. The pledge of non use was just that, a pledge, to be honoured in the breach.
So, looks like Moonbat knew more than me. Bit of a shock that.