the carving up of the congo [great as a detalied case-study of the seediness of carving up]:Most people who became aware of the 2nd Congo War (1998-2003) did so because of the violence unleased in the (then) Ituri District, which was created in June of 1999 by General James Kazini of the Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF). After the Lusaka Accords were signed and the UPDF officially pulled out of the country, the neighboring countries of Uganda and Rwanda aggravated and exploited ethnic differences to create numerous militias that went to war over the vast gold tracts in Ituri. The illegal sale of this gold in neighboring countries served to fund the war by purchasing arms, military uniforms, and other supplies. Incomprehensable acts of violence and rape occurred, and child soldiers were the norm. Today, with the aid of U.N. forces, Ituri has found a relative peace.
(...) Ituri is unique compared to the Kivu provinces to the south because throughout the 1st Congo War (1996-1997) to the present day, war over minerals has always been about gold and timber. The rest of Northeastern Congo went through several distict phases where one particular commodity was more sought after than another. When the 2nd Congo War broke out, diamonds were the most coveted mineral until mid-2000. In 2000, the coltan (columbium-tantalite) boom occurred due to increased military-industrial spending, and the arrival of popular electronics equipment (the cell phone boom, Sony Playstation, etc.), which drastically increased market demand for coltan. What started off in 1999 as a $20 (U.S.) per pound commodity rose to $380 (U.S.) per pound by December of 2000. With 80% of the world’s coltan reserves, fierce fighting for the mining sites claimed countless victims [1]. The world market reserves quickly became so saturated with smuggled coltan that the price plummeted back down by the end of 2001. The smugglers in the Kivus then focused on the highest grade ores that were found primarily in Walikale Territory.
(...) Throughout the wars and for years before that, multinational corporations sought to exploit the same gold mining areas in Ituri that the militias did.
(...)