Which of the following effects in Congo has been caused by the increasing value of coltan?
violence over control of coltan resources
violence over control of diamond resources
demand for electronics
increased tension between the Hutu and the Tutsi
Answers
Answer:
War rages in Africa over a remarkable metal used to make cell
phones and MP3 players.
Ever wonder where the metal inside your MP3 player comes from? Chances
are the source is an impoverished country in the heart of Africa: the
Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Though Congo’s people are desperately poor, their land is stunningly rich in
diamonds, gold, silver, tin, uranium, and a mineral called coltan. To the
untrained eye, coltan looks worthless. But it contains one of the most
valuable metals on Earth: tantalum. It’s that metal that helps power cell
phones, MP3 players, and video game consoles.
“Coltan is vital to the function of modern society,” says Andrew Campbell, a
professor of mineralogy at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and
Technology. “It is an incredibly precious mineral.”
Precious and rare. Sixty-four percent of the world’s coltan is underground in
Congo. In recent years, the demand for cell phones has skyrocketed—and
with it, the value of Congo’s coltan. That rise in demand has sparked a mad
scramble among corrupt governments, violent militias, and wealthy
companies, all struggling to get their hands on the mineral. The result has
been one of the bloodiest wars in world history. Since 1996, 6 million people
have been killed. The International Rescue Committee estimates that 45,000
Congolese are dying every month.
Keith Harmon Snow has witnessed that bloodshed. Snow is an investigator
for the United Nations. He was living in Congo with a family of poor peasants
when the entire family was killed by soldiers from the neighboring nation of
Rwanda.
“That’s the way it is there. The militias control the land. They’ll take a 9-
year-old boy, put a gun to his head, and force him to dig up the coltan and
haul it away,” says Snow. “It’s a slavery situation. They make sure no one
steps out of line.”
The militias are brutalizing the girls they find in Congo’s villages too. “It’s a
war tactic,” says Maurice Carney, cofounder of the aid organization Friends
of the Congo. “The idea is to terrorize the communities that live on this resource-rich land, to move them off the land so the rebels can control it.
Then they dig up the coltan and sell it to international corporations.”