The mindboggling violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo over the past ten years has seen more dead bodies than the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur and Iraq combined. At the heart of the conflict are the so-called ‘blood minerals’ or ‘conflict minerals’ whose unregulated trade has been ruling the country, enriching its politicians and their crony elite, as well as plunging the Congolese people into the deepest depths of poverty and degradation.

These minerals are the ‘ores that produce tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold.’ They find their way into the world’s cell phones, iPods, computers, and sundry other gadgets and gizmos. They have also fueled ‘a war that has left more than 5 million dead.’

The lucrative path from conflict minerals to western consumer electronics companies starts in eastern Congo. Men and children are ‘forced to pay arbitrary “taxes” to various armed groups and live on slave wages, carving uncertain tunnels into mountains with iron picks, hammers and their bare hands. Deep underground, they sift through mud and rock for valuable ore, much of which is smuggled across the border into Rwanda or Uganda, taken by truck to ports in Tanzania and Kenya, and loaded onto cargo ships bound for Asia, where it is smelted into metal, sold and used by electronics companies to make the microprocessors that power your favorite gadgets.’

About half a dozen armed groups vie for control over the lucrative trade in black market minerals, mined by the so-called artisanal miners whose lives are literally endangered by the mining operations.

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Via The Root