And Mvemba Dizolele has relaunched his blog, Eye on Africa. Most readers will know Dizolele as one of the most prominent voices on Congo in the United States, and for his frequent appearances on TV and radio.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Two Interesting New Congo Blogs
And Mvemba Dizolele has relaunched his blog, Eye on Africa. Most readers will know Dizolele as one of the most prominent voices on Congo in the United States, and for his frequent appearances on TV and radio.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Lil 'Ol Me?
I seem to have become for Enough what Rachel Maddow is for Newt Gingrich and gay terrorists are to the Family Research Council: a bogeyman to rally supporters around.
I don't mind. But I wish they'd spend less energy attacking me and more energy trying to figure out what to do about the million or so people they've helped immiserate.
Here's the first part of a letter they're sending around:
I don't mind. But I wish they'd spend less energy attacking me and more energy trying to figure out what to do about the million or so people they've helped immiserate.
Here's the first part of a letter they're sending around:
 |
Dear Friend, This past week, we've seen a flurry of debate surrounding the impact of the conflict minerals provision in the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act on the people of eastern Congo. Voices critical of conflict minerals reform provisions have seized on a New York Times opinion piece by David Aronson, which largely blames the current plight of eastern Congo’s local communities on Enough Project, Congress, and others. I know you’ve been fired up by this intense debate and want to take action now. |
Working in the Mine, Mine
3TAMIS, a Congolese film making company located in Bukavu, in association with Oxfam, produced a good short documentary in 2008 about cassiterite mining on Idjwi Island. I think it provides an almost tangible sense of what it's like to work in the mines in eastern Congo--and also of just how bleak the prospects are otherwise. It's only in French, unfortunately, but if you can follow along it's well worth it.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
The Lesson of the 20th Century
For people who write about "inevitable dislocations" or "foreseeable negative side-effects," one thought:
The omelet never turns out the way you imagine, but the eggs--they stay broken.
The omelet never turns out the way you imagine, but the eggs--they stay broken.
A Methodological Suggestion for Econometricians Working in Africa
When I was in Bukavu this summer, I tried to figure out how to measure the secondary economic effects of the de facto mineral embargo. It was clear how the embargo was affecting the miners and others directly involved in the mineral trade. A team of economists could presumably fan out throughout the province and measure those effects down to the decimal point. But how establish the impact of the embargo on the broader economy of the region--especially given the paucity (and likely inaccuracy) of the relevant data?
We have all sorts of ways to measure how well the economy is doing in the United States. There's the inflation rate, of course, and the unemployment rate. But there's also the monthly advanced retail sales report, the manufacturer's shipments and orders report, and the personal income and spending report, to name a few. Each of these require sophisticated data gathering techniques that have been refined over decades--the sort of intellectual infrastructure that obviously doesn't exist in a place like Bukavu. The question is whether there is any shortcut, any (relatively) accessible data that might function as a quick and dirty indicator of how well the economy is doing.
One thought occurred to me: Cell phone minutes. Cell phones are pretty ubiquitous, at least in town. Most people don't have monthly plans. Instead, they buy cell phone minutes in increments of one to five dollars at a time. When people aren't doing so well, they purchase fewer of those minutes. When they're flush, they purchase more. As a proxy for economic trends, then, minutes have several advantages. They aren't a requirement of life, like rent or food. But neither are they a lagging indicator, the result of pre-existing contracts and commitments, in the way that labor costs might be. Instead, they reflect how well people feel they are doing at the very moment the minutes are purchased. They are, to use an economic term I probably have no business using, highly elastic.
We have all sorts of ways to measure how well the economy is doing in the United States. There's the inflation rate, of course, and the unemployment rate. But there's also the monthly advanced retail sales report, the manufacturer's shipments and orders report, and the personal income and spending report, to name a few. Each of these require sophisticated data gathering techniques that have been refined over decades--the sort of intellectual infrastructure that obviously doesn't exist in a place like Bukavu. The question is whether there is any shortcut, any (relatively) accessible data that might function as a quick and dirty indicator of how well the economy is doing.
One thought occurred to me: Cell phone minutes. Cell phones are pretty ubiquitous, at least in town. Most people don't have monthly plans. Instead, they buy cell phone minutes in increments of one to five dollars at a time. When people aren't doing so well, they purchase fewer of those minutes. When they're flush, they purchase more. As a proxy for economic trends, then, minutes have several advantages. They aren't a requirement of life, like rent or food. But neither are they a lagging indicator, the result of pre-existing contracts and commitments, in the way that labor costs might be. Instead, they reflect how well people feel they are doing at the very moment the minutes are purchased. They are, to use an economic term I probably have no business using, highly elastic.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
A Response to Enough
The Huffington Post has published Enough's response to my New York Times op-ed. I think it's unconvincing, for several reasons.
1) The primary argument of my piece is that the Dodd-Frank Act is having a devastating impact on Congolese. Enough doesn't deny that; in fact they acknowledge that "dislocations are inevitable," and estimate that mineral exports from the Kivus have decreased by 75 percent as a result of the law. Some 200,000 to 400,000 people work as artisanal miners in the Kivus. Most of them are young men and heads of households, so it's probably fair to say that one million people, including women and children, depend directly on mining for their livelihood. If a million people one step up from absolute poverty have lost 75 percent of their income, that's a disaster. Those "inevitable dislocations" translate, as I said in my op-ed, to mothers giving birth at home instead of in clinics, children dropping out of school, families going hungry, and whole communities being cut off from the world.
2) Enough continues to maintain that the mineral trade is fueling the conflicts in the Congo. That was arguably true for the period from 2003 to 2008. It was during that period, between the official withdrawal of Rwanda and Uganda on the one hand, and the "global and inclusive agreement" on the other, that a large number of militia groups flourished. There is a serious, sometimes acrimonious debate about the role that minerals played in the conflicts during those years--a debate that feeds into a broader academic discussion about the root causes of civil wars.
But from 2008, nearly all of the militia groups that were once active in the Kivus were incorporated into the national army. The one exception is the FLDR, the remnants of the ex-genocidaires, who are responsible for about 75 to 80 percent of the rape victims seen by Panzi hospital each year. Embattled and hunted down, they have taken refuge in the vast untouched forests of Shabunda, where they make their money by kidnapping and extortion.
The bottom line: while there may have been a time when you could plausibly have argued that the mineral trade fueled the conflicts, that time is past. Most of the militia that participated in the trade have been neutralized, and the one that hasn't been neutralized isn't involved in the trade.
1) The primary argument of my piece is that the Dodd-Frank Act is having a devastating impact on Congolese. Enough doesn't deny that; in fact they acknowledge that "dislocations are inevitable," and estimate that mineral exports from the Kivus have decreased by 75 percent as a result of the law. Some 200,000 to 400,000 people work as artisanal miners in the Kivus. Most of them are young men and heads of households, so it's probably fair to say that one million people, including women and children, depend directly on mining for their livelihood. If a million people one step up from absolute poverty have lost 75 percent of their income, that's a disaster. Those "inevitable dislocations" translate, as I said in my op-ed, to mothers giving birth at home instead of in clinics, children dropping out of school, families going hungry, and whole communities being cut off from the world.
2) Enough continues to maintain that the mineral trade is fueling the conflicts in the Congo. That was arguably true for the period from 2003 to 2008. It was during that period, between the official withdrawal of Rwanda and Uganda on the one hand, and the "global and inclusive agreement" on the other, that a large number of militia groups flourished. There is a serious, sometimes acrimonious debate about the role that minerals played in the conflicts during those years--a debate that feeds into a broader academic discussion about the root causes of civil wars.
But from 2008, nearly all of the militia groups that were once active in the Kivus were incorporated into the national army. The one exception is the FLDR, the remnants of the ex-genocidaires, who are responsible for about 75 to 80 percent of the rape victims seen by Panzi hospital each year. Embattled and hunted down, they have taken refuge in the vast untouched forests of Shabunda, where they make their money by kidnapping and extortion.
The bottom line: while there may have been a time when you could plausibly have argued that the mineral trade fueled the conflicts, that time is past. Most of the militia that participated in the trade have been neutralized, and the one that hasn't been neutralized isn't involved in the trade.
Monday, August 8, 2011
The New York Times Op-Ed
For an even more critical view of the Dodd-Frank conflict minerals provisions than mine, see TexasinAfrica.
For a good interview with Eric Kajemba, the NGO leader mentioned at the end of this editorial, see CongoSiasa.
It is probably worth mentioning that while I and a lot of other scholars and students of African affairs are deeply concerned about Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act, regarding conflict minerals, we generally favor Section 1504 , which requires American companies to disclose the payments they make to foreign governments.
How Congress Devastated Congo
IT’S a long way from the marble halls of Congress to the ailing mining towns of eastern Congo, but the residents of Nyabibwe and Nzibira know exactly what’s to blame for their economic woes.
For a good interview with Eric Kajemba, the NGO leader mentioned at the end of this editorial, see CongoSiasa.
It is probably worth mentioning that while I and a lot of other scholars and students of African affairs are deeply concerned about Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act, regarding conflict minerals, we generally favor Section 1504 , which requires American companies to disclose the payments they make to foreign governments.
IT’S a long way from the marble halls of Congress to the ailing mining towns of eastern Congo, but the residents of Nyabibwe and Nzibira know exactly what’s to blame for their economic woes.
The “Loi Obama” or Obama Law — as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform act of 2010 has become known in the region — includes an obscure provision that requires public companies to indicate what measures they are taking to ensure that minerals in their supply chain don’t benefit warlords in conflict-ravaged Congo. The provision came about in no small part because of the work of high-profile advocacy groups like the Enough Project and Global Witness, which have been working for an end to what they call “conflict minerals.”
Unfortunately, the Dodd-Frank law has had unintended and devastating consequences, as I saw firsthand on a trip to eastern Congo this summer. The law has brought about a de facto embargo on the minerals mined in the region, including tin, tungsten and the tantalum that is essential for making cellphones.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Learning about the Congo
If you're a newcomer and want to know more about the Congo, the best place to start is with Jason Stearns' recently published Dancing in the Glory of Monsters. It provides a clear, well-written account of the wars that took place in 1996–97 and 1998–2003 and of the Congo's breakdown in their aftermath. Stearns manages to streamline the story without making it simplistic; he conveys the episodic horror of those years without dehumanizing the victims or the victimizers; and his prose is lively and detailed. While Rwanda and Uganda emerge as the book's primary antagonists--their plunder-driven invasions left the eastern half of Congo in chaos--Stearns makes it clear that it is ultimately the Congo's own lack of political leadership that accounts for the country's continuing problems. A more detailed study is Gerard Prunier's Africa's World War. Prunier is the author of an outstanding account of the Rwandan genocide, but in this book he sometimes loses the narrative thread as he exhaustively details the alliances and divisions of the country's mitotic rebel groups.
OF course, before the wars there was Mobutu, African Machiavel, kleptocrat, and American Cold War ally. An excellent journalistic account of his excesses and ultimate downfall is Michaela Wrong's In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz. A shoutout is due as well to Howard French's A Continent for the Taking, although only a couple of the book's chapters focus on Congo. The best documentary is Thierry Michel's Roi du Zaire--only in French, unfortunately. Still the best scholarly treatment of Mobutu's reign is Crawford Young and Thomas Turner's Rise and Decline of the Zairian State. Unfortunately, it was published in the mid-1980s and so doesn't cover the last decade of the regime.
OF course, before the wars there was Mobutu, African Machiavel, kleptocrat, and American Cold War ally. An excellent journalistic account of his excesses and ultimate downfall is Michaela Wrong's In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz. A shoutout is due as well to Howard French's A Continent for the Taking, although only a couple of the book's chapters focus on Congo. The best documentary is Thierry Michel's Roi du Zaire--only in French, unfortunately. Still the best scholarly treatment of Mobutu's reign is Crawford Young and Thomas Turner's Rise and Decline of the Zairian State. Unfortunately, it was published in the mid-1980s and so doesn't cover the last decade of the regime.
Quote of the Day
It is relatively uncomplicated to guard oneself against cruelty and greed, if one wishes to do so. But detachment, a half-willed blindness to the suffering of others, is one of the inescapable conditions of life on earth. Between 1998 and 2003, about as many people were killed in the Congo War as died in the Holocaust. Our ability to live placidly through this and so many other atrocities lies in a combination of ignorance and helplessness: it happened far away, we didn’t pay attention as it happened, and even if we rent our clothes over it, there was nothing we could do to stop it.
--Adam Kirsch in "Can You Learn Anything from a Void?," from this week's The New Republic.I find I'm seeing more of this, the invocation of the Congo as a place whose problems we're never going to do anything about. The Congo's become rhetorical shorthand for the inevitable limits of our humanitarian instincts, limits wiser to acknowledge than protest. A few months ago, for example, the discussion among Very Serious People was about whether we pay too much attention to the suffering of the Palestinians and not enough to the suffering of, say, the Congolese. On one side were those who argued that we care comparatively little about the Congo; to make it right, they said, we need to care less about the Palestinians. On the other side were Equally Serious People who felt that both groups get the attention they deserve: not too much, not too little, but just right.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
What We Talk about when We Talk about Rape
I interviewed these women one afternoon in late June, 2011, in the back lot of a protestant church outside of Uvira. All volunteered their names and agreed to have their photographs taken for possible publication. By telling their stories they hoped to provoke action to reduce the continuing toll of rape in their country.
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