The Resource Curse In Action In Congo - Tin Boom Chops Up Jungle, Drives Armed Chaos - IHT

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Despite a costly effort to unite the country's many militias into a single army, billions of dollars spent on international peacekeepers and an election that brought democracy to Congo for the first time in four decades, the government is unable or unwilling to force these fighters - who wear government army uniforms and collect a government paycheck - to leave the mountain.

The ore these fighters control is central to the chaos that continues to plague Congo, helping to perpetuate a vast conflict in which as many as five million people have died. In the latest chapter, fighting between government troops and a renegade general, Laurent Nkunda, has forced tens of thousands of civilians here in eastern Congo to flee and pushed the nation to the brink of a new regional war. The proceeds of this and other mines here in eastern Congo, along with the illegal tributes collected on roads and border crossings controlled by rebel groups, militias and government soldiers, help bankroll virtually every armed group in eastern Congo.

No roads lead to Bisie. This hidden city of 10,000 lies 50 kilometers, or 30 miles, down a narrow, muddy footpath through dense, equatorial forest. Built entirely for the mine, Bisie is a cloistered world of expropriation and violence that mirrors the broad crisis in which Congo still finds itself mired. This is Africa's resource curse: Its wealth is unearthed by the poor, controlled by the strong, then sold on to a world largely oblivious of its bloody origins. Under Matumo's rule, Bisie is a fetid, Darwinian place where those with weapons and money leech off a desperate horde in a pyramid of payoffs.

The chokehold begins a long way from the mine. At the trailhead, a burly soldier with a spade-shaped beard demanded 50 cents from every man, woman and child to enter the trail to the mine. A clamoring crowd hands wrinkled bills to the soldier, who opens the wooden gate a crack to let those with cash make the journey through the jungle.At the other end of the trail, at the base of the mountain, another crowd forms at the gate into Bisie. Porters exhausted from the two-day trek sprawl on felled trees, waiting for soldiers to inspect their load and extract another tribute. The price is usually 10 percent of entering merchandise and cash.The men at the checkpoints describe these payments as taxes. But the people of Bisie don't get much in return.

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http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/16/africa/congo.php