Corona Crisis, Nature Strikes Back, Coltan, Congo's Curse, Chapter 3

 

Chapter 3

Memories

Aldabi Alombong picked up the phone. ‘Oui,’ he said, ‘who is this?’

‘It is your old mate Erik. How are you my brother? It‘s been a while. I only seem to deal with your subordinates now that you are the big boss.’ I had sounded a bit cynical but intended none.

‘Yes, I am good. And yes, quite a while. We used to deal directly, but now my agents and office staff do all the legwork.’

‘But tell me, are you OK?’

‘I am quite well. You know how it is here in conflict zone one. It is not getting any better, but worse. Great to hear your voice. What can I do for you?’

I told him that I was coming to town and wanted to set up a meeting or dinner with him.

He agreed, and we set up a date, place and time.

‘Looking forward to seeing you again, old friend. We have to talk.’

‘True, we should talk more, but since you’re in Geneva and only coming here occasionally, it is difficult to keep up the relationship. You know how it goes; out of sight, out of mind.’

‘I know, I ‘m sorry, I got sloppy. you know, perhaps now we ‘re a bit older, we’ll have other priorities rather than just work and business.’

‘Sorry, I can’t talk right now, I ‘m quite busy at the moment, got to go, Erik. See you next week. We’ll speak then!’

He hung up and I looked at my phone for a few seconds, wondering what he was doing. He had sounded a lot more distant than ever before. Something must have happened there, in Africa. I just knew he was not his usual self, hearty, spontaneous, even comical sometimes. His usual jokes were possibly just bygones. I was eager to go and see him now, to understand. Yes, that was my task, I needed to comprehend what was happening there. And that could only be achieved by going there and seeing for myself.

The usual office murmur took over. I knew I needed some time to think and decided to go for a walk along the shores of Lake Geneva. It was almost noon, so I would not be missed for a long lunch.

Reflecting during a walk was always a way to deal with matters that needed in-depth contemplation and this matter certainly was one. Although I had tried to hide the memories somewhere deep down, because they were just too atrocious, they came back to me without delay. Twenty-two years had passed since I came back from Rwanda where I served with UNAMIR, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, protecting the Prime Minister of Rwanda, Madame Uwilingiyimana, as a Belgian para commando. My dad was Belgian, my mother American. Although I was born in the United States, I grew up in Antwerp and had joined the Belgian Army at the age of nineteen. As I excelled both physically and mentally, I was selected to be trained as a commando and eventually ended up in Africa where I was involved in several bloody disputes and civil wars until I was chosen, with others, to guard the Rwandan government as a UN Blue Helmet. My most vivid and mentally disturbing memory was when the Belgians were accused of assassinating the Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the President of Burundi. After their airplane was shot down, the infamous RTLM* radio station used by Interahamwe – which meant, those who attack together – started spreading the message that all Belgians had better leave Rwanda immediately. An uncontrollable anger was the result and led to the arrest of ten of my fellow Belgian colleagues who were tortured to death. I had been able to survive. No, I have never told anyone outside the army about these experiences. I did not mention my commando years on my CV either. Pauline did not know; Didier and John did not know either. I preferred it to be that way. On my CV, it said that I sailed on cargo ships for a couple of years after high school and did my MBA in Rotterdam after that. No one asked questions. No one had checked my past…yet. But living alone with such terrible memories became harder every day. I had wanted to tell Pauline so many times, but I just couldn’t. All she knew was that I somehow managed to establish worthwhile contacts in Congo, Zambia and Rwanda as a trader, but in fact the deals I was able to make were a kind of IOUs from the past that were  repaid without too much trouble. But that trouble, I felt, was starting to catch up with me, as, I’m afraid, everyone finds out for himself one day. One cannot escape one’s past, not even I. I walked on and saw one of the small ferry boats full of passengers sail to Pâquis on the other side of the lake. The weather was quite good,  fairly sunny, but still a bit cool for the time of the year. Summer was  approaching. I walked on and decided to turn back to the office.  There was still a lot to be done before I was  in the air. More work, more orders to put on hold. The  visas, both for Rwanda and for Congo, wouldn’t  be ready until Friday. I would be travelling using my Belgian passport. Having parents from Belgium and US allowed me to have two nationalities, so I held a Belgian and a US passport, which was convenient and guaranteed me some kind of security during travels. My flight was booked so I would arrive at my destination on Monday. I was going back to where it had all begun. The approximate 800,000 killed Tutsi and moderate Hutus were engraved in my brain. Ten of my best mates too, but what about the millions of people who died in that area since colonial and neo-colonial policies started to enforce control over vast natural resources? What about the bloodshed of today? Innocent people caught in a permanent crossfire over natural resources and territorial control? Nothing had improved. It was worse than ever. And do you know what? Nobody seemed to care. The reason why Aldabi and I were old friends and doing business together was that I helped his Tutsi family to flee from the Interahamwe Hutu killers. That’s how they ended up in Goma DRC. We, the Belgians, were the only army that assisted with the Tutsi evacuation. The rest of the world, the US, the UN, did not intervene when they could have, not even during the more than a hundred days when the atrocities continued. The world turned a blind eye because their commercial and geopolitical interests were deemed more important. They left everyone to die in the streets. My job of protecting Madame Agathe Uwilingiymana became impossible, so she too was assassinated to prevent her helping to reunite the Rwandese people and stop her from encouraging Interahamwe to calm down and end the massacre. The genocide was part of a larger political central planning, not just concocted by the Rwandese Hutu but instigated by Western pressure. The first killings were done by the Presidential Guards. About three months before the start of the genocide, the UNAMIR Brigadier-General, Romeo Dallaire, sent a fax to his superiors at the UN headquarters in New York about an informant who had trained 1,700 Hutu men in military camps outside the capital. The 1,700 were scattered in groups of 40 throughout Kigali. Since the UNAMIR mandate, he had been ordered to register all Tutsi in Kigali; the informant suspected it was for their extermination. An example he gave was that pre-planning estimations were projected based on calculations that well-trained personnel would be able to kill up to 1,000 Tutsi in 20 minutes. In fact, it meant that each member of a group of 40 killers would be able to murder 25 people within 20 minutes. Such a ferociously effective planning almost seemed Nazi inspired.

After her death, a new government was formed consisting of the Hutu killing machines or so-called Hutu Power who controlled the genocide, like Jean Kambanda who later pleaded guilty to the International Criminal Tribune for Rwanda. In the end, it all was about ideological and financial control, but way back, it had been historically caused by the discrimination of the Hutu by the Tutsi minority which was instigated by the Belgian rulers who had started the separatism between the two cultures.

I sighed deeply, remembering all this was kind of positive to ease the pain. At least it came out of me, although I did not want to speak about it with anyone. I kept it inside, but the reflection brought me some relief and the uneasy feeling of that morning started to fade. Suddenly, I remembered that I hadn’t eaten breakfast and felt quite hungry, so I walked into a McDonald’s and ate a hamburger and French fries, which, by the way, were not even French but Belgian.

It was just after two o’clock when I sat down in front of my three screens and decided to do some more research on the trading methods of the Chinese in Africa, because my Colonel in the Belgian Army used to quote Horace: ‘Like a wise man in time of peace prepares for war’.

Later that afternoon, I called Pauline to see when she was expecting to be home. ‘Not before seven, darling,’ she said. ‘We have this emergency meeting on the attack on our hospital in Afghanistan. Some expert from Holland flew in today to do the security briefing.’

‘Right, I remember. Terrible.’

‘Yes, but what is worse, we can’t take the perpetrators to court, they are protected by impunity.’

‘I know, it is time someone paid.’

‘Okay, I ‘ll see you at home then, around eight.’

‘Love you.’

‘Love you, too.’

I pushed the end call button and continued my work. I knew that the Chinese were on an asset buying spree all over Africa. They were buying oil and mineral producers, such as Addax petroleum, or mines such as the Djoubissi gold mine in the Central African Republic. They were taking over shops, logistics facilities, even building shoe factories or making deals with several not-too-ethical governments to obtain access to natural resources. In Algiers, Chinese contractors were building one of the largest mosques in Africa. One couldn’t blame them. The only reason that the West had become wealthy was because of the focus on interior policy of the Chinese for many years. The industrial and societal implosion of the country due to Mao’s Long March and his ascent to power resulted in communism and great poverty, killing millions of civilians and soldiers who starved to death. It was only in the beginning of the ’90s that China was discovered as a cheap labour provider for lazy and greedy international corporations. Large corporations, searching for cheaper ways to produce their products, first exhausted Japan and then South Korea, until their labour costs went up too and  they became technologically advanced competitors. But what happens when you teach an ape how to climb? China, almost overnight, copied Western scientific and technological advantage and became a fierce competitor as well. That was not intended, but blinded by overnight success, short-term profit incentives and related bonuses, the West had given away its industrial superiority. The US and Europe had exported manufacturing and now faced unemployment of millions of people who just had earned the right to receive benefits. The results were quite noticeable in Western countries and drove geo-political agendas. The only reason  the US and Europe still survived was because of their ability to create dollars and euros out of thin air which was stealthily disguised as quantitative easing. I saw right through the scheme.

I was now looking at a list of the top ten Chinese coltan buyers who I traded with, at fifty to six hundred dollars per pound. We, Aldabi and I, had supplied hundreds of tons the previous year, but now, as I was calculating, I noticed that we were falling behind quite a bit. Our regular buyers had last ordered almost a year  ago, which had a negative effect on our margins. Our prices had to go up because supply was interrupted on one side, whilst on the other side, our usual buyers were starting to deal directly with our suppliers, cutting out the middleman; us.

I was wondering what happened to Aldabi. Did he turn sides, or had he been persuaded or pressured? This was Africa; there were no rules, no conditions, no trust nor confidence in anything. If you wanted to trade, you’d be relying on many uncontrollable factors of which perpetual armed conflict was the principal concern. After the Alombong family had fled from Rwanda and ended up in Congo, they changed their names, and Aldabi’s dad had found work as a border patrol officer working for Congo. But in fact, he was working for all sides because if he hadn’t played that game, he wouldn’t have survived all that time. He taught Aldabi the ropes of acting as a mediator between powerful people and parties, and just siphoned the spoils with which he was able to build a decent life for his family. Only later, after his dad died, and Aldabi’s dream to be selected to play for an international football club did not come true, he decided to go into business and build himself a distribution network worth millions. In fact, he became a millionaire with important connections within the Congolese army and the government, who were involved controlling the mining areas. But even more importantly, he also became good friends with the old Interahamwe Hutu rebel militants, who viciously exploited a large chunk of the mining activity after having fled from but never returning  to Rwanda. It was his money and his connections that kept him alive. After fleeing from Rwanda, these rebels set themselves up as mining protectors, in charge of the coltan, cobalt  and cassiterite deposits, of course in cahoots with everyone else who had an interest in financial gain. But they subjected local people as their property and had them do the digging and transport from the mines to distribution centres, which were now mostly owned and operated by Aldabi’s company with offices in Goma and Bukavu. He never dared to reveal his identity or his background. That had to be kept hidden somewhere deep. Maybe I was the only one, except for his mother, who knew exactly what had happened. His sisters were born in Congo and so if they were told that they were Congolese they would not have reason to doubt that.

One thing was true: anyone involved in dealing, distributing, transporting and ultimately using these minerals had blood on their hands, because millions had paid their price in death and agony.

‘And nobody cares,’ I whispered to myself, ‘nobody gives a damn.’

 

***

 

Aldabi remembered his past vividly. His father’s portrait was given a prominent place on his desk. His old man had been right. He did not survive for long after they moved the coltan to a safe place. They found him slaughtered, using machetes – Interahamwe’s favourite weapon of mass destruction. But he didn’t  reveal what had happened to the product. They had come to the house and shed but hadn’t found any trace of hidden minerals. Aldabi had the place cleaned thoroughly. He had been quite young when Erik and a team of UN soldiers managed to help his family escape from Rwandan or Hutu “butchers” as the Interahamwe were often called. He owed his life to Erik. They had become good friends. Erik was about ten years older. Aldabi was about twelve years old in 1994. Now, more than twenty years later, voices from the past were starting to catch up with them because circumstances had changed. The simplicity of trading with Erik’s company directly could no longer be sustained because other parties like the Chinese claimed their access, driven by companies like Motorola or Apple that outsourced their manufacturing to China. Demand for cassiterite and coltan skyrocketed. Suddenly, he was approached by sinister people working for obscure trading firms based in Beijing or Hong Kong. They promised him great wealth if he assisted them logistically. He reluctantly agreed to cooperate, merely because the Congolese army officers insisted that they would only provide continued protection if he would collaborate. Obviously, they had been bribed from deeper pockets than he had. So he found himself between a rock and a hard place. Erik was the one who helped him create a booming business as he was the first one who directly bought the product he distributed. The first load, the one stashed by his father in that shack, was purchased by Erik. He felt he owed him his life and his business, but on the other hand, his father’s words, “Survive any way you can,” kept popping up inside his head. He was looking forward to seeing Erik after  such a long time, so he called his favourite restaurant to make a dinner reservation.

He remembered that Erik loved to eat crocodile. In his mind, Erik was a guy that fitted in anywhere, always able to adjust, adapt and overcome. Aldabi knew he loved Africa, because he told him many times about his experiences being stationed in Africa as a soldier. He knew him as a man who could never wash off the African red dust, as he had become connected to this original earth, which he considered to be the mother of everyone. That was a passion they both shared intensely. He was the only one Erik was able to share his horrific memories with, and vice versa. It was their bond.

 

***

 

Before I  went  home, I called Didier. ‘Do you have a minute for me?’ I asked.

‘Mmm, can it wait? I’m really busy and in a meeting now until at least six o’clock. After that, I ‘m expected at a function with the city mayor.’

‘In that case, I ‘ll talk to you tomorrow morning. I’d like to go home now. Pauline ‘s expecting dinner when she gets home.’

‘Okay, we’ll talk later. I have to hang up now.’

I wanted to tell him what my plans were to solve the matter once and for all. But in retrospect, I was somehow relieved that he didn’t have time for me, because when I thought about this plan a bit longer, it truly sounded ludicrous, crazy or worse. I’d better rethink or at least think it through more thoroughly. Deep down inside, I knew that my strategy could and would work -exactly because it was crazy. No one would expect such a manoeuvre, no one! ‘And that is exactly why it will work,’ I mumbled, sitting in a tram back to the train station. I even felt excited and could hardly wait for the remaining days to pass until I’d be back in Congo. Yes, it had all started in Africa and therefore, finally, it was time to end it.

Pauline came home around eight-thirty that evening. I had prepared a light dinner of cod with tartar sauce, green peas and white rice. She looked very tired. That evening we spoke about the Congo conflict and watched two documentaries on the subject on YouTube. We both agreed; the devastation, the bloodshed, the rapes and killings were going on without interruption. No one stood up to try to stop it. Europe, the US, China and everyone else demanded its share of the loot without considering human life, non-human life, the environment or social cohesion, which would be minimal conditions to achieve enduring peace. Without regarding life a priority, man, beast and the environment would keep being sacrificed for a number of diverse interests such a money, geopolitical power, the supply of arms or stealing minerals from a sovereign nation, which obviously Congo never had been. Congo had never stopped being a colony. It just changed into a politically correct expression, a resource neo-colony. It had always been the preferred place for robbers, thieves and murderers which commenced with King Leopold II of Belgium, who initiated the trend of unscrupulous exploitation a century  ago. Leaders who were against the looting were assassinated, whilst puppets like Mobutu reigned with an iron fist to please his Western lords. Pauline had tears in her eyes from watching a young girl explaining what had happened to her and I felt her pain as if it was my own. The tears I felt when my mates were mutilated were small pieces in a giant puzzle.

Around ten o’clock, my phone rang. I whispered to Pauline that I was going to take the call in my home office, so I walked in and closed the door. I was standing in front of my desk, looking out of the window at a rainy night.

‘Bonsoir, it’s Didier.’

I was kind of surprised that he was calling at that hour.

‘Sorry, Erik, but after you called this afternoon, I was getting a bit curious. What did you want to tell me?’

I took a few seconds to answer. During the train trip home, I had anticipated this question, but I did not tell him what I was planning and neither did I tell Pauline. I just said, ‘This morning you asked me to solve the issues for whatever price necessary, is that still your position?’

‘Yes, certainly, why?’

‘Are you prepared to give me carte blanche, I mean financially?’

‘Depends on how much.’

‘How much did we earn in the mineral trade last year?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know, maybe about a hundred million or so, why?’

‘Well, then I suppose you won’t mind using some of that money to grease some hands left and right?’

‘How much are you talking about?’

‘For starters, ten million dollars, maybe more.’

‘Are you crazy? Ten?’

‘Yes, perhaps even more, but I won’t waste your money. It is only ten million. I have seen paintings hanging in your hallway that are worth a lot more. So perhaps you should see our African project as a work of art.’ I added ironically, ‘An artistic investment, perhaps?’

He did not laugh. He was a very serious man when it concerned money.

‘How can I give you that money without me knowing what you ‘re going to do with it?’ Didier asked impatiently.

I sighed. ‘Look, I just need to know that you trust me to go there and do my job. I need this money to organise things in a certain manner.  It’s best that you don’t know, because then you can always deny knowledge, I mean, you can play dumb.’

A pause followed. He heard him grind his brain. ‘Ten million? Cash?’

‘One million dollars and one hundred thousand Euros in cash and the remainder in a special, untraceable bank account, and a no limit credit card in my name would be a good start.’

‘But,’ was all I heard, another pause followed. Didier was a smart man, smarter than me; he made himself billions from being smarter than the rest. He intuitively knew when not to ask questions, which was perhaps an even more important skill.

‘Very well, you shall have what you asked for. Come by my office tomorrow morning and I ‘ll ask my personal lawyer to set it up. This  will be an agreement between you and me and not between the firm and us, understood?’

‘Loud and clear, sir. Thanks for your understanding. Goodnight.’

He ended the conversation without returning the greeting. I heard “click”.

I remembered an old saying reminding me that this talk was held twice; the first and the last time.

I went back to the living room where Pauline was yawning. ‘I don’t know what you ‘re going to do, but I ‘m tired and want to go to bed. Perhaps I ‘ll read for a while.’

‘Sure, love, go and get ready, I’ll be right up too.’

I kissed her on her cheek. She stood up from the couch and I caressed her back when she passed in front of me. The TV was still on, but the sound was down. I caught a glimpse of the weatherman, temperatures, rain clouds and parts of sunshine. “Just like life,” I thought.

Just before she left the living room, she turned around and said, ‘I do love you, Erik, you are the love of my life. I worry about you, especially now I know that you ‘re leaving for Africa soon. Please be careful.’

Before I could reply, she had walked out, and I heard her climbing up the stairs. I decided to sit for a little while longer and switched off the lights so I could see the shades and lights of other buildings reflecting in the moonlight over the black water of Lake Geneva. How quiet this place is, I thought, how safe, how nice, how secure… I decided to have one last drink before I made a promise not to touch alcohol anymore until the end of my project. At the kitchen sink, I poured a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue Label and added one ice cube to cool it down a bit. I remembered well who had given me that bottle; Aldabi.

I lifted my glass and toasted him, us and the moon we shared. Me looking from the north; him, looking from the equator. That moon was everybody’s, but not for long, because some mind, some person, somewhere would eventually claim it for himself, to exploit, ransack and scavenge, and eventually destroy it for power and wealth, just like our planet Earth. Such was the state of modern man…

 

---

* Radio Télévision Libre des Milles Collines.