Notes - Empty Hands, Open Arms - page 199

124 “ Between late 1999 . . .” Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters , 300.
124 Agricultural produce, livestock Turner, The Congo Wars , 24.
124 The price of tantalum Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters , 299.
125 Copper prices increased Thomas Turner offers a detailed assessment of the pillage in the Se-
cond Congo War. The Congo Wars , 40-41, 46-47.
125 Even as Kabila was Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters , 298-301. In Africa's World
War , Gérard Prunier writes: “Today President Kagame does not try to control 'the Congo' anymore
but simply to control enough mining interests in the Congo to help finance his great dreams of turn-
ing Rwanda into the Singapore of Africa. The money comes from a variety of nonferrous metals
(niobium, cassiterite, not much coltan these days since the Australians got back into the market)
extracted from mines controlled by local Congolese militias who export their product to Rwanda
in light planes” (326).
125 A committee of military leaders Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters , 308.
125 In recent years, however Étienne Tshisekedi, Joseph Kabila's foremost opponent and a political
figure since Mobutu's time, also claimed victory and had himself inaugurated at his residence. To
the media, Kabila admitted that the elections hadn't been as efficient and reliable as they could
have been, but he insisted that he had won. Despite the conflict, the violence that many feared
didn't take place.
125 The damage was long lasting The International Rescue Committee places the number at 5.4
million, based on an April 2007 study, though this does not include casualties from the First
Congo War. “IRC Study Shows Congo's Neglected Crisis Leaves 5.4 Million Dead,” International
Rescue Committee, http://www.rescue.org/news/irc-study-shows-congos-neglected-crisis-
leaves-54-million-dead-peace-deal-n-kivu-increased-aid—4331 .
Jason Stearns, in Dancing in the Glory of Monsters , writes: “Over five million people have
died, and hundreds of thousands of women have been raped” (327).
In The Congo Wars , Thomas Turner writes: “The International Rescue Committee estimated
the total at 3.8 million deaths for the period 1998 to 2004. In contrast, the Sudan civil war produced
2 million deaths in twenty-two years. The Rwandan genocide and massacres of 1994 may have
involved 1 million deaths. The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 killed around 300,000 people, and
the terrorist attacks of '9/11' around 3,000” (2). Turner also writes:
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has conducted a series of epidemiological studies.
The first of its reports was published in 2000. IRC concluded that 1.7 million people had died
during the previous two years as a result of war in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic
of the Congo. About 200,000 of those deaths were the direct result of violence. The vast ma-
jority of deaths were caused by the destruction of the country's health infrastructure and food
supplies.
Two years later, the IRC estimated that at least 3.3 million Congolese died between August
1998, when the war began, and November 2002. Again, most deaths were attributable to easily
treatable diseases and malnutrition, and were often linked to displacement and the collapse of
the country's health services and economy. A third study, in 2004, raised the likely death total
to 3.8 million. More than 31,000 civilians continued to die every month as a result of the con-
flict. (3)
The NGO Caritas writes that the number of deaths may be more than six million. “Six Million
Dead in Congo's War,” Caritas.org , http://www.caritas.org/activities/emergencies/SixMil-
lionDeadInCongoWar.html .
126 As Sally tried to understand The Bonobo Protection Fund had been organized under Georgia
State University, whose statutes were such that BPF could only promote education and research.
Furthermore, given the conflicts between researchers over strategy and the use of sites, Sally real-