Edition: U.S. / Global

The Dirt in the New Machine

Published: August 12, 2001
(Page 5 of 5)

But inside what's left of Congo, a wide array of influential people (who are not combatants in the war and are not getting rich from coltan) make a persuasive case that these demands are naïve and could well produce disastrous consequences. They argue that in a collapsed state where the likelihood of constructive Western intervention is next to nil, there simply are no easy fixes.

''For local people who are trying to make a bit of money out of coltan, how can an embargo possibly help?'' asked Aloys Tegera, who directs the Pole Institute, a nongovernmental social-research institute in Goma, in eastern Congo. Tegera is well aware of coltan's destructive side: he is the lead author of a study on the severe social impact of coltan mining, which describes how teachers have been lured to the mines from the country's few functioning classrooms and explains why teenage girls have turned to prostitution.

''Coltan fuels the war; nobody can deny that,'' said Tegera. ''That is why we maybe will never get peace. But civilians, especially those who are organized, also are getting some money from this.''

He and many others find it more than slightly insulting that in a country where millions are hungry and coltan is helping to feed some of them, a de facto embargo is gathering steam among high-tech companies apparently worried less about human beings than about the public-relations downside of dead gorillas. And, like many other Congolese, he declines to become morally riled up about foreign domination.

''Of course, the Rwandans are pillaging us,'' he said. ''But they are not the first to do it and they are no worse than the others. King Leopold did it. The Belgians did it. Mobutu and the Americans did it. The most sorrowful thing I have to live with is that we are incapable of coming up with an elite that can run things with Congolese interests in mind.''

Terese Hart, an American botanist who helped create the Okapi Faunal Reserve and has worked there since the early 1980's, supports neither an embargo on coltan nor a quick pullout of Ugandan forces from northeast Congo.

''The world wants to intervene from a distance and pull the strings on the puppet,'' said Hart, who works for the Wildlife Conservation Society. ''The problem is that the strings are not connected to anything. When outsiders struggle to find solutions for Congo, they often assume there is some kind of government. There is no government. There is nothing.''

As for coltan mining, Hart said it is silly for the outside world to try to squeeze one of the few ways for poor people to make a bit of money.

''Outside the reserve, I think that coltan mining is the lesser evil of the types of exploitation that occur when there is no government,'' Hart said. ''I prefer mining to logging. Cutting timber in the rain forest is part of an irreversible ecological process. I don't think coltan mining does as much permanent damage. The miner will not get much, but at least he will continue to live.''

Among the Congolese I spoke to about coltan, the consensus was that they could not risk the simple solutions that outsiders had prescribed. Struggling to survive in a failed state, they saw no straightforward answers, no moral high ground. For them, the only thing worse than mining coltan is not mining it.

What progress there is in eastern Congo tends to be slow, small-scale and subject to sudden reversal.

The World Health Organization has succeeded in working with rebel groups to vaccinate most children for polio, but it says 7 of 10 children have not received any other vaccines in the past decade. Western donors are distributing some medicines, seeds and tools, but three-quarters of the population still has no access to basic health care.

When progress is being made, it often involves the mixed blessing of coltan. In eastern Congo, two mining entrepreneurs, Edouard Mwangachuchu, a Congolese Tutsi, and his American partner, Robert Sussman, a physician from Baltimore, are struggling to build a legitimate business in an illegitimate state.

They run a company that even their competitors say treats miners fairly. It supplies shovels and picks to about a thousand men who operate as independent contractors in mines located far from national parks, protected forests and endangered gorillas.

The land belongs to Mwangachuchu, whose herds were slaughtered in 1995, as the Mobutu era was sputtering to an end. Desperate to shore up popular support, Mobutu encouraged Congolese in the east to attack the ethnic Tutsi minority. A mob pulled Mwangachuchu, then a financial adviser to the provincial government in Goma, out of his Suzuki jeep on his way to work. They choked him with his necktie, ripped off his clothes and dumped him at the Rwandan border. Crowds later stoned and shot at his house.

Mwangachuchu, his wife and their six children were granted political asylum in the United States in 1996, and they rented a house in Laurel, Md. Two years later, homesick and bored with his job at a Carvel ice-cream plant, Mwangachuchu returned home for a visit.

Civil war was raging. His cattle farm had been destroyed, his herds gone, his buildings burned. But he still owned the land, which he had long known was rich in coltan. In 1999, a year after his first trip home, he heard that there was money to be made mining it. All he needed was a partner, someone with a bit of money.

Robert Sussman, 55, sold his medical practice in Baltimore in the early 1990's. Comfortably well off, he began a second career as a mining-camp doctor in remote countries, including Myanmar and Congo. Intrigued by mining, he began thinking of going into the business himself. He met Mwangachuchu in a Goma hotel in 1998, and they became partners the following year, as the price of coltan began to go up.

Sussman and Mwangachuchu say they are investing in Congo for the long term. They believe they can operate profitably despite the recent slump in coltan prices and despite the fact that their mines are still periodically fought over by roving bands of armed men. The partners say they have laid the foundation for a solid business.

''We are proud of what we are doing in Congo,'' Sussman told me. ''We want the world to understand that if it's done right, coltan can be good for this country.''

Sussman and Mwangachuchu, of course, are also in it for the money. High coltan prices last year gave them an unexpected windfall. Sussman said they sold 22 metric tons of coltan, which earned them about $7.5 million -- before they paid their many bills.

Since then, they have bought about 25 more tons of coltan from miners in the field -- ore that they have not been able to sell.

Last year, Sussman and Mwangachuchu shipped their ore to Europe on Sabena airlines. That airline now refuses their business, and they are scrambling to find another shipper. They fear that a corporate embargo could cripple their business and idle miners who have come to depend on them.

''We don't understand why they are doing this,'' Mwangachuchu told me. ''The Congolese have a right to make business in their own country.''

Photos: Miners working an illegal dig for coltan in the Okapi Faunal Reserve in eastern Congo. Coltan, a key element in the manufacture of cell phones and laptops, is usually mined out of shallow pits like this with shovels, pickaxes and plastic basins.; Clockwise from above, the product of one hour's work: several grams of coltan, which can be worth many times more than the average daily wage in Congo; a commerçant, who sold goods to miners for coltan, looks on as his ore is weighed; U.S. currency flows freely after the deal is closed.; A Congolese soldier greets a local official en route to a mine. The soldier leads porters who carry cases of beer, which will be sold to miners in exchange for coltan. (Molly Bingham for The New York Times)