How the US Conspired With Museveni's Uganda to Plunder D.R Congo's Mineral Wealth

In February, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Uganda must pay $325 million in reparations to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for its role in conflicts in Congo’s resource-rich Ituri province from 1998 to 2003.

The $325 million sum falls well short of the $11 billion that Congo had demanded. However, for true justice to be seen to be served, Jeremy Kuzmarov writes, Uganda’s foreign backers especially the U.S, should also be held liable for significant reparations payments and be indicted criminally.

Ugandan Invasion and Plunder of the Congo

Uganda first invaded the DRC in 1996 with Rwanda in order to replace the DRC’s ailing leader Joseph Mobutu Sese Seko with Laurent Kabila, a former guerrilla fighter and diamond smuggler who would help Uganda and other foreign powers access the country’s rich mineral wealth.

In 1997, gold and gold compounds plundered from the DRC became Uganda’s second largest source of export earnings.

In 1998, after Museveni claimed that Kabila was failing to provide security along Uganda’s border, Ugandan troops invaded the DRC again and helped install a new puppet, Hyppolite Kanambe alias Joseph Kabila.

The Wall Street Journal had reported that Kabila’s nationalizations “sent a worrying signal … to foreign companies that are eager to do business in this mineral-rich country.”

Between 1999 and 2003, Uganda and its proxy militias controlled Congo’s Ituri region, home to some of the richest gold and diamond deposits on earth, as well as coltan.

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During this period, some 50,000 Iturians were killed and half a million displaced while the Ugandans and their allies “looted property, committed murders, and grabbed land,” in the words of journalist Helen C. Epstein. Villagers were raped, and herded into churches and burned alive.

The UN Security Council reported that General James Kazini, the commander of the Ugandan Army, looted timber and conspired with a Ugandan militia leader, Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, to seize 200 tons of coffee beans in the Équateur region.

President Museveni’s half-brother, Salim Saleh, and his wife, Jovia Akandwanaho, took charge of the exploitation of diamonds while setting up a private air-transport company to ship illicit natural resources back into Uganda.

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