Coltan, Tin, Gold, Diamonds, Timber Fuel Congo War - Reuters

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"Walikale is the scene of a war within a war, a microcosm of a broader regional conflict where groups of armed men prey upon civilians and fight for control of the valuable natural resources found in Democratic Republic of Congo. A five-year war in which 3 million people died, most from hunger and disease, was supposed to have wound down after successive peace deals forged an interim government last year.

The clashes continue for there is much to be won. The territory of Walikale, an area about the size of neighboring Rwanda, is where the wartime rebels mined coltan, a mineral used in mobile phones, computer games, and stealth bombers. The price of coltan has since crashed, but Walikale is now in the flush of a new mining boom for cassiterite, the base element of tin.

A global shortage of tin ramped world prices to near 15 year highs of $9,600 a ton in May, up from $6,500 a ton in January. And as with coltan during the war, the sudden price rise has fueled power struggles in the bush, where gold and diamonds are also mined by peasants in rags who dig by hand using hammers.

Ghost Town

The fighting here in June was accompanied by such widespread looting that nearly all of Walikale's 15,000 residents fled the area. The United Nations and foreign aid agencies left too. Walikale is now a ghost town, with rows of mud houses along the main road abandoned and stripped to the bone, their wooden doors kicked in and thatched roofs sagging from neglect. The market consists of empty wooden shacks."

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http://www.enn.com/news/2004-08-10/s_26443.asp

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. Thousands of times more casualties than Iraq and no one ever notices