Natural Resources: A Major Cause Of Conflict In The Democratic Republic Of Congo (DRC) From 1960-2009

A Thesis Submitted To the School of Arts and Social Sciences in Partial Fulfilment Of The Requirements for the Masters of Arts Degree in International RelationsConflict has been a feature of humanity since time immemorial. Disputes that arise organized around social class, ethnicity, religion, region, or some combination of these factors.Struggle can be over economic opportunities, as well as political and civil rights, among contestable factors. The Central Africa region, and particularly the Democratic Republic of (DR-Congo), has witnessed over 5 million lives annihilated due to armed conflict and human abuses. DR-Congo has been the battleground for wars within wars, where networks of conflict interacted to produce different patterns of local resource extraction and different patterns of regional violence, resulting in one of the most devastating, yet surprisingly understudied, humanitarian disasters of our day. This massive loss of lives has been disregarded by the Western media fact that it is by far the most deadly conflict on record! Other much smaller conflicts are instead to be the subject of intense focus and attention, ostensibly on grounds of relevance to national and humanitarian concern. But neither of these rationales holds up to scrutiny. Numerous scholars written extensively that the conflict in Central Africa, particularly in Eastern DR-Congo is an conflict complicated by African tribalism, primitiveness, and chaos. Other scholars have argued the root cause of the conflict is the lack of good governance that facilitates foreign armies to and exploit DR-Congo's minerals. The rationale of this thesis is to evaluate these arguments in relation to armed conflict human rights abuses and also the illegal exploitation of the DR-Congo's mineral resources particularly the West, and by international corporations from various countries. International interference and scramble for scarce resources in general for coltan and diamond in particular, cardinal factor in the lack of state stability and the continuation of war in the DR-Congo. Illegal in timber, copper, gold, diamond and cobalt has also helped finance invading armies and movements. Therefore, this thesis examines the role played by Congolese warlords, multinational companies and the international community's investment in illegitimate movements that have discouraged strong state structures and resulted in the creation of a based upon kleptocracy and corruption. This thesis controverts blanket arguments that the conflict is mainly an ethnic spawning from tribalism or African primitiveness compounded by DR-Congo government's weakness. Apportioning blame on colonial legacy is also simplistic. However, the thesis establishes that the conflict is substantially the consequence of international community interference and for DR-Congo's vast mineral resources, with special focus on foreign policies of the United United Kingdom, France and Belgium