President Donald Trump’s pursuit of peace and critical minerals deals in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) may be about to face a significant self-imposed obstacle. The Trump administration is strongly considering effectively removing sanctions on mining magnate Dan Gertler despite sanctioning him under a flagship global anti-corruption program during President Donald Trump’s first term. The move to give him a license to operate again despite the sanctions would significantly undermine U.S. efforts to broker peace in the DRC and access critical minerals from Congolese soil. After six months of dealmaking and a possible upcoming White House visit from Congolese and Rwandan presidents this fall, the entire process is being put at risk by this potential move, being debated now within the administration. Importantly, it would put U.S. companies at serious risk.
Gertler, who has denied any wrongdoing, is the latest in a long line of foreign exploiters of the DRC’s resources. Over the past five centuries, this is a dynamic that has condemned the DRC to conflict and impoverishment with few parallels globally. Working with Congolese elites, foreign exploiters have directly and indirectly caused untold human suffering among Congolese populations going back centuries.
Global demand for the raw materials that have been and are being looted and smuggled from the DRC have led to billions of dollars in profits by those who cause and benefit from that violent extraction. The Trump administration and Congress can take steps to begin to help end the cycle and provide a better footing for the peace process.
Deep U.S., European Consumer Ties to Congo
Unbeknownst to most, American and European consumers are deeply connected – and have been for centuries – to the people and resources of the DRC. For five centuries, various human traffickers, kings, colonial powers, presidents, tycoons, bankers, mining magnates, mercenaries, arms dealers, intelligence agencies, mineral smugglers, and elephant poachers from around the world have colluded with Congolese leaders to loot the people and natural resources of that rich country.
The story of the West’s dependence on the DRC began in the late 1400s, when Portuguese colonists landed on the shores of what was then known as the Kongo Kingdom, later enslaving and exporting Congolese people en masse. Ultimately, the Kongo Kingdom and its environs accounted for one-quarter of those enslaved on plantations in the American South.
Fast forward to the 1800s, when demand was skyrocketing for ivory, the high-end version of plastic in its day, found in buttons, pianos, and more in Europe and the United States. Congolese elephants had enormous tusks, so Europeans descended on what was then Kongo and then the Congo Free State to extract the ivory from these tusks. Joseph Conrad’s book “Heart of Darkness” was all about this evil trade: “The horror! The horror!”
Jump forward to the turn of the 20th century, when the boom in the auto industry began and demand for rubber tires skyrocketed. Congolese forests were full of rubber-producing trees. The infamous Belgian King Leopold II personally owned the Congo Free State, and he deployed forced labor to extract rubber used mainly for car tires, utilizing deadly violence. Ten million Congolese are estimated to have perished in large part to feed the American and European auto industries, while uncounted others had their hands cut off for not meeting rubber quotas.
Equipping the Weaponry of the World’s Wars
And then in World War I, when copper was part of every major weapons system, and demand exploded. Congo had large copper deposits, so the West descended on Congo and used harsh tactics on the Congolese miners to extract the copper.
Fast forward to World War II, when Albert Einstein warned President Franklin D. Roosevelt that the Nazis were developing an atomic bomb, and the United States raced to secure as much uranium as possible. The Belgian Congo, as it was known then, held a dominant percentage of the world’s known uranium reserves at the time, and the United States secured the uranium from its largest uranium mine, beating Nazi Germany to the punch. The uranium used in the atomic bombs that the United States dropped on Japan was extracted by Congolese forced to work in radioactive mines, leaving a legacy of health issues.
On to the Cold War, when the U.S.-Soviet race for uranium, copper, and other minerals led the United States and Belgium to conspire to assassinate the first democratically elected Congolese prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. The two countries later supported a coup to install their own loyalist, the kleptocratic dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Mobutu presided over three decades of brutal tyranny. By the time he died in 1997, he was reportedly one of the world’s richest men, having been handsomely rewarded for protecting the continued looting of Congolese resources by American and European interests.
Fast forward to the late 1990s, when demand began to explode for cell phones, laptops, and video games, triggering a spectacular increase in the price of the 3 Ts — tin, tantalum, tungsten – that power most electronics. Some of the largest deposits in the world of these three minerals are in what in 1997 became the Democratic Republic of Congo – for example, it is the world’s largest source of tantalum. This new source of consumer demand generated yet another cycle of violent looting in the DRC, culminating in the deadliest war globally since World War II, which officially ran from 1998-2003, and conflicts continue to this day. This time, Rwanda and Uganda led the plunder while multinational corporations profited. More than 5 million people perished.
Fast forward again to the present day, when Rwanda has reinvaded eastern DRC, reopening another chapter in this centuries-long raw materials feeding frenzy. Both Rwanda and Uganda have stationed thousands of troops in the DRC, ostensibly countering “terrorism” but also organizing the looting of gold and the 3Ts, worth billions of dollars a year.
Over the last few years, new technologies are driving global demand for cobalt and copper, which are essential components of lithium-ion batteries. The DRC produces approximately three-quarters of the world’s cobalt and is the world’s second-largest producer of copper. This has led to increased corruption, mine safety, and child labor issues in Congolese mines. China had a massive head start in securing these supplies from the DRC in recent years. But there is now U.S.-China competition for these minerals, which is a primary driver for recent U.S. engagement in high-level diplomacy between Rwanda and the DRC, ultimately seeking access for U.S. companies to Congolese critical mineral supplies.
Lack of Accountability
Conventional diplomacy seeking ceasefires, elite power-sharing deals, quick elections, and merged military forces have repeatedly failed in Africa’s most persistent complicated, multi-layered, profit-fueled wars. The lack of accountability and serious pressure is staggering relative to the amount of human suffering.
The current peace efforts, led by the United States and Qatar, will only stand a chance if the illicit actors who profit from the conflict and corruption face significant, biting financial consequences. This should entail escalating network sanctions on the business people and minerals-smuggling rings facilitating this plunder, along with the political and military actors engaged in the looting. Unless the incentives are altered away from violent, corrupt extraction and toward stable State retrieval, there is no chance of ending it.
This is why the removal of Gertler from the U.S. sanctions list would be so damaging to peace and investment prospects. Gertler was sanctioned by the first Trump administration for his involvement in corruption. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, he “amassed his fortune through hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of opaque and corrupt mining and oil deals” in the DRC, with the country reportedly losing more than $1.3 billion in the process from 2010 to 2012. Allowing him to return would take the DRC backwards to the free-for-all days of corrupt mining deals when the DRC lost more than $1 billion in revenues.
It would also put American investors at significant risk. Mining companies who have worked with Gertler have faced significant fines, judicial prosecutions, and reputational risks, which now U.S. companies would be forced to deal with. The U.S. sanctions on Gertler and his corporate network were a line in the sand in preventing further corrupt deals for the DRC’s multi-billion-dollar mining industry, and that line should not be erased.
People in the DRC are organizing as well, and widespread protest movements have at times made a huge difference. A pro-democracy movement in the DRC – combined with the imposition of network sanctions on Gertler and his companies – led a would-be president-for-life, Joseph Kabila, to step down in 2018, laying the groundwork for the first peaceful transfer of power in the DRC’s history. However, the one thing that always follows an assertion of activism by the grassroots is repression and counterattacks against the activists. Therefore, international support for these local efforts in democracy, peace, and human rights will be crucial.
To move the peace process forward, the Trump administration should not only maintain its sanctions on illicit actors in the DRC and Rwanda; it should escalate them against spoiler networks that continue to support illegal armed groups and smuggle conflict gold and critical minerals. These steps would be in line with a recent Republican-led congressional resolution on the DRC that calls for the administration to use sanctions to support the peace process. Furthermore, multinational banks should ensure that these networks are kept out of the global financial system. As the last five centuries of the region’s history demonstrates, there will be no durable peace and long-term investment opportunities without significant costs for the profiteers of conflict, instability, and corruption.
