SKIRMISHER

Apparently, because manufacturing the Playstation 2 [and most probably Xbox 360 and other newer game consoles] and other personal electronics requires a rare metal called tantalum, and because tantalum is derived from coltan ore — most of which comes from Congo — mining for coltan has helped fuel a decade-long war and bloody exploitation in the Congo.

After it is refined, coltan becomes a bluish-gray powder called tantalum, which is defined as a transition metal. For the most part, tantalum has one significant use: to satisfy the West’s insatiable appetite for personal technology. Tantalum is used to make cell phones, laptops and other electronics made, for example, by SONY, a multi-billion dollar multinational based in Japan that manufactures the iconic PlayStation, a video game console. And while allegations of plundering coltan from a nation in desperate need of revenue seem bad enough, the UN also discovered that Rwandan troops and rebels were using prisoners-of-war and children to mine for the “black gold.”

“Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms,” said British politician Oona King, who was a Member of Parliament from 1997 to 2005.

Most of the fighting from Africa’s World War ended in 2003 following a peace accord. But reports of troop tension, instability and rampant sexual violence against women continue to emerge from where the war was at its most intense: the eastern portion of the DRC, near the city of Goma and in the DRC province of North Kivu. This is a region where millions of Congolese live among active volcanoes and endangered Mountain Gorillas.

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