The Vehicle Of The Living, Part One

22. Dissection of a Vicious Circle

The meeting with the two Daylis was also intended to enable me to understand both the real stakes of the crisis and the details of the Union's plan to curb it. This plan was relatively simple on paper, but particularly laborious to implement. In order to grasp the relevance and details of it, I first needed to know the causes and effects of the armed conflicts that abounded in the region in question. I began by analyzing the profile of each entity that was involved in this complex crisis.

1. The business

Only two kinds of mining are legal throughout the country.

The first one, referred to as "industrial," is conducted by a company employing at least a hundred employees. The extraction of these minerals is performed using motorized equipment and heavy mining machinery, then a factory processes the extracted gravel in order to obtain a marketable product, which remains raw material and generally has to be exported and sold to manufacturers of goods that use these minerals. Mining rights, taxes, and duties are paid to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The second form of mining is called "artisanal" and is only practiced on sites endorsed by the State, based on their low risk for mortality. Here, peasants dig into the ground using hand tools, such as pickaxes and shovels, in order to extract minerals hidden in the rock or gravel, which will then be cleaned by hand until a marketable product is obtained. This is then sold to local mineral purchasing outlets, which takes care of its resale, generally by export, to almost exclusively foreign manufacturers. These peasants, called "diggers," are exempt from paying mining rights to the State, but they do pay taxes on the sale of their products to the local purchasing outlets. The rest of the chain is required to pay taxes and duties related to mineral transactions. It goes without saying that the artisanal form of mining is conducive to supplying the black market.

When it becomes impossible for the State to control part of its territory that is rich in exploitable minerals, it authorizes the development of illegal mining activities, known as "clandestine mining." The State mainly loses control in two ways.

First, because of an armed conflict in such territory, which is a case of force majeure.

Second, because a group composed of, among others, political, administrative, and military authorities has created a cartel that is exploiting an allegedly impenetrable or hostile mining area without the knowledge of and to the detriment of the State, by making such area accessible exclusively to their personnel. This type of organization requires accomplices in high places within the central government. A police or military presence will be visible around the area, under the pretext of protecting it from invasion by illegal diggers, when in reality, it is covering up and overseeing unlawful mining.

This last type of scenario is precisely what is set up in the Bakunga region. It allows the handful of individuals who lead the cartel to get rich and for the segment of the population that contributes to the crime to remain in poverty. These leaders include regional government authorities, members of the regional parliament, local police and army commanders, local heads of religious denominations, and, above all, businessmen working in the mining industry in general.

My uncle Mutis was, of course, one of those businessmen who benefited greatly from the clandestine mining that was going on in the region. Governor Kamangudi, Regional Commissioner Mangaya, Colonel Frank, and many others were also part of this vast criminal organization, essentially controlled by Hollace Corp.

2. The businessman

The businessman is the one who brings the funds and the plans necessary for the realization of the project. He owns a not necessarily legal company that harvests the minerals and exports them through not necessarily legal channels to a network of pre-established buyers. He pays the salaries of the destitute diggers and their police or military guards. He redistributes the sales profits to other cartel leaders and, wherever necessary, pays bribes that are essential to the continuation of operations. He works on behalf of himself, a company, or even a State. He is the brains of the business.