Word: congos
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Italy and another Catholic priest in Tanzania, Brother Constant Goetschalckx, whose refugee education organization won the $1 million Opus Prize in 2007. The prize, the world's largest for faith-based entrepreneurship, is meant to "recognize unsung heroes" working to fight poverty. (See pictures of the fallout in Congo...
...These and other revelations in the exhaustive report, issued by a U.N.-mandated group of Congo experts, erases any doubt that the multiple rebel groups operating in eastern Congo, led by the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), have a vast, sophisticated network of political and financial supporters around the world. The confidential report, which was obtained by TIME, also makes clear that the international community and the 20,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping operation in eastern Congo have been powerless to cut off the rebels' prodigious sources of funding...
...army and the peacekeepers have basically dealt with the FDLR militarily without cracking down on their financial and political support networks," said Jason Stearns, a Congo expert who had helped to draft previous versions of the U.N. findings. "The report says this is a deeper problem than going after them with an army. These guys are colluding with military officials throughout the region - the head of intelligence in Burundi, senior army commanders, important gold traders." (Read: "A Glimmer of Hope in Africa...
...This is not the kind of news the United Nations wants to hear. In fact, the report is an implicit condemnation of the recent strategy adopted by the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, known by its French acronym MONUC. The operation began in 2000 as a way of monitoring the end of a five-year civil war in Congo, but the violence has dragged on for years and the U.N. has been unable to rid the region of insurgents, some of whom crossed the border from Rwanda after the genocide of the 1990s. After taking the lead role in fighting...
...most striking things about the U.N. report is what's missing. There is no discussion of the rebels' ideology, their goals, their prescription for a better future in Congo. What seems to be most clear is the extent to which the Congo insurgency has become a battle for resources, such as gold, timber and cassiterite, the chief component of tin. Congo estimates that about 40 tons of gold - $1.2 billion worth - is smuggled out of the country each year. Much of it goes through Uganda or Burundi and ends up being sold in the United Arab Emirates, according...