BISIE, Congo — Deep in the forest,high on a ridge stripped bare of trees andvines, the colonel sat atop his mountainof ore. In track pants and a T-shirt, heneeded no uniform to prove he was a sol-dier, no epaulets to reveal his rank. Ev-eryone here knows that Col. Samy Matu-mo, commander of a renegade brigade ofarmy troops that controls this mineral-rich territory, is the master of every hill-top as far as the eye can see.
Columns of men, bent double under110-pound sacks of tin ore, emerged fromthe colonel’s mine shaft. It had beencarved hundreds of feet into the moun-tain with Iron Age tools powered by hu-man sweat, muscle and bone. Porters
carry the ore nearly 30 miles on theirbacks, a two-day trek through a mud-slicked maze to the nearest road and aworld hungry for the laptops and otherelectronics that tin helps create, eachman a link in a long global chain.
On paper, the exploration rights tothis mine belong to a consortium of Brit-ish and South African investors who saythey will turn this perilous and exploit-ative operation into a safe, modern bea-con of prosperity for Congo. But in prac-tice, the consortium’s workers cannoteven set foot on the mountain. Like a ma-
fia, Colonel Matumo and his men extort,tax and appropriate at will, draining thisvast operation, worth as much as $80 mil-lion a year.
The exploitation of this mountain isemblematic of the failure to right thissprawling African nation after manyyears of tyranny and war, and of thedeadly role the country’s immense natu-ral wealth has played in its misery.
Despite a costly effort to unite thenation’s many militias into a single na-tional army, plus billions of dollars spenton international peacekeepers and anelection in 2006 that brought democracyto Congo for the first time in four dec-ades, the government is unable or unwill-
JOHAN SPANNER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Men mined for tin ore in a pit in eastern Congo that is part of a lucrative operation controlled by renegade soldiers.
Congo’s Riches, Looted by Renegade Troops
Militia’s Grip on Tin Mine Reflects History of Exploitation
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AIR MOUNTAINS, Niger —Until last year, the only triggerAmoumoun Halil had pulled wasthe one on his livestock-vaccina-tion gun. This spring, a batteredKalashnikov rifle rested uneasilyon his shoulder. When he donnedhis stiff fatigues, his lopsided gaitand smiling eyes stood outamong his hard-faced guerrillabrethren.
Mr. Halil, a 40-year-old veteri-nary engineer, was a reluctantsoldier in a rebellion that hadbroken out over an improbable —and as yet unrealized — bonanzain one of the world’s poorestcountries.
A battle is unfolding on thestark mountains and scallopeddunes of northern Niger betweena band of Tuareg nomads, whoclaim the riches beneath theirhomeland are being taken by agovernment that gives them littlein return, and an army that callsthe fighters drug traffickers andbandits.
It is a new front of an old war tocontrol the vast wealth locked be-neath African soil. Niger’s north-ern desert caps one of the world’slargest deposits of uranium, anddemand for it has surged as glo-bal warming has increased in-terest in nuclear power. Growingeconomies like China and Indiaare scouring the globe for thecrumbly ore known as yellow-cake. A French mining companyis building the world’s largesturanium mine in northern Niger,and a Chinese state company is
building another mine nearby. Uranium could infuse Niger
with enough cash to catapult itout of the kind of poverty thatcauses one in five Niger childrento die before turning 5.
Or it could end in a calamitouswar that leaves Niger more desti-tute than ever. Mineral wealthhas fueled conflict across Africafor decades, a series of bloody,smash-and-grab rebellions thatshattered nations. The miserywrought has left many Africansto conclude that mineral wealth isa curse.
Here in the Sahara, the ura-nium boom has given new life tolongstanding grievances overland and power. For years, theTuareg have struggled against a
Battle Unfolds in a Poor Land
For the Riches Beneath the Soil
Continued on Page A12
THE SPOILSNiger and Its Uranium
JOHAN SPANNER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Fighters of the Niger Move-ment for Justice in May.
14 Ø N INTERNATIONALTHE NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2008
ing to force these fighters — who weargovernment army uniforms and collectgovernment paychecks — to leave themountain.
The ore these fighters control is cen-tral to the chaos that plagues Congo,helping to perpetuate a conflict in whichas many as five million people have diedsince the mid-1990s, mostly from hungerand disease. In the latest chapter, fight-ing between government troops and arenegade general named LaurentNkunda has forced hundreds of thou-sands of civilians here in eastern Congoto flee and pushed the nation to thebrink of a new regional war.
The proceeds of mines like this one,along with the illegal tributes collectedon roads and border crossings con-trolled by rebel groups, militias andgovernment soldiers, help bankroll vir-tually every armed group in the region.
No roads lead to Bisie. This hiddentown of 10,000 lies about 30 miles down awinding, muddy footpath throughdense, equatorial forest. Built entirelyfor the mine, it is a cloistered world ofexpropriation and violence that mirrorsthe broad crisis in Congo.
This is Africa’s resource curse: Thewealth is unearthed by the poor, con-trolled by the strong, then sold to aworld largely oblivious of its origins.
Under Colonel Matumo, Bisie is aDarwinian place where those withweapons and money leech off a desper-ate horde.
The chokehold begins far from themine. At the trailhead, a burly soldierdemands 50 cents from each person en-tering the narrow trail to the mine. Aclamoring crowd hands wrinkled bills tothe soldier, who opens the wooden gatea crack to let in those with cash.
At the other end of the trail, at thebase of the mountain, another crowdforms at the gate into Bisie. Porters ex-hausted from the two-day trek sprawlon felled trees, waiting for soldiers to in-spect their loads and extract anothertribute. The price is usually 10 percentof entering merchandise and cash.
The men at the checkpoints describethese payments as taxes. But the peopleof Bisie do not get much in return. Thevillage is a filthy warren of mud huts.Hundreds of haphazard latrines floodnarrow, trash-filled alleyways. Diseasecourses through the town, carried bywater from a river that is used for ev-erything from washing clothes to clean-ing ore. Jawbones of slaughtered cowsand goats stud the riverbed. When itrains, the river overflows, spreadingcholera and dysentery.
In some ways, Bisie is a thriving com-mercial town. It has makeshift theatersshowing bootleg kung fu movies on tele-visions powered by sputtering genera-tors. Its bars are stocked with JohnnieWalker whiskey and Primus beer, eachbottle carried through the jungle. Thereis no telephone service, but a ham radiosystem passes messages between themine and the outside world. It has ho-tels that double as brothels. There iseven a clapboard church.
But these meager comforts do notcome cheap. A bowl of rice and beanscosts $3 here, six times the price alongthe main road. Mud huts rent for $50 amonth or more, in part because oppor-tunism is the town ethos.
A History of PlunderThe saga of Bisie is merely another
chapter in Congo’s epic tragedy. Thoughblessed with an incomparable endow-
ment of minerals and water and abun-dant fertile land, this vast nation in theheart of Africa has known little but dom-ination and war since its founding as acolony under King Leopold II of Bel-gium in the 19th century.
The bloodshed and terror have al-ways been driven in part by the endlessglobal thirst for Congo’s resources, “thevilest scramble for loot that ever disfig-ured the history of human conscience,”as the novelist Joseph Conrad put it.
Just as the pneumatic tire was in-vented, King Leopold began sucking ev-ery last drop of rubber from Congo’sjungles, his militia killing or maiminganyone who stood in his way. Genera-tions later, the country’s vast reservesof cobalt, a mineral essential for build-ing fighter jets, helped the longtime rul-er of the nation then known as Zaire,Mobutu Sese Seko, keep the UnitedStates firmly behind him during thecold war despite his obstinately klep-tocratic and repressive ways.
Congo’s riches have played a starringrole in the conflict that has unfolded inthe past decade. The war began in theaftermath of the Rwandan genocide,when the perpetrators of that slaughterfled into neighboring Congo. Rwandabacked an effort to flush out the killersin 1996, but it soon led to a huge regionalconflict that descended into a war ofplunder by half a dozen nations andcountless homegrown rebel groups.
A peace deal officially ended the warin 2003, and elections in 2006 broughtCongo its first democratically chosenleaders in more than four decades. Andin many parts of the nation, which cov-ers an area the size of Western Europe,life is slowly returning to normal. In-ternational investors, especially China,have begun pouring billions into Con-go’s economy.
But here on Congo’s eastern edge, thewar never really ended. The unfinishedbattles over the Rwandan genocide playout on Congolese soil among armedgroups fueled by lucrative mines likethe one in Bisie and by other mines con-trolled by the Hutu militias that carriedout the genocide.
Those fighters have been hiding in
the jungles of eastern Congo for morethan a decade, sowing terror and reap-ing profits from the nation’s minerals.Other rebel groups, including Mr. Nkun-da’s largely Tutsi militia, have gleanedprofits from illegal taxes levied whenvaluable minerals and other resourcespass through territory they control, ac-cording to analysts and government of-ficials in the region.
The Discovery of Tin OreIn 2002, a hunter discovered chunks
of tin ore, known as cassiterite, lying onthe slopes of a mountain deep in the jun-gle in eastern Congo. Almost overnight,hordes of miners arrived, driven by fe-vered reports of piles of ore lying
around waiting to be carted away. Butcivilians were not the only ones in-terested. Armed groups fought pitchedbattles over who would control the area.In 2004, a group of Mai Mai fighters al-lied with the government took control.
Under the terms of the peace agree-ment that ended the war, the militia wasabsorbed into the national army and be-came the 85th Brigade. The fighterswere supposed to be sent for militarytraining and then deployed around thecountry to dilute the influence of re-gional militias.
But the 85th refused to disband. Itscommander, Colonel Matumo, is knownas a ruthless warrior with a keen eye forbusiness who believes, as most Mai Maido, that he has special powers connect-
ed to water that make him all but invin-cible. During the war these fighterswould wear drain plugs dangling fromtheir bulging biceps as amulets of theirpotency. These days the brigade’s mem-bers have mostly abandoned this prac-tice in favor of the more practical armygreens.
They violently enforce a system of il-legal taxation of every worker, mer-chant and mineral trader who comes tothe mine.
That system has ensured that theyand their allies have skimmed millionsof dollars in the years the militia hascontrolled the mine — a costly, lost op-portunity for a nation desperately inneed of development.
Tin has replaced lead content in thesolder used to make many electronic de-vices. And as the price shot up in recentyears, to a high of $25,000 a ton in May,Colonel Matumo and his men staked outa whole ridge of the mine complex astheir personal property. Senior com-manders of the brigade have built largehouses and opened businesses, like ho-tels and bars, with the proceeds of themine.
A company called Mining and Pro-cessing Congo bought the rights tosearch for tin ore at the mine in 2006.But the militia has effectively barredthe company, which is owned by a con-sortium of South African and British in-vestors, shooting at its helicopter andchasing its representatives from thepremises.
When the company started workingon a road to link the mine to the mainroad, local officials blocked the route.When it began working on a campsitefor its geologists to begin prospecting,soldiers opened fire on the workers, in-juring several, company officials said.
“We have all our documents and per-mits in order,” said Brian Christophers,the weary managing director of thecompany. “We have written to the headof the military, the minister of minesand even the president. But there are norules in Congo, just the rule of the gun.”
Mr. Christophers said that his compa-ny was prepared to help pay not just fora road to the mine but also for schools,clinics and a hydroelectric power sta-tion. It also promised to invite govern-ment agencies to enforce labor stand-ards. But none of them have had thechance.
Indeed, some workers are suspiciousof the company’s plans, fearing that aroad would put thousands of porters outof work and that mechanized miningwould drastically reduce employmenthere. The militia has tapped this uneaseto convince some workers and local offi-cials that the company will simply ab-scond with the minerals and leave thelocal people empty-handed.
The militia levies a tax on every en-terprise here. For the small-time ped-dlers who sell tiny packets of laundrysoap, cooking oil and powdered milk,the tax is usually $20 a week, a heftyslice of profits. From prosperous broth-els, bar owners and mineral traders, thesoldiers usually take a percentage, busi-nesspeople here say.
One Congolese intelligence official es-timated that the militia took in $300,000to $600,000 a month in illegal taxationalone, not including the money it madefrom mining tin.
The workers preyed on by the militiatoil in hand-dug tunnels as deep as 600feet that are held up precariously bywood pillars. Some of the workers arechildren, especially in the summer,when desperate parents send boys hereto earn cash for the next year’s school
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHAN SPANNER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
SCRAMBLING FOR HIDDEN WEALTH
A hunter discovered tin ore in eastern Congo in 2002, and miners arrived almost overnight. In the battle for control of the mine in Bisie, a militia allied with the government won out.
Congo’s Riches Plundered by Renegade TroopsFrom Page 1
10 miles
Biruwe
NORTH KIVU
CONGO
Ndjingala
ManoireMain support town
Approximateroute of trailto Bisie
Approximateroute of trailfrom Bisieto Biruwe
Main road
BisieTin minelocation
BURUNDI
RWANDA
TANZANIA
ZAMBIA
CONGO
UGANDANORTHKIVU
Lualaba River
LakeTanganyika
Lake Albert
Congo
Areaof detail
200 miles
Goma
ENVIRONMENTAL SCARS
When ore is cleaned or clothes are washed, the dirty runoff goes into the fetid river coursing through Bisie.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
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fees. The tunnels are pitch-black and suffo-
catingly narrow. They often fill withdangerous fumes. Miners sometimesspend 48 hours straight working in thetunnels. The open pits are dangerous,too: heavy rains cause mudslides andcollapses. Cave-ins, mudslides and gas-es kill and maim an unknown number ofworkers every year.
On a late-summer afternoon at themine, a tunnel collapsed and crushed aminer’s leg. Another worker carried theman on his back as the injured minermoaned in agony, his eyes darting wild-ly. Blood carved tracks down his fore-head and cheeks.
“My wife is pregnant,” the minermoaned. “Jesus, mama, please.”
The man had broken his leg, and hisleft shoulder was sliced open. He gri-maced as health workers with only min-imal training worked to fashion a splintfrom sticks and vines.
Musamaria Luseke, 22, is whatpasses for a doctor here. He is one of ahandful of health workers who havebasic first aid training and earn cash byselling medicine to sick and injuredminers.
“These kinds of injuries happen allthe time,” he said.
Mr. Luseke had painkillers in his met-al box, but he was charging 25 cents atablet.
“I have to eat, too,” he said. Solidarity is in short supply here. An
argument broke out over who wouldpay a porter $20 to carry the injuredminer down the mountain.
“I didn’t tell him to go work,” shoutedthe owner of the tunnel, who neverthe-less ponied up the $20.
Hard-rock miners who work deep inthe tunnels say the money they canearn on a productive day makes up forthe risk. A young man who gave hisname as Pypina said he made $200 on agood shift.
But his friend Serge said such dayswere rare.
“We have some days where we findnothing, where we dig and dig for noth-ing,” he said.
Both of the young men are highschool dropouts who came to the mineto work for the summer but quicklyfound themselves trapped in a web ofdebt. Serge said he hoped to go back toschool, but already he had been at themine for a year and had saved nothing.
Pypina had given up on college. “I’ll buy a car,” Pypina said, flexing
his biceps to admire the dollar sign tat-tooed there.
But he is a long way from buying thatcar. When he makes a bit of money hehas to pay his debts first. With anythingleft, he tries to salve the loneliness oflife.
“First, you need a woman,” he said.Pypina said he paid $100 to have a wom-an with him for 24 hours. They go ondates to the clapboard bars in the mar-ket, and he shells out $100 or more forwhiskey, beer and gin. She cooks forhim.
“She is like a wife for a day,” he ex-plained.
“I am a man,” he said, describing whyhe spent so much on pleasure-seeking.“I cannot live without a woman. Andonly God knows what tomorrow willbring.”
One of Many ProblemsColonel Matumo declined to be in-
terviewed for this article. But he madeno effort to conceal his control over themine, openly supervising the produc-tion and the sale of dozens of sacks ofore. A hotel he owns doubles as an oredepot, and each morning porters ar-
rived to carry his latest load to the mainroad for sale.
A major who said he had been sent byCongo’s top military brass to assess thesituation said the government wantedthe militia to leave but had too manyother security problems to contendwith. Mr. Nkunda, the renegade Tutsigeneral, has been waging a fierce insur-gency in another part of eastern Congo,and the army has so far been unable todefeat him.
“Samy is just one of many problems,”the major, who refused to give his name,said of Colonel Matumo. “If we can’tdeal with Nkunda, how can we forceSamy to go when he does not want toleave?”
Bisie may be the middle of nowhere,but the ore it produces is tightly linkedto the global market. After porters bearthe loads, often heavier than the menthemselves, the ore reaches middlemenalong the main road. One such middle-man, Bakwe Selomba, said he did notmind paying the militiamen because thepayment guaranteed his investment.
“To be honest, it is better for us thatthey are there,” he said. “I can send mybuyers walking through the jungle withlots of money, but nobody will touchthem as long as we pay the tax. It pro-tects us.”
The ore is then trucked a few milesdown a stretch of pavement to the vil-lage of Kilambo. There, on a slightlycurved stretch of road, Soviet-era cargoplanes take off and land, as many as twodozen times a day. The carcasses of twoplanes that presumably botched thistricky maneuver lay strewn to one sideof the makeshift runway, covered inblack and green mold.
The flights land in Goma, the pro-
vincial capital, where other middlemenbuy and process the ore for export.Alexis Makabuza’s Global Mining Com-pany is one of these buyers. Amid thesorting and cleaning equipment of hisrudimentary processing plant sit doz-ens of barrels of tin ore. On each is sten-ciled the address of Malaysian SmeltingCompany Berhad, a major tin smelter.Mr. Makabuza said he sold to the com-pany via a minerals broker.
In a handwritten contract between alocal government official and a repre-sentative of Mr. Makabuza’s companysigned in 2006, then operating under adifferent name, the company agreed topay a large percentage of its earningsfrom the mine in exchange for a guaran-tee of security. Colonel Matumo’s militiais the only force operating in the area,and most of this money ended up in hishands, according to security officials inthe region.
Mr. Makabuza shrugged off questionsabout his business dealings with the mi-litia.
“We follow all the rules,” he said. “Iam just a buyer like anybody else.”
Debating a SolutionCongo’s tin ore represents a rela-
tively small slice of the world market,but in recent years supplies have beenso tight that efforts to stop mining atBisie have caused price spikes. Thisyear, the government tried to shut downthe mine, but it was quickly reopenedby local authorities who feared the eco-nomic and political costs of puttingthousands of miners out of work andcutting off the cash flow to a volatilerenegade military commander.
Indeed, many fear banning exports of
tin ore from Congo would cause moreproblems than it would solve.
“A blanket ban on tin from Congo isnonsense because it penalizes the mil-lions dependent on the sector the most,”said Nicholas Garrett, a mining expertwho has written reports on Congo forthe World Bank and other institutions.Putting those people out of work wouldsimply invite another rebellion, Mr.Garrett said.
The government has repeatedlyasked Colonel Matumo’s men to leavethe mine. In a written order issued inAugust 2007, Col. Delphin Kahimbi, dep-uty commander of the army in NorthKivu, the province here, admitted thatelements of the armed forces were prof-iting from the mine and laid out a planto replace the renegade brigade withloyal soldiers. But the orders were nev-er followed up, and the militia’s grip onthe mine seems tighter than ever.
Julien Paluku, the governor of NorthKivu, said the government must movecautiously. Already faced with a rene-gade Tutsi general who has largeswaths of the region under siege, thegovernment can scarcely afford to pick
a fight with another armed group, hesaid.
“Solving this problem will take time,”Governor Paluku said.
Some analysts say the situation inBisie is so blatant that its very persist-ence is evidence of collusion betweenthe militia and powerful politicians.
“Unless immediate action is taken totransfer these soldiers out of Bisie mineand to prosecute those responsible forthe large-scale looting of minerals, wecan only conclude that these activitiesare sanctioned at the highest levels,”Patrick Alley of the anticorruption or-ganization Global Witness, based inLondon, said in a statement.
In May, Senators Sam Brownback ofKansas and Richard J. Durbin of Illinoisintroduced a bill to require certifyingminerals from Congo. “Without know-ing it, tens of millions of people in theUnited States may be putting money inthe pockets of some of the worst humanrights violators in the world, simply byusing a cellphone or laptop computer,”Senator Durbin, a Democrat, said at thetime.
Here in Bisie, daily life offers fewclues that such information age technol-ogy exists. Isolated and indebted, al-most none of the town’s workers haveany clue what tin is actually used for.
“It is for weapons,” suggested DjumaAssualani, 21. “Kalashnikov, bombs.They make war with it.”
“It’s gold,” shouted Makami Kimima,18, who came to the mine to earn moneyto go back to school but ended up indebt instead. His fellow miners jeered athis ignorance.
“It is something like gold,” he said,chastened. “It goes to America. AndChina. It makes people rich.”
JOHAN SPANNER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
CREATURE COMFORTS
Bisie, a town of 10,000, has basic businesses like bars, where prices are not cheap because each item must be hauled through the jungle.
This is the first article in a seriesexamining the role of natural re-sources in spurring conflict and in-hibiting peace in Africa.
The Spoils
Remember the Neediest!
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A12 N INTERNATIONALTHE NEW YORK TIMES MONDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2008
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — The presi-dent of Somalia announced Sun-day that he was unilaterally fir-ing the prime minister, throwingSomalia’s beleaguered govern-ment, and the nation itself, intofurther disarray.
President Abdullahi Yusuf Ah-med, a warlord in his 70s who hasbeen steadily marginalized forseveral months because he iswidely seen as an obstacle topeace, said he was dismissing
Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hus-sein, a former aid official, be-cause the government had “failedto accomplish its duties.”
But it is not even clear that thepresident has the authority to dothis.
According to the transitionalgovernment’s charter, only Par-liament can hire or fire the primeminister. And most analysts be-lieve Parliament — a fractious,unpredictable group that is dom-inated by former warlords — ac-tually supports the prime min-ister, which means a high-levelshowdown may be coming next.
Mr. Nur said he was not goinganywhere.
On Sunday, he insisted thepresident had no right to fire himand that only “Parliament hasthe authority to sack the govern-ment.”
The two men have never reallygotten along, constantly blamingeach other for the ever-deepen-ing crisis that Somalia has sunkinto, from the current piracyproblem to the Islamist resur-gence to the looming famine thatis threatening millions of lives.
The latest bone of contention isa peace agreement that Mr. Nurhelped broker between the gov-ernment and a group of moderateIslamist opposition leaders. Mr.Yusuf rejected that agreement
and called the Islamists terror-ists.
Many Western diplomats aresupporting Mr. Nur and have in-dicated in recent weeks that theyare fed up with Mr. Yusuf.
But the bickering and postur-ing within the transitional gov-ernment may, in the end, be pure-ly academic. The transitional
government now controls nomore than a few city blocks in acountry almost as big as Texas.The Ethiopian troops who havebeen shoring it up for the pasttwo years have said they wereabout to withdraw, and a smallforce of African Union peace-keepers in Somalia is expected tofollow.
Most analysts say that as soonas the Ethiopians pull out, the Is-lamist insurgents who haveseized control of most of thecountry in the past year will takeover the capital, Mogadishu. Thetransitional government will thencollapse, as did the 13 transitionalgovernments before it, the ana-
lysts predict. The Somali Parliament is ex-
pected to meet in the comingdays. On top of the president’smove to dismiss Mr. Nur, mem-bers of Parliament are also con-sidering a measure to impeachPresident Yusuf.
One serious risk, though, isthat Mr. Yusuf still enjoys thesupport of his clan, one of the big-gest in the country. Many ana-lysts worry that too drastic amove against him could ignite thetype of heavy clan warfare thatbrought down Somalia’s centralgovernment in 1991 and has keptthe country mired in violent cha-os ever since.
Somalia’s President Fires Prime Minister but May Not Have the Power to Do So
A showdown could benext in a nation thatis already in disarray.
Mohammed Ibrahim contributedreporting from Mogadishu, Soma-lia.
government they largely dis-dained. But this new rebellionhas shed the parochial com-plaints of an ethnic minority,claiming instead that the govern-ment is squandering the entirecountry’s resources through cor-ruption and waste. Armed with aslick Web site and articulatespokesmen in Europe and theUnited States, the movement hasgotten sympathy from Western-ers drawn to the mysterious Tua-reg and their arguments for jus-tice.
It has also pulled in a wide va-riety of fighters — not only illiter-ate herdsmen but also collegestudents, aid workers, even for-mer pacifists like Mr. Halil.
“This uranium belongs to ourpeople; it is on our land,” Mr.Halil said. “We cannot allow our-selves to be robbed of our birth-right.”
Useful or UselessWhen Mr. Halil was in high
school, an old French map hungin his classroom. The verdantcrescent along the southern bor-der was labeled “useful Niger.”The vast, dun-colored swathacross the north that he calledhome was labeled “useless Ni-ger.”
It was a profound lesson, inpolitics as well as geography. Theagricultural belt along the southhad all the power. The herders ofthe north were irrelevant.
It had not always been so. TheTuareg have plied the barrenpeaks here for centuries, rulingover the caravan routes thatcrossed the Sahara with the rich-es of Africa — from salt to slaves.With their camels and swords,they enriched themselvesthrough tribute and plunder.
By the time Mr. Halil was born,that era was long gone. As a boyhe dreamed of having a hugeherd of camels, as his father hadbefore the great droughts of the1970s wiped out the herd. Afterexcelling in school, Mr. Halil wentto college in Benin, but he failedto get the Niger government togive him a scholarship to veteri-nary school abroad.
“My family had no connec-tions,” he said. “Unless you havea friend in government, yourchances of getting a scholarshipare zero.”
Instead, he started a union ofherders to try to get those notori-ously individualistic people toband together for their commoninterests.
In his travels, Mr. Halil beganto notice the stream of geologistsfrom France, China, Canada andAustralia scouring ever deeperinto Tuareg grazing lands. Littleseas of flags, used to mark po-tential mining areas, sprang upeverywhere, he said.
“I asked myself, ‘What do weTuareg get out of this?’” he said.“We just get poorer and poorer.”
An Insurgency BeginsMr. Halil’s efforts were part of
a wave of civic activism that hasswept over Africa in the past 15years as the continent has be-come more democratic. Many ofthe new elected governments aredeeply flawed, but because of amore youthful, urban populationin touch with new technology,their citizens are often better in-formed and less willing to toler-ate the corruption that hassquandered so much of Africa’spotential.
In February 2007, a group ofarmed Tuaregs mounted an au-dacious attack on a military basein the Air Mountains. A new in-surgency was born. They calledthemselves the Niger Movement
for Justice and unfurled a set ofdemands: that corruption becurbed and the wealth generatedby each region benefit its people.
Far from useless, as Mr. Halil’shigh school map had said, Tuareglands produce the uranium thataccounts for 70 percent of thecountry’s export earnings. But al-most none of those earnings re-turned to those who lost access tograzing land and suffered the en-vironmental consequences ofmining, the rebels argued.
To fight the rebellion, the gov-ernment has effectively isolatedthe north, devastating its econ-omy. International human rightsinvestigators have also docu-mented serious misdeeds on bothsides. The rebels use antivehicleland mines that have killed sol-diers and civilians, while thearmy has been accused of extra-judicial killings, arbitrary deten-tions and looting of livestock. Inall, hundreds of people have beenkilled, and thousands have beenpushed from their land.
Despite the violence, miningand exploration continues largelyunabated, but the rebels contendthat corrupt officials siphon offmuch of that wealth. The coun-try’s prime minister was forcedto step aside after being accusedof embezzling $237,000, and lastsummer he was indicted.
“This wealth needs to be usedto help the people, not the poli-ticians,” said Aghali Alambo,president of the rebel movement.“Otherwise it is just plunder.”
The government argues thatNiger is a democracy, if an imper-fect one, with peaceful means ofredressing grievances.
Officials dismiss the men fight-ing in the north as bandits andtraffickers who have moveddrugs, untaxed cigarettes, gaso-
line and even human cargoacross the vast Sahara for dec-ades. Some rebels admit to traf-ficking, especially of cheap gaso-line smuggled from Algeria, tosupport the rebellion.
“Niger is a democratic countrythat is ruled by laws,” saidMohamed Ben Omar, Niger’sminister of information. “If some-one has a grievance, let him forma political party and bring it tothe ballot.”
Poor Amid RichesThe Tuareg have been fighting
here for centuries. The warriorscover their faces with long, bluescarves that stain their skin.
After France lost its grip onmost of its Saharan colonies in1960, the Tuareg found them-selves a small minority dividedamong new nations created byarbitrary borders that meant lit-tle to them. Worse, droughts re-duced them to penury.
But the parched land on whichthey lived was valuable. AFrench nuclear company, Areva,was scooping hundreds of tons ofuranium from northern Niger ev-ery year. Unlike southern farm-ers, who owned their land, no-mads could use pastureland buthad no title to it.
The hardships of global warm-ing and desertification, whicheats away grazing land, furtherimpoverished the Tuareg, forcingmany to abandon herding. Yet asits fertility degraded, their landbecame increasingly sought afteras the global price of uraniumrose steadily. This paradox wouldprove explosive.
Mr. Halil sat out the last Tua-reg uprising, which began in 1990and ended with a peace agree-ment in 1995. Back then, he was
idealistic, hoping to avoid vio-lence. But he knew his people’shistory well.
“Tuareg are fighters,” he said.“It is our nature.”
In June 2007, an army vehicleexploded after driving over aland mine planted by the rebels.Villagers say that the army thenslaughtered three elderly men;the army says no one was killed.But the story of the slaughteredelders spread swiftly among theTuareg.
For Mr. Halil, it was a sign thatnonviolence was foolish.
“If they were going to kill old,defenseless men, how could weeven talk about negotiation?” hesaid. “Fighting was the only wayto defend our communities andour way of life.”
After months of indecision, Mr.Halil sent his 2-year-old daughterand his pregnant wife to staywith her parents. He set off forthe Air Mountains.
An Oath With ExceptionsOnce there, Mr. Halil found a
growing army. He learned to usea weapon and march in forma-tion, but he was more useful injobs closer to his former voca-
tions — healer and organizer. Wounded fighters sought him
out under his tree in the camp.He treated infections and coun-seled men on splinting brokenbones. Fighters started callinghim the doctor.
“I felt that I was useful,” Mr.Halil said.
Each new recruit must swear athree-part oath on the Koran:never betray the movement; nev-er attack civilians or take theirproperty; serve all of Niger’speople, not just one tribe or clan.
But the oath has exceptions,and stealing from outsiders is notonly tolerated but encouraged.Armed men stole a new, whiteToyota truck from Unicef’s of-fices in April. The same vehicleturned up at a rebel base a fewdays later, its Unicef emblemscratched off. The rebels drove itto Mali to try to sell it.
Such slips made Mr. Halil un-easy.
“I was not born to be a soldier,”he said.
The fighters spend little timeactually fighting. Mostly, theydrive around on patrols, takeshelter under the meager shadeof thorny acacia trees and pre-
pare Tuareg tea, a potent brewpoured into small glasses.
At such moments, Mr. HalilAached for home. He thought ofhis newborn son, whom he hadnever seen. He wondered if hehad made the right choice, leav-ing his family and taking up theway of the gun.
“Sometimes I have doubts,” hesaid, stoking the embers of acampfire.
In late June, Mr. Halil was on amission when the thwackingsound of helicopter rotors sud-denly broke the desert silence, hesaid. There had long been rumorsthat the government had ac-quired attack helicopters, a pow-er that would fundamentallychange the conflict.
In the firefight, 17 rebels werekilled. Mr. Halil managed to getaway and fled to Algeria, leavingthe rebellion and taking up hisstudies once again. He hoped, atlast, to become a real veterinari-an.
“I won’t abandon the struggle,but I will continue by othermeans,” he said.
The fighters left behind, in bas-es deep in the mountains, vowthat they are there to stay.
A Battle Unfolds in Northern Niger for the Riches That Lie Beneath the Soil
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHAN SPANNER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Niger Movement for Justice fighters near Tezerzait in May. The group has demanded, among other things, that wealth generated by each region benefit its people.
Arlit
Ingal
AirMountains
Agadez
NIGER
Uraniumprospectingpermitsgranted
50 miles
URANIUM PRODUCTION IN TONS (1,000)
Resource-Rich Desert Niger is the fifth-largest producer of uranium in the world. The uranium mining area, in the north of the country, is home to the nomadic Tuareg people.
ALGERIA
Area of search for uranium
S a h a r a D e s e r t
NIGER CHAD
NIGERIA
BENINTOGOGHANA
MALI
ALGERIA
LIBYA
Tuaregregion
Detailat right
Sahara Deser t
Source: World Nuclear AssociationSource: World Nuclear Association THE NEW YORK TIMES
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CanadaAustraliaKazakhstan
RussiaNiger
Iferouâne
Amoumoun Halil, 40, in April. He fled to Algeria in late June,leaving the rebellion and taking up his studies once again.
From Page A1
This series is examiningthe role of natural resourcesin spurring conflict and in-hibiting peace in Africa.
The Spoils
ONLINE: Morephotographs, an
interactive feature onAfrican commodities inhistory and the previousarticle in this series:
