Published 05 Sep 06

Strategic Interests

by J. Peter Pham, Ph.D.
World Defense Review columnist

Iran's Congo Connection

On July 31, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1696. This invoked Chapter VII of the world body's charter to demand that Iran suspend all activities related to its pursuit of uranium-based nuclear weapons by August 31 – a demand that the mullahs rejected last week, countering with an offer to drag out the already prolonged "negotiations."

The UN resolution also called upon all other countries to "exercise vigilance and prevent the transfer of any items, materials, goods, and technology that could contribute to Iran's enrichment-related and reprocessing activities and ballistic missile programs." Yet just one day before the Security Council acted, another mission, itself likewise authorized by an apposite resolution from the same body, supervised a flawed poll designed to confer democratic "legitimacy" on what is likely to be the first regime to violate the embargo on selling the banned bomb-making materials or technology to the Iranians.

Notwithstanding its current official name of "Democratic Republic of Congo" (DRC), the former Belgian colony two-thirds the size of Western Europe has not had a free and fair election since independence in 1960. The July 30 poll was meant to recognize the incumbency of the 35-year-old Joseph Kabila, who became the world's youngest head of state in January 2001 following the assassination of his father, Laurent-Désiré Kabila. Kabila père, a one-time protégé of Che Guevara, had carved for himself a secessionist state on the shores of Lake Tanganyika with support from Maoist China. As Mobuto Sese Seko's Zaire fell apart, he shot his way into the presidency of Africa's third largest country. Eventually, a disgruntled aide cut short his reign, but not before his authoritarianism, human rights abuses, corruption, and nascent personality cult ignited a conflict that drew in five of his neighbors.

With the complicity of the international community, the Kabila cabal installed the dead man's twenty-nine-year-old son in his place without even the pretense of constitutional order. Never mind that Kabila fils grew up in Tanzania and, consequently, speaks Congo's official language, French, with an English accent and does not even know Congo's lingua franca, Lingala. Never mind up to the point when his minders told him there was a campaign to run, Kabila had held a total of two news conferences and given perhaps a dozen speeches in his more than five years in power. What was important was that a campaign be run and a poll conducted. Like much at the UN, it's process over substance. (As it turns out, despite significant irregularities – that is, extralegal attempts by the incumbent and his supporters, Congolese and foreign, to manipulate the outcome – Joseph Kabilastill could not secure an outright majority and now faces an October run-off with second-place finisher Jean-Pierre Bemba.)

My point is that in the contemporary world seemingly unrelated developments and trajectories are, in fact, connected and that while attention might be focused on one geopolitical theatre, other regions cannot be ignored with impunity. In the present case, legitimate international concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions and their impact on the Middle East balance of power cannot be divorced from at least some preoccupation with events in the heart of Africa where the 1998-2003 conflict in the DRC – one that, after exacting the immense toll of at least 3.5 million lives and giving the DRC the world's highest crude mortality rate, has been dubbed "Africa's first world war" – went virtually unnoticed in the West.

In any event, if certain prejudices usually leave this corner of Africa orphaned in the chanceries of Europe and America, vital national interests now require a focused attention. As Britain's Sunday Times reported recently, a senior Tanzanian customs official confirmed that his country had intercepted an October 2005 large shipment of uranium destined for the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. According to the Times, a report prepared for UN sanctions committee chairman Oswaldo de Rivero, dated July 18, stated that there was "no doubt" that the radioactive material came from the Lubumbashi mines in Congo. These findings, contested by the Iranians, lend credence to the presumption that Iran's nuclear program is far more extensive than officially acknowledged.

Furthermore, an investigative report by Belgium's Kanaal Z uncovered correspondence between Saman Cheshemen Mines of Iran and the German firm Wieland Lufttechnik GmbH concerning the purchase of U-235 (while U-238 is the stable heavyweight isotope which comprises more than 99 percent of raw uranium ore, it is the lighter weight fissile isotope U-235, which makes up less than one percent of raw ore, that is the focus of enrichment processing because it can produce energy by splitting into smaller fragments). One of the documents acknowledges that Wieland – which has an active corporate presence in both Tanzania and Congo – had "received funds from Saman Cheshemen" and that "the work in Tanzania is well under way." The Belgian television alleges a total of twelve shipments took place, the most recent successful delivery taking place this past February.

Uranium has long been one of Congo's more desirable natural resources. The Shinkolobwe mine near Lubumbashi, the capital of mineral-rich Katanga province, for example, supplied the uranium in the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. From this locale, it is a relatively straightforward road passage through northern Zambia to Tanzania and its ports on the Indian Ocean. Not surprisingly, Congo's warlords have often used the radioactive ore a currency. In 1997, after Mobuto fled the country, four of his generals turned over 800 kilograms of the precious ore in a bid to ingratiate themselves with the victorious Laurent-Désiré Kabila. According to intelligence sources, after failing to sell it to Libya's Mu‘ammar Qadhafi, Kabila père offloaded the hoard on North Korea's Kim Jong-Il. The go between on the transaction was was reported Kabila fils, who was spending the year getting advanced training at the National Defense University in Beijing. The ore delivered must have been of a sufficiently enticing quality because the following year, working in collaboration with the Kabilas, the North Koreans tried to reopen the Shinkolobwe mine, which had been closed in 1961.

Eventually, pressure from the United States forced the elder Kabila to break off contact with the North Koreans. However, it seems that his son has decided to go into business with another charter member of the "axis of evil." The younger Kabila's longtime minister of state at the presidency was one Augustin Katumba Mwanke, a former governor of Katanga and one-time employee of Bateman Mining of South Africa. Mwanke figured prominently in a 2002 UN report, S/2002/1146, on illegal exploitation of resources during the war in the DRC. Although popular opinion forced Joseph Kabila to officially accept Mwanke's resignation, it is apparent that the latter is still involved in the affairs of state. Last year alone, he traveled twice to Iran – hardly a tourist destination for ex-ministers from the developing world.

Add another element to this puzzle. In a previous column, I discussed Hezbollah's extensive network among the Lebanese diaspora in Africa. Of course, Hezbollah is Iran's proxy – and not just in the Middle East. As it happens, the largest trader in foodstuffs in the DRC is a company called Congo Futur, a firm that went into business as the Kabila clan was installing itself in Kinshasa. In addition to its legitimate agricultural operations – which, incidentally, give it an extensive logistical network across not only the DRC, but also the African continent and beyond – the firm has been implicated in various shady enterprises, including illegal logging. Congo Futur is owned by a Lebanese businessman named Kassim Tadjideen, who is no stranger to dealing with questionable regimes – inter alia, in 2002, he was fêted in Rangoon by the minister of commerce of the Burmese junta, Brigadier-General Pyi Sone.

Could it be that all of this is coincidental and that nothing is afoot in the DRC? Possibly, but not quite probably. There are simply too many connections for all this to be random happenstance. As the international community prepares to confront Iran's nuclear defiance as well as to oversee the "conclusion" of Democratic Congo's transition to not-quite-democracy, it would be prudent to keep an eye on who holds the reins of power in Kinshasa, who his friends are, and what they are up to – especially if we are serious about our resolution to "exercise vigilance and prevent the transfer of any items, materials, goods, and technology" to Iran and other rogue actors.

– J. Peter Pham is Director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs and a Research Fellow of the Institute for Infrastructure and Information Assurance at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He is also an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C. In addition to the study of terrorism and political violence, his research interests lie at the intersection of international relations, international law, political theory, and ethics, with particular concentrations on the implications for United States foreign policy and African states as well as religion and global politics.

Dr. Pham is the author of over one hundred essays and reviews on a wide variety of subjects in scholarly and opinion journals on both sides of the Atlantic and the author, editor, or translator of over a dozen books. Among his recent publications are Liberia: Portrait of a Failed State (Reed Press, 2004), which has been critically acclaimed by Foreign Affairs, Worldview, Wilson Quarterly, American Foreign Policy Interests, and other scholarly publications, and Child Soldiers, Adult Interests: The Global Dimensions of the Sierra Leonean Tragedy (Nova Science Publishers, 2005).

In addition to serving on the boards of several international and national think tanks and journals, Dr. Pham has testified before the U.S. Congress and conducted briefings or consulted for both Congressional and Executive agencies.

© 2006 J. Peter Pham

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