Mass rapes in DR Congo.

WindSock wrote: »

No one has to be a mod to point out their distaste at a persons posting style. It is something I have noticed and giving my opinion that it does not add to your wealth of information when you berate people or their posts in that fashion. imo. Same with anyone else really.

MUSSOLINI wrote: »

Truly shocking. What is the actually point of the rapes? Make the villages afraid?

Morlar wrote: »

Blaming the west for this is a cop out and it is the same old schtick.

An agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and China in 2008 to swap 10 million tonnes of copper ore for US$9 billion worth of mine and civic infrastructure looked like a genuine win-win.

But ever since the International Monetary Fund (IMF) demanded renegotiation of the deal in May 2009, China and the DRC have been on a roller-coaster ride of risk. Today, Beijing anxiously eyes a growing list of major dysfunctional problems - and a $100 million adverse judgment in a Hong Kong court - that could derail the "deal of the century".

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The third was onerous indebtedness, which forced the DRC to concentrate on the IMF's priorities of debt repayment and fiscal and financial reform instead of its own desperate need for social and infrastructure spending.

The Chinese deal was, in its essence, barter. The state-owned Export-Import Bank of China (China Eximbank) would fund the opening of a copper mine in the DRC's Katanga province for $3 billion and underwrite $6 billion of infrastructure projects, paid in two tranches. The bank would be repaid using profits of Sicomines, a joint venture between the DRC and China that would receive the rights to extract 10 million tonnes of copper and 600,000 tonnes of cobalt reserves from the Katanga mine.

Undoubtedly, the deal was a potential bonanza for China. In addition, Chinese companies might well have hoped to take advantage of the DRC government by manipulating the contracting process to provide the capacity-challenged and corruption-prone nation with overpriced infrastructure.

An expert on the DRC's developmental challenges told Asia Times Online he was pessimistic about what might be delivered. "I'm not sure what to expect, beyond a bit of new pavement on some old roads. I 'trust' a corrupt, but efficient government like Angola to squeeze value out of Chinese and Western companies. Not the DRC."

Nevertheless, for China as well the deal represented a remarkable leap of faith. At the time when the DRC was a financial, political and economic basket case, China agreed to put $6 billion into the country up front in the first four years before the mine - which would enter into production at 2014 at the earliest - had produced a pound of copper.

To its discredit, the West's response to news of the agreement was anger compounded by fear and jealousy. Kabila conveyed his resentment of this response in an interview with the New York Times: [1]

No sooner had the agreement been praised in Congo as a desperately needed lifeline than Congo's Western allies started griping that the Chinese got a sweetheart deal and began pressing Mr Kabila to revise the terms.

"What revolted me was the fact that there was resistance to this agreement and there was no counterproposal," Mr Kabila said.

The West expressed its displeasure in a concrete way through the most effective avenue available to it - the IMF.

The IMF dominates the DRC's international economic activity through its administration of a debt workout process for so-called HIPC or "Highly Indebted Poor Countries".

The HIPC workout has been criticized as a coercive and self-serving exercise designed primarily to protect the interests of Western sovereign creditors who over-lent to developing countries.

To prevent a wave of national defaults, and avoid the need for creditors to immediately write off foreign debt that impoverished borrowers are unable to service, the IMF interposes itself to set fiscal and structural reform obligations in return for bridge financing and the employment of its good offices to effect eventual cancelation of debts by the Paris Club of the largest Western holders of bad national debt.

Somewhat absurdly, the DRC, even in the depths of the global recession in 2009, was making more than $170 million in interest payments to stay in the good graces of the IMF.

This self-sacrifice is necessary so that the IMF will eventually certify to the Paris Club creditors that their $6 billion share of the DRC's $11 billion foreign debt is worthy of being written off. The debt was actually incurred by the kleptocratic predecessor regime of Mobuto Sesi Seko, who fled the country in 1997 when it was still called Zaire; he died the same year.

It would appear that the IMF relishes the leverage it holds over the DRC by virtue of its control of the country's financial lifeline to the outside world, and resented the idea that the DRC could, through an ore-for-infrastructure swap, pursue its developmental goals in disregard of the priorities of the IMF and its Western backers.