00:03Eastern Congo where brutal conflict, international aid and precious resources all intersect.
00:17The only way to get up to these mines is with the local motorcycle transport known as Boda Boda.
00:25It's pretty groovy.
00:28The Rubia Mine is one of the world's richest resources of one of its most precious minerals, coltan.
00:36You can't make a mobile phone or laptop, an electric car, plane, missile or run a GPS without it.
00:44Indeed pipelines, rockets and even jet engines need it.
00:48And, just as he wants resources in Greenland and Venezuela, Donald Trump wants American access here.
01:04The Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC, has 80% of the planet's coltan reserves.
01:11And, the Trump administration has done a deal with the government to get access to the Congo's rarest minerals.
01:20But, this territory is held by rebels backed by Rwanda.
01:24Patrice is one of the mine managers.
01:26Patrice is one of the most famous people in the country.
01:29How many people work here?
01:3110,000?
01:3210,000 or 11,000 people.
01:35They work here.
01:362,000 years.
01:37It's here that we have been working here.
01:40We have always been working here.
01:41Yes.
01:48How many people work here?
02:04This is the mineral called cotton.
02:08And, how much would you get for one kilo?
02:10Perhaps 40 or 50.
02:1240 or 50 dollars?
02:1350 dollars.
02:16And, if you had a big industry here?
02:18I think we can improve our life.
02:21Because, we found a good investment.
02:26Trump agrees.
02:28But, that means shoving out Rwanda and bringing government rule back here.
02:34And, the coltan is from Rwanda, Burundi, and who?
02:41The crasers take their production.
02:45They bring them to Rwanda.
02:46There are great negotiators and small negotiators.
02:49The destination of these miners, when they arrive to Rwanda, it's Burundi.
02:53I don't have any information from this.
02:59Each month, 120 tons of coltan are usually mined here.
03:03But, the mines have been outside the control of the government forces for two decades.
03:10And, they're run by a militia called the M23.
03:14He won't say it out loud, but Patrice is part of that militia.
03:21The thing that's really important about coltan is not just its role in terms of the essential material for pretty
03:29much all forms of computing, but it's also a massive income generator for the militia.
03:34These mines are estimated to generate at least a million dollars a month for the M23.
03:42Years of conflict have been funded by illegal mining of essential minerals.
03:47Donald Trump now wants to break that cycle, save lives, and make profits.
03:53I said, how long has the war been going?
03:55I'm trying to mind, it was very much involved.
03:58I said 30 years, and at least six million people were killed during that period of time.
04:04It's incredible.
04:05And somebody said that was actually the biggest war on the planet since World War II.
04:12So, it's a shame.
04:14I hope we're going to bring it to an end.
04:18But Trump's diplomacy depends on M23, who are not in the Oval Office, but are taking over more of Eastern
04:25Congo.
04:27By February last year, M23 pushed out government forces and took control of Goma, the largest city in the east
04:34of the country.
04:35M23 is an ethnic Tutsi movement that is expanding its territory with funding from illegal mining.
04:42The movement is backed by Tutsi-dominated neighboring Rwanda.
04:50M23 claims to have been created to protect Tutsis in the Congo from what happened during the genocide in Rwanda
04:57in 1994.
05:03I took these photos there at the time.
05:08When the state organized a mass slaughter of ethnic Tutsis by Hutu extremists and its own army.
05:19And I'm returning to the area where I documented one of those many massacres.
05:28Really bloody scary it was.
05:30The thing that people don't take on board is that a million people were killed in a hundred days.
05:37That means an industrial level of mass murder, the likes of which the Nazis perfected with all of their industrial
05:43might.
05:43The killing here was being done by hand.
05:4731 years ago, here in Bissicero, I discovered the last few thousand Tutsis left alive.
05:58Tens of thousands of other Tutsis were killed here over three months.
06:04This is a memorial to the genocide that sparked fire that rages in the Congo today.
06:19It's extraordinary seeing these skulls here because these could be some of the people that I saw lying dead in
06:25the fields just a few hundred yards away from here.
06:28You can see the evidence of how they would kill.
06:31Bullet wound, machete cut.
06:40Entire families were wiped out.
06:48What happened here in 1994 with the murder of a vast number of people spread almost immediately into the neighboring
06:58Congo then called Zaire.
07:00The infrastructures of mass murder moved with the Hutu population into the neighboring Congo into refugee camps and immediately, like
07:10a darkness, this idea of ethnic groups having to live with a kill or be killed mentality began to spread
07:18across the entire country and it's still there today.
07:27Hutu perpetrators of the 1994 massacres fled into the Congo taking their ideology with them.
07:35International aid paid for their food and housing, their medical needs and education.
07:42Many settled and had families and kept the dream of genocide alive plotting and killing Tutsis.
07:52The DRC has received an estimated 50 billion in aid over the last two decades.
08:00But war and poverty has killed at least 6 million since 1994.
08:09Aid may have saved lives, but it hasn't bought peace.
08:18And the bloodletting has created space for illegal mining of minerals that run the world's technologies.
08:28Goma is close to Rabaya and is just across the border from Rwanda.
08:41The M23 rebels took over this part of the Congo alongside 4,000 Rwandan soldiers a year ago.
08:51Government forces, along with militias like M23, have committed widespread atrocities here for years.
08:59M23's leaders say they need to rule this region to protect people.
09:03But the fight over minerals have brought chaos.
09:06Aid agencies have been mostly driven out, leaving civilians more vulnerable.
09:24Some of the worst fighting was concentrated in a town called Sake, to the west of Goma.
09:29It deplaced thousands of people.
09:38Alice, we're going to Sake, which in the past has always been a kind of scene of a lot of
09:43violence.
09:44What are we going to see?
09:46We're going to see women.
09:48These women have been previously displaced.
09:51It comes around Goma and now the fighting has stopped.
09:55They have gone back to their community into Sake.
09:59So they were displaced from Sake because that was basically the front line.
10:04Yes.
10:04And now the front line has moved, they can go home.
10:07They have lost their livelihoods.
10:11Now they have to start afresh.
10:17Many of these women have been attacked.
10:19Many of them have been raped.
10:20And many have seen their families murdered.
10:24Thanks to a savings co-op system that CARE taught them to run, they have survived.
10:39Many of them have gained though their changes had been всего over and over.
10:42They carried out so much noise for the people there and and so on.END
10:43Goma is jumping on the street. I
10:47try to finish the alkalo, they are sprayed with, they have taken them in. I
10:56now have themsoon of wood neighbourhood. And
10:56I'm fishing. I'm
10:57fishing.
10:58and after the war, it was a great day.
11:07Is this your farm?
11:09Yes.
11:09We were just in the village.
11:11I was in the village, and I was in the village.
11:14It was the village that was in the village.
11:16Did any of the armed groups attack you and your family?
11:19Yes.
11:20I was in the village,
11:23and I was in the village and I was in the village.
11:25I was in the village,
11:26and i was in the village.
11:28Look at all,
11:29these families don't talk about too much.
11:32The village has lost it.
11:44Now that
11:45M23 is in charge,
11:48do you feel safe?
11:49I am in the village who is hungry,
11:53so that I'm hungry,
12:04The DRC, Rwanda and Trump have signed a deal to exploit the region's minerals.
12:10They've spent a lot of time killing each other.
12:14And now they're going to spend a lot of time hugging, holding hands and taking advantage of the United States
12:20of America.
12:21We're going to take out some of the rare earth and take out some of the assets and pay and
12:27everybody's going to make a lot of money.
12:29In the Eastern DRC, there are American companies that are being lined up.
12:33They're being supported by the Trump administration to gain access to lucrative mining concessions, including tantalum mining concessions.
12:40But making that reality is very difficult. The infrastructure is poor. There is very little electricity provision.
12:45There are security problems. There are governance problems.
12:47For, I think, any clear-eyed investor to look at that and say, well, this is a good idea,
12:52they would have to either have very extensive guarantees, which the Trump administration is not providing them,
12:57and certainly the Konglis administration isn't capable of providing them,
13:01or it would have to be so lucrative that that risk would pay off.
13:05At the moment, that's not the case.
13:13In January this year, more than 200 miners were buried and killed in a landslide at Rabaya,
13:21intensifying the local misery, while M23's war in the Congo has forced a humanitarian disaster on its neighbours, notably Burundi.
13:49More than a million people have been displaced by violence in the DRC over a year,
13:54and 84,000 have fled here to impoverish Burundi.
14:01That's the Congo over there, those hills.
14:03Between them and me, in the valley, is the Rasisi River.
14:06That marks the boundary between Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
14:12But in those mountains is where some of the worst ethnic violence back in the late 1990s occurred,
14:20when members of the Tutsi community rose up against other local, particularly Hutu invaders, to defend themselves.
14:28And that was part of an ethnic maelstrom that is still burning today.
14:35This is a military zone. We're not supposed to be filming at all.
14:39Can you see the refugees? They're coming.
14:42There's some very small figures made out by a kind of yellow jerry can that they're carrying.
14:47They're heading towards the border. Those are refugees.
14:49They've got to get across that river because there is fighting over there and safety here.
14:59Over there is Kamanyura, Kamanyura city, where most of the refugees, the swimming seekers, come from nowadays.
15:08They swim.
15:09They literally swim across the rivers?
15:12They can swim or use some plastic material, like gallons.
15:16Many people swim with children on back because they cannot swim by themselves.
15:20And what kind of condition are they in?
15:23When they're crossing like that.
15:25Many, like children, children are traumatised because leaving all your belongings behind,
15:33seeing your family's right to move, they are not in good condition.
15:38They are traumatised. They don't understand what is happening.
15:40Many, like a week.
15:52Mehmetpatikaka and her two young children arrived here this morning.
16:00Did members of your family get hurt by these people who were shooting?
16:16And you didn't know who these people were?
16:31Mami Batakoka is given food and she, along with about 60 other
16:35refugees, are then bused to a nearby temporary shelter.
16:41These kids are not safe here, it's too close to the border.
16:44They'll be moved soon.
16:46Trump's cuts to aid have made it harder for Burundi to cope,
16:50and the hopes that the US might intervene in the Congo
16:52in return for access to minerals may be misplaced.
16:56The Congolese government is extremely weak.
16:59Any backing of the Congolese government would be quite difficult,
17:03I imagine, even if the US would send in private military contractors
17:09or their own soldiers to do so.
17:11And I find that very difficult to believe that they would do something like that.
17:14They'd have to partner with the government in an army that is poorly trained,
17:19abusive, and has not been able to assert its own control over its territory.
17:24So clearly, from your perspective, the idea of a Trumpian peace deal underpinned by security
17:32guarantees and access to minerals is unlikely to be the solution for the ongoing conflict
17:38in the east of the Congo.
17:40At the moment, it's the only hope we have.
17:42So I would refrain from saying that it's impossible.
17:46But the Trump administration up until now has not shown the sort of consistency
17:51and vision that is required to push this, to get this over the finish line.
17:59Elvis fled M23 to Burundi.
18:04Can you tell me what happened to you?
18:06We had a job on a job and a rebel, and a rebel, and argentizing more.
18:11And then he would finish his job together, and then he would lift his紙
18:15And then he would engage with another job on a job.
18:19And then he would take his job there and his job.
18:22And then he would find out that he would work.
18:25And that he would step in.
18:26The boy would learn how to feed myself.
18:27And he waited for the last night.
18:30He would say the boy would have felt like this,
18:32He was sick, he was sick, he was sick, he was sick, he was sick, he was sick.
18:37What was his name?
18:39Asensio.
18:40Asensio.
18:40How old was Asensio?
18:42He was six years old.
18:44Six years old? And I shot him?
18:48Yes.
18:50And then they continued to beat him.
18:56You want to go back?
18:57Yes.
18:59Yes.
19:12In the Congo, whatever Trump's desires for minerals and his promises of military aid,
19:18the reality remains more grinding poverty amid mineral wealth that brings it only war.
19:30You...
19:30...
19:32I am named as a victim to somewhere.
19:32I got a friend like that.
19:32How did I think it would bewatching value?
19:33I was saying there was a million pc ta einf hace.
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