War-torn Congo has a deal for Trump: kick out rebels, get minerals

The leader of a war-torn African nation has put a secret deal on the table for President Trump: Help his country defeat a powerful rebel force in exchange for access to a trove of minerals needed by US hi-tech firms.

Workers at a mine near the city of Kolwezi, Congo. Picture: Junior Kannah/AFP/Getty Images

The leader of a war-torn African nation has put a secret deal on the table for President Trump: Help his country defeat a powerful rebel force in exchange for access to a trove of minerals needed by US hi-tech firms.

In a Feb. 8 letter to Trump, Félix Tshisekedi, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, offered mining opportunities for the US Sovereign Wealth Fund, an entity Trump had launched a few days earlier.

“Your election has ushered in the golden age for America,” Tshisekedi wrote in the letter, which has been seen by The Wall Street Journal. “Our partnership would provide the US with a strategic advantage by securing critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium, copper and tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

Talks about Congo’s natural resources were ongoing with the US, said a spokeswoman for the Congolese president. Picture: Junior Kannah/AFP/Getty Images.

In exchange, Tshisekedi asked Trump for a “formal security pact” to help his army defeat M23, a Rwandan-backed rebel group that recently routed Congolese soldiers, United Nations troops and private mercenaries and seized key cities in Congo’s mineral-rich east.

The Congolese letter didn’t specify what kind of military backing it wants from the US. A White House official said it doesn’t “provide details on the private correspondence to the president.”

The offer comes at the same time Tshisekedi is in negotiations with Erik Prince, a Trump ally who founded the controversial private-military company then called Blackwater. If the talks succeed, Prince would help the Congolese government collect and secure taxes from mining operations, according to Congolese and Western officials.

Members of the M23 movement arrive at the local government offices in Bukavu on March 1. Picture: Glody Murhabazi/ AFP

Scores of militias operate in the wilds of eastern Congo. The latest clashes constitute aftershocks from the 31-year-old Rwandan genocide, in which ethnic Hutus slaughtered Tutsis by the hundreds of thousands. When Tutsi forces under current Rwandan President Paul Kagame defeated their Hutu rivals in 1994, many Hutu extremists fled across the border into Congo.

Rwanda has denied providing military backing to M23, whose members are predominantly Tutsis, and says its only interest is in securing its own borders and protecting ethnic kinsmen from persecution in Congo.

But a U.N. panel of experts reported in December that Kagame had dispatched 4,000 soldiers to help M23, and both Rwanda and Uganda are scrambling to secure Congolese minerals. The U.N. said Rwanda received 150 tons of smuggled coltan from a Congolese mine M23 fighters control.

The Congolese proposal is an effort to take advantage of both Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy and a global race for natural resources to supply American technology companies and automotive giants. In his pitch, Tshisekedi predicted that a partnership with Congo would advance America’s global competitiveness in aerospace, cars, data centres and artificial intelligence.

Tantalum, extracted from coltan, and cobalt are critical components of smartphones and laptops, and are used by Apple, HP and Intel, among other American companies. Lithium is the main component of electric-vehicle batteries. Last year, Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla and leader of Trump’s efforts to shrink the federal government, called the mineral “the new oil.”

A Tshisekedi spokeswoman confirmed the letter’s authenticity and said talks with the US over access to Congo’s natural resources were ongoing. “It is in both our interests that American companies — like Apple and Tesla — buy minerals direct from source in the DRC and unlock the engine of our mineral wealth for the benefit of all the world,” she said.

Civilians allegedly joining the M23 ride a truck as they arrive to an enrolment of civilians, police officers, and former members of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo last month. Picture: Luis Tato/AFP

An informal intermediary — a banker who advises mining companies in the African country — sent the Congolese offer letter to Trump’s office, which forwarded it to the White House National Security Council, according to a person familiar with the matter. The NSC then invited the intermediary to provide a briefing on the proposal, the person said.

On the day of the meeting, the Treasury Department unveiled sanctions against Rwanda’s minister of state for regional integration, James Kabarebe, and M23 spokesman Lawrence Kanyuka Kingston over their involvement in the Congo conflict. The sanctions had been in the works long before they were announced, according to the person familiar with the matter.

The State Department referred to the press release sanctioning the Congolese rebels and the Rwandan official but declined to comment further.

“The DRC is interested in partnering with the Trump administration to end the conflict and stop the flow of blood minerals via Rwanda,” the Tshisekedi spokeswoman said.

A M23 soldier stands at the coltan mining pits in Rubaya, Congo on March 5. Picture: Camille Laffont / AFP

Prince has yet to sign a deal with Congo. But his representatives were in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, last week to discuss his potential role in securing the country’s mining revenue, according to a Western official. Two Congolese government officials said representatives from the president’s office, Finance Ministry and state miner Gecamines have been leading the talks with Prince since last month.

Those negotiations have gained steam as the Congolese government has watched its mining revenue decline in parallel to military advances by M23.

Under the prospective contract, Prince would help Kinshasa crack down on fiscal evasion from mining producers and exporters, including by providing security for tax collectors, according to the Western official and another person familiar with the matter. Prince, a former Navy SEAL, gained prominence and notoriety during the Iraq war, when his company Blackwater provided security guards for US officials and contractors.

Last year, representatives of Erik Prince also discussed with Yemeni officials a plan to bring foreign contractors to unseat Houthis rebels from the Red Sea coastline, according to Yemeni officials and a person familiar with the matter. The effort, which was not accepted, would have been repaid in oil cargoes, the person said.

Erik Prince, Founder and CEO of Blackwater Worldwide in 2008. Picture: AP /Gerry Broome

In 2004, four Blackwater contractors drove past a US Marine checkpoint in the Iraqi city of Fallujah and stumbled into an insurgent ambush. The four were killed, dismembered and set on fire, with two of the bodies suspended from a bridge. The incident was among the events that sparked the first battle for Fallujah.

Three years later, Blackwater guards killed 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad. Four of the guards were convicted in the US in 2014. Trump pardoned the men in 2020.

Since Trump was inaugurated in January, he has made access to natural resources for American companies a cornerstone of his foreign policy. American diplomatic talks with Iraq have focused on talks to resume oil flows for US companies that have been blocked for two years by a dispute between the government in Baghdad, the Kurdish authorities and Turkey.

Natural resources have also been a significant factor in the Trump administration’s dealings with Venezuela, Ukraine and Russia, while the president has set his sights on Greenland, a Danish possession, largely because of its reserves of rare-earth minerals.

The Wall Street Journal