TECHNOIR (12 page)

            There was also hard evidence to back the US military’s claims the MRAPs were turning the war’s tide. The insurgency’s IEDs killed 92 US troops in May of 2007. In May of 2008, that number fell to 11. The insurgency during this time would even ramp-up a new style of IED – the Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP), which ejects a piece of molten metal. The EFP is sometimes placed in a window of a narrow and claustrophobic Iraqi street. As a Cougar passes by, the EFP would be triggered by someone nearby with a cell phone, who would target the molten piece of metal towards those in the driver seat. British intelligence said they had uncovered evidence that Iranian Special Forces in Iraq had passed along the EFP know-how to the insurgency.

            The EFP and some super-sized IEDs (over 1,000 pounds) would end up killing a small number of soldiers in MRAPs, nevertheless. And In 2005, one highly-respected military analyst believed the Buffalo and Cougar and other MRAPs wouldn't single-handedly defeat the Iraqi insurgency in the near term.

            “You have to keep in mind there are 10,000 vehicles in Iraq that are subject to ambush,” said John Pike to me in 2005, director of
GlobalSecurity.org
, which focuses on  worldwide military news. “I wouldn’t count on the (Buffalo and Cougar) having an immediate impact because the military doesn't have the sufficient numbers to make a difference.”

            And even if the U.S. military were to deliver to Iraq large numbers of both vehicles, he said back in 2005, it may not matter how thick their armor is. The insurgency will fabricate improvised explosives large enough to obliterate whatever the U.S. military throws into the fray. “Several hundred pounds of explosives will level a small office building,” said Pike. “A thousand-pound bomb is like a hot knife through butter. IEDs of this size have blown away Abrams [tanks]. Keep in mind there's no shortage of ammo in Iraq.”

            John Pike, back then, was being cautious with his words. Who wouldn’t, the Iraq war in 2005 was going downhill faster than avalanche, and all options – no matter how expensive or risky – were on the table. But what didn't stop the MRAP from joining the battle was their legacy. One that has a connection to the greatest international statesmen of our time, Mandela.

            Les Switzer is a long-time journalism professor at the University of Houston in Texas. Over a span of 30 years Switzer was a U.S. expatriate working as a journalist and teacher during South Africa’s Apartheid regime. He remembers an armored vehicle much like the Buffalo and Cougar roaming townships, especially during uprisings. Black South Africans gave them a slang term, recalls Les Switzer, naming them the “Saracens.” He says their size “is unforgettable.” And when they were called in to break up a protest, he also remembers the terror they brought.

            “The mere presence of a Saracen struck fear in the people,” said Switzer. “(They) were like an evil presence wandering through the township.” He remembers the funeral of an anti-apartheid martyr in 1980, and said the Eastern Cape township had a short fuse. An uprising would soon engulf it. “The South African government, not trusting the local police, had sent in armed troops and Saracens to monitor the proceedings, and the result was a foregone conclusion,” he said.

            The Saracens, says Switzer, author of
South Africa
's Alternative Press: Voices of Protest and Resistance, 1880s-1960s
, had an official name, Buffel, which is Afrikaans for Buffalo. Force Protection (maker of the US Buffalo and Cougar) acknowledged to me the V-shaped design is indeed taken from past South African designs. They also say some of the same engineers that designed the original Buffel for the South African military are now employed by Force Protection.

            Others in U.S. have scrutinized the military's decision to adopt such a controversial symbol of oppression. Stationed in Africa during the 1980s, a U.S. Special Forces veteran from the Midwest does not say when or how he first became familiar with the heavily armored trucks. But he is well aware of the emotions they evoke. “To the ANC [African National Congress, Mandela’s party and his supporters], the Buffalo is a hated symbol. It is like how Jews view the swastika. South African blacks despise them,” he told me. He refused to give his name because he now runs a high-level state government office.

            During uprisings, he says, the vehicles would be driven directly into rioting crowds. Armed soldiers would then pop out of a top hatch and fire into their countrymen, he says. ANC supporters returned fire with rocks that clanged harmlessly off the thick armor.

            Switzer said the demise of Apartheid helped to usher in the era of the American Saracen. “At the end of Apartheid (in the early '90s), many of South Africa's best engineers and scholars, and scientists left the county,” said Switzer. In essence, the minority whites – who had oppressed the majority blacks for generations – fled the country. Mandela’s freedom was the trigger that sent Apartheid imploding into the pit of history, and thus Mandela sent Saracen engineers running for their lives to America. Engineers who were set on building their truck of oppression for another day.

            While their legacy seems set in stone, perhaps the vehicles can redeem themselves. Because of their prowess at destroying buried bombs in Iraqi soil, these battleships on wheels could be the answer to one of the globe’s biggest problems: the forgotten land mine. If the war in Iraq continues to cool, there will be thousands of MRAPs near nations that could use a good land mine eater.

            Force Protection bristled at the South African connection. In a letter responding to questions from this journalist, the company wrote that any “attempt to tie the technology” to the Apartheid regime of South Africa “is as outrageous as attempting to tie Boeing commercial aircraft to the German invention of the jet engine during WWII.”

The metallic ore needed to satiate the West’s obsession for video games

            In the year 2009, after many years of war, both
Rwanda
and the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
finally agreed to peace. At least if only amongst themselves. No way in hell were they going to put down their AK-47s, or the 50-caliber machine guns, or even the RPGs and mortars. That would mean slow annihilation for both nations
.

            From 1995 to 2009, as both countries contested for the rich minerals of the eastern regions of DRC, a disturbing number of African militias and other African national armies, from neighboring Uganda for instance, were also complicit in this resource war. What many poor Congolese know as a bloodbath wrapped in a free-for-all. Over thirty different armies and militias – including 3.5 million civilians – were in a war-zone roughly 300 kilometers long from east to west. A killing field that would rival some of mankind’s worst. In essence, soldiers and rebels killed and killed for natural resources. Resources that were shipped mostly to the Western world. Experts believe 4 to 5 million Africans perished in this resource war; a conflict that is still smoldering as of 2010 and will do so for many more years to come. This resource war was (and is) fought mostly in the eastern DRC provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu, better known as the eastern Congo. This is a land of dense jungles, rugged mountains, rumbling volcanoes and exposed soil that is millions of years old. A region where millions live in dire poverty. They share the land with thousands of rare mountain gorillas that attract rich Western  tourists.

            And while these tourists paid hundreds-of-dollars per hour to see over-sized primates, African women were suffering in nearby camps. Some had been sexually brutalized either by rebels or soldiers. Some then shot in the vagina with a shotgun, as detailed by
Johann Hari
of
London
’s
Independent.
In first half of 2007 alone, the UN estimated that 4,500 Congolese women were victims of sexual violence.

            What is so tragically ironic, is that some of these gorilla tourists probably had benefited from these same rebels or national soldiers who had fired their guns into female genitals. Either financially through the stocks of mining companies operating in the eastern Congo, or simply through their cell phones and laptops, which may have been manufactured with minerals from this same region.

            The fuse to this war was lit not long after the Rwandan genocide nightmare of 1994. That apocalyptic African chapter and its aftermath would soon morph into the eastern Congo resource war, what has become known as the “PlayStation War.” Again, a conflict that has smoldered for 15 bitter years. The war was given this name because of the black metallic ore coltan, which is used to manufacture these iconic video game consoles. Evidence piled on high shows that during the PlayStation War, hundreds-of-millions of dollars worth of coltan was stolen from the eastern Congo and thus the entire nation of the DRC. Hundreds-of-millions of dollars worth, if not billions, of other minerals were also plundered, such as cobalt, copper, and gold.

            Both Rwanda and Uganda share a border with the eastern Congo, and some of the most active resource thieves were from these governments, which used their militarys for muscle. An unknown number of militias, supported by either Rwanda or Uganda, have also been implicated in the looting of the eastern Congo. But the web of resource pirates does not end there. A number of Western-based mining companies, metal brokers, and metal processors, were also in on the take. From these three distinct groups – government, militia or military, and miners – the UN said several “elite networks” formed. A lethal and greedy mix of corrupt African politicians, hardened African soldiers and piggish metal traders from the West. These were the main actors behind the PlayStation War nightmare, claims the UN.

            These elite networks were stealing from literally one of the poorest nations on the planet. At the end of 2008, the UN’s Development Programme released updated statistics for its
Human Development Index (HDI).
The index tabulates statistics that reveal a nation’s well-being. The index, for example, measures life expectancy, standard of living, literacy rate and the number of school-aged children being educated. Out of 179 countries measured the DRC ranks 177
th
; a ranking for a country with a population of over 65 million. Life expectancy in the DRC is just 46 years. Only 33 percent of school-aged children are enrolled in some type of school. While the GDP hovers around $300 US dollars, per person, per year.

            Resource wars in Africa that shed the blood of millions is not a new African phenomenon by any measure. But what makes Africa’s PlayStation War so insidious is how it fueled some of the West’s greatest technological revolutions: The advent of the cell phone, the lap top, the world’s most popular game console, the PlayStation, and many other personal electronics. Because at the height of the war, the resource that was most treasured was
coltan
, a shiny black metallic ore needed to make these devices. After it is refined, coltan becomes a bluish-gray powder called
tantalum
, which is defined as a transition metal. One that is resistant to extreme heat. Tantalum powder thus can hold a high electric charge, making it a good ingredient for capacitors, which control the flow of electrical currents inside miniature circuit boards. And these miniature circuit boards have one tremendous and significant application: to satisfy the West’s insatiable appetite for personal technology. But tantalum is also necessary for the US military to wage war. It’s needed to manufacture jet engines for the F-series and other jet fighters; missiles and satellites are also on coltan and tantalum's resumes.

            It was bad enough two nations and a bunch of rag-tag African militias were stealing coltan from a nation in desperate need of revenue, but then the UN discovered that Rwandan and Ugandan troops and their supported rebels were utilizing Congolese prisoners-of-war and children to mine for the “black gold.” The following quote would be the verbal tag that helped inspire the name the PlayStation War.

            “Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms,” said British politician Oona King to the
Independent
during the later stage of the conflict. King was a Member of Parliament from 1997 to 2005.

            Also taking notice of the PlayStation War and trying to do something about it was a London-based, non-government office called
Rights and Accountability in Development
(RAID). RAID, however, did not take on the African militias or armies; focusing instead on the 100-plus Western-based mining companies that continued to work in the DRC, or purchase minerals and metals allegedly stolen from the DRC, as the war raged. RAID accused these companies, such as Eagle Wings Resources International of Ohio, Cabot Corporation of Boston, Mass., and Chemie Pharmacie Holland of the Netherlands, with having stealing millions of dollars worth of resources out of the DRC, or made millions processing stolen resources from the DRC, namely coltan.