Since November 2021, M23, a reportedly Rwandan-backed militia, has once again been occupying territory in the provinces of South and North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This armed group, which was last defeated by Congolese forces in 2013, has its roots in several decades of wars and armed conflicts that continue to plunge the DRC into mourning, to the benefit of an illegal trade tainted by the blood of the people of the region. At a time when M23 is occupying the strategic town of Goma and threatening to move on to the capital Kinshasa, if we are to grasp the full scope of what is happening in Congo, it is important to understand the links between the war raging in Congo and the global economy. 

‘We had never seen anything like it. We had never seen so many states trying to agree on a bad action.’ It is in these terms that Eric Vuillard, a French writer, filmmaker and screenwriter, in his book Congo, comments on the Berlin Conference of 1885 that resulted in the partitioning of Africa. He also recalls a part of the preamble of the conference’s General Act of 26 February 1885, which was the founding charter of the colonial model the Western powers applied to Africa: ‘In the name of Almighty God, to settle, in a spirit of mutual goodwill, the conditions most favourable to the development of trade and civilization in certain regions of Africa.’ Yes, it was indeed in the name of God that the raids were conducted, it was indeed in the name of God that kingdoms were subjugated, and yes, it was indeed in the name of the Almighty God that Congo has since experienced a bloody and relentless colonial history that has been slow to end. 

It is worth noting that this General Act was the conclusion of several months of intense discussions held as part of the ‘Kongokonferenz’ or ‘Congo Conference’ convened by German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, with the support of the French government. This came in response to rising tensions among European nations who wished to establish clear rules on the occupation and exploitation of the African continent. The Congo Conference primarily aimed to establish rules under which the Congo River Basin, a rich expanse of land and water with unparalleled economic and geostrategic advantages, would be administered. Of the 38 articles constituting the Berlin General Act, 25 directly pertain to the Congo Basin, eight to the Niger Basin, five to the general provisions for the ratification of the Act and two solely to new conditions of occupation and partitioning of the remaining African coasts. 

The decisions on the Congo Basin are summarized as follows: freedom of trade, political neutrality and free navigation for all powers. Thus, what was then called the ‘Independent State of Congo’ was born—a free-trade zone four times the size of France, placed under the protectorate of a single individual, King Leopold II of Belgium, and whose sole destiny was to serve as a buffer zone between colonial powers and a granary for all the signatories of Berlin. Consequently, Congo was created in a profoundly capitalist, mercantile spirit dedicated to plunder, without regard for the hundreds of peoples inhabiting the Congo Basin, and with the sole aim of becoming either a vast market or an open-pit mine. 

Christine Germeaux, a university professor and specialist in Germanic studies, writes the following, in his essay, ‘La Conférence de Berlin, 1885’, about the Berlin Conference: ‘The purpose of the conference was indeed to establish European control over Africa in the dynamics of a new wave of globalization.’ But as globalization and capitalism often go hand in hand with occupation, exploitation and enslavement, since this conference, the tragedy of Congo has been unparalleled. After suffering under Leopold II in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—what historians have termed the bloodiest colonial history—today the Congolese are trapped in what the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has called the deadliest armed conflict of our time since the Second World War: the Congo Wars, followed by the Kivu conflict, which persists to this day.  

If you want to understand the intricacies of neo-colonialism, its relation to colonialism and its roots in slavery, read about the bloody fate of Congo, listen to the cries of its mutilated children, see the distress of its raped women and feel the wounds of its beaten-down men. All for the purpose of feeding the voracious appetite of a global capitalism that is always hungrier, always fervently insistent and never ever restrained. Congo bleeds and the neo-colonialism plan does not seem to spare it. It is indifferent to all the spilled blood.