This morning, M23 entered #Bukavu and took control of key locations including the governor’s residence and Ruzizi 1 border crossing. Amidst broader confusion, M23 entry had been erroneously reported since Friday night owing to inconclusive videos circulating on social media. Evolutions around Bukavu, including the capture of Kavumu airport around Friday noon, have inspired more people to leave the area, many headed to Bujumbura. There, hundreds of Congolese who have entered legally are currently rounded up for unclear reasons.

Unfortunately, Dr Mukwege is wrong on one important aspect here. As my @HurstPublishers @OUPAcademic book "Conflict Minerals Inc." demonstrates, three decades of war and violence in eastern #DRC are neither "mainly economic" nor is the exploitation of minerals a "root cause"...

https://twitter.com/DenisMukwege/status/1760395505190793253

Whatever perspective you choose to take, the link between minerals and conflict is much more circumstantial and correlative than it is causative. Illegal trade has existed before the wars began, and, after the wars had begun, minerals only eventually began playing a role in it.

🧵Many people I speak to compare the “new” conflict around M23 to the 2012 crisis, seeing it as yet another cycle in the same longer history of crises in eastern #Congo — especially foreigners but also people from the Great Lakes region. I am not sure whether that’s true… There is, whoever you listen to, unarguably a long, persistent history of grievances and unsolved problems. Different people have different claims, and it’s not for me to judge who is right or wrong. On some aspects of the story, there probably isn’t really a right or wrong…

Kila kitu na wakati yake… 📚 My book, Conflict Minerals Inc. is out now with Hurst and Oxford University Press. Reviewers say it’s “lucid, compassionate and personal”, and a “devastating and essential reading.” Here is to a few pictures and key points... 🧵 As the subtitle says, the book tells a story of war, profit and white saviourism in eastern #Congo. Through the prism of #ConflictMinerals, it looks at how violence, business and intervention intersect in what was once Eurocentrically called “Africa’s World War.”

In light of ongoing events, it is interesting to look at data. M23 doesn’t seem to be a major source of civilian deaths in eastern #Congo since its return 2017. This doesn’t mean it isn’t illegal and committing violations galore, but it may nuance the current polemic a bit. Obviously, @KivuSecurity covers violence no longer than since its establishment in 2017. It does neither include M23’s first life, nor its predecessors CNDP and RCD. Many of the latter can be found in the @UNHumanRights Mapping Report, alongside a wealth of crimes by others.

#AcademicTwitter, there is a great tendency towards more transparency, reflection and inflection about publishing, process, success and failure in our work. This one, has been more failure than success for most of the time, so let me share a short story on this article. Thread...

https://twitter.com/ethuin/status/1372906261554020358

This piece is based on the last of 5 substantive empirical chapters of my PhD that I wrote about 3 years ago. It's been in several ways the least intended and most haphazard chapter, but at the same time the most intriguing to research.