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'NEUTER THE CATS! ADD NEW MATERIAL BELOW LINE'

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Lueshe at Shigiko in North Kivu province, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the site of Lueshe Mine, source of the rare metal niobium used in high-technology industries, and a strategic resource with military uses. Modest in size but valuable, Lueshe Mine's importance stems from it being a prize fought over by warring ethnic factions and foreign invaders in the eastern DRC, and from its contribution to financing the Second Congo War, and continuing lower-level conflicts through the so-called "blood minerals" trade, enabling the purchase of arms and ammunition.

The mine's operation by a German businessman in league with Rwandan-backed rebel warlords trading with the western companies was the subject of reports by the UN Security Council and the UK Parliament. The German government, which insured the German company owning the mine against risk, was dragged into the controversy amid accusations that it was concerned more with its influence in central Africa and profits for German companies than humanitarian and ethical concerns, and that its diplomats cooperated with organisations known to be involved in the blood minerals trade.

In 2007, fresh outbreaks of fighting in the area of the mine between opposing rebel groups and DRC government forces threaten to start a Third Congo War.

Minerals at Lueshe
The main niobium-containing mineral ores discovered at Lueshe in 1959 are pyrochlore and lueshite, classified in the perovskite group and named for the mine as it was first discovered there and is found only there in abundance. The mine started operations in the 1960s. The ores are concentrated at the mine and shipped for smelting and refining elsewhere. The mine's capacity has only ever been about a thousand tonnes of concentrate per year, but it has a high value for weight, around US$5000 per tonne, and like other blood minerals in North Kivu, coltan (columbite-tantalite) and cassiterite, it is easily smuggled out and is even worthwhile flying out in small cargo aircraft. Coltan had been the chief blood mineral but when the price collapsed in 2001, pyrochlore and cassiterite took over.

The Lueshe deposits also contain arsenic and uranium in small quantities. The mine tailings have poisoned the Lueshe stream in the past, and their radioactivity levels are elevated.

The proven reserves of pyrochlore at Lueshe are 34.5 million tonnes at 1.54% pyrochlore, and although the reserves at the Araxa mine in Brazil are much larger, there are few other sources of niobium and the mine's output found a ready market in Germany in particular.

Location
Lueshe Mine is named after a small stream and is located at latitude/longitude 0° 59' 11 S 29° 09' 27 E in the Territoire de Rutshuru (district), just outside the boundary of Virunga National Park, west of the Great Rift Valley and the volcano May-ya-Moto. High-resolution satellite images on the internet show Lueshe Mine quite clearly. The small town of Shigiko lies 2 km west of the mine and Kilima is 5 km east. The area is hilly and fertile, with small farms and a few coffee plantations in the surrounding area. 2.5 km north-west of the mine is a 500 m dirt airstrip. The provincial capital, Goma centre of trade including that in minerals, is 75 km by air to the south. Access by road is difficult as the rift valley escarpment and the volcanoes Nyiramagira and Nyiragongo lie on the direct route south to Goma. A narrow winding dirt road connects the mine via Kilima north-west to the Goma-Butembo highway near the turn-off for Vitshumbi; this road was paved at one time but is in a bad state of disrepair. It runs south to Rutshuru and Goma, for a total road distance of about 175 km from the mine.

Importance of the mine
At its height employed 3500 people. The Shigiko area has townships for workers and housing for senior staff. For most of its life though the mine attracted little attention, being out of the way and requiring only a few trucks to handle its output.

The mine was operated by Société Minière du Kivu (SOMIKIVU), with the German subsidiary of a US company as the major shareholder, and the government of the then Zaire as minor shareholder. Niobium-steel alloys are highly heat-resistant and are used in jet and rocket engines. During the Cold War and the space race, niobium was one of the minerals in the Congo which was strategically important to the USA (another being cobalt), ensuring US support for the regime of then president Joseph Mobutu. It is said that from time to time 'a NATO representative' would fly in to the dirt airstrip next to the mine to check on operations.

Hutu–Tutsi conflict and the Congo wars
During the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, Hutu refugees were housed in camps in the area, and Hutu militias started up. Ever since, they, the Tutsi in Rwanda and their Congolese allies, the Banyamulenge, and the Government of the DRC in Kinshasa have struggled for control of the mine, with the Banyamulenge having had the upper hand through their control of the RCD and provincial capital, Goma.

As the eastern DR Congo became increasingly destabilised and rebel groups emerged, SOMIKIVU's former manager Karl-Heinz Albers, who was also a major coltan trader, emerged as principal shareholder in partnership with the finance minister of the RCD.

After Kabila took power in the DR Congo at the end of the First Congo War, he dissolved SOMIKIVU, but Albers ignored this move and continued to operate the mine with the support of the RCD and the security of its armed wing, backed by Rwanda. Albers did not pay taxes to Kinshasa but paid off the rebels and thus helped finance the Second Congo War. This did not prevent squabbles between Albers and the RCD rebel government controlling North Kivu over money, which eventually led to Albers being forced out.

Mine ownership turns deadly
in 1999, Kabila sold the mining rights at Lueshe to an Austrian company, Krall Metal, but as he was not fully in control of Kivu, this was also ignored. Albers and his partners twice asked his RCD rebel allies to kill Krall Metal's representatives when they tried to inspect the mine in the early 2000s, but they refused. However Krall Metal was not able to take control of the mine, which continued to be run by Albers and his partners.

United Nations sanctions
As a response to the coltan trade, the United Nations and the international community moved to block the smuggling and illegal trade of "blood minerals" to stem the flow of arms into the eastern Congo. Albers and his companies were placed on UN blacklists and efforts were made to investigate the trade. British and German companies looked the other way as shipments of Congolese coltan, pyrochlore from Lueshe and cassiterite were given false certificates of origin as having originated in Rwanda so it could be imported into Europe.

A British company, Alfred Knight, provided assaying services to Albers on coltan and pyrochlore from Lueshe, and evidence was provided to the UK Parliament that these services contributed "to the fuelling of war in the DRC" and that if they had refused such "mining business in the DRC would have collapsed." However British authorities took no action against the company.

German involvement in Lueshe
The German government had planned to send 500 soldiers to North Kivu as a peacekeeping force at the end of the wars, but the plan was dropped when they were accused of wishing to protect German investments such as Lueshe and to extend their influence rather than assist the civilian population. The German government was also said to favour secession of the North and South Kivu provinces to Rwanda, a former German colony. In their dealings over German ownership of Lueshe, German diplomats cooperated with organisations subject to punitive sanctions by the United Nations for involvement in the blood minerals trade. Over Lueshe mine

When Albers' businesses started to fail in 2003, his stores of pyrochlore concentrate in Goma were seized and one of his German partners was arrested. The German ambassador to the DR Congo interceded their behalf, threatening to pull investments out of the country. In 2004 Albers fled to Germany and was bankrupted, and the German ministry of trade claimed it technically owned Albers' share of the mine when he went bankrupt since they had provided him with risk insurance.

Albers' Congolese partner Modeste Makabuza took over running of the mine.

General Nkunda's involvement
After the official end of the Second Congo War, rebels groups used Lueshe Mine as a refuge and from at least 2004, the RCD-allied Banyamulenge warlord Laurent Nkunda used it as a base, stationing troops there and visiting it himself, notably in 2004 at the same time as Albers' business partner, Johanna Konig, the former German ambassador to Rwanda. Nkunda's occupation continued until late 2006, during which time the pyrochlore was being sent by land and air to Rwanda. Using certificates of origin forged by Konig, the pyrochlore was sold to German companies. The UN report was critical of the DRC and German governments' failure to resolve the ownership of Lueshe Mine and to get it back into officially-controlled production so that employment and mining royalties could benefit the Congolese people.

In 2006 Nkunda was ousted from Lueshe under pressure of DRC troops and the mine was under DRC government control and officially closed. Krall Metal became embroiled in legal action in Germany and DR Congo to take up the mining rights at Lueshe sold to them by Kabila. The mine needs rehabilitation of the existing plant and new equipment.

In 2007 Nkunda reneged on a peace deal with the government and again mounted a rebellion. In August and September 2007 he held a crescent of territory with Lueshe on its northern fringes and there is a concern in some quarters that one of his aims is to take up illegal mining and smuggling of Lueshe pyrochlore again to obtain the arms which he and his Rwandan allies need.