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STRUGGLES OVER RESOURCE
WEALTH AND CONFLICT*
By Michael Renner
Abundant natural resources—such as oil, minerals, metals, diamonds and other gemstones, timber, and agricultural commodities including drug crops—have fueled a large number of violent conflicts. Resource exploitation played a role in about a quarter of the roughly 50 wars and armed conflicts of recent years. More than 5 million people were killed in resource-related conflicts during the 1990s. Close to 6 million fled to neighboring countries, and anywhere from 11–15 million people were displaced inside their own countries.1
The money derived from often illicit resource exploitation in war zones has secured an ample supply of arms for various armed factions and has served to enrich a handful of people—warlords, corrupt government officials, and unscrupulous corporate leaders. But for the vast majority of the population in affected countries, these conflicts have brought a torrent of arms trafficking, human rights violations, humanitarian disasters, and environmental destruction. Ample endowments of coveted resources have helped push these countries to the bottom of most measures of human development.2
In places like Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Colombia, and Sudan, the pillaging of resources allowed violent conflicts to continue that were initially driven by grievances or secessionist and ideological struggles. Revenues from resource exploitation replaced the support that was extended to governments and rebel groups by superpower patrons but largely evaporated with the end of the cold war.3
Elsewhere, such as in Sierra Leone or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, predatory groups initiated violence not necessarily to gain control of government, but rather as a means of seizing control of a prized resource—typically one of the few tickets to wealth and power in poorer societies. They are aided by the massive proliferation and easy availability of small arms and light weapons.4
Commercial resource extraction can also be a source of conflict where the economic benefits accrue only to a small domestic elite and multinational companies, while the local population shoulders an array of social, health, and environmental burdens. This is particularly the case in countries that lack democratic governance, are corrupt, and are characterized by extreme divides among rich and poor and ethnic tensions. The result has been protests and even violent conflict in places like Colombia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville island, and Indonesia’s Aceh province.5
Finally, tensions and disputes arise as major consumers of natural resources jockey for access and control. The history of oil in particular is one of multi-hued foreign meddling, including support for dictatorships and military interventions, of which the invasion and occupation of Iraq is but the latest chapter. The United States, Russia, and China are backing competing pipeline plans for Caspian resources. Likewise, in their struggle for access to Siberian oil, China and Japan are pushing mutually exclusive export routes. Some observers have begun to speak of a new “great game”—the term by which the 19th century British-Russian imperial rivalry was known. In Africa, France and tIn North and West Africa, the United States and France are maneuvering for influence by deepening military ties with undemocratic regimes in Algeria, Gabon, Congo- Brazzaville, and Angola. China it is seeking a greater role for its oil companies, particularly in Sudan, and working to increase its political clout in Africa and the Middle East. And the United States is getting ever more deeply involved in Colombia’s civil war, in part to secure the flow of oil against rebel attacks on export pipelines. 6
From Pakistan to Central Asia to the Caucasus, and from the eastern Mediterranean to the Horn of Africa, a dense network of U.S. military facilities has emerged since 2001—with many bases established in the name of the “war on terror.” Both the Clinton and Bush administrations have deepened U.S. involvement in Colombia’s civil war, in part to secure the flow of oil by protecting an export pipeline against rebel attacks. 7
Overly dependent on natural resources, resource-rich countries often fail to diversify their economies, stimulate innovation, or invest adequately in critical social areas or public infrastructure. Resource royalties help political leaders maintain power, even in the absence of popular legitimacy—by funding a system of patronage and by beefing up an internal security apparatus able to suppress challenges to their power.8
A number of conflicts—in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Angola—have finally come to an end, but others burn on. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, foreign forces that invaded in 1998 have withdrawn, yet fighting among various domestic armed factions continues, and elaborate illegal networks and proxy forces have been set up that continue to exploit natural resources.9
The enormous expansion of global trade and financial networks has made access to key markets relatively easy for warring groups. They have had little difficulty in establishing international smuggling networks and sidestepping international embargoes, given a degree of complicity among certain companies and often lax customs controls in importing nations.10
Over the past five years or so, awareness of the close links between resource extraction, human development, and armed conflict has grown rapidly. Campaigns by civil society groups, investigative reports by UN expert panels, and greater media interest have shed light on these connections, making it at least a bitslightly more difficult for “conflict resources” to be sold on world markets. To discourage illicit deals, revenue flows associated with resource extraction need to become more transparent, but governments, companies, and financial institutions often still shirk their responsibilities.11
Commodity-tracking regimes are equally important. In the diamond industry, national certification schemes and a standardized global certification scheme—the so-called Kimberley Process —have been established. But the resulting set of rules still suffers due to the lack of independent monitoring and too much reliance on voluntary measures. Efforts are also under way by the European Union to establish a certification system for its tropical timber imports—up to half of which are connected to armed conflict or organised crime.12
Natural resources will continue to fuel deadly conflicts as long as consumer societies import materials with little regard for their origin or the conditions under which they were produced. Some civil society groups have sought to increase consumer awareness and to compel companies to do business more ethically through investigative reports and by “naming and shaming” specific corporations. For instance, consumer electronics companies were pressured to scrutinize their supplies of coltan, a key ingredient of circuit boards, and to ask processing firms to stop purchasing illegally mined coltan.13
Promoting democratization, justice, and greater respect for human rights are key tasks, along with efforts to reduce the impunity with which some governments and rebel groups engage in extreme violence. Another challenge is to facilitate the diversification of the economy away from a strong dependence on primary commodities to a broader mix of activities. A more diversified economy, greater investments in human development, and empowering local communities to be strong guardians of the natural resource base would lessen the likelihood that commodities become pawns in a struggle among ruthless contenders for wealth and power.
Michael Renner
Senior Researcher/ Co-Director, Global
Security Project, Worldwatch Institute
1776 Massachusetts Avenue. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036
USA
Phone: +1 631 3696896
Fax: +1 626 6083189
E-mail: mrenner@optonline.net
Website: http://www.worldwatch.org/about/staff/mrenner/
* A slightly different version of this text was published under the same title in Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2005 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005), pp. 96-97.