coltan

Sprocket notes that Sam Bodman, CEO of Cabot during the coltan boom, was appointed in December 2004 to serve as President Bush's Secretary of Energy.

They will then be sent off so the Coltan mineral can be are-used.

But a recent World Bank study suggests that if conflict diamonds can be outlawed, why not conflict gold and conflict coltan? If stringently enforced, such pacts could begin to slash the funding for the warlords who have ravaged so much of Congo.

In some respects this represents an asset, as in the DRC when actors on all sides of the conflict swiftly moved from mining gold to mining coltan when the price of the latter began to rise exponentially on world markets.

Since the advent of modern technological devices, the demand has risen for coltan. Many manufacturers of electronic components doubled and tripled their supply orders for tantalum.

class="MsoNormalThe region is rich in coltan, a mineral which when refined is a key element in electronic devices.

With an international surge of assistance right now, it could be redirected on a path of national restoration and communal reconciliation, or it could collapse in an implosion of interreligious violence and perpetual conflict fueled by its vast, unexploited natural resources--gold, diamond, coltan, oil, and more.

Minerals such as cassiterite, coltan and wolfram are a growing part of Rwanda's economy, partly due to ongoing reforms and substantial investments in the sector--Rwanda invested $46.8m in the mineral sector in 2012 alone--but also due to high prices on the international market.

Mined largely in the DRC under questionable human rights standards, wolframite, cassiterite, coltan and gold are then processed for the manufacture of electronic components found in cellphones around the world.

Charles Taylor's stash of ill-gotten cash may be fictional, but the flow of Congolese coltan and other strategic minerals through Rwandan and Ugandan military middlemen to the rich countries of the West is undeniable.