Violence, Profit, and the Economy Sustaining Eastern Congo’s Endless War

At a checkpoint between Miba and the Kachanga hill in Fizi territory, soldiers of the Congolese army wave through bicycles loaded with mineral ore, one at a time, charging fifty cents a crossing. At least four thousand bicycles pass daily, delivering at least two thousand dollars a day into the hands of men in uniform who are nominally fighting the war surrounding that checkpoint. Nothing about that transaction looks like a battle. It looks like a toll booth, and that is the point new wars…