Would You Fight? We Asked Aggrieved Artisanal Miners in Eastern Congo

• Author: Marijke Verpoorten,Nik Stoop
• Published date: 01 July 2021
• Date: 01 July 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0022002720983437
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Would You Fight?

We Asked Aggrieved

Artisanal Miners in

Eastern Congo

Nik Stoop

1,2,3

, and Marijke Verpoorten

1,2

Abstract

To meet the rising demand for minerals, mining companies have ventured into fragile

areas, often at the expense of artisanal miners. This has led to grievances, and at

times violence. Who among the aggrieved intend to use violence? How can peace be

maintained? This paper uses individual-level data to address these questions. Among

a sample of 469 about-to-be-evicted artisanal miners in Eastern Congo, we inquire

about the intention to engage in several forms of violence. We identify how this

intention varies with miners’ past exposure to violence and attitudes towards

policies that seek social peace. A large proportion of miners intends to destroy the

company’s property, attack its employees, use fire arms, or join an armed group.

These would-be-fighters are motivated by grievances, as well as material and social

incentives. Our results contribute to understanding the micro-motivations under-

pinning the local resource curse and entail concrete lessons for mining policies.

Keywords

conflict, artisanal mining, industrial mining, Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa

1

Institute of Development Policy, University of Antwerp, Belgium

2

Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance, University of Leuven, Belgium

3

Research Foundation Flanders, Brussels, Belgium

Corresponding Author:

Nik Stoop, Institute of Development Policy, University of Antwerp, Lange Sint Annastraat 7, 2000

Antwerpen, Belgium.

Email: nik.stoop@uantwerp.be

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2021, Vol. 65(6) 1159-1186

ªThe Author(s) 2020

Article reuse guidelines:

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DOI: 10.1177/0022002720983437

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“If you take 100 [artisanal] miners today, you may find 3 to 5 who were part of [the

armed group] Shikito. But if we are all chased away in the future and Banro does not

leave us with any alternative, everyone could join”

—focus group discussion, Kamituga, December 2014

Since the 2000s super-cycle in commodity prices, the search for precious minerals

has enticed large-scale mining companies to increasingly venture into fragile and

conflict-affected regions, often crowding out artisanal miners (e.g., Campbell

2003; Haselip and Hilson 2005; Hilson and Yakovleva 2007). At the same time,

it has been shown that the commodity super cycle contributed to violence in

Africa, explaining up to one fourth of the continent’s violent events over the

period 1997 to 2010 (Berman et al. 2017). Stoop, Verpoorten, and van der Windt

(2019) show that these two facts are linked: the expansion of industrial mining in

artisanal mining sites increases riots as well as violence against civilians. This

paper looks more closely at this link. In particular, we study who among the

evicted artisanal miners would turn to violence, and which policy measures can

appease the would-be-fighters.

To do so, we turn to Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), one of the

most fragile (post-)conflict regions in the world, where an unprecedented expansion

of large-scale mining is crowding out artisanal mining. We study a sample of 469

artisanal miners that are operating in Kamituga, a mining town located on a con-

cession held by Banro, a Canada-based multinational. The miners are all (young)

men; the vast majority was exposed to the violence of the Congo wars, and some

participated in the violence. Their future is uncertain, facing eviction once the

company moves to the production phase. It is to these men, who experienced violent

conflict and were at risk of losing their employment, that we asked the question

“would you fight?” We inquire about their intention to engage in four concrete

violent actions: destroying the firm’s property, attacking its employees, using fire

arms and joining an armed group. We then relate miners’ intention to participate in

these actions to their past exposure to violence and their attitudes towards policies

that seek to curb violent confrontations. The associations that emerge allow us to

sketch the profile of “would-be-fighters” and inform mining policies that aim to

preserve (social) peace.

Our study is situated at the nexus of three strands of literature. First, it relates to

the largely qualitative body of studies that highlights the tenuous relationship of

industrial mining companies with artisanal miners (e.g., Bush 2009; Carstens and

Hilson 2009; Geenen and Claessens 2013; van Puijenbroeck and Schouten 2013;

Verweijen 2017). Second, our study adds to the growing literature that uses

individual-level data to identify micro-motivations for participating in collective

violence (e.g., Blattman and Annan 2016; Humphreys and Weinstein 2008;

Nussio 2017), or for the intention to participate (e.g., Argo 2009; Ginges and Atran

1160 Journal of Conflict Resolution 65(6)