Earlier this year, a US drone strike killed two innocent hostages, one American and one Italian citizen near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
The incident spurred outrage across the media, resulting in Obama having to apologize for the grave error.
If only one could expect the same apology for the thousands of drone victims across the Muslim World since the advent of the War on Terror, most of whose names were never so much as uttered by those who sealed their deaths.
In today’s globalized world almost everything is interconnected. When it comes to war, conflicts are often interlocked in disturbing ways. For example, every death by way of drone wouldn’t be possible without turning a blind eye to the ongoing genocide from resource wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or DRC.
While people rightly demand that “Black Lives Matter” in America, black lives have been forgotten in the Congo, where nearly six million people have died just in the last fifteen years.
Media Roots Radio is joined by Kambale Musavuli, Spokesperson for Friends of the Congo, to talk about how Congo’s resource curse feeds the military industrial complex and why anti-drone activists need to organize with the Congolese to disrupt cobalt extraction.
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Kambale came on Breaking the Set to discuss the cobalt connection to the civil war in the Congo, and Media Roots covered this issue in depth. He also visited BTS during the last Africa Summit to break down backlash against US military policy in the continent.
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Many DRC soldiers are trained and equipped in the United States. Breaking the Set expands upon a UN report bringing to light crimes against humanity committed by a US-trained Congolese battalion.
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Listen to all previous episodes of Media Roots Radio here.