(intriguing orchestral music) (reporter speaking foreign language) (protestors clamoring)(bullets sputtering) - This place, the DemocraticRepublic of the Congo, one of the most complex,longest running conflicts in the world, and you're probably not hearingabout it much on the news, but it is important, and it is connected to the entire world.

 It's a war where the frontlines are always changing.

 There's militia, hundreds of them, they control little patches of territory.

 Let me show you the one map that got me deep into this story.

 It looks like this.

 (intriguing dramatic orchestral music) All of these are the groups, the many, many differentgroups, armed groups, and this is the territorythey control, or controlled.

 This map is totally outdated, because, every day, it shifts.

 These groups blobtogether, they break apart, they join alliances with the national army and then with the rebels.

 (intriguing dramatic orchestral music) This is a war that is funded by minerals, by roadblocks, byillegal taxes, extortion.

 And in February, 2025, the logic of this warreached Washington, DC.

 (intriguing dramatic orchestral music) The President of the Congo isoffering Congo's vast minerals in exchange for military support to push back Rwanda-backed rebels.

 These are the kinds ofdeals Donald Trump loves, and the US is moving forward with, what it calls, "apath forward" for a deal.

 (intriguing dramatic orchestral music) But this video is not about that.

 That will be on the news,and we'll see where it goes.

 To me, what's much more interesting is what is going on here? How did it get to look like this, this patchwork of allthese different groups? Where's the government in all of this? Well, it turns out the government is actually a part of all of this.

 (intriguing dramatic music) This isn't just about minerals,it's not just about rebels, it's about power.

 How power is extracted and sold and traded in a space where a central government does not control or havea monopoly on violence, like in most countries.

 And it's all happening in this country that is much bigger than you think.

 At least it was muchbigger than I thought.

 - Congo's a continent of a country, it's as large as all ofWestern Europe combined.

 (intriguing dramatic orchestral music) - Congo is home to tensof trillions of dollars of untapped mineral resources.

 I mean, we cover a lotof wars on this channel, but this one's different.

 If you watch our videos, you'll see a lot of maps with icons, this group versus that group, sometimes it's like four different groups, sometimes it gets really complex.

 We make icons to representthese different groups.

 But for this one, we can't really do that, and I wanted to understand why.

 - There's something about the nature of modern conflict we're describing that is not what most peopleare probably familiar with.

 They see maps whereUkraine is versus Russia, or Hamas is versus Israel, and what we see here is a much more fractal kinds of conflict, which is actually much more common than those conflicts I just said.

 - That's Jason Stearns, he's like world expert on this topic, and he will help us navigatethis very complicated, difficult to understand, conflict.

 So let's dive into this conflict, the context, the background, and how it got to look like this, how it's lasted decades,how it's reshaped itself over and over again, and how the sides aren't tryingto take over the country? They're just trying toextract value from it.

 And it turns out thatwar can be very valuable, especially when you add to the equation what's beneath the ground, and the power that comeswith controlling people and land and movement.

 (intriguing dramatic orchestral music) (intriguing orchestral music) Now the roots of the story, of course, start with Europeans carving up Africa.

 We covered that pretty extensively in our "How EuropeStole the World" series.

 So if you wanna deep dive, go there.

 But why don't we start here.

 This image that we've sort of doctored up to make it a little bit more immersive.

 This is European leadersinventing countries in Africa in the late 1800s, carving up this map looking for resources.

 And the Congo was one of themany inventions of Europeans.

 - Congo was created actually as the private fiefdomof a Belgian king in 1885.

 And so, the whole purposeof the Congolese state was always to extractfrom the local population.

 It was never to createa government or a state that provides publicservices or public goods, including security.

 - The Belgians mapped it and discovered just howmany valuable resources the place had.

 The most valuable at the time was rubber, and it led to one of the most brutal colonial exploitationcampaigns in history.

 - It's got an enormousamount of natural resources.

 Congo is geological scandalis what Congolese call it.

 It's the largest producerof copper in Africa, it's the largest producer of cobalts, it's one of the largestproducers of diamonds, tungsten, tantalum, tin.

 You go down the lists, they have it.

 The uranium used for Hiroshima, Nagasaki came from the Congo.

 In fact, a lot of Belgium'swealth came from Congo's mines.

 (intriguing dramatic orchestral music) - Again, go watch partthree of that series if you want a deeper dive.

 So the most important partof this section of the story is that Belgium didn't builda country out of Congo.

 They built a pipelinefor resources to Europe.

 (enthralling orchestral music)(train whirring) The roads and railways led from mines and plantations to ports, not between cities.

 It created ethnic groupsand tribal identities, and then played them off each other, so that they could conquer them.

 But, also, in the process, sowing the seeds for futureconflict and division.

 - That deep history really is important in understanding where we are today, because a lot of thehabits, and the trends, and the logics of the state issort of persistence of today.

 - Some of the structuralissues Congo is still facing, moving from bad governance,the structured army, lack of a sustainable policy, that is actually where we cansituate some of these trends.

 (enthralling orchestral music) - Hey, real quick, let me tellyou about Threat Protection and these new tools coming out of NordVPN who is the sponsor of today's video.

 I'm very grateful that theysponsor our journalism.

 I started using a VPN like years ago now.

 Originally, when I would travel, I would connect to theinternet via the United States, which is what a VPN allows you to do.

 And for a lot of years,that was the big perk, like I wouldn't get kickedout of my Gmail or something if I was in another country, with some like securitytwo-factor death loop.

 But since then, Nord hasbecome a much more useful tool.

 I've recently been learninghow vulnerable we all can be when we are surfing theinternet on public Wi-Fi, like, when I'm in a coffeeshop or a hotel or whatever.

 When you're connected to Nord, your internet traffic issecure, it's encrypted.

 It's one of many perks you get as a part of their threatprotection suite of tools.

 This blocks malware andphishing attempts, annoying ads.

 It generally makes beingon the internet safer, which, like, cyber attacks are getting weirdly sophisticated.

 So I feel good when I'mconnected to NordVPN.

 And it just happens in the background, like it's not like I don't haveto like type anything in it, it just is in the background,doesn't mess with my speed.

 Oh, and I can watch streamingshows from other countries when I connect to other countries, which is kind of sick.

 Anyway.

 So I'm a big fan of NordVPN,it's really affordable, and they're giving a discount to anyone who uses thelink in my description, it is nordvpn.

com/johnnyharris.

 When you sign up for the 2 Year Plan, you get four extra months for free, and there's a 30 day money back guarantee, so you can get all your money back if it's not a good fit for you.

So nordvpn.

com/johnnyharris, clicking the link helpssupport the channel, gets you in on that discount.

 Thank you NordVPN forsponsoring today's video.

 And with that, let's get back to the DRC.

 (enthralling dramatic orchestral music) Let's now fast forward to modern day where the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a independent country.

 It's one that is shapedby a lot of conflict, especially in the '90s.

 It's also shaped bywhat happened next door in the '90s, in Rwanda, where a civil war and genocide led to the fleeing ofmillions into the Congo.

 Some of them gathered togetheras anti-Rwanda rebel groups.

 All of this leading to what became known as The Great War of Africa.

 (enthralling dramatic orchestral music) Okay, again, we're not gonnaget into Africa's World War, it's a huge thing, but just look at the map of this war.

 It did turn into a complex web of actors, some allying with theCongolese government, some being backed by foreign governments, I mean there was a lotof players in this war.

 But it's still not this, this fractured group that we'reeventually going to explain.

 The big difference is thatthe goal for these groups during the big war in the '90s was to win, was to take over the government, winning power of the state.

 I mean, that's how most civil wars are, one side wants to takeover the government.

 Okay, but here's somethingyou don't see on this map, and it's very important for how we get to the fractured group.

 There are actually tons of small militias in a bunch of differentvillages in this region.

 Over the years, a lot of small self-defenseforces formed militias that were meant to protect villages in the absence of a functioning state.

 - There were self-defensegroups that had emerged, in part because the state had collapsed.

 - Again, these aren't rebel groups, these aren't political groups, these are just people tryingto protect their community.

 They're like their local police force.

 (intriguing dramatic orchestral music) So keep that in mind, the self-defense forcesthat each community has, they'll become important in just a second.

 This big war ends in 2003, and all the differentgroups come to a peace deal.

 There's elections,democracy tries to sprout, and it fails.

 (intriguing dramatic music) After one of the groupsloses in elections, they flee to the eastand form a new rebellion, widely believed to be backed by Rwanda.

 So it's like the early 2000s and the DRC is headed towardsanother full-blown civil war.

 - Now, the Congolesegovernment at that point was a weak government, it hadjust emerged out of a war, its army was hodgepodgeof different armed groups thrown into one joint army.

 And so, they really didn'thave much of an army to push back against this new rebellion.

 - This moment is crucial for understanding what happens next.

 You got the rebels, you got the DRC, government that is super weak, they don't have a super cohesive army.

 So who do they turn to butthese dozens and dozens of small community self-defense militias, the ones I was talking about earlier, like local police forcefor these communities, they turn to them, they say, "You're fighters,help us counter this rebellion.

 We will give you weapons and support.

" - "In addition to our army, let's just pump weapons and ammunition into all of these localmilitia in the Eastern Congo.

" - So the state funnelsweapons into the eastern DRC to help them fight back the rebels.

 And in the short term, it kind of worked.

 The Congolese governmentachieved what it wanted to, halting the advance of the rebels.

 And, eventually, in 2009, this kind of reemergenceof a civil war was ended in a peace deal thatwas brokered by Rwanda.

 But remember all the guns and ammunition that the government sent tothe small defense forces? Yeah, that's still there.

 - A flush with weapons,mostly old Soviet-era weapons, so Kalashnikovs.

 (intriguing dramatic orchestral music) - These groups are now morearmed and more hardened by war, and these small defense militias now see an opportunity formore power and for growth.

 - The big reason of why there's so many and why they're so prevalent is because of a lack ofkind of a security footprint from the Congolese state.

 It's kinda like the WildWest out in Eastern Congo that, if you wanna provide security, isn't gotta be on avillage by village basis, which is how these areall kind of springing up.

 - Moving around some ofthe very remote villages, farmers were still not aware that former President Kabila had died.

 There is a sort ofdisconnection from locals, especially in remote areas, to peri-urban and urban centers.

 - And so, here we are at the explanation of why we have so many armedgroups in the Eastern Congo.

 But do you see how this is different than the typical civil warthat we cover on the channel, and that you usually think about when you think about a civil war? This isn't as political.

 - These are now a hundreddifferent armed groups spread over an area, roughlythe size of California, whose goal is not to take the state, they're too weak to take the state.

 Their goal is basically just to survive and to extract whateverresources they can extract.

 A generation of fighters who all they know how to do is fight.

 - When you have absence of states, people will refer tothem as their protectors.

 - War becomes a mean of survival,becomes a mean of dignity.

 That's the origin of this fragmentation.

 (intriguing dramatic orchestral music) - Congo's really kind of got this rainbow of individuals here as far as what group looks like what.

 They'll come across very professionally, you know, camouflage andfull fatigues, well-equipped.

 And then, in contrast, you'llsee some of these groups and they're obviouslymuch poorer equipped, I mean, these guys aren'trunning around in fatigues, but they have, you know, rainboots and soccer jerseys on and just carrying around beat up AK.

 (intriguing dramatic orchestral music) (enthralling orchestral music) - So this gets us closer towhat it looks like today, and why this war continues.

 There's no front line,there's no single enemy.

 So the question is, whatdo these groups want? What is their goal? - Almost every single armed group, if you go and talk tothem in the Eastern Congo, they'll say, "We're hereto protect our people.

" But if you go and talk tothose people, they'll tell you, "Well, that's how they started off as, and, yes, those are our sonsand our nephews and whatnot, but now, these guys arenot here to protect us.

" Almost every single armedgroup, almost by necessity, because they need to feed themselves, they recruit sometimes forcefully, they extract, they tax,and they become predatory.

 And so, you have this transition from local self-protection groups really to extract to this, to groups.

 - Everyone keeps sayingthat they tax people.

 Taxing is what a governmentdoes to its people to run the government.

 So what do they mean by tax? Well, this takes us back to the resources and the minerals thatlie beneath Congo's soil.

 You got some diamonds, not a ton, but it's mostly tungsten, tantalum, tin, and perhaps most valuableand abundant in these mines, gold.

 (enthralling traditional music) We're making a whole video about gold, just gold, everything gold.

 Because, in researching this piece and reporting out the globalsupply chain and trade of gold, I became endlesslyfascinated with the stuff.

 Much like everyone in history, gold is this insanelymagical, weird, crazy thing, and we're making a whole video about it.

 So, expect that sometime in coming months.

 Okay, but before we go any further, let's clear something up.

 'Cause the way that this is reported, all the conflict in Eastern Congo, the way that it's usuallyreported by media outlets is blood gold, conflict minerals, there's a conflict in Congo,and it's all about minerals.

 As you will see, thatis a part of the story, but it is not the whole thing.

 It goes far beyond minerals.

 - That is part of the motives, but it does not justify or explain the overall scope aroundarmed groups, militia, or self defenseinitiatives implementation.

 - These groups will"tax" anything they can; cattle, charcoal, cassava, market stalls, some guy on a motorbike.

 And this one report was titled, "Everything that moves will be taxed.

" - Whoever is perceived as aprotector, meaning an authority, then they are rightfulto perceive or to fix, to put in place taxation.

 And recently, we noticedthat some armed groups were now easily collecting taxes, like nobody could thought of, an armed group deliveringa building license, yet it is happening now.

 - And I will show youwhat those taxes look like in just a sec, but let's get back to gold, because, even though gold isn't the root or the main driver of the conflict, it is a huge part of howthe war economy works, how these groups are funded, and how this stuff is connectedto the global economy.

 (enthralling orchestral music) So all these dots, lookat all of these dots.

 Every one of these dotsrepresents a gold mine.

 This is very difficultdata to get your hands on, and the InternationalPeace Information Service are the group that collected this.

 They do incredible work andhave generously helped us in providing their data andexpertise for this story.

 I would not be able to tell this story without those on theground collecting data.

 Okay, so you've got all these gold mines, but look what happens next.

 (enthralling dramatic orchestral music) These are the armed groupsthat we talked about, the ones that startedas self-defense groups, and then got a bunch ofweapons and ammunition from the government tohelp stave off the rebels, and now use that firepower to make money off of a lot of things, including, as we see onthis map, gold mines.

 (enthralling dramatic orchestral music) - It's the perfect economyfor the mafia really, right? What does the mafia provide? The mafia provides two things.

 The mafia provides financing, it has good access tohuge amounts of money, and it provides protection.

 And for something likegold, which you have, if you're a gold diggerin the Eastern Congo, and you have 50 grams of gold to sell, that's an enormous amount ofmoney in the middle of nowhere.

 And so, you need protection, and you need somebody tobuy it, you need financing.

 And so, these are veryeasily militarized sectors.

 (enthralling dramatic orchestral music) - So let's get really specific now, so we can see what this looks like.

 Let's zoom into one of these mines, so I can show you howthese local turf wars work, how this war economy works, how this gold flows froma hill in Eastern Congo to the international markets.

 (intriguing orchestral music) And along the way, we will see how all these armedgroups and the government have built some versionof "violent order," half war, half cooperation, all happening in a spacewhere the government is at once totally absent, but also, as you'll see, very present, but in a way that you might not think.

 (intriguing dramatic orchestral music) - You have millions of people digging for tin, tungsten,and mostly gold, actually.

 (enthralling dramatic orchestral music) - [Johnny] This is a pitmined, or artisanal mined.

 - [Jason] This is thousands of young men digging in hillsides, sometimesin terrible conditions, in lots of different pits.

 They're all, they're dottingmostly very remote hillsides in the Eastern Congo.

 - [Johnny] They work inthese harsh conditions, often with little more than shovels, pans, sometimes bare hands, pulling gold from the soil.

 - These are fairly militarized pits.

 You'll find soldiers, they'll provide quote-unquote"protection and security" in exchange for payments.

 - This is unrefined gold.

 So it's extracted, maybe it's powder orflakes or a small nugget, and then it starts itsjourney towards the city.

 But this journey willcross through the territory of dozens of different groups.

 - Roadblocks are one featureof the landscape of the Congo, and there are thousands of them.

 - Roadblocks are everything.

 So one of these armedgroups has a roadblock, and they demand a cut fromanyone transporting minerals.

 (enthralling dramatic orchestral music) If you know the system well,and you're well-connected, you have relationships, that will help you withthese transactions, ensure that they don't get violent.

 - Go into a little hut, andyou give them what is expected.

 There'll be somenegotiating back and forth, but you pretty much know what you're gonna have to settle for, they'll get some of that.

 - Now, again, I wanna emphasize, this doesn't just happen for gold.

 You can be stopped for anything.

 You can be stopped for carrying cattle, you may have to pay just tomove through the checkpoint.

 Again, "Everything thatmoves will be taxed.

" - There could be 50 or60 of these roadblocks before you get to a major city.

 - A motorcycle could betaxed a few bucks to pass.

 If you're a big truck, maybe you're taxed $700for a single checkpoint.

 And according to the people we talked to, a lot of these transactionshappen without violence, it's the threat of violencethat keeps the order going out here where there is no government.

 Wait a minute, butlook, that is a soldier.

 That is an officialCongolese military soldier, like, from the government military.

 And this is where it starts to get even more kind of mind bending on our normal boxes andcategories and frameworks for understanding conflict.

 Turns out that the government military is very present out here.

 (enthralling dramatic orchestral music) They move around in this system, they have roadblocks of their own, and they end up behaving very similarly to these armed groups.

 They set up checkpoints, they extract illegal informal taxes, they'll pocket some of them, or they will distribute them, not to the state coffers, but to their network ofalliances and relationships, which could include otherarmed groups, or local police, or even commanders back in the Capitol who want in on all of this.

 And, again, what you start tosee is a kind of quasi-order where there is aequilibrium of the tax rate, the same that the Congolesegovernment would impose if they were out here, but now it's an armed group,or a Congolese soldier, that's sort of acting like an armed group, but also technicallyworks for the government, but doesn't get paid very much, so they subsidize their pay by setting up a checkpointto make more money, like.

.

.

 You start to see that allof these power systems, none of them are strong enough to command the whole state and to impose order, and so, they fracture, and they all end upgrabbing what they can.

 - If you are a peasantin the Eastern Congo and your day-to-day job isfarming cassava and beans, two staple crops in eastern DRC, then you have to get them to market.

 Chances are, if you take them to market, you'll run into a roadblockmet by people with guns, you have to pay taxes to them.

 If you don't pay taxes tothem, they could get violent.

 And so, abuse and violenceis part of day-to-day life.

 Funerals are, I mean,it's a very social world, and so, it's rare thatseveral months go by without there being a funeral.

 And so, death and violence are things that are just much more present.

 (enthralling dramatic orchestral music) - So we're gonna get backto our journey of gold from the mine to the global market, but, first, let me justdrive this point home by going back to our map.

 (intriguing orchestral music) Remember these are thedots that are gold mines, these are the local armed groups, and these dots are instances where between 2021 and 2023, the military of the DemocraticRepublic of the Congo was reported to be interfering, which basically meansshowing up with roadblocks or showing up to pit mines and threatening violenceand demanding payment, not for the government, but for themselves and their alliances.

 Again, thank you IPIS for this data.

 - Violence permeates life.

 Most of the populationknows nothing but war.

 - We grew up as children, kids, who only knew violence and war.

 Growing as a child, I think you don't actually perceive that as something that's appealed to you.

 And as I said, people somehow some ways rationalize that as a way of living.

 - But at the same time, they know how to navigatethese wars and these press, they know how to deal with soldiers, they know what the logic is of violence.

 (intriguing orchestral music) - [Johnny] Okay, we're backto the truck that's driving, it's passing through allof these checkpoints, these roadblocks.

 (enthralling dramatic orchestral music) Once you've made itthrough the checkpoints, maybe 60 of them, so the gold makes it to the border, and it's almost always smuggled across.

 Gold is very small, youcan put it in your pocket, and walk across the border.

 - Well, they'll bewalking across the border.

 Sometimes that would be official border and they just hide that on their person.

 - And it mostly goes toeither Rwanda or Uganda, this is where it gets refined.

 There's this one Belgian businessman who has been convictedof money laundering.

 He's on the sanction listfor the U.

S.

 Treasury for contributing to armedconflicts and illicit trade in the DRC region.

 He owns one of Africa'slargest gold refineries, it's in Uganda, and it processes a lotof this smuggled gold that comes from this conflict region.

 Uganda's gold exports were about a half amillion dollars in 2014.

 In 2023, not even 10 years later, they jumped to $2.

3 billion.

 A lot of that's coming fromthe war economy next door.

 - Global markets needs at a lower cost, some of the minor rolesthat can be found in Congo.

 And multinationals havetested and saw it working to get what they needed out of Congo through local armed groups rather than dealing directlywith the central government.

 And so, they perpetrate that.

 - Same thing happens in Rwanda.

 If the gold is smuggledacross the border in Rwanda, it goes to a refinerythat is owned and operated by Rwanda's army.

 And then, once it's refined.

.

.

 - It's put on an airplane,and it goes to Dubai.

 (enthralling dramatic orchestral music) - We are now out of the checkpoints, and artisanal mines,and threats of violence, and in the gleaming city built off of oil, which is the epicenter of gold.

 It's one of the world'smajor gold hubs, tax free, strategically located hereat the center of the globe.

 A huge amount of the gold, especially coming from the DRC and a bunch of other regions in Africa, including a bunch thatfund this war economy, come to the United Arab Emirates, who doesn't ask very many questions.

 Instead, they combine itwith all the other gold, it's washed clean of allof its conflict blood, and it's sold off to the world.

 The origins disappear, the corruption is polished away into a universally desired store of value, impossible to trace.

 - It goes into jewelry, some of it goes intoindustrial manufacturing, a gold is still used forcoating in electronics and other things, and some of it is used forlaundering money by gold.

 And all of a sudden, you know, like magic, your dirty money becomes clean money, because it's gold now, right? It's very opaque, once it reaches Dubai.

 - This gold disappears againinto Dubai, into Russia, again, into the EU, to push for the minerals and the resources that are in this regionare absolutely massive.

 And, again, you know, it's everything for electric cars to satellites.

 I mean, there's a lot ofmoney involved in this, and they're a massive exporter.

 (enthralling dramatic orchestral music) (intriguing orchestral music) - Okay, but let's get back to the Congo, because I'm less interested in gold, although, I'm really interested in gold, and I'll make an entire video about it, and I'm more interested inwhat keeps this system going.

 This system of artisanalmines with soldiers, hundreds and hundreds of checkpoints, military soldiers thatwork for the government, but also behave like armed militias that are extorting people at every turn, the threat of violence that breaks out and ends up destroyingthe lives of the locals at a moment's notice.

 And I wanted to understandwhat keeps it going.

 This system has been going onfor decades, just like this.

 It turns out that this eternal war economy produces a lot of value, mostly for the warlords and power brokers and government officialsthat are in on it, but also somewhat paradoxically, this provides a sense of, albeit violent, stability and security for the people.

 It brings a lot of money to the region.

 - You know, it's a double-edged sword.

 It also provides enormousvalue to local societies.

 Does it fuel violence? Yes, absolutely.

 I think that ambiguousnature of the mining sector is not something that many people have been able to grapple with.

 When, for example, under President Obama, they passed the ConflictMinerals Acts in 2010, it led to a temporary boycott of minerals in the Eastern Congo, and it created an enormousamount of hardship and a resentment towards the United States by people digging in these mines.

 (enthralling dramatic orchestral music) - So the war economy in the Eastern Congo is not going away anytime soon, and especially because, recently, in addition to these local turf wars that is fueled by mineralsand a global gold trade, the regional proxy dynamics, where outside countries startto meddle in bigger ways, are back in full force.

 - [Reporter] After a bloody invasion, M23 rebels now in fullcommand in the city of Goma.

 (firearm banging) - So Rwanda has invaded the Eastern Congo and backed arm groups in the Eastern Congo on five occasions, right? And so, these are pattern that goes back almost 30 years now.

 Rwanda considers the eastern DRC as part of its sphere of influence, much like Israel and Southern Lebanon, much like Pakistan andSouthern Afghanistan.

 Last week, Rwandan government newspaper announced that $1.

5 billion of gold had been exported from Rwanda in 2024.

 The entire Rwandan budget is $4 billion.

 That is an enormous amount of money, and it's difficult to saythat doesn't play a role.

 I am sure it plays some sort of a role.

 So I think there's a bunchof different factors, I think it'll be misleadingto boil it down to one factor.

 (enthralling dramatic orchestral music) The story of the Congohas been a dismembering and dilapidation of the statesince it was first created.

 The state was a predator when it was created by thecolonial enterprise in 1885, and it's remained soreally since its creation.

 - These are the samecommunities that are destructed, because kids that are bornwithin these communities, they see this as a model, that is the only modelthey have been exposed to.

 - And so long as you have a state that's really invested in violence, I mean, the Congolese elitesare also invested in violence for a whole host of different reasons, as long as you have that, it's hard for me to seeneighboring countries will continue to meddle, multinational corporationswill continue to profit.

 So I think really what you have is inelectable state, really.

 You have to go back to the state that would be able to providethe most basic of goods, which is security.

 And so, I think that'sthe foremost challenge for this generation.

 It's really a generational challenge, it's not something thatcan be fixed quickly.

 And I think it will notcome from outsiders.

 I mean, from what I've seen in the Congo over almost three decadesis those people are there, they're ready to build, you just need to give'em space to do that.

 (pedestrian speaking foreign language) - Hey, everyone, thanks for watching.

 This video was different in some ways, because this is an area thatis an information vacuum.

 That's why I'm reallygrateful to our sources who helped us get insightinto what's happening here.

 If you have unique insight, whether local orprofessional, or whatever, in this region or anywhere else that is an information vacuum,I'd like to know about it, 'cause I wanna report moreon these parts of the world that are not paid attention to as much, and are harder to report on, because they are shrouded in conflict, or are remote, or difficultto understand or whatever.

 That's something I'm very interested in.

 So, please, leave comments, reach out, and thank you all forwatching, for being here.

 And I'm going to make this video on gold, like, what is your questions about gold? Tell me everything youwant to know about gold, its history, the chemicalproperties of gold, how it's used in medical treatments? Like, gold is an endless rabbit hole that I plan to descend into, and I would love to knowwhat you're curious about.

 Okay, that's it, thank youso much for being here, and I'll see you in the next one.

 (enthralling orchestral music)