Thanks for your comments Will and the work you guys are doing over at CNAS. I completely agree that the folks at the EnoughProject and also Senators Lugar and Cardin deserve tremendous credit for bringing to light some of the ugliness of the global supply chain and how the consumption choices we make can sometimes have terrible consequences. They've laid a crucial foundation. Now that the law has been passed, the work turns towards implementing it effectively.

The central crux of my post was that we should be careful assuming that shutting down the illegal mineral trade in the DRC will end the conflict there. As you know, being too unicausal about how resource scarcity or exploitation can lead to conflict is an easy trap to fall into but rarely explains the whole issue. The revenue from illegal minerals in the DRC certainly helps support the different armed groups but it is not the sole impetus for violence, so shutting it down or suppressing it will not necessarily lead to the end of said violence.

The real challenging question for the DRC, I believe, is what can we do (if anything) to help improve the human security situation? Is withdrawing the UN peacekeeping force next year the correct decision? If not what can be done to improve their mission and capabilities? How can we promote better governance and ensure that DRC government and army officials (and the UN for that matter) are not also compliant in human rights abuses and violence?

You also did well in bringing up the second issue which is the difficulty in tracking the source of conflict minerals. Radioactive elements can be tracked using Geiger counters, (although Christine points out that they face their own set of issues) and diamonds can be traced because of their particular chemical makeup, but as the noted by the EnoughProject themselves, dealers in the DRC can rely only on differences in color and texture to determine the provenance of the three T’s and gold mined there – a decidedly much less scientific method. They also mention that even this crude method requires some government oversight and only one in ten transporters in Bukavu are officially registered with the government (and that figure does not account for minerals – perhaps the lions share – that bypass these trading houses and are smuggled straight out of the country).

I admit I still have a great deal to learn on the tracking front however, as you say; it is an extremely complex issue!