Their eyes shining from dust-white faces latticed by trails of sweat from working hundreds of feet underground, the thousands of miners who burrow into a rebel-held hillside know the risks – and are prepared to take them to earn a few dollars a day.
Dragging sackfuls of columbite-tantalite, also known as coltan, to the surface via makeshift shafts at the Rubaya mine, in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), is dangerous.
