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. So much so that, in late January this year, more