This article originally appeared in The Nation. For the full piece, go to the Nation’s webpage: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/congo-diaspora-peace-deals-trump-minerals/. Below is a short clip from the full piece.

Nils Kinuani was sitting in his elementary school classroom in Bukavu, a city in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, when the rebel commander chiefs entered the room. “They picked a number of boys, but they never picked me,” Kinuani said, recounting the moment he saw his friends being kidnapped by rebel soldiers in 1997, following the outbreak of violence in the Congo. “Those boys that were picked and taken from the classroom, their families never saw them [again]… they were recruited into the army, and they never went back home.”

Kinuani, now residing in Maryland, leads a network of US-based Congolese activists at a nonprofit group called Action for Congo. Even after 15 years of living in the United States, he still thinks back to that frightening moment in the classroom as motivation for his continued activism.

“I always tell people that if I was picked that day, I’d never be in the US,” Kinuani told The Nation. “I don’t know how my life would be right now.”