POLITICS-DR CONGO: U.N. Military Observers Role Under Fire

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Juakali Kambale

KINSHASA, May 20 2003 (IPS) - Recent killings of civilians and U.N. military observers in Ituri district have sparked a debate over the role of the U.N. Observer Mission to the Congo in seeking a solution to the ethnic unrest in the northeast Democratic Republic of Congo.

The hostilities between Hemas, traditionally cattle-raisers, and Lendus, predominantly farmers, in Bunia, the capital of Ituri district, prompted the deployment of a U.N. contingent in the city.

The fighting, in which more than 200 civilians were killed last month, has stopped but tension remains high in the city, according to a U.N. staff in Bunia.

Relations between the Congolese militias and the United Nations are so bad that the militias executed two U.N. military observers in Mongbwalo in eastern DR Congo. The bodies of the observers have been found a week after the men went missing on May 13.

"Apparently they were executed," said Hamadoun Toure, the spokesperson of the U.N. secretary general’s special representative to DR Congo.

The two U.N. observers, a Jordanian and a Nigerian, were buried in a shallow grave in Mongbwalo, about 70 kilometres north of Bunia.

The mayhem in Bunia has Congolese wondering why the world body should deploy 700 U.N. peacekeepers, mostly Uruguayans, in Bunia, if they cannot prevent any fighting in the city.

South African President Thabo Mbeki, who is the current chairperson of the African Union (AU), is seeking greater role for the U.N. forces, known as the U.N. Observer Mission to the Congo (MONUC).

”MONUC was deployed in the DRC in 1999 with the sole mandate of monitoring peace process, enforcing cease-fire, ensuring troops disengagement, disarmament, and demobilisation and monitoring the withdrawal of all foreign troops,” says a MONUC official in the DR Congo.

”The Ituri problem exists outside that framework,” said Namanga Ngongi, the U.N. Secretary General’s special representative in DR Congo, at a news conference in Kinshasa on May 14.

Ngongi described the fighting in Ituri as "a war within a war" waged by Congolese. ”It’s true that we couldn’t stop the fighting in Bunia,” he acknowledged, ”but you can’t deny that MONUC saved the lives of nearly 15,000 people who were seeking protection”.

Hemas and Lendus have been in conflict for centuries for land and other resources in the region. The African countries that became involved in the fighting in the Congo in the 1990s – Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia – had armed both sides as proxy militias.

MONUC General Moutanga Diallo says the U.N. peacekeepers are guarding the airport in Bunia to prevent it from falling into the hands of the warring militias. They are also maintaining security for the humanitarian air shuttles between Kinshasa, the DRC capital, and Bunia.

”To accuse us of immobility,” he says, ”is to say we should take part in the fighting. But whom should we fight against and to whose advantage?" he says.

"We are trying to persuade warlords not to send their youths to kill each other. But no one sees this aspect of our work, and no one reports on it,” says Diallo.

Despite his explanations, Congolese remain bitter with MONUC. ”If MONUC cannot review its mandate, the U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan should do it,” says Crispin Selemani, a senior civil servant in Kinshasa.

Eddy Isango, a journalist in Kinshasa, says the Security Council has always dealt with the Congolese problem with "kid gloves".

"We experienced similar problem at the end of 1994, when there was a massive influx of Rwandese refugees in eastern DR Congo. The U.N. just pussyfooted around. Finally, we had to apply a local solution by sending in soldiers from (the former President) Mobutu’s Special Presidential Division, the infamous DSP,” he recalls.

Plans are underway to deploy a Congolese contingent alongside the international forces in Bunia. Olivier Kamitatu, the secretary general of the Congo Liberation Movement (MLC), says the plans are already at an advanced stage. ”We think that we should not leave the task of making Ituri safe exclusively to an international force. President (Joseph) Kabila must rally our troops, and send them to Bunia”.

Kamitatu also welcomes a French proposal to send troops to Ituri.

But in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, and in Goma, Congolese rebels allied with Rwanda, are opposed to French intervention. They point to the failed French military intervention in Rwanda in 1994. Named ”Operation Turquoise”, the French troops turned a blind eye as Hutu fanatics slaughtered Tutsi and moderate Hutus, leading to the death of up to one million civilians.