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Contributions from
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Tribune
Congo’s overburdened peacekeepers
The Philippines: controversy over NGO meddling
Kyoto Protocol: new incentives for investors
03/2006
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[ UN peacekeeping ]
Overburdened soldiers
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Nations (UN) is running the world’s biggest blue helmet mission. The objective is to achieve peace , but success seems doubtful. One thing is certain: peace in Congo would save the UN. However, far too little has been done to win and secure peace. From day one, the UN mission was half-hearted and muddled.
[ By Dominic Johnson ]
On the dusty parade ground behind Bunia airport, the French tricolour was lowered and Bangladesh’s red and green banner rose up, along with the blue and white flag of the United Nations. The soldiers who had just arrived were in high spirits. After the handing over ceremony from the EU operation Artemis to the UN mission Monuc, an officer from Bangladesh casually assessed the task of bringing order to the battleground of Ituri in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The issue could be resolved in two or three months, the grey-haired colonel declared, mentioning his experience in Vietnam, the UN mission in Iraq and the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh.
August 2003 was a crucial month in Congo’s seemingly endless peace process. Today, it has been going on for almost as long as the war before it. As result of the war, up to four million people are said to have lost their lives. In 2003, French troops stopped extermination campaigns by militias of the Lendu and Hema ethnic groups in Bunia and surrounding areas. Despite a peace agreement in December 2002, their conflicts had threatened to plunge Congo back into a full scale war. In the capital city of Kinshasa, 2000 kilometres away, an interim government had taken office, made up of all warring parties. In Bunia and the surrounding province of Ituri, peace was to prove its worth. UN troops were expected to intervene to protect the population rather than to passively observe massacres. Congolese government bodies were supposed to no longer serve warlords. Rather, they were to serve the entire government and – after democratic elections – the people.
It took longer than two or three months. Ituri remains a dangerous combat zone. Tens of thousands of people still live in refugee camps. For the most part, the warlords of 2003 are behind bars and around 15,000 combatants have laid down their arms. Yet several thousand remain at large and have become the core members of new armies that recruit desperados. There is no operational public administration and the new national Congolese army FARDC has all but collapsed. Belgian-trained, it was made up of combatants from the old warring parties. Its showcase brigade was intended to fight militias in Ituri. Instead, the soldiers plundered just as the militiamen had. Its commander was dismissed a few weeks ago. In Bunia, Congo’s peace does not differ from Congo’s war. The UN mission has not achieved as much in Bunia as hoped.
Nonetheless, the contrast to its beginnings in 1999 is stark. Bunia became the test case for new, “robust” peacekeeping operations. UN soldiers engaged in more offensive action there than anywhere else in the world. They drove militias away from villages, shot fighters and arrested commanders. The UN troops used military helicopters and operated like an intervention army.
From observer status to combat unit
In 1999, a year after the war broke out, domestic and foreign war parties had agreed on a ceasefire in the Zambian capital of Lusaka. On 6 August 1999, the UN Security Council decided to dispatch “up to 90” UN soldiers “to establish contact and maintain liaison” with the signatory states. On 30 November 1999, the “United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo” (Monuc) evolved from this, with “up to 500” UN military observers. On 24 February 2000, in fairly muddled language, the Security Council expanded Monuc to “up to 5,537 military personnel, including up to 500 observers, or more, provided that the Secretary-General determines that there is a need and that it can be accommodated within the overall force size and structure”.
The task of the troops was to “monitor the implementation of the Ceasefire Agreement and investigate violations of the ceasefire”. These were euphemisms, as war continued to rage throughout the Congo. All sides were pinning their hopes on victory. The armies of Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Angola took part, at times, those from Namibia and Chad did, too. All wanted to reap the greatest possible benefit from their engagement.
Since its resolution of August 1999, the UN Security Council has adopted 34 Congo resolutions and numerous declarations for Africa’s Great Lakes region. It has appointed several investigation commissions, imposed sanctions, organised peace conferences and supported political processes. It was a paradoxical endeavour. While the Congo itself searched for peace by many circuitous routes, the UN found just as many roundabout ways to war. The blue helmets kept quiet while the Congo was a battlefield. Now the country is at the brink of true peace, which democratic elections in June should seal. But the UN mission sees itself as a robust army.
The transition from observers to combatants did not run as smoothly as Monuc claims. Contrary to a popular legend, the first UN soldiers deployed in the Congo in 2000 already had a mandate to enforce peace under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The mandat explicitly permitted the use of force to protect civilians who were threatened directly. However, the blue helmets did not use this mandate until 2003. Rather, they watched the war go on, even though the parties involved had officially ended it in December 2002 with the Pretoria Peace Agreement. Uruguay’s UN soldiers sat idly in armoured vehicles on Bunia’s main street while Lendu militias hunted down the civilian Hema population and massacred hundreds. The UN base turned refugees away from its gate.
The worst days in Bunia reminded observers of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Eventually, in June 2003, a French UN combat unit marched in. The French soldiers took simple measures , which the UN troops should have applied much earlier. They declared weapons-free zones, searched all passers-by for weapons at road blocks and thus created “islands of security”. Theoretically, these islands could have been gradually expanded and joined to one another to create a peaceful Ituri. All along, the white UN tanks stayed in Bunia, without playing any role. Unfortunately the French mainly disarmed Hema militias in Bunia but not the Lendu militias in the hinterland. This approach later proved the seed of new violence.
Both France and the UN rely heavily on the legend of the blue helmets having only had an observer mandate under Chapter VI of the UN Charter before 2003. This lie serves both parties as an excuse – in Monuc’s case, for doing nothing, and in the case of France, for intervening. From its start, however, Monuc did have the mandate under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to use armed force to protect civilians “under imminent threat of physical violence”. In addition, on 28 July 2003, the Security Council authorised the UN troops to use “all necessary means”. Apparently, a clear mandate is not sufficient for the United Nations, one also needs a request to fulfil it.
Initially, the new clause did not apply to the entire country but merely to its East. This odd restriction was only removed on 1 October 2004, when Monuc’s mandate was expanded to safeguard the entire peace process. However, offensive military operations began even later – in spring 2005 in Ituri and later in neighbouring regions. The fighting continues. Ituri showed some first signs of measurable success. Results in Kivu followed. However, Congo’s most violent war zone is northern Katanga at the moment. It has still not seen a single UN combat soldier. By early February, 20 UN soldiers had died in battle in the Congo.
Meanwhile, logistical help to prepare for the elections has become the key task for UN troops in the Congo, in addition to periodical combat. From June to December 2005, 25 million people had registered to vote. The country is the size of Western Europe but has scarcely any roads. Many people live days or weeks on foot away from the nearest larger town. Therefore, white UN helicopters have been essential for transporting electoral commission staff and material for issuing forgery-proof voting cards, which also serve as temporary identity cards.
UN commanders in Kinshasa say they have combat capacities only until the final phase of the elections. After that, they say, the elections will keep Monuc busy. Since the deployment of the Congolese army (FARDC) did not succeed as hoped, the UN now needs troops from the European Union or the African Union to take over peacekeeping operations during the elections.
Disoriented troops
With 16,193 soldiers and military observers by the reference date of 24 August 2005, Monuc is the biggest and most expensive UN mission to date. But its composition and performance reflect UN clumsiness a decade after the disasters of Rwanda and Bosnia. The greatest contingents are provided by Pakistan (3795), India (3547), Uruguay (1572), South Africa (1409), Bangladesh (1317) and Nepal (1139). None of their soldiers knows a single language commonly spoken in the Congo, not even French. The national contingents obey different rules of engagement. They face confusing circumstances without sufficient experience or training. In the war zones, regular Congolese troops and irregular local militias interact with changing loyalties. Exacerbating the confusion, irregular fighters from Rwanda and Uganda as well as various private armies run by politicians and businessmen are also involved. In such an environment UN soldiers from India or Uruguay do not even have the means to determine the identity of a gunman. They have no chance of taking control of explosive situations. It is no wonder that the task of demobilising and repatriating foreign militias is beyond Monuc’s ability. Persons in charge at Monuc admit candidly that they do not think they will fulfil that task. Meanwhile, the UN officially considers demobilisation and repatriation to be the most important requirement for the success of the peace process.
Monuc’s political leader is William Swing, a US citizen, while French generals have the military authority along with a Senegalese colleague. This constellation makes consensus at the top difficult. France and the USA are diplomatic rivals in the Great Lakes region. At the Monuc head office in Kinshasa, one can hear completely different – at times even contradictory – assessments of identical circumstances, depending on staff nationality.
The Congolese say they always considered Monuc a joke that sees nothing, hears nothing and says nothing. The word on the street is that UN soldiers are the last to find out what is going on around their bases. For years, their contact with locals was confined to the female half of the population and the nocturnal part of the day. Only after a series of scandals involving rape and commercial sex did UN soldiers receive a strict code of conduct in 2004. The new rules prohibit any contact with the civilian population. By the time, many Congolese had already formed a picture of how differently South Americans and Asians, Muslims and Christians associate with prostitutes – an unintended lesson in globalisation.
Monuc has a size similar to UN missions in Sierra Leone or Liberia. However, the country it is supposed to save is 20 times bigger than either. Accordingly, Monuc is far from achieving a position of respect as was won by the UN contingents in the other two war-torn countries. It is also much too late to do so now. Should the warlords of the Congo decide to stop the peace process or to reverse the steps towards democracy, Monuc would not be able to stand in their way. UN strategists remember bad experiences in Angola, Rwanda and Somalia in the early 1990s. In Angola in 1992, a large UN mission remained passive when, after a contentious first ballot, rebel leader Jonas Savimbi broke the ceasefire. Consequently, President Eduado dos Santos cancelled the decisive ballot and two more terrible rounds of war ensued – forcing the UN to withdraw. In Rwanda in 1994, UN soldiers remained inactive in the face of massacres and thus gambled away their regional reputation. In Somalia, UN troops were powerless against warlords who pushed for the destruction of the Somali state for their own benefit. The UN withdrew in 1995, after several years of pointless presence and a failed US intervention.
Congo’s elections could certainly bring about a political confrontation, which – like in Angola – could turn into a military one. The outcome could be massacres of the civilian population – like in Rwanda –, to enforce power claims over individual regions. In the end, Congo could degenerate into separate areas of informal rule by individual powers – like Somalia. Such worries haunt the UN mission. Should only one of these scenarios actually come true, UN peacekeeping operations will be permanently discredited throughout the world. not only does the fate of 60 million Congolese depend on the success of the peace process – but also the fate of the world organisation itself.
Dominic Johnson
is the Africa editor for the tageszeitung,
a daily newspaper based in Berlin.
johnson@taz.de
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