Guys, please. The report's conclusion that the Kimia II operations are failing to dismantle the FDLR and that the CNDP maintains military and economic control over large areas of the Kivus. The closest the report gets to criticizing MONUC is this: "The Group also underlines the possible contradiction within MONUC’s mandate to protect civilians on a priority basis, and that of providing logistic support the FARDC, while the latter continues to commit abuses against the civilian population, and conducts military operations in disregard of protection of civilians and for international humanitarian law."
Yes, one implication of the report is that MONUC should stop supporting Kimia II. But MONUC was never a main party to these operations, which are much more the result of the Kigali-Kinshasa deal early this year than any move by MONUC. The UN, eager to back this detente between Rwanda and the Congo, joined up with Kimia II after the offensive had been decided on. In my view, MONUC's main strategic error was not to back the operations, but their failure to negotiate strong conditionalities. They provide food, transport, medical evacuation and (rarely) attack helicopter support, but are excluded from all operational planning and are almost never on the front lines, where they would need to be in order to protect civilians. In other words, MONUC gives and gives but gets next to nothing in return.
But the press has featured MONUC as the main culprit in this morality tail - it is a great press story: "The blue helmets who were deployed to protect civilians are actually fueling the violence." We seem to find pleasure in debunking altruism, in exposing humanitarianism to be just another greedy resource grab. The priest child molester is a juicy scandal; the miscreant child molester is nothing new. But let's get the story straight: the culprits in the UN report are Congolese, Burundian, Ugandan and Tanzanian businessmen, military officers and politicians who are profiting from the conflict. They are, to a lesser extent, French and American officials who do not want to go the extra mile to provide information on the conflict, and Chinese and Ukranian governments, also for withholding information. MONUC comes a distant last in the list of culprits.
Otherwise, the report was received warmly by the Rwandan The New Times (close to the government), which has demanded the Security Council to take action. The Burundian, Ugandan and Tanzanian government have vehemently rejected accusations that their officials are supporting the FDLR. Watch this space for some words on the consequences of the report in Burundi - my guess is that the report might be most strongly felt in Burundi, where the head of intelligence and one of the most important businessmen have been implicated in FDLR networks. The Rwandan government, which in influential in Bujumbura, is reportedly furious.
In the Congo, the local press did not make as much of the report as one might expect. The Congolese minister of information lambasted the Group of Experts, but focused on allegations that the offensive was failing, not on evidence that Congolese army officers are still backing the FDLR and that the CNDP has not been successfully integrated. The pro-government Digitalcongo.net website called for the "unfair arms embargo" against the government to be lifted, implying that it is this embargo that is keeping the government from getting rid of the FDLR (not their indiscipline or incompetence). This has often been Kinshasa's reaction - but they seem to neglect that the embargo is only on rebel groups - the only obligation the Congolese government has towards the UN in this respect is to notify the Security Council of military imports.
It was altogether a bad press week, even in Belgium, where Le Soir reported that "The war in the Congo is being financed from Belgium." That the FDLR has supporters there is clear. That these supporters do business with the FDLR and send them funds is probable. But that the FDLR would receive even a fraction of the millions they make off the minerals trade in the Kivus is absurd.
I will leave you will a picture of the lead author of this report, Dinesh Mahtani, with yours truly in the foreground, in Masisi.
Agreed to some extent, but the fact remains: There are more than 20,000 peacekeepers in the region, and things only continue to get worse. MONUC may not be to blame, but it is partnering with an army that is a serial human rights abuser. And MONUC did participate in operations that have only resulted in more civilians being killed. Reporters are wrong to blame the conflict on MONUC, but they are right to suggest that the report ought to make MONUC rethink its role and its strategy in eastern Congo.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I share much of the criticism on MONUC, I would like to emphasize that the present scapegoating (or even demonizing) lets bilateral donors too easily get off the hook.
ReplyDeleteThose with more political clout than the UN have failed to apply concerted diplomatic pressure, and neglected to invest in and defend MONUC when and where most needed, especially in the domain of the military integration process.
Although this process has been an apparent failure from the start, the general tendency has been to look away, to focus on the elections and then to wait for the central government to present a strategic plan. In the meanwhile, critical issues like the uncontrolled procurement, stockpiling and distribution of military equipment and arms, the diversion of arms from the military to non-state groups, DDRR(R), the presence of notorious human rights violators and ‘spoilers’ throughout the military hierarchy, and the manipulation of the integration process by neighbouring states were largely left unaddressed. Such issues , indeed the politically sensitive ones, for which the ‘lack of political will’ and ‘sovereignty’ are always (too?) conveniently mentioned as factors blocking progress, could have been tackled by the collective of bilateral donors in a much more proactive manner.
Sure we can and should question MONUC’s logistical support to the FARDC in the absence of clear conditionalities, but then we should also criticize bilateral donors’ largely uncoordinated and technocratic approaches to military assistance (sometimes rather euphemistically called ‘defence reform ’). These approaches have also been characterized by a glaring lack of human rights or political conditionalities, making the burden of complicity for dismal FARDC performance wider shared than is presently presented in the media.
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