The MONUC in the Congolese Quagmire

Pierre Mapoba, UN Regional Information Center in Brussels, France Desk

The United Nations peace-keeping force in the Democratic Republic of Congo, called MONUC, with 25,000 soldiers and an estimated cost of more than $1billion a year, is the UN’s largest ongoing peace-keeping operation in terms of budget and personnel. The UN operation in Congo started in 1999 while the country was facing civil war, mainly in the Eastern provinces of Kivu and Ituri. These provinces are extremely rich in minerals such as gold, diamonds, tin and coltan, a metallic ore used in many mobile phones and laptops.

The origins of the civil war are partly the result of the fact that the DRC was a natural destination for those who had been displaced by the war in neighbouring Rwanda as well as the victims of the Rwandan Genocide. Mobutu Sesse Seko, who until 1997 was the country’s President, agreed to give asylum to these refugees, who were mostly of the Hutu ethnic group. Among them were rebels from a Hutu militia called FDLR (the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda). The Tutsi Rwandan President Kagame warned the international community of the danger represented by this militia gathering across his border, and that it represented a threat for peace in his country.

Therefore, he supported the rebellion against Mobutu which was spearheaded by Laurent Desiré Kabila, the father of the current Congolese president Joseph Desiré Kabila. When this rebellion succeeded and he became President, Kabila accepted, in returnfor the support that he had received, that Rwandan President Kagame send troops from Rwanda to protect the border region against attacks from the FDLR. Unofficially, Kagame also supported a Congolese Tutsi rebel militia called CNDP, the National Congress for the Defence of the People. Both rebellions aimed at exploiting the country’s resources and terrorising the civilian population. Since the beginning of the war millions of civilians have been killed, women raped and thousands displaced. Thanks to the assistance given by NGOs and UN aid workers the displaced live in refugee camps where life may be hard, but at least it is safe.

In this context, the military mission of the UN in Congo consists of protecting millions of lives from the threats they usually face. Their -sion was to neutralize the FDLR in order not to exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Kivu. To achieve this the UN works in close cooperation with the Congolese army. However, a recent scathing report from Human Rights Watch showed that the UN had failed in this mission, because members of the Congolese army are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged enrolment of child soldiers in 2002-2003, during the operation known as Kimia II. The UN military force was accused of having provided military firepower, transport, rations and fuel to an army commanded by General Bosco Ntaganda, accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court for his actions as the new main CNDP leader. In a deal struck to put an end to the CNDP’s abuse, Ntaganda had been promised impunity by the Congolese army for his actions if he agreed to join them, in what constitutes a formidable act of treachery.

Must the world’s largest UN peacekeeping mission be stopped after these charges? Would a hasty withdrawal ensure peace and order to those who still survive in utter misery and despair? Can the government of Congo maintain security while facing a rebellion organized by its neighbours, Rwanda and Uganda? The role of the UN peace-keeping forces should be defined by more specific missions on the ground, especially fighting the rebels from Rwanda in order to force them to leave Congo. International law is quite clear when it comes to the violation of the sovereignty of any country, which is the biggest concern with the current invasion of the DRC. The state-building of the Democratic Republic of the Congo will be a long process; indeed it will take a political agreement between all those involved, including Rwanda, Uganda and the African Union to reach an acceptable and reasonable agreement.

The last issue at the core of the problem is identity. No military force can find a solution to this problem. The war in Congo is in fact the extension of the rivalries between the Tutsi and Hutu ethnic groups. The memory of the Rwanda genocide of 1994 should be a way to learn from the past. As long as both groups cannot coexist in peace, there will always be tensions and conflicts in the DRC. But at the moment the UN military operation should carry on its mission to protect civilians and prepare the field for a real Congolese army. The UN forces should help the government to train military personnel in methods of fighting rebels, assist them in the rebel’s defeat and ultimately create a situation where the peace-keeping forces will be substituted by the national Congolese army. A hasty withdrawal can only lead to a worse situation in a country where abuses still exist and millions of lives still depend on the security provided by the UN.


¹ The report can be found at: http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/drc1209web_1.pdf

² Laurent Nkunda, the founder of CNDP, was arrested in January 2009 and assigned to residence.

Further info:
- DPKO and OCHA report: “Protecting Civilians in the Context of UN Peacekeeping Operation”,
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/lib.nsf/db900sid/EGUA-7XVSZJ/$file/dpko-ocha-protecting-civilians-nov09.pdf?openelement

- Human Rights Watch report: “You Will be Punished” Attacks on Civilians in Eastern Congo, http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/drc1209web_1.pdf





Picture © UN Photo/Myriam Asmani