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| East/Subsaharan Africa | |||
| EU soldiers in Congo find their hands are tied (other body parts to follow) | |||
| 2003-06-13 | |||
| Followup to other stories here today and yesterday, and EFL Ragged children sang and an elderly woman beamed toothlessly for the cameras as a convoy of French special forces rolled slowly through the Bunia suburb of Nyakasanza, the sun sparkling on their submachine guns. The joy was not feigned. A massacre took place in Nyakasanza last month when the tribal war in Ituri province in north-east Congo spread into the town. Militiamen of the Lendu tribe swept through the suburb looking for members of the smaller rival tribe, the Hema, to kill. Sixteen people, including two priests, were hiding in a Catholic church. They were led outside and hacked to pieces in the road. In such scenes, painfully redolent of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, 500 people were butchered in Bunia last month, under the noses of 700 Uruguayan UN peacekeepers. With 55,000 dead in the three years of fighting in Ituri, the UN war crimes prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, said the slaughter could constitute genocide. Thanks Carla, we would never have figured this out. It was this, supposedly, that the French arrived in Bunia last week to end, leading a 1,400-strong force mandated by the UN and put together by the EU, including fewer than 100 British personnel. As the French rolled back to their barracks 12 miles down the road from Nyakasanza less joyful scenes were apparent. The village of Katoto was smouldering, and one house still burning, after the reported massacre of 121 people on Saturday during the latest Lendu attack. Bloodied mattresses lay scattered outside a looted mud hut. Throughout the attack the French troops stayed in their barracks. Their mandate did not permit them to venture outside Bunia, their commander said, nor to intervene in battles between armed groups. "Of course we cannot intervene! We are here to keep peace!" One week after the first French troops arrived the first rapid reaction intervention by the EU alone is in danger of being a toothless failure, observers say. If it is not allowed to leave Bunia it will hardly see the slaughter in the province, much less stop it. If unable to intervene in fighting it will not prevent the civilian massacres that invariably follow. "Bunia is just a tiny part of Ituri," Anneke Van Woudenberg, of Human Rights Watch, said yesterday. "We hear of massacres taking place outside Bunia that the French will be utterly unable to stop. If the force is going to protect Ituri's civilians, it will have to interpret its mandate very courageously. But it doesn't look like this will be allowed." Even if allowed, would the French want to? To allow the safe flow of aid in Bunia, the UN wants the Hema militia expelled from town, but its peacekeeping unit has no mandate to use force. The intervention force has a mandate to fire but not to demilitarise the town. Its commander, Colonel Daniel Vollot, said yesterday: "The international force will chase the fighters from the town. It will impose a city without weapons." Moments later its spokesman, Colonel Gerard Dubois, said: "There is no confusion: it's not in our mandate to demilitarise the city." That was downright Orwellian. Thomas Lubanga, the Hema warlord in control of Bunia, agreed. "We are for peace ... but we will not disarm, and will not leave the city we have fought for and won."
They certainly have it figured out. By the roadside 10-year-old Robert "Rambo" said, "We're dancing for joy because our leader is here", snapping bullets into an AK-47 magazine. The French UN ambassador, Jean-Marc de la SabliÚre, denied that the intervention force's mandate reflected western indifference to Ituri or Congo's wider civil war. "There is no military solution to the war in Ituri, only a political one," he said.
The UN has negotiated countless agreements to end the war but without a neutral force to hold the the internal factions and neighbouring countries which have taken sides to their word, most of them have already failed. The latest initiative is the Ituri Pacification Commission (IPC), elected by the tribes, which agreed to be separated and disarmed while a provincial government was set up. The UN promised to enforce it, but without allowing its peacekeepers to fight, and most of its members are now refugees in the UN compound. The UN peacekeeping mission in Congo costs more than £400m a year but its achievements, Ms Van Woudenberg says, are minimal. "The UN is hopelessly incapable of protecting Congolese civilians. Unless it gets a serious mandate their huts will continue to burn." Sad thing is, the ambassadors know this, as does Kofi. It's all for show so they can tell the leftie crowd at home that they're trying to "do something."
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| Posted by:Steve White |
| #4 WTF!? I thought Vollut was in charge of MONUC, not the EU mission...unless the French put this proven loser and coward over both. |
| Posted by: Watcher 2003-06-13 23:27:29 |
| #3 I am truly embarassed and ashamed that my country is associated with this farce. The death of the UN cannot come quickly enough. Faster please... |
| Posted by: Celissa 2003-06-13 20:57:14 |
| #2 "There is no military solution to the war in Ituri, only a political one." Wait until all but one group is dead, declare peace, go home... But then, the French (and Kofi) thought the "serious consequences" of 1441 should be the lifting of sanctions and a round of congratulations on the success of spending millions on inspections for over twelve years. |
| Posted by: John Anderson 2003-06-13 14:31:59 |
| #1 This just in: French UN ambassador, Jean-Marc de la Sablière has announced the complete surrender of French troops. Developing... |
| Posted by: btg9999 2003-06-13 11:36:04 |