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| Africa Subsaharan |
| U.N. Sends More Troops to DR Congo's Troubled Katanga Region |
| 2014-02-26 |
| [An Nahar] The U.N. said Tuesday it has deployed around 100 Egyptian special forces to the restive Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material... , where a surge in violence has caused what it called a humanitarian "catastrophe". A source at the U.N. peacekeeping mission MONUSCO, speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... , said the company had been sent to "reinforce" some 450 troops from Benin already in the area, in the south-east of the country. "They have begun patrolling," the source said. The country's wealthiest province, Katanga is about the size of Spain and is believed to hold around a third of the world's cobalt and 10 percent of its copper reserves. A drive by MONUSCO to stamp out rebel violence in the restive northeastern province of North Kivu late last year left a security vacuum in Katanga, resulting in a surge of attacks by local militias. Katanga's capital Lubumbashi is the country's second largest city and the province has been plagued by secessionist violence since DR Congo's independence from Belgium in 1960. Over the past year, rebel groups fighting for Katanga's independence -- known as Mai Mai Bakata Katanga -- have sown terror in a northern area known as the "triangle of death" stretching thousands of kilometers between the towns of Pweto, Manono and Mitwaba. "It's a humanitarian catastrophe," MONUSCO chief Martin Kobler said in January, reporting that rebel violence had destroyed 600 homes and displaced 400,000 in the three preceding months. "I feel an element of guilt when I think of Katanga because we have concentrated our military activity on the Kivus but it is important not to neglect Katanga," he said. With over 20,000 uniformed members, MONUSCO is one of the United Nations ...an organization originally established to war on dictatorships which was promptly infiltrated by dictatorships and is now held in thrall to dictatorships... ' biggest peacekeeping forces in the world and includes a specialized intervention brigade tasked with neutralizing the dozens of gangs in the east of the country. |
| Posted by:Fred |