WHEN MONUSCO, the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announced – with a lot of fanfare –last month, that the FDLR militia would begin to disarm, there was a lot of skepticism in the air.

That was very familiar territory. The militia group that has found safe haven in DRC for the last two decades, had in the past announced plans to lay down arms, but incidents always seemed to conveniently crop up, an excuse for putting off the militia’s intentions to lay down arms.

This time, it was the Busasamana provocations that seemed to play perfectly into the fake FDLR disarmament comedy.

Monusco could claim the border incident took its attention from the disarmament process, but that, to many observers, is hogwash: its mandate is to disarm and disband all armed groups by use of force, as it did with the M23 rebels, period.

The well-timed leaking of reports on the region by UN bodies is legendary, and usually has sinister motives or is done to cover up inadequacies. Now the disease has hit the Extended Joint Verification Mechanism (EJVM) that is tasked with investigating incidents such as the Busasamana attacks.

EJVM is supposed to report to the Defence Committee of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) and no one else.

So, it is logical to assume that leaking the flawed report has more to it than meets the eye, such as getting the FDLR and Monusco’s shortcomings off the radar for the time being.