UN once again shows its true colors, abandoning civilians in DRC to a genocidal regime

News that Monusco, the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is departing the country and transferring its base at Kamanyola to Congolese authorities, adds another ignominious page to the UN’s calamitous failures in our part of the world. First off, there can only be one outcome with Monusco’s departure. Congolese ruler Felix Tshisekedi will be emboldened to step up his ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing of his country’s Tutsi communities in the east. With no witnesses, except ordinary villagers and other locals, many of whom Kinshasa has inculcated with hate speech against the targeted Tutsi, the man no doubt will let loose his worst instincts. In short, Monusco is leaving the beleaguered powerless populations to a fate of worse slaughter, looting, destruction of property, or rape than what they’ve already suffered. These crimes against humanity have been going on right under Monusco’s nose. But with its presence, there at least was some pretense on its part that it was against them. Once in a while they’ve issued some half-hearted condemnation of atrocities – though often lumping victims of genocide themselves (who are fighting under the banner of the M23 movement) in its condemnations. A UN force still is preferable to Kinshasa coalition troops, whether that UN force itself has been accused by locals of colluding with the Kinshasa regime. Or colluding with FDLR, whose terrorism civilians in the east fear the most! (who can forget reports of Monusco helicopters airlifting FDLR terrorists injured in battle with M23?) Or being involved in illegal mineral trade, or child rape. Those in the crosshairs of Tshisekedi fear their government more. There is a reason after all why Tshisekedi has worked so strenuously to expel Monusco. In acquiescing to Tshisekedi’s arm-twisting it the UN has shown it can never take the moral high ground where difficult decisions are concerned. It’s shown its true colors. Monusco has been in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (initially as Monuc) for the best part of a quarter of a century, during which it completely failed to keep any peace. Not only did this lavishly funded organization – with on average a budget of a billion US dollars annually – fail at this, it’s also ended up being a mere onlooker, or even worse, amidst all the insecurity perpetrated by the Congolese military FARDC; a group no different than countless illegally armed, criminal militia outfits. And now, in the new environment whereby Kinshasa and its coalition of forces can perpetrate massacres and other crimes with not a blue helmet in sight? Soon swathes of DRC will be like the killing fields of Cambodia. It is that bad. It is no secret the Congolese military colludes with terrorist militias, which number over two hundred (something that underscores the lawless nature of the vast country), to perpetuate the ongoing insecurity (even as the Kinshasa regime pretends to decry the situation). What makes the situation for Tutsi Congolese so dire is the fact Tshisekedi has outright incorporated the FDLR, the most dangerous of the eastern Congo-based militia, into his military. For the unaware, FDLR is the offshoot of the ex-FAR and Interahamwe militias who fled across the border into the then Zaire after the RPF routed them. Once in Zaire the genocidal forces enjoyed the hospitality of Mobutu, and his masters in Paris. The genocidaires got every support, to reorganize with the goal to re-invade Rwanda and topple the new, RPF-led government. They failed when the Rwandan military inflicted another heavy defeat on them, but regrouped. Their main mission as ever was to kill Tutsis. Congolese Tutsi civilians becoming their new victims. With Tshisekedi, a guy who more than any of his predecessors explicitly shares their ideology, the genocidaires (now FDLR) enjoy real power. They are part and parcel of the FARDC, and participate in operations side by side with South African and Burundian troops. Yet there isn’t one word of condemnation from the UN for this unholy alliance. This stance has precedent in Rwanda, back in 1994 when Rwanda’s Tutsi population was in the same exact situation as DRC’s Tutsi nationals now. Back then, as genocide against raged, there was a UN force in Rwanda: the so-called United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda, Unamir (Minuar by its better-known French acronym), that basically was a bystander to genocide. Minuar did exactly nothing as the military (the FAR), the Interahamwe militia, as well as multitudes of ordinary Hutu civilians that the government browbeat into participating, perpetrated one of the most horrific bloodbaths in history. The inaction of Minuar was nothing short of appalling. It’s more so when one considers that, when full scale genocide broke out in April 94, the UN had received ample warning of that. No less a person than Maj. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, Minuar force commander, had in January sent an urgent fax to UN headquarters in New York warning, among others, Kofi Annan (who then was UN undersecretary general for peace keeping operations), of a plot at the highest levels of the government to exterminate the Tutsi. Dallaire’s fax, which was based on a tip from a highly-placed informant in the Habyarimana government, warned of arms caches, a plot to assassinate Belgian UN peacekeepers, as well as (Rwandan) members of parliament – all part of a wider plot to trigger countrywide massacres “to finish the Tutsi once and for all.” To Dallaire’s disbelief, his superiors in New York, citing “Unamir’s limited mandate”, ordered him to do exactly nothing. Worse still, Annan and his deputy Iqbal Riza ordered Dallaire to actually tell Habyarimana about the informant’s allegations. Displaying an unusual degree of shamelessness, the same UN actually wanted to keep Minuar troops in Rwanda (supposedly to keep peace) even after the liberating RPF forces had stopped the genocide and defeated its perpetrators! The new administration in Kigali said no thanks! (Years later, drawing from its experiences Rwanda drew a template for peace-keeping operations that make its forces some of the most successful, and sought out in trouble spots. Even after its betrayal by the UN, Rwanda didn’t succumb to bitterness, but chose to become more proactive in devising solutions to this thorniest of problems, though that hasn’t saved Rwanda from being constantly maligned!) As a country we’ve experienced more than our fair share of UN malfeasance, even going further back, in the 1950s in the runup to the departure of the Belgian colonial administration. At the time, the UN was a “trustee” of the Ruanda-Urundi colony (meaning it had a mandate to keep an eye on Belgian colonial rule). The UN knew in Rwanda the colonial administration was in cahoots with Kayibanda and his Parmehutu extremists that were planning to exterminate their Tutsi countrymen and women. The pogroms, massacres, and multitudes of refugees fleeing, came to pass, and the UN did zilch. One can be certain a bunch of other countries have their horror stories about the organization. Yet this is the same UN that today will be up in arms whenever news comes out of DR Congo, say when M23 fighters fire at FARDC troops, or when they shoot down an enemy drone, or other measures of self-defense against Tshisekedi’s troops and members of his coalition – the very groups genociding their communities. The UN repeats the same blunders so often one has to think that’s just the way it is: never siding with victims, but with powerful perpetrators. Never doing the right thing, but the expedient thing for selfish interests. Today we see it coddling Tshisekedi, when the man should be a prime candidate for an international tribunal for the worst crimes against humanity. Can the UN ever evolve, to become a body that – at least in our part of the world – actually can do better? One can only hope.

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UN once again shows its true colors, abandoning civilians in DRC to a genocidal regime