Monuc support to fdrl should not surprise anyone

It has been reported that the United Nations in Congo (MONUC by its French acronym) has been “conniving and facilitating” the Interahamwe genocidal forces in the DR Congo the very criminals they are supposed to disarm and repatriate to their country of origin, Rwanda. It has been reported that the single most cause of insecurity in the DR Congo are the genocide criminals who killed people in Rwanda and have wrecking havoc in there by, abducting civilians, pillaging, looting, raping, carrying out massacres of local people and illegally mining and dealing in minerals. Those who know a thing about UN intervention in Congo will not be surprised. The history of UN in Congo and the great lakes as a whole has been that of shame, shame and more shame for the international body. Consider the following news reports. In 2005, the Pakistani MONUC peacekeepers in Mongbwalu entered in a trading relationship for gold with Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI) militia leaders, eventually drawing Congolese army officers and Indian traders from Kenya into the deal. (Pakistanis have the second largest presence in DRC with 3,551 peace keepers and 46 military observers). A French U.N. logistics expert in the Congo shot pornographic videos in his home, in which he had converted his bedroom into a photo studio for videotaping his sexual abuse of young girls. When police raided his home, the man was allegedly about to rape a 12-year-old girl sent to him in a law enforcement sting operation. As the Times reported, a senior Congolese police officer confirmed the bed was surrounded by large mirrors on three sides, with a remote control camera on the fourth side. U.N. officials are worried that the scandal, which already has netted 150 allegations of sex crimes by U.N. staffers, will explode if the pornographic videos and photos, now on sale in Congo, becoming public. “It would be a pretty big problem for the U.N. if these pictures come out,” one senior official told the London Times. U.N. “peacekeepers” from Morocco based in Kisangani – a secluded town on the Congo River – are notorious for impregnating local women and girls. In March, an international group probing the scandal found 82 women and girls had been made pregnant by Moroccan U.N. staffers and 59 others by Uruguayan staffers. One U.N. soldier accused of rape was apparently hidden in the barracks for a year And at least two U.N. officials – a Ukrainian and a Canadian – have been forced to leave the African nation after getting local women pregnant. Most of the sexual abuse and exploitation, says the report, involves trading sex for money, food or jobs. However, some victims say they were raped, but later given food or money to make the incident appear to have been consensual – “rape disguised as prostitution.” An Internet paedophile ring run from Congo by Didier Bourguet, a senior U.N. official from France; a colonel from South Africa accused of molesting his teenage male translators; and estimates of hundreds of underage girls having babies fathered by U.N. soldiers who have been able to simply leave their children and their crimes behind. Two Russian pilots paid young girls with jars of mayonnaise and jam to have sex with them, the report adds. In 2008 Indian UN Peacekeepers were reported to have used a UN helicopter to fly into Virunga National Park to swap ammunition for ivory with rebels; fraternized with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and refused to seize their weapons; exchanged UN rations for dollars and gold; bought marijuana from the FDLR; failed to support FDLR disarmament; arrested an FDLR rebel after he had supplied counterfeit gold to the them, and abused him until the money was returned. The UN peacekeeping mission in Congo, MONUC, has backed the Congolese army in the Kimia II operation since March, following a joint Rwandan and Congolese military operation against the FDLR militias, some of whose leaders participated in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. According to UN statistics, 1,071 FDLR combatants have given up their arms and been repatriated to Rwanda since January. The group’s estimated strength before military operations began was 6,000 to 7,000 combatants. By 2009, MONUC consisted of 16,475 uniformed troops. On October 28, 2008, CNDP rebels under Gen. Laurent Nkunda and combined government-MONUC troops battled between the Kibumba refugee camp and Rutshuru. Later MONUC troops in their Armoured Personnel Carriers and tanks fled to Goma and onwards to Gisenyi in Rwanda abandoning civilians and displaced people who pelted them with stones in anger. Fiascos in secessionist Katanga and Kasai provinces like Operation Rumpunch, Operation Morthor , Operation Unokat and others should have been lessons to MONUC. What may not be clear is willingness and determination of those who are involved in the operations of MONUC to end the DR Congo conflict and whether it is in their interest to see those Military Observers cum tourists return to their countries. One should forgiven for thinking that it serves some powers in the UN and MONUC to prolong the misery of Congolese. Email: ekaba2002@yahoo.com