Editor,The reality is that the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo lacks a clear mandate. Originally, the mission was set up to eradicate the FDLR and other armed groups in the DRC. The UN, seemingly by some kind of morphosis, changed its forces’ mandate to propping up the Kinshasa government and protecting the civilian population from those same groups. But in the end, it has failed miserably in discharging of one or the other and seems only interested in self-perpetuation, even if it has to manufacture a purpose. It has become just another armed group among many, the largest and the most heavily armed, but arguably also the least capable of all the armed groups in that country. The sooner it leaves the better.And the last thing the DRC needs is this mastodon of an ineffectual UN army that now serves simply as a testament to the UN’s long history of failure on the African continent and the Great Lakes region in particular.Mwene Kalinda(Response to the article, ‘Defining Peacekeeping Downward: The U.N. Debacle in Eastern Congo’, The New Times, November, 28)
