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Congo (Kinshasa): UN Peacekeeping in Question
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Aug 2, 2010 (100802)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
For more than a year and a half, UN peacekeepers have continuously
supported military operations conducted by the Congolese armed
forces (FARDC) against the Rwandan rebels of the Democratic Forces
for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) in North and South Kivu. This
policy has failed, says International Crisis Group analyst Thierry
Vircoulon. Despite pledges to protect civilians and reduce abuses,
there has in fact been an increase in human rights violations.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains Vircoulon's analysis, published
on July 19 by the International Crisis Group.
For additional background and official reports on the UN
Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of
the Congo (MONUSCO), which until July 1 was the UN Organization
Mission in the Congo (MONUC), see http://monuc.unmissions.org/
Two other AfricaFocus Bulletins released today also relate to the
Democratic Republic of the Congo. One, sent out by e-mail and also
available on the web at http://www.africafocus.org/docs10/lum1007.php, contains several
short articles reporting on new evidence of U.S. complicity in the
assassination of Patrice Lumumba. The other, available at
http://www.africafocus.org/docs10/cgk1007a.php, contains an
analysis of and documentation on the new conflict minerals
legislation passed by the U.S. Congress.
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Congo (Kinshasa), visit
http://www.africafocus.org/country/congokin.php
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After MONUC, should MONUSCO continue to support Congolese military
campaigns?
Thierry Vircoulon | 19 Jul 2010
http://www.crisisgroup.org / direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/392334q
For more than a year and a half, UN peacekeepers have continuously
supported military operations conducted by the Congolese armed
forces (FARDC) against the Rwandan rebels of the Democratic Forces
for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) in North and South Kivu.
Over this period, the FDLR might have lost 40 per cent of their
combatants but have demonstrated resilience in the face of FARDC
offensives using dispersion tactics and forging new alliances with
Congolese armed groups. Today, the FDLR pose the same strategic
threat to regional security as ever.
There is nothing to suggest these military operations have improved
the security of the population. On the contrary, UN specialists,
NGOs and local civil society movements have reported a rise in
human rights violations since the beginning of 2009. With more than
one third of the Congolese army on operation in the Kivu, many
critical reforms have not been implemented.
The UN has already lost much credibility for actively supporting
this controversial military-led approach to solve the long-standing
Kivu conflict, Now that a UN stabilisation mission (MONUSCO) is
replacing the peacekeeping force (MONUC) and Roger Meece is taking
over from MONUC head, Alan Doss, it's a good time to ask should the
UN still support FARDC military campaigns in the Kivu?
Grounds for committing MONUC support to FARDC military campaigns
In January 2009, Alan Doss made the critical decision to closely
associate MONUC with the anti-FDLR military offensives launched by
presidents Kabila and Kagame. There are three main motives behind
this strategic choice:
First, the UN Security Council had previously mandated MONUC to
support the implementation of the November 2007 Nairobi communiqu‚,
a Rwanda-DRC agreement that allows for the use of force to disarm
the FDLR. Powerful members of the Security Council had for a long
time demanded that MONUC participate in decisive military action
against rebel groups. Yet those members were not ready to commit
their own troops for the job.
Second, the former SRSG, Alan Doss, did not want MONUC to be
accused of undermining the historic November 2008 rapprochement
between the DRC and Rwanda, in which he believed anti-FDLR military
campaigns played an important role. Presidents Kabila and Kagame
had indeed celebrated this joint initiative against the FDLR as a
keystone of their new cooperation.
Third, he argued that since military offensives were inevitable,
MONUC's participation in FARDC operations would at least reduce
their negative impact on the population. He expected that in
exchange for UN logistical support the Congolese authorities would
make significant efforts to improve the behaviour of their
soldiers. Also, MONUC involvement would in theory provide
peacekeepers with access to the planning stage of operations,
therefore allowing them to anticipate associated risks for the
population.
Assessment of more than a year and a half of UN-backed military
offensives in the Kivu
Since the first of three consecutive anti-FDLR campaigns - Umoja
Wetu, Kimia II, and Amani Leo - MONUC civilian and military staff
have worked hard to achieve incremental improvements in FARDC
operational effectiveness against the FDLR and in civilian
protection. In both cases, due to a lack of resolute leadership
from the DRC Government, MONUC has failed to secure lasting
progress.
1. No decisive military success
Launched in January 2009 in North Kivu, Operation Umoja Wetu was
spearheaded by Rwandan troops and lasted for only 35 days. It was
quickly followed by Kimia II, a ten month campaign in North and
South Kivu conducted by the FARDC with MONUC logistical support.
The third military operation, Amani Leo ("Peace Now" in Kiswahili),
began in January 2010 and is still ongoing. It puts stronger
emphasis on civilian protection and joint planning, and conditions
UN support on the respect of international law by the eighteen
FARDC battalions involved.
The military-first approach has not delivered any decisive success.
Despite an initial ratio of ten FARDC soldiers deployed for every
FDLR combatant, the Congolese army supported by MONUC has been
unable to eradicate the Rwandan militia, provide security in areas
freed from rebel control or prevent FDLR reprisals against
civilians. The rebel group's strength has decreased from
6,000/6,500 to 3,000/4,000 combatants but its command and control
structure remains almost intact, as does its capacity to abuse
civilians.
The army pushed the FDLR away from some mining sites, but other
armed men replaced them. FDLR combatants have found refuge in
remote areas of the Kivu, and in parts of Maniema and North
Katanga. The FDLR remain a threat to the Congolese population. And
since they are forging alliances with other militias hostile to
Kigali, such as the FPLC of Gabi Ngabo and the FRF of Michel
Rukunda, the FDLR also remain a potential justification for another
Rwandan military intervention on Congolese soil.
Ironically, MONUC leadership has refused to call for these military
operations to stop because all the tactical gains achieved so far
are only temporary. MONUC has argued that calling off the offensive
now would likely trigger the collapse of the January 2009
integration process in which former Congolese rebel groups, such as
the Tutsi-led CNDP, joined the regular army and allow the Rwandan
rebels to regroup and reorganise. Instead, MONUC has encouraged the
FARDC to pursue military offensives, with no end in sight.
2. No security improvement in the Kivu but a culture of impunity
The poor training, lack of discipline and weak operational capacity
of the Congolese soldiers make it very difficult for them to
enforce the disarmament of militias and ensure the protection of
civilians.
With more than 60,000 regular troops spread out in the Kivu in
2010, the over-militarisation of the countryside is causing
insecurity for the villagers. UN specialists now suspect that the
majority of human rights violations are carried out by the FARDC
and demobilised combatants in part because the Congolese government
is not paying all its soldiers nor carrying out a proper
disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) program. Civil
society organisations, like the one from the city of Butembo in
North Kivu as recently as 11 July 2010, are calling for the
demilitarisation of urban areas and the deployment of recently
integrated troops outside the Kivu.
The new emphasis on civilian protection under Amani Leo was
supposed to contribute to improved security. However, in March and
June 2010, the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian
affairs (OCHA) raised the alarm that violence targeting civilians
was on the rise again. Sexual violence in particular is getting out
of control in Eastern Congo. OCHA records 80 attacks against
humanitarian workers mainly in Eastern Congo in the first half of
2010 alone, which in many instances involve FARDC soldiers.
President Kabila's "Zero Tolerance policy" announced on 30 June
2008 has not significantly eroded the culture of impunity or curbed
crime by Congolese security forces in Eastern Congo. In fact, only
a handful of senior FARDC officers have so far been brought to
justice. Several senior rebel officers such as General Bosco
Ntaganda, Colonel Sultani Makenga and Colonel Innocent Zimurinda
were integrated into the FARDC in January 2009 despite past
accusations of war crimes and they are still active in the FARDC in
the Kivu.
Ntaganda is subject of an ICC arrest warrant for crimes committed
in Ituri province between 2000 and 2006. He is also accused of the
murder of humanitarian and MONUC personnel and of involvement in
the massacre of 150 villagers in Kiwanja in November 2008. UN
experts suspect Makenga of involvement in several massacres carried
out since 2003, including the Buramba massacre of March 2007 for
which his responsibility was demonstrated in a judicial report by
Congolese magistrates. UN experts also reported in November 2009
that Zimurinda was responsible for a massacre in Shalio in April
2009, which left more than 120 Hutu Rwandan refugees dead.
The Congolese authorities have spared Ntaganda, Makenga and
Zimurinda on the grounds that their arrest would prompt the CNDP to
withdraw from the FARDC. President Kabila told the New York Times
in May 2009 it was necessary to be realistic and pragmatic about
the issue of Ntaganda and that peace was his first priority. He
delivered the same message to the ICC prosecutor, Mr Ocampo, when
they met in 2009.
3. UN embarrassment and contradictions
Despite providing food rations, fuel, transport and occasionally
medical evacuations for Congolese soldiers, the level of planning
and coordination between the peacekeeping mission and the FARDC was
never satisfactory under Kimia II. Today, despite Amani Leo's
provisions, joint planning between Congolese commanders, MONUC and
UN civilian specialists is irregular. Among MONUC's senior staff,
some dissenting voices have raised the alarm that UN support to the
FARDC has not increased MONUC's influence over the conduct of
operations and that it has played a marginal role in limiting FARDC
abuses against civilians.
During 2009, MONUC came under heavy criticisms from international
and local NGOs for failing to protect civilians. As a result, in
late 2009, the UN office of legal affairs in New York drafted a
memo that stated MONUC could be held responsible for the violations
of international law committed by FARDC troops receiving its
assistance. The UN legal experts asked for a review of the
parameters of MONUC support and for a conditionality policy to be
associated with Amani Leo in 2010.
MONUC leadership was concerned that if too many strings were
attached to UN support then the Congolese military would sideline
the UN mission and execute operations on their own. MONUC and
Kinshasa finally agreed on a policy of conditional support after
drawn out negotiations. The DRC government refused initial UN
proposals to link support to a substantial security sector reform
at the scale of the Kivu. And now the Congolese authorities either
ignore or circumvent most of the other provisions put forward by
MONUC aimed at instilling discipline and integrity into the FARDC.
The imperfect policy finally agreed on, far from significantly
reducing the occurrence of FARDC crimes, serves the more limited
purpose of shielding the UN mission from accusations of complicity
in war crimes.
MONUC's support to the FARDC causes yet another dilemma. Since
resolution 1856 of December 2008, the UN Security Council has given
MONUC the mandate to ensure the protection of civilians under
imminent threat of physical violence "emanating from any of the
parties engaged in the conflict". With this instruction, UN
peacekeepers are required to defend civilians even from abuses
committed by FARDC elements. However, despite Congolese soldiers'
actions that could qualify as war crimes in areas monitored by
MONUC, UN troops have never used force to prevent FARDC rogue
elements from committing crimes.
What went wrong?
1 High levels of corruption and lack of discipline in the
Congolese army
Since the Sun City agreement that ended the second Congolese war
(1998-2003), the national army, which had already been pulled
together from former warring factions, has continued to integrate
former militia members into its ranks. In January 2009, in only two
weeks more than 17,500 rebel combatants from Mayi-Mayi groups and
CNDP ranks were chaotically turned into FARDC soldiers. .
The new soldiers get paid as irregularly as the rest of the army.
Following old patterns, they continue to prey on civilians to
survive while their commanders engage in illegal activities,
especially the exploitation of natural resources. In November 2009,
a UN group of experts revealed that MONUC-backed Kimia II had
shifted the control of almost all mining sites in the Kivu from
FDLR and Mayi-Mayi groups to FARDC units. As a result, the
anti-FDLR campaigns have turned into business opportunities for
FARDC officers. Many new houses and petrol stations in Goma, the
capital of North Kivu, belong to army commanders or front men.
Among other signs, this demonstrates that military operations have
benefitted corrupt officers who take advantage of poor governance
in the Congolese armed forces.
Amani Leo's policy requires MONUC to give support only if the
operations are jointly planned with and executed by FARDC
battalions that have not committed abuses against civilians. In
January 2009, when the CNDP integrated its 6,000 combatants into
the FARDC, the chain of command that linked its officers was not
effectively dismantled and the ex-CNDP commanders are now the
driving force behind anti-FDLR offensives. To avoid putting at risk
the integration of the CNDP, Kinshasa has resisted any calls for a
comprehensive vetting process that would could lead to taking
action against ex-CNDP figures.
2. Getting around the conditionality policy is easy
The FARDC have interpreted Amani Leo's conditionality policy in a
way that does not oblige them to vet officers involved in
operations if their rank is higher than battalion commander. With
this approach, senior FARDC officers suspected of war crimes can
still participate in Amani Leo without forcing MONUC to withdraw
its support. An official FARDC document sent to MONUC presented
Amani Leo's order of battle in North Kivu as of 5 April 2010. In it
Zimurinda is still mentioned as 23rd Sector Commander and Colonel
Albert "Foca Mike" Kahasha is also mentioned as 12th Sector
Commander despite having been in charge of the area of Lukweti in
the summer 2009, where the FARDC killed at least 62 civilians.
As suspicions of human rights violations involving Amani
Leo-associated FARDC commanders continue to emerge, MONUC's
decision-making process regarding conditions has become even more
opaque. During Kimia II, MONUC was forced to withdraw its support
for the FARDC's 213th Brigade that carried out the Lukweti
massacre. Seven months into Amani Leo, the UN has not withdrawn
support from any other Congolese unit. In a damning report
presented to the UN Human Rights Council in June 2010, the UN
Special Envoy on extrajudicial executions, Philip Alston,
recommended that MONUC's conditionality policy should be made
public and that the peacekeeping mission should strictly adhere to
it.
Another way for the FARDC to circumvent the conditions imposed by
the UN is to give up on MONUC support altogether. President
Kabila's insistent demand for the UN mission to withdraw blue
helmets from the Congo before the end of 2011 demonstrates that he
has not valued MONUC support to military operations as much as
MONUC hoped. The FARDC has conducted most recent military
offensives against the FDLR in a unilateral manner parallel to
Amani Leo. On 25 June, Kinshasa decided to open a new front in
launching operation "Rwenzori" against the ADF-Nalu, a Ugandan
rebel group located in the Northern part of North Kivu. For this
new campaign, Kinshasa did not bother to insist on MONUC support.
The leverage that MONUC leadership expected to derive from its
support to anti-FDLR operations has evidently proved slim.
Conclusion
More than a year and a half into a controversial policy of UN
support for FARDC's military offensives, MONUSCO should heed four
lessons before deciding whether or not to continue MONUC's
approach:
1, Even if the number of FDLR combatants continues to decrease, the
rebel group will remain a major strategic obstacle to peace and
security in the Kivu:
The FDLR's retaliations against civilians that followed the
military offensives demonstrate the group does not hesitate to
target civilians when cornered. The FDLR today have ten times more
combatants than the Lord Resistance Army, another dreadful foreign
armed group successfully challenging the FARDC in Eastern Congo. As
the current approach of military attrition is not solving the
problem, MONUSCO and the governments of the DRC and Rwanda should
implement a comprehensive strategy, including negotiations with
some non-genocidaire rebels, as detailed in Congo: A Comprehensive
Strategy to Disarm the FDLR, Crisis Group Africa Report N 151, 9
July 2009.
2. UN support for the DRC's military approach has diverted
attention away from much needed reforms:
Since the 2006 general elections, the government in Kinshasa has
overly relied on the FARDC to suppress local rebellions and provide
security for the regime instead of undertaking concerted political
efforts and governance reforms to more sustainably address the
problems in the East. The international approach to SSR remains
sketchy. International partners have not opposed Kinshasa's
practice of promoting bilateral cooperation to train and equip
specific battalions. Congolese political authorities have
circumvented any attempt to significantly improve multilateral
coordination of SSR and are carefully avoiding international
engagement on this sensitive issue. As the FARDC's infamous record
in the Kivu demonstrates, no real reform of army governance is
under way.
3. The UN mission and other international actors take legal risks
and put their reputation on the line when they get involved in
training or supporting Congolese security forces:
Congolese authorities have successfully deflected international
calls to stop impunity and adopt a strict vetting policy for those
who integrate into the FARDC. Under such circumstances, a candid
collaboration between foreign military personnel and Congolese
soldiers is inconceivable. As the Congolese police are suspected of
involvement in the murder of the human rights activist Floribert
Chebeya on 2 June 2010, any kind of security cooperation with the
government is questionable. International actors should be wary of
collaborating with a government that shows increasing signs of
political repression, in a time when the country is approaching
landmark elections in 2011.
4. The UN mission runs the risk of partiality:
Rebel armed groups are commonly organised along ethnic lines. The
influence of the Tutsi-based CNDP on the FARDC is increasingly
resented by other local communities, particularly those which
oppose the CNDP's preparations for the return of their fellow Tutsi
refugees from Rwanda and Uganda. Consequently, Congolese armed
groups and the FDLR are allegedly forging new alliances to defend
the interests of particular communities. As a result of
international support for the FARDC, and thus for the CNDP, the UN
mission and other international actors risk being accused of
partiality and losing credibility among the Kivu's different rebel
groups and civilians.
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