U.N. Stretched Thin in Congo

As soon as she heard the popping of gunfire, Kavira Mwengeshal grabbed her seven children and fled to the forest, escaping moments before anti-government militiamen sealed off this remote fishing village.

She and thousands of other terrified residents prayed for nearby United Nations troops to rescue them, but a company of Congolese government soldiers responded first to the Mai-Mai rebel attack in July. During the ensuing four-day battle, more than 120 civilians were shot by fighters from both sides and 150 huts were torched, witnesses said.

As residents staggered back to bury the dead and pick through the ashes of their homes, the Congolese soldiers, who receive little or no salary, looted what was left, carting away mattresses, shoes and food.

“They left nothing,” Mwengeshal said.

It was a week before U.N. peacekeepers from a camp about 35 miles away arrived, offering food and water. “Those people are useless,” snapped Father Raphael Mandolesi, a priest at a nearby church.

Two years after the U.N. substantially boosted its contingent of troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo and authorized soldiers to use deadly force to restore order, the largest, most expensive peacekeeping mission in the world is facing harsh reviews from those it is charged to protect.

With about 16,000 soldiers and a $1-billion-plus annual budget, the U.N. mission in Congo, a country roughly the size of Western Europe, is finding itself stretched thin.

For nearly a decade, the African nation, formerly known as Zaire, has been torn by violence. First came a civil war, then a regional conflict involving most neighboring countries, and now half a dozen ethnic-based militia groups continue to challenge the government’s authority in the mineral-rich northeast.

Though most of the key cities in the northeastern region are controlled by U.N. or Congolese troops, outlying towns and villages remain dominated by the rebels, some of whom get arms and support from neighboring Uganda and Rwanda.

“It’s safe right here,” said Rita Malose, 38, of Bunia, near the Ugandan border. “But if you walked two kilometers [less than a mile and a half] away from the city, you would not return.”

National elections, originally scheduled for June, have been postponed until next year, partly because of security problems. Hundreds of thousands of Congolese live in refugee camps. Humanitarian groups estimate that 1,000 people die each day from hunger, disease and other causes related to the nation’s instability.

Maj. Gen. Patrick Cammaert, commander of U.N. troops in northeastern Congo and former military advisor to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said his soldiers were doing the best they could with limited resources and a sometimes ambiguous mandate that curbed their ability to attack the rebels.

“Peacekeeping is an art,” said the Dutch general, who commanded U.N. troops in Ethiopia and Eritrea. “It’s harder than fighting a war.... Sometimes I feel that my hands are bound behind my back and I’m dragging a ball and chain from my leg.”

Arriving in February to command about 15,000 troops in the northeast, Cammaert has won praise for energizing the military effort in Bunia, a former tinderbox city.

Atrocities in the area are down, according to a human rights group. Moreover, under a disarmament program, about 15,000 rebel militiamen have agreed to turn in their guns for $100 payments.

Standing in line recently at a voter registration center for what would be the first democratic election since 1965, one former militia fighter praised the progress.

“If the U.N. weren’t here, we wouldn’t be able to come here and register,” said Balija Chuvi, now a taxi driver.

But Cammaert worries that his force is too small. He has about 4,700 troops in the Ituri region, which is about the same area as the African nation of Sierra Leone, where 17,000 U.N. soldiers assist in carrying out a peace accord.

Another 4,700 U.N. troops are stationed in North Kivu province, but they are outnumbered by an estimated 15,000 fighters in the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda, or FDLR, one of the largest armed rebel groups still opposing U.N. troops and government soldiers. The militia was founded by Hutu rebels who were driven out of Rwanda after leading the 1994 genocide there.

The militiamen who remain are viewed as die-hard fighters, and they are responding to the U.N. crackdown with tougher tactics, usually striking against civilians. In July, 39 villagers outside Bukavu in South Kivu province were burned to death in their huts by militiamen who reportedly taunted victims for cooperating with U.N. troops.

Northeastern Congo has long been plagued by violence. It was here that Laurent Kabila launched a rebellion that overthrew strongman Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997.

The lucrative area was occupied during the 1998-2002 war that pitted Congo, backed by Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, against the armies of Rwanda and Uganda. That conflict, which led to the deaths of an estimated 4 million people, was called Africa’s “world war.”

A transitional government took control in 2003, led by Joseph Kabila, son of Laurent, who had been assassinated by a bodyguard in 2001. But rebels who were not included in the new government have continued to take advantage of the rugged mountain ranges, jungles and vast lakes of the five nations whose unprotected borders converge in the area.

The governments of Uganda and Rwanda accuse U.N. and Congolese troops of failing to control the region, and have threatened an invasion to pursue rebel groups that occasionally launch attacks across their borders. But the two nations also are blamed for backing proxy militias inside Congo.

Criticism of the U.N. peacekeeping mission, which was launched in 1999, rose last year when dissident Congolese soldiers seized Bukavu and U.N. troops did nothing to stop them. The dissidents retreated under international pressure, but hundreds of residents were killed and 30,000 fled. The failure of the peacekeepers to react stirred memories of U.N. inaction in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, when more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred by Hutu mobs.

“They spent a long time doing not very much of anything,” said Jim Terrie, senior military analyst who focuses on Central Africa for the International Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution advocacy organization.

By late 2004, northeastern Congo appeared once again to be on the verge of war. Violence against citizens was rampant. Then, in February, nine U.N. peacekeepers were killed in an ambush near the town of Kafe.

About the same time, U.N. officials revealed that several dozen peacekeepers were under investigation in the sexual abuse or rape of Congolese girls as young as 13. Seven soldiers have been disciplined or sent home. In late July, six Nepalese troops were court-martialed and sentenced to three-month jail terms.

Since spring, U.N. forces have attempted to regroup, adopting a more aggressive military approach and pledging to eliminate sexual misconduct.

Although U.N. troops were authorized to use “all necessary means” against militias in July 2003, Cammaert said, soldiers only recently began to take full advantage of the U.N. mandate, known as a “Chapter VII.” The rules do not permit the peacekeepers to fire at will, but U.N. commanders are increasingly chasing and confronting the militias, and once U.N. troops are fired on, they are permitted to shoot back.

United Nations forces have launched several dozen major operations this year. An estimated 1,500 militia fighters have been killed in the region, said Brig. Gen. Deo Bahadur Ghale, who leads the U.N. peacekeeping brigade in Ituri.

Over time, U.N. officials hope that government forces will take over the northeast.

But most Congolese troops are recently converted militia fighters who were folded into the army. Equipped with rusting rifles and frayed uniforms, the soldiers are often more feared by civilians than are the rebels.

A recent Human Rights Watch report found that factions of the army attacked one another in December in North Kivu, with soldiers killing at least 100 civilians and raping scores of women during the battle.

Dominique McAdams, the head of the U.N. in Bunia, worries that violence will worsen, but she said the solution would come through diplomacy. U.N. troops can’t force a peace, she said.

“This is a political mission, not a military mission,” McAdams said. “When you are faced with this level of violence in a country, something is deeply broken in the social fabric. You can’t address it through military [means].”