The UN envoy to the Democratic Republic of Congo says a joint military operation against rebels will be concluded at the end of this month.

Alan Doss told the UN Security Council that the campaign in the east of the country had "largely achieved" its goal of weakening the Rwandan Hutu rebels.

The operation was criticised by rights groups, who accuse Congolese government troops of killing and raping civilians. UN experts had said the campaign failed to dismantle militia infrastructure.

But Mr Doss declared that had not been the objective, as the rebel group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), is deeply entrenched in eastern Congo. He did acknowledge there was a dilemma at the heart of the peacekeeping mandate to both protect civilians and work with an undisciplined Congolese army.

Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch said the offensive had seen 1,400 civilians murdered this year by both Congolese troops and rebels.
 
New mandate
Mr Doss told the Security Council that Congolese troops backed by the UN force "will now concentrate on holding ground recovered from the FDLR and preventing attacks on civilians in areas of vulnerability".

The FDLR has been active in eastern Congo for 15 years. Some of its older members are accused of taking part in the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda, which targeted the Tutsi minority and claimed about 800,000 lives.

Mr Doss said during the first half of next year UN officials would propose a realistic plan for reconfiguring the 21,000-strong peacekeeping force in Congo, known as Monuc, which has been deployed in the country for the past 10 years.

Diplomats say a draft resolution submitted to the Security Council would extend the peacekeepers mandate by five months.

At that point, the idea would be to begin phasing them out of combat and into a programme to reform the army and police forces, says the BBC's Barbara Plett at the United Nations in New York.

I just heard on BBC that the UN will be sending an additional 3000 troops to DR Congo to try to stem the violence in the east.  But I don't know if it will do much good if the mandate itself is not upgraded from peacekeeping...

There was recently a piece on NPR about the conflict.  You can listen here.

I should also say that I think Nkunda's ceasefires mean nothing.  [Oh wait!  It's official!]  And BBC is now reporting that Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria's former president), serving as a special UN envoy to the area, has spoken to Laurent Nkunda and thinks he's a reasonable man.  There is a photo floating around out there of Nkunda hugging a kid.  Wow.  

This conflict runs so deep that no former Nigerian president and no amount of photos of kids could possibly solve it.  I don't know what will solve it.  How do societies that have suffered civil war come out of it?  And what happens to that generation that was born into it?

Laurent Nkunda has guaranteed a humanitarian corridor so the UN can reach Rutshuru ... for now.  But I can't believe that this will hold for long.  

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has called for the mandate of UN forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo to be strengthened.

I don't know what will come of this.  I am extremely apprehensive because, first of all, for all the talk about ceasefires, there has only been relative calm in eastern DRC since 1998.  Not actual calm. They say the war ended in 2003 but it never did.  When was the last time a family could see a growing season through to harvest without worrying about pillage and abandoning it plus their seed stores to run and hide in the forest?

But secondly, the UN mission in the 1960s did not leave with such a great reputation.  If the MONUC compound has been attacked recently by Congolese citizens, that shows you what kind of trust they have in the organization now.

In the end, it is the lack of DR Congo government leadership and will to enforce laws already on the books and will to organize to pay the troops that are already employed but extorting from villagers due to lack of pay (and now probably due to habit), in addition to MONUC not having mandate that permits offensive actions, that encourage Nkunda to gain headway.

If ever a government did not care about its people, this is it.  Joseph Kabila, I hope all the wealth that you have reaped has been worth it to you.  You could effect change and you have chosen to sit by and watch the death of your brothers and sisters instead.

I'm worried because two of my friends recently moved to Goma with the UN and I had heard in September that one of the reasons I was given a hard time by the presidential guards in Kinshasa was that the government believes the UN mission, MONUC, to be protecting one of the routes in the east along which Laurent Nkunda is attempting to advance.
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There have been allegations in the past of UN peacekeepers sexually assaulting civilians, and it's in the news again.  I'm sure we'll hear more about this in the future.  It's happened in other countries, and the mission in DRC continues its mandate, so I don't think these accusations are over.

Also, IRIN has an analysis of the progress toward peace in the Kivus, and the International Crisis Group has a new report out entitled Congo: Four Priorities for Sustainable Peace in Ituri.  For a taste of the report, check out these recommendations from the executive summary to the gov't of DRC and to MONUC (another fourteen to other parties can be found at the site, full report in French):

RECOMMENDATIONS

Completing the disarmament process and restoring state authority

To the Government of the Democratic Republic of Congo:

1.  Concentrate the deployment of FARDC in the strongholds of the Front for National Integration (FNI) and the Patriotic Force of Resistance in Ituri (FRPI) militias and systematically replace it in the rest of the district with national police force officers including residents of Ituri.

2.  Order the military prosecutor to initiate official investigations into the alleged complicity of FARDC officers in the illegal exploitation of natural resources and mining in Ituri.

3.  Initiate a disciplinary investigation into Governor Médard Autsai’s administration of Province Orientale.

To the UN Mission in Congo (MONUC):

4.  Increase tactical and operational support to FARDC in order to facilitate the encirclement of the FRPI militia, limit its capacity for movement and restrict its access to external support.

5.  Create a civilian-military task force, mandated to implement an integrated strategy for finalising the disarmament of the FNI and FRPI militias that combines sensitisation and pressure and enjoys the backing of local community leaders.

According to some people that I met yesterday, Joseph Kabila (President) and Jean-Pierre Bemba (ex-vice president in the former transition government) are both in New York right now, but not sharing a room.  Bemba will supposedly be coming back to DR Congo directly after this meeting because if he doesn't, he will lose not only his position in the Senate (he hasn't lost it already?) but also his immunity for crimes perpetrated in the name of (???).  He has been in exile in Portugal for the past five months, ostensibly for medical care for his leg, although he owns a villa there and his entire family went with him.

I arrived in Johannesburg to someone informing me that there had been a UN workers strike initiated in Kinshasa (see full text below), apparently while I was in transit.  I found this hard to believe, since many people I know would love to be in the UN system.  Despite its monstrous bureaucracy and frustrations due to slow action, and restrictions on those actions, hey - it pays well.

Well.  I ought to qualify that.  The UN missions pay well those who leave their home countries to work for the UN in other countries.  Normally, international staffers of most any ilk are paid well.  They want to travel, generally speaking, and it is accepted that they have some kind of technical ability not to be found amongst the local population, whether or not this assumption is true.  But international workers tend to want working conditions that emulate (or improve upon) those of their home country, and when you send someone overseas as an employer, you are transferring an entire life and home and possibly family.  All of which costs money.

Kinshasa is a special place.  International cuisine is available, and your favorite meats and cheeses can be found at the grocery, freshly imported from Belgium.  Even fish that you may assume came from the river is actually imported frozen from South Africa.  Rents are high in Gombe, the central business district, because people with money come to live there and will pay the high rents - and landlords oblige. 

Often prices in Kinshasa seem to fluctuate along with the saturation of UN staff based there.  Rents have been increasing and so has the price of a pack of cigarettes on the street over the years and with augmentation in the level of UN staff, now numbering 19,000.

I do not know what the current UN per diem is, but UN workers, along with any other benefits that they may receive outside salary (shipping costs, vehicle use, housing subsidy (?), home leave, R&R), they receive $100 (or more?) a day.

Therefore I find it disgustingly ingenuous  for MONUC's administration to be citing budget constraints.  You don't think it would be possible to skim a bit off the top of those per diems, which, despite the imported groceries and restaurant food, are virtually impossible to spend, to help the person driving and the person cleaning the toilets?  Trust me, if they don't show up to work, you will notice!


Note that in this version of the article, the budget constraint reference was removed.  This article (all three marked AFP, by the way) provided some quotes from the day laborers in question:

"We’re protesting because for more than five years, there has been no review of our wages, nor raise in our pay, though it should be revised every year," a chauffeur, who gave his name as Pierre, 55, said.

....

"If there’s an accident on the job, we’re not covered. We get no assistance. Should we get pregnant, we’re sacked without explanation," said 31-year-old Irene, who has cleaned toilets as a daily employee for three years.

I just heard the tail end of this story on BBC News so I went to the website to follow up.

After all the problems that eastern Congo has had, after the world has finally acknowledged the problems and the need for some intervention, after a UN peacekeeping mission was sent to bring stability to the country, after all the efforts toward delivering the country from violence, this.

Apparently Pakistani peacekeeping troops were trading arms to rebel militias that they were supposed to disarm in exchange for gold.

And when William Swing, the head of the UN mission in Congo, was confronted with the facts, he denied that UN troops had been rearming militia.  Of course it is political - he doesn't want to lose Pakistan's substantial contribution to the mission.

But I am sorry, I can't see how REARMING helps establish stability.  You might as well save the millions of dollars and send everyone home. There are some actions whose ends do not justify the means.  What if the Pakistani faction had been found guilty of sexually abusing women and girls in refugee camps as other UN troops have been found guilty  in the past?  Would we say that tacit permission to coerce women and minors is justifiable as long as the mission to promote peace in maintained in the east?  NO.  OF COURSE NOT.

Perhaps other non-harmful transgressions could be overlooked, but please - this is bordering on the ridiculous.