The Guardian November 03, 2008
Britain considers Congo troop deployment to quell fighting
AS part of a possible European Union (EU) force to quell fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has said his country could send troops to there.
The comment came as a 12-vehicle United Nations (UN) aid convoy set off Monday to go behind rebel lines in eastern Congo, carrying medical supplies for clinics looted by retreating government troops. It was the first humanitarian aid delivery behind rebel lines since fighting broke out in August.
UN peacekeepers escorted the trucks from the provincial capital of Goma, and both the Congolese army and the rebel leader assured the convoy's safe passage, said Gloria Fernandez, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in eastern Congo.
She said medical supplies and tablets to purify water were the priority in this shipment. Another convoy today would be bringing food for some of the 250,000 refugees displaced by fighting in this central African nation, she said.
Miliband visited Congo over the weekend with French counterpart Bernard Kouchner after the recent dramatic escalation of eastern Congo's civil war, which is based on ethnic grievances.
"We have not ruled anything out. It is possible," he told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) yesterday, adding that the head of the 17,000-strong UN peacekeeping force had arrived in the country to assess the situation.
"It is right to see this through the UN perspective," Miliband said.
Miliband said a political settlement was needed to maintain a fragile cease-fire, but that aid convoys should have protection.
The lawmaker was speaking as thousands of people who fled the fighting in Congo continued to cross back into rebel-held territory because they say conditions at refugee camps are intolerable.
With no food, water or sanitation in the camps, people have decided that it is worth the risk to return to their homes, even though rebels killed and raped many people just last week, residents told ITN's Jonathan Miller, who is near the city of Goma.
Many of their villages have been looted and emptied of people by the rebels, they said.
Roads were filled with people returning to rebel-held territory, carrying their belongings on their heads or on their backs.
However, others, fearful of fresh violence, continued to leave their homes, overwhelming aid centers.
On Saturday, aid groups delivered food and water to a refugee camp north of Goma, traveling through a narrow "humanitarian corridor" the rebels established following a cease-fire with government forces that the rebels announced on Wednesday last week.
Western diplomats shuttled between Goma -- the scene of some of the worst fighting -- and Kigali, in neighbouring Rwanda, to meet with leaders in order to get a peace process back on track.
The cease-fire seemed to be holding on Sunday, but both sides appeared to be massing troops near the cease-fire line.
Government soldiers flew in from the capital Kinshasa and deployed in the jungle, and rebels were out in force on their side of the line.
ITN reporter Miller heard intermittent firing from the hills that mark the line where the two sides face off only a few hundred yards apart. A small contingent of United Nations troops in the area donned flak jackets and helmets in response.
Miller said it was not clear if the two sides were firing at each other.
The latest fighting broke out on October 24 when Congolese rebels led by renegade Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda launched renewed attacks in the eastern province of North Kivu.
The fighting between Nkunda's rebels and Congolese army regulars displaced thousands of civilians almost immediately, the United Nations said.
Many of the displaced fled to Goma, the capital of North Kivu, which borders Rwanda and Uganda.
Nkunda is the leader of the National Congress for the Defense of the People. His rebel forces declared a cease-fire late Wednesday after four days of fighting.
Over the weekend British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the international community cannot allow Congo to become "another Rwanda," where 800,000 died during a 1994 genocide.
The fighting is based on ethnic grievances.
Nkunda says he is fighting to protect his Tutsi community from attacks by Rwandan Hutu rebels.
During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the country's Hutu majority killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, according to the United Nations.
When Tutsis came to power in Rwanda, many Hutus crossed the border into Congo. They were afraid to return home, fearing they would be targeted for revenge by Tutsis, so they remained in the jungles of eastern Congo, where they preyed on local residents.
In May 2005, it was reported that Rwandan Hutu rebels in eastern Congo carried out hundreds of summary executions, rapes, beatings and kidnappings of Congolese civilians in the province of South Kivu, according to GlobalSecurity.org.
Nkunda, a Tutsi, has repeatedly blamed the Congolese government for failing to protect the Tutsis from attacks by Rwandan Hutus.
"Everybody is hungry, everybody," said Jean Bizy, 25, a teacher.
Rebels were allowing farmers to reach Goma, the provincial capital, in trucks packed with cabbages, onions and spinach. And an Associated Press (AP) reporter saw the UN convoy stop to deliver a sack of potatoes to UN troops in Rugari.
Bizy, who watched as the UN troops collected their food, said he has been surviving on wild bananas for days.
Nkunda went on the offensive August 28 and brought his fighters to the edge of Goma last week before declaring a unilateral cease-fire.
The conflict is fueled by festering ethnic hatred left over from Rwanda's 1994 genocide and Congo's civil wars from 1996-2002. Nkunda claims the Congolese government has not protected ethnic Tutsis from the Rwandan Hutu militia that escaped to Congo after helping to slaughter half a million Rwandan Tutsis.
All sides are believed to fund fighters by illegally mining Congo's vast mineral riches, giving them no financial interest in stopping the fighting.
Tens of thousands of people in Kibati have received little food aid since they fled their homes a week ago. Fernandez said families here have been forced to move four or five times in the past 10 days.
"They go around in circles ... fleeing the movement of troops and the lines of combat," she said.
Since Thursday, the day after the cease-fire, streams of refugees have thronged the roads around Goma trying to get home, lugging babies and bundles of belongings, and guiding children, pigs and goats.
The aid convoy yesterday headed past Kibati to Rutshuru, a village 55 miles (88 kilometers) north of Goma. On its way, it drove past the body of a dead soldier that has been in the middle of the road for days.
The priority is to take pressure of Rutshuru hospital, the only operating medical facility in a region of hundreds of thousands of people, Fernandez said.
She said clinics there have been "looted and completely destroyed."
Nkunda began a low-level insurgency in 2004, claiming Congo's transition to democracy had excluded the Tutsi ethnic group. Despite agreeing in January to a UN-brokered cease-fire, he resumed fighting in August.
Nkunda wants direct talks with the government. He has especially complained about a $9 billion agreement in which China gets access to Congo's valuable minerals in return for building a highway and railroad.
Nkunda's rebellion has threatened to re-ignite the back-to-back wars that afflicted Congo from 1996 to 2002, drawing in a half dozen African nations. Congo President Joseph Kabila, elected in 2006 in Congo's first election in 40 years, has struggled to contain the violence in the east.
Congo has charged Nkunda with involvement in war crimes, and Human Rights Watch says it has documented summary executions, torture and rape committed by soldiers under Nkunda's command in 2002 and 2004.
Yet rights groups have also accused government forces of atrocities and widespread looting.
The UN peacekeeping mission in Congo is its largest in the world, yet only 6,000 peacekeepers of the 17,000-strong UN mission in Congo are in the east because of unrest in other provinces.
© Copyright 2008, Guardian Newspapers Limited
