Howard Barrell
A Security Council resolution has given South Africa a brief respite from having to make good its various undertakings to provide military support personnel – and perhaps combat troops as well – for the United Nations peace support mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The council has decided to suspend any further deployments under the mission, known as Monuc II, until it is satisfied that Rwandan and Ugandan troops, who engaged each other in fierce battles in and around the Congo city of Kisangani in May and earlier this month have, in fact, stopped fighting.
Meeting in New York on June 16, the council asked Secretary General Kofi Annan to “keep under review” arrangements to deploy Monuc II personnel. The delay is likely to last at least a few more weeks.
South Africa has formally and officially offered to provide 165 military personnel, including headquarters staff and a variety of specialists.
The status of South Africa’s undertakings to provide combat troops to Monuc II remains unclear. If sent, South African troops would form part of a contingent of about 5E500 UN blue berets whose primary task would be to defend the 500-odd UN military observers monitoring the peace. But, according to military specialists, the troops would also have peace enforcement powers.
Amid considerable concern that South Africa might be sucked into a complex conflict it would be wiser to avoid, the government has been equivocating over whether or not it will send combat troops. Some government sources suggest South Africa is willing to risk one batallion group – about 1E000 men – to Kisangani. But foreign press reports have quoted diplomatic sources suggesting South Africa is willing to send three times that number.
Military specialists suggest South Africa was “bounced” into promising combat troops for Monuc II when, at a summit of African leaders in Algiers at the end of April, Nigeria offered to provide troops for the mission. As the leading power in the Southern African Development Community, South Africa could not allow itself to be upstaged by an out-of-region power like Nigeria.
If South Africa does provide combat troops, this will represent a dramatic shift from the original South African plan to secure peace in Congo. That plan, initially presented to some African leaders in December 1998, envisaged the various combatants in Congo agreeing themselves to police a peace between them.
These military specialists say South African and any other troops in Monuc II, who are all likely to be from developing countries, will not have an aggressive combat capacity like that of the British troops recently provided to the UN contingent in Sierra Leone.
There, British paratroopers, who had battleships waiting just offshore, responded to challenges from rebels, signalling a readiness and ability to mete out heavier punishment than the rebels could inflict.