The first contingent of South African troops involved in a UN operation to disarm and repatriate foreign armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), will deploy on Friday, a senior UN commander said on Thursday.
Colonel Lawrence Smith, who commands UN operations in an area spanning some 500 kilometres along the vast African country’s eastern border with Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, said some 200 troops will be deployed at Lubero, a small town near Lake Edward on the border with Uganda.
”The troops will consist of infantry, engineer and logistical support personnel and their first focus will be to establish high visibility in the region to restore the confidence of the local population,” Smith said in Kindu, the small town on the banks
of the Congo River, where the UN sector headquarters is based.
”The deployment will take about three weeks, from where UN personnel will move in to make contact to start with the process of disarming and repatriation, a long and difficult process,” Smith said.
Since mid-May, South Africa have been deploying forces to the central-eastern region under the banner of the UN Mission to the Congo (Monuc), where fighting has been raging between the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) and local militias.
The aim of the South African mission — agreed upon by the UN Security Council in November 2001 — is to disarm, demobilise, repatriate, resettle and reintegrate foreign forces.
This include Rwandan Hutu rebels involved in the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi community, who then fled across the border into the DRC.
Smith said South Africa had some 1 200 troops based in Kindu, the largest contingent from any single country in the UN’s sector five, which consists of the DRC’s Maniema, and Kivu provinces.
In Lubero in north Kivu, South Africa planned to occupy an existing UN base before deploying into the region, Smith said.
He added, however, that South Africa’s task force would not be deployed to Bunia, in Ituri province further to the north, where more than 50 000 people have been killed and some half a million displaced since 1999.
Smith added, however, that fighting in Bunia had had a ”spill-over” effect into the Kivus with reports saying that up to 10 000 displaced civilians had been sighted on the road between Ituri province and the town of Lubero.
The DRC war broke out in August 1998, and at its height drew in more than half a dozen African countries. The conflict has claimed some 2,5-million lives directly or indirectly through disease or starvation. – Sapa-AFP