South Africa said on Sunday it will provide troops for the international peacekeeping force set to deploy in turbulent northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where ethnic violence has killed hundreds in recent weeks.
”We will provide troops to both the interim force in Bunia and to Monuc (the UN military mission in the DRC),” said South Africa’s minister for provincial affairs, Sydney Mufamadi, who has been facilitating peace talks among the parties to DRC’s four-year-long civil war.
Mufamadi said he could not give exact figures for the troops who would head to Bunia, the main town in DRC’s Ituri region, saying that was ”being discussed by our military people. But we will help to do what is expected under the UN mandate.”
An advance guard of French and British troops landed on Friday in Bunia, where clashes have continued between fighters of the ethnic Lendu majority and Hema minority, who have controlled the town since mid-May.
The peacekeeping force, under the authority of the European Union with United Nations backing, is mandated to secure Bunia airport and protect civilians and UN personnel in the town but has no power to intervene in fighting elsewhere in the Ituri region.
The UN mission in DRC, called Monuc, is already present in Bunia, and refugees and foreign journalists have taken refugee in its compound during the fighting.
Mufamadi announced the South African deployment following a meeting covering the Bunia fighting between South African President Thabo Mbeki, who chairs the African Union, and ambassadors of the UN Security Council.
South Africa has been actively involved in negotiations to set up a transitional government and interim constitution for the DRC as part of an ongoing peace process grouping the Kinshasa government and various rebel groups.
South Africa has sent soldiers to DRC’s central-eastern region under the Monuc banner, but deployment in Bunia has been ruled out until now.
The UN delegation met with Mbeki ahead of its tour of the Great Lakes region, which begins on Monday. The team will visit DRC, Angola, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
The leader of the UN Security Council team, Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, applauded South Africa’s role in the DRC and Burundi peace processes.
”Security Council members are of the opinion that important progress has been made on both these processes but that this is not irreversible. Both processes are fragile,” he said.
Meanwhile, to the echo of gunfire, French troops began patrolling Bunia on Saturday. Some 50 French soldiers padded through the suburbs, deserted and smoking after a battle between the rival Hema and Lendu tribes on Saturday.
The patrols followed a show of French strength late on Saturday, when an advance guard of 100 special forces occupied Bunia’s main road for an hour, sparking an angry confrontation with the incumbent Hema militia, the Union of Congolese Patriots.
”It was an important gesture,” said the colonel commanding the French force, who asked not to be named. ”I wanted them to know that we control this route, and we will use it as and when we want.
”Today was different. I told my men to be less aggressive, to keep their guns lowered…Our mandate is very clear: it tells us to protect civilians and to respond to any aggression with the appropriate force.”
That mandate appears unlikely to end the war in Bunia, which has claimed 50 000 lives so far, and is only one of a dozen micro-conflicts raging in eastern DRC, stirred by four years of anarchic occupation by Rwandan and Ugandan forces.
As fighting raged around the main UN compound on Saturday, grenades and bullets swept over the heads of several thousand refugees. At least three people were injured, yet the French troops remained at their barracks, about three kilometres away.
Their mandate, the colonel said, did not allow him to intervene. ”If civilians are being massacred, we have to stop it. But if there are just a few civilians killed in fighting between armed groups, that’s not our job.”
The French troops arrived in Bunia on Friday to secure the town’s decrepit airport in advance of a 1 400-strong European force sent to pacify the area in preparation for the arrival of Bangladeshi UN peacekeepers in September.
The French soldiers are not allowed to reveal their names or regiment, but their accents — including one trooper’s thick Scottish brogue — suggested they include many from the Foreign Legion.
It remained uncertain yesterday when the main force will arrive, or which European countries would contribute. Britain, Sweden, Norway, Belgium and Germany all expressed an interest after a massacre last month exposed the way Bunia’s existing 700 Uruguayan peacekeepers were outnumbered.
Five British military planners reconnoitred Bunia on Friday, but it is not known what role any UK troops would play. – Guardian Unlimited Â