United Nations peacekeeping officials sought more power to conduct aerial surveillance and electronic warfare against militia who have stepped up attacks in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s lawless Ituri region.
The officials’ request, which they said on Thursday would help prevent weapons from pouring into the eastern region, came days after peacekeepers killed up to 60 people in the most serious incident since troops were sent to the DRC in 1999.
UN peacekeepers on a ”cordon and search” operation near a small town came under rebel fire on Tuesday and killed the militia in an ensuing gunbattle. Last week, the same militia is believed to have killed nine Bangladeshi peacekeepers.
The officials said violence had been escalating in the eastern region for months and the latest attacks showed the militia were well-trained and organised. They are also still getting weapons from neighbouring countries despite an arms embargo, the officials said.
”Exactly who’s training them, I don’t have that kind of intelligence, but we do know that they are being supplied from across borders and that there are contacts and links between them and elements in Kinshasa and in the neighbouring countries,” said Margaret Carey, deputy head of the peacekeeping department’s Africa division.
Carey cited Uganda and Rwanda in particular as needing to do more to help stop the fighting in the resource-rich area.
The DRC is home to the United Nations’ largest peacekeeping mission, with about 16 700 troops. While much of the country is stable after a five-year civil war, the northeast has seen prolonged and brutal fighting between tribal militia over the gold, diamonds and other abundant resources.
That area has been the UN peacekeepers’ chief concern, and the UN Security Council has given the troops have what is uniformly referred to here as a ”robust mandate” — the power to respond aggressively and disarm militia as they try to bring the many factions toward peace.
Carey was joined at the briefing by Francoise Dureau, chief of the situation centre for peacekeeping forces, who said there had been about 50 attacks in the last four months. He also said that in the operation when the 50 militia were killed, peacekeepers found evidence suggesting gunmen were planning attacks on either a nearby refugee camp or on peacekeeping forces.
Carey said the best thing the DRC mission could get would be air surveillance, electronic warfare and ”listening capabilities” to be able to better monitor an arms embargo in the three worst-affected provinces, North and South Kivu provinces and Ituri.
”That’s really what would give us the muscle to be able to successfully engage the arms embargo and help us in terms of our own military operations in the Kivus and in Ituri,” she said.
Earlier on Thursday, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said there are probably not enough peacekeepers in the DRC and he hoped to strengthen the UN forces there.
Last year, Annan had recommended more than doubling the 10 000-strong force in the DRC but the Security Council gave him only half of what he wanted.
The Security Council is working on two draft resolutions about the DRC, one that would increase troop numbers from the current 16 700 and another that would seek to strengthen the arms embargo.
But the resolutions are stalled over disagreements on how to pay for them.
While the United Nations insists it is sticking to its mandate of protecting people, Carey said it was not the peacekeepers’ role to go on the offensive and take out the militias preying on civilians.
”We are not engaged in a war,” she said.
”We are engaged in trying to create a peace. We need basic security on the ground so that the parties themselves can create peace and establish some kind of legitimate government.” – Sapa-AP