The United Nations Security Council renewed a push for civilian rule in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s militia-plagued east on Sunday as efforts continue to disarm rebel groups and finally restore peace to the ravaged region.
The country’s hilly eastern border area — the scene of the worst fighting and a humanitarian crisis in the Central African nation — has been lawless for so long that citizens have given up on any sort of government, France’s UN Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said as the group toured Goma, a major eastern city.
”They have to understand the state is there, the state is back and they can ask for help from somebody else other than the militias,” said Ripert, who is leading the council visit to the DRC.
A major step in this direction is local elections, which Ripert said should happen ”as soon as possible — probably next year”.
He said the Security Council was strongly backing ongoing work to demobilise militia fighters — a slow process of regular meetings between the armed groups, a mixed technical commission and the Congolese government.
Ripert said he would also carry back to the UN a request by representatives in DRC for more technical surveillance equipment such as drones — key tools for policing and monitoring a Europe-sized country with few roads and more history of war than peace.
The DRC’s UN peacekeeping force is the world’s largest with 17 000 troops, more than 90% of those stationed in the east, according to Alan Doss, the country’s top UN envoy. But Doss said they are still stretched thin, calling it the equivalent of ”one cop for all of Manhattan”.
The UN estimates there are about 20 000 militia fighters in the east, belonging to a number of different groups. Among them are members of an extremist ethnic Hutu militia accused of orchestrating the 1994 genocide of 500 000 ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda. The group and others are accused of razing villages, terrorising the local population and perpetrating rapes.
The Security Council was meeting with the technical commission — which includes all members of the militias and armed groups — and with regional officials, as well as visiting camps for displaced people and observing the humanitarian response.
In the Mugunga camp just outside of Goma, orphans and women told stories of hurried flights from homes and fields and ongoing fears that they will be attacked when they go out to gather firewood.
Kabeya Kahindu said she had been living in the camp for more than a year with her husband and six of her nine children. She lost track of three of her children when they fled their village.
”I don’t know where they are. They got lost,” Kahindu said.
And many say they are still too afraid to go back and look for the people they lost or the homes they fled when militias have taken over many deserted villages.
”The important thing for us is peace but the problem is there are a lot of people who have guns,” said Ernest Kisheku, a 58-year-old farmer who fled his village of Bufamando about a year ago.
Provincial governor Julien Paluku said he hoped the UN visit would draw much-needed attention to a suffering region.
”The main problem is impunity. These warlords are causing problems everywhere” in North Kivu province, Paluku said.
The council arrived in Goma on the eighth day of a cross-continent trip to African hotspots. On Saturday, representatives of the UN’s most powerful body met with the DRC’s president and prime minister in the capital, Kinshasa.
In 2006, the DRC installed President Joseph Kabila as its first democratically elected leader in more than 40 years, prompting hope that the country was finally emerging from a nightmarish history of war, corrupt dictatorship and brutal colonial rule.
But Kabila has struggled to assert control, particularly over eastern warlords, and the army and militias have continued to battle sporadically in the region.
The council was scheduled to return to Kinshasa late Sunday afternoon, but takeoff was delayed when a security officer’s gun accidentally discharged in the craft. No one was injured, but officials said they needed to inspect the plane and departure might be put off until the next day. – Sapa-AP