Regional

Taking stock of MONUSCO’s presence in DRC

2023-08-29 05:30:00

MONUSCO troops from Guatemala Special Forces Contingent (GUASFOR) in Sake town of DRC’s North Kivu Province, on July 5, 2017, carrying out training.

The end of the UN peacekeeping mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) could be near.

The gigantic mission has been operating in the country for more than two decades.

For the past years, Kinshasa has reaffirmed its wish to see MONUSCO begin its withdrawal by January 2024, a wish that was emphasized by the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in a ‘leaked’ report transmitted to the UN Security Council on August 12.

The UN chief announced that the Mission has entered its final phase, and is expected to make an accelerated, but responsible withdrawal. However, he gave no specific time frame for this plan to go into motion.

Established in 2000 as the Mission de l'Organisation des Nations Unies en République Démocratique du Congo (MONUC), their mandate was to protect civilians. In 2010, the mission was renamed MONUSCO. Currently, the mission has 19,000 troops deployed and costs about $1 billion a year.

More than two decades later, mostly operating in volatile eastern DRC, the mission has brought no positive change and consistently failed the Congolese population.

Its core mandate includes supporting the authorities of the DRC and unilaterally, or jointly with the Congolese army, FARDC, carrying out targeted and robust offensives against armed groups. To the contrary, the UN force decided to side with the negative armed groups.

In June 2022, evidence emerged showing that the UN Force shielded combatants of the Nyatura Jean Marie/Abazungu Mai Mai faction (former members of the genocidal FDLR) who were fighting alongside the FARDC against M23 rebels. MONUSCO welcomed the former at their base in Shangi after they had lost the fight.

The collaboration of MONUSCO with negative armed groups in DRC is a betrayal of its mandate. It also confirms that the UN force, instead of helping to fight the negative armed groups, gives them support and safe passage, thereby being accomplices in escalating insecurity in eastern DRC.

The blue helmets have watched, tight-lipped, as the FDLR, a terror group formed by individuals responsible of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, became an integral part of FARDC.

The silence from MONUSCO concerning these evil deals is not a sign of neutrality, rather a tacit support of the actions of FDLR/FARDC. The inaction renders MONUSCO effectively complicit.

After all these failures, the peacekeepers' job was reduced to spying for Kinshasa and shifting the blame of their collective failures on Rwanda. In June 2023, a UN group of experts released a report accusing Kigali of direct military interventions on DRC’s soil, while backing these accusations with the so-called images from the UN mission’s drones.

Blaming Rwanda for DRC’s security crisis, advantages Kinshasa and MONUSCO in hopes that it will cover their failures, as millions of Congolese are killed daily under their watch.

Close to 25 years, with $20 billion and counting, the blue helmets in DRC have little to show in terms of improved security in the country. And their support to armed groups and incendiary claims, begs a question.

What has been the purpose of the UN peacekeeping mission in DRC all these years?