Global Policy Forum

By Rodrique Ngowi

From positions on three hills, tribal fighters unleashed a surprise attack at sunset, their bullets smacking into the high sand ramparts around the U.N. checkpoint below. Then the peacekeepers did what the United Nations all too often is accused of failing to do: They fought back. Helicopter gunships, armored personnel carriers and infantry sent the assailants fleeing. Quiet returned, and people in this dusty gold-mining town of 15,000 breathed easier, knowing they had probably been spared another round of rape, murder and cannibalism.

Peacekeeping has changed dramatically since the troops from more than two dozen nations arrived in eastern Congo in 2001 to protect U.N. installations and unarmed military observers monitoring the cease-fire lines that separate government and rebel armies. Nowadays, with a stronger U.N. Security Council mandate to pacify a volatile chunk of Congo twice the size of Colorado, the peacekeepers talk — and act — tough.

"We need to intervene very forcefully and very quickly," said Dominique AitOuyahia-McAdams, the Frenchwoman who heads the U.N. mission in northeastern Ituri province and is headquartered in Bunia, the provincial capital 16 miles south of Iga-Barriere. The strategy may be risky, "but we all have to take risks because the price for the population is too high not to take any risk," she said.

Trying to regain control

Backed by a fleet of 52 helicopters and transport planes and a $600 million budget, the 10,500 peacekeepers are helping the transitional government regain control of Africa's third-largest nation, curb armed groups and prepare for elections that could be held in less than two years.

"U.N. troops first entered as peacekeepers and have been transformed into peace enforcers," said Taylor Seybolt of the U.S. Institute of Peace, an independent, federally financed think tank in Washington. "The U.N. is responding to events on the ground in a way they have not done in the past in other countries and other times," said Seybolt, who studies peacekeeping and ethnic conflict.

Seven months after the three main rebel groups joined President Joseph Kabila in a transitional government in faraway Kinshasa, peace is yet to be restored in large parts of eastern Congo. This is the region hardest hit by the five-year civil war in which an estimated 3 million people have died, mainly through war-induced hunger and disease. Hutu militiamen, who fled to Congo in mid-1994 after taking part in the Rwanda genocide, are still active in South Kivu province, attacking villages and terrorizing the population.

"Congo is a huge country. It's the heart of Africa. There is no infrastructure, so the challenge for anyone to help the government to do anything is multiplied by 10," AitOuyahia-McAdams said. "We are being asked to address a country of between 50 and 60 million people, so the challenge is much bigger for us than any other U.N. mission existing today."

The turnaround came in July with the new Security Council mandate "to use all necessary means" to do the job. That was after the peacekeepers were fiercely criticized for failing to stop tribal fighting in Bunia in which more than 500 people were killed, despite the presence of hundreds of soldiers from Uruguay. The present force draws armed troops plus unarmed observers from Bangladesh, Chile, India, Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan, South Africa and Uruguay. An additional 25 nations provide observers only.

More work ahead

With most of the U.N. troops in Ituri based in Bunia, seat of the U.N.-backed interim provincial administration, the town has quieted down. Newly painted shops advertise cellphone companies, and U.N. engineers from Uruguay use bulldozers to cover the potholes. But more work remains. Although many gunmen have been disarmed and removed from Bunia, the rebels are still able to run a clandestine network extorting illegal taxes in the city, U.N. officials say.

In the South Kivu city of Bukavu, blue-helmeted peacekeepers patrol, ready to use force to prevent more fighting between the private army of the former rebel governor and troops loyal to the regional military chief. In Ituri, the tribal fighters were armed by neighboring Uganda and Rwanda in a proxy war to protect stakes in the province's timber and mines. They have morphed into criminal gangs that attack U.N. helicopters, troops and civilian staff.

'Thriving on violence'

"There are some elements in the armed groups who have been thriving on violence, on extortion, and they want to continue with that way of living," said Brig. Gen. Mahmood Rashad, commander of the 4,700 U.N. soldiers in Ituri. Rashad arrived three months ago, thinking his job would be to peacefully disarm and demobilize tribal fighters. But the Pakistani officer now hunts them down with helicopter gunships and sends peacekeepers to arrest them because the local police have no guns, vehicles or handcuffs.

There are plans to send U.N. troops in to oust the Rwandan Hutu militiamen and pave the way for the new Congolese army to secure the volatile region. "All our assessment is, whenever we've moved into an area — and when there is a rumor that we are moving into the area — the rebels pull out," said Lt. Col. Tim Wood, British chief of staff of the U.N. force in eastern Congo. But in Ituri, the tribal fighters aren't giving up so easily. They just shed their uniforms, hide their weapons and wait to inflict casualties on the peacekeepers.

On Thursday, a Kenyan army officer was shot dead when his team of U.N. observers, sent to investigate tribal fighting in northeastern Congo, came under fire, the U.N. mission said. Troops called in by helicopter fired on the assailants and scattered them before they could make off with the dead Kenyan's vehicle. Last year two unarmed military observers, a Jordanian and a Malawian, were killed and mutilated in Mongbwalu, 35 miles northwest of Iga-Barriere.

The United Nations says it is prepared to hold its ground and fight the rebels, strengthened by battle-hardened U.N. troops from Pakistan, India and Nepal. How long will Congo need peacekeepers? President Kabila says they won't be required after the end of this year and should start training the new Congolese army and police. Seybolt is skeptical.

"In the Balkans, foreign troops have been there for eight years, and they are not likely to pull out anytime soon because there is a general sense that the place will gradually fall apart in such an event," he said. "The same may be true for Congo."

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