Aid agency: UN peacekeepers failing to protect Congolese civilians

Feb 4, 2009, 9:12 GMT

Nairobi - United Nations peacekeepers are failing to protect civilians from Ugandan rebels in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where over 900 people have been butchered since Christmas, humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Wednesday.

The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) embarked on its murderous spree following a combined attack by Ugandan, Congolese and southern Sudanese forces.

'Little thought was given to protecting civilians when planning these attacks,' Hakim Chkam, MSF's Field Coordinator in the Haut-Uele province, told journalists in Nairobi. 'All the governments involved and the UN must act now to protect civilians.

'Given its mandate to protect civilians, MONUC (the French acronym for the UN peacekeeping mission) has a particular role to play,' he added.

MONUC currently has much of its 17,000 forces employed in the north-eastern provinces of South Kivu and North Kivu, where attacks by Tutsi rebels last year forced 250,000 to flee.

The situation is still unstable despite a lull in the fighting, with Rwandan troops now in the area hunting down Hutu militia that sprang up after the 1994 genocide.

According to MONUC military spokesman Jean-Paul Dietrich, the situation in the Kivus makes it difficult to commit forces to protect civilians elsewhere.

'It is a choice we had to make ... we have to stabilize the Kivus,' he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. 'Possibly after the Kivus stabilize we can redeploy more troops (to Haut-Uele).'

MONUC has long complained it lacks resources in the sprawling, mineral-rich Central African nation, which is roughly the size of western Europe.

The UN Security Council authorized another 3,000 troops, but so far governments have been reticent to promise the necessary soldiers.

Dietrich said that MONUC was doing what it could in Haut-Uele under the circumstances, helping to deploy and supply Congolese army forces attempting to flush out the LRA.

However, Chkam said that the MONUC mission in the village of Dungu, numbering around 100, could do more and failed to carry out simple tasks such as patrolling the streets.

According to Dietrich, the Dungu force's primary mission is to protect an airfield used as the base for operations in the whole region.

MONUC also came under fire for refusing to transport injured civilians, including at one point a one-year-old toddler suffering from gunshot wounds, in its helicopters.

The LRA has attacked more than 50 villages and towns across an area of 36,000 square kilometres, clubbing and hacking people to death and burning homes and churches during its latest wave of attacks.

'The LRA is deliberately and systematically attacking civilians,' Chkam said. 'They are using scorched earth tactics, sparing no-one - not even women, babies and children.'

Witness testimony recorded by MSF told of a Christmas Eve attack on a church in Haut-Uele, where people were pulled out one by one to have their skulls smashed with clubs.

Over 60 people died in the attack, including the pregnant wife, father and son of the witness.

Chkam said that more than 100,000 people have been displaced since September, when the LRA launched a first wave of attacks.

The LRA has a past history of carrying out retaliatory attacks against civilians when it faces military action.

The current army offensive came after the rebel group refused to sign a final peace treaty to end its decades-long rebellion against the Ugandan government.

LRA leaders refuse to come out of their DR Congo hideout until the International Criminal Court withdraws arrest warrants against five of its top officials, including leader Joseph Kony.

The men are accused of carrying out war crimes, including murder, rape and the recruitment of child soldiers.