DRC rejects UN stance on general President Joseph Kabila
President Joseph Kabila

President Joseph Kabila

THE Democratic Republic of Congo’s government rejected calls by a United Nations official to remove a general from an offensive against rebels in the east of the country, saying the operation is a “decision of sovereignty.”“Some preoccupations have been expressed” about the appointment of two generals to lead operations in eastern Congo who are on a UN list of alleged human-rights abusers, government spokesman Lambert Mende told reporters yesterday in the capital, Kinshasa.

“We’ve discussed them with our partners” in the UN mission in Congo, he said. “We are obliged to reestablish security in the country.”

The UN has given Congo a two-week deadline to remove General Bruno Mandevu from the offensive or it will withdraw its support for the mission, a senior UN official told reporters on Wednesday in New York. Mandevu is on a so-called UN Red List related to accusations of 121 rights violations including summary executions and rape. General Fall Sikabwe, who was put in charge of North Kivu province where various rebel groups operate, is also on the list, according to the UN mission’s spokesman in Congo, Charles Bambara.

Congolese forces with the support of the UN officially began the offensive against ethnic-Hutu rebels in the mineral-rich east of the country last week. The Armed Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, which is on the US State Department’s terrorism list, has been active in the region since fleeing across the Rwandan border after the genocide in that country in 1994. About 1,400 combatants remain of a force that once numbered as many as 13,000.

The UN’s Congo mission, known as Monusco, has conducted joint operations with the military against rebel groups throughout President Joseph Kabila’s 14-year rule.

Congo’s army is taking full control of Operation Sokola II with Monusco offering support when necessary, according to officials from both forces. The UN can’t order the Congolese government to remove Mandevu and can only “advise” the authorities, Monusco’s Bambara said by phone on February 2.

Past military operations against the FDLR which had UN support resulted in “widespread human rights abuses,” according to Human Rights Watch’s senior Congo researcher, Ida Sawyer.

“The UN should ensure strict implementation of its human rights due diligence policy, which means no support should be provided to operations commanded by Congolese army officers with a known history of involvement in serious” abuses, she said in a January 31 e-mail.

In late 2013, Monusco helped defeat the M23 rebel group in eastern Congo in an offensive that lasted just two weeks. Demands by UN and US officials for an equally quick action against the FDLR probably won’t be met because of the fighters’ entrenchment among the population of eastern Congo, according to analysts such as Prosper Nzekani, a retired army colonel and independent consultant.

“The FDLR is deeply embedded in society,” Nzekani said in a phone interview from Kinshasa on January 31. In late December, a UN strategic review team said that “based on lessons from the past, military operations have the potential to weaken, but not eliminate, FDLR.”

“This is guerrilla warfare,” the UN’s Bambara said when the offensive began. “They run and hide. We can’t estimate an exact timeframe.”

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the country said a shorter offensive would limit the number of people potentially displaced by violence.

“Our hope is that this operation will not last long so it won’t cause a humanitarian catastrophe,” the agency’s interim head, Joseph Inganji, said by phone on January 30. — Bloomberg.

 

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