In Congo, Civilians Bear the Brunt as UN Attacks NGOs and Whistleblowing General Diaz

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/drc3ngos022509.html

UNITED NATIONS, February 25 -- In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it is said that Rwandan troops are leaving today, to be followed by the end of the week by Ugandan forces involved in the ill-fated hunt for Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army that resulted in LRA killings of 900 civilians. But questions have arisen whether all of the Rwandans are leaving, and if the Ugandans will leave at all.

DRC President Joseph Kabila is trying to remove the head of the National Assembly, who has raised questions about Kabila's invitation of foreign armies onto Congolese soil. Local leaders in Dungu in north Congo, where the LRA is still on the loose, are demanding that either the Ugandans or Congo's ragtag army stay and finish off the LRA, which they liken to a wounded lion.

Despite the claim that the UN Mission in the Congo, MONUC, is most focused on protecting civilians, they did almost nothing when the LRA began a wave of killing on Christmas of last year. Tuesday at UN Headquarters, Human Rights Watch's Congo expert Anneke Van Woudenberg told the Press that MONUC wasn't even informed of the assault on the LRA until hours before it took place.

Inner City Press asked Ms. Van Woudenberg for HRW's view on whether the United States, as a Permanent Five member of the Security Council which provided funding and planning to the Ugandan army, had a duty to give more advance warning to MONUC, so that civilians could be protected. Ms. Van Woudenberg responded that it was perhaps understandable that only a few people not involved in the planning would be told before the action started. But can it be that the U.S. doesn't trust the head of MONUC, Alan Doss?

Doss in recent weeks has adopted a combative approach, not to warlords but to the press and NGOs. His new communications chief, Kevin Kennedy, issued a stinging rebuke of a Medecins Sans Frontieres report about the north Congo killings. While the head of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations Alain Le Roy upon his return from Afghanistan urged a more detailed response, the resulting letter to MSF was given little publicity.

On February 23, Inner City Press asked MSF's Sophie Delaunay if the group has any second-thoughts about the report, after the UN called it "unfounded." No, she said, the report is what happened in norther Congo, it was "outrageous" and it had to be said. MONUC is known to dispute even the titles of NGOs' reports on the Congo. MONUC will let no insult stand, it seems.

This applies equally to the damning report by Spanish General Diaz, who left MONUC after he found a less than friendly reception by Alan Doss. Inner City Press has asked for the UN's comments on Diaz's end of mission critique, and the response has been to vilify Diaz as a quitter, even as having had a nervous breakdown. But Inner City Press has heard that Doss never wanted Diaz, preferring instead an African general. MONUC didn't even pick Diaz up from the airport when he arrived. Spain's mission in Kinshasa had to do it, at the eleventh hour. It was hardly an auspicious beginning. Peacekeeping, indeed.

While the UN's top humanitarian John Holmes, when Inner City Press asked him about HRW's report this month of 100 killings of civilians by the fleeing FDLR military said "I hope it's not true," Ms. Van Woudenberg said that it's that the UN couldn't go out and do their own count for two weeks. She expects that Holmes will now confirm the report. We'll see -- Holmes will return to New York on Friday, from Colombia and a controversial government-controlled trip to Sri Lanka.

When the International Criminal Court screened its Prosecutor's opening statements again Thomas Lubanga in his old stomping grounds in Bunia, Ms. Van Woudenberg was there. She told Inner City Press that the room chosen was too small, and that students outside, some supportive of Lubanga and the UPC militia, began to make noise. The ICC cancelled the afternoon's screening, which was Lubanga's lawyers' chance to speak. The ICC ended up appearing to be one-sided. Ms. Van Woudenberg suggested they increase their outreach.

While Amnesty International has called on the UN Mission in Sudan, UNMIS, to refrain from helping transfer two of the LRA's leaders, both indicted by the ICC, to Uganda, HRW has yet to take a formal position on this. Ms. Van Woudenberg recounted her meetings with warlords from Laurent Nkunda to Bosco Ntaganda. The latter, she said, began with Rwandan forces of Paul Kagame back in 1991. In a uniquely Congolese trajectory, Bosco passed to the AFDL which overthrew Mobutu and tried the same with Desire Kabila, pere, then moved on to the UPC in Ituri before joining the CNDP, at first under and now over Laurent Nkunda.

Ms. Van Woudenberg told the Press that the Congolese government in May 2007 asked MONUC to help apprehend Bosco, who has been indicted by the ICC. Inner City Press asked if this request has been rescinded, now that Kabila's government wants to work with the CNDP. Ms. Van Woudenberg said it has not been revoked, and provides an opportunity. But with the UN system so invested in the regime of Kabila, to the point where only his opponents are indicted and delivered to the ICC, it's hard to imagine MONUC seeking to use a request that has been politically superseded in order to apprehend Bosco.

In fact, as Ms. Van Woudenberg confirmed, warlord Peter Kerim who killed and kidnapped UN peacekeepers in 2006 is now a colonel in the Congolese Army, and the UN says little to nothing about it. Ms. Van Woudenberg said that the Congolese government, at a minimum, was involved in brokering an impunity deal with Kerim. But was the UN also involved?

In the course of Ms. Van Woudenberg travels in Congo -- she is there seven months a year, she says -- she recently met Ugandan General Patrick in the town on Dungu. Gen. Patrick was involved in the UPDF's bloody forced disarmament campaign in Uganda's Karamoja region, in which the UN Development Program was involved. Gen. Patrick told her, I know Human Rights Watch, you are the ones who criticized us in Karamoja. And that is to HRW's credit.

Ms. Van Woudenberg's presentation was keyed to Ban Ki-moon's travel this week to the Congo. She said that Ban should "bang his hand on the table" on several of these issues. Somehow that's hard to imagine. Watch this site.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/drc3ngos022509.html

UN's Congo Mission Critiqued by General, UN Fires Back, Blames the USA, ICC Follies

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/drc2diaz021309.html

UNITED NATIONS, February 13 -- The UN Mission in the Congo, even as it defers to Rwandan troops to fight the Hutu militia FDLR long in the Kivus, is under fire from other quarters. Doctors without Borders said MONUC did not protect civilians from the Lord's Resistance Army. The UN called the report "totally unfounded." Now MONUC's former force commander, General Diaz Villegas, in his end of mission report has said MONUC in most of the country is only capable of "auto-protection," while civilians get killed. Inner City Press asked UN spokesperson Michele Montas on February 11 if the UN has any response to the report. He was only there two weeks, she said, then said all other questions should be directed to the Department of Peacekeeping Operations.

Inner City Press' inquiries with DPKO, an interchange on background and quick questions to DPKO chief Alain Le Roy and other senior UN official in the hall, glean that the UN is mad to General Diaz. While acknowledging that he was there three weeks and not two, the background briefer questioned why Diaz would have fled the country instead of staying the trying to change MONUC's strategy. But in his report as quote in El Pais, Diaz says the Mission's Alan Doss said that he was in charge.

Interestingly, DPKO's position is that they expend political capital appointing a European general to lead a mission like MONUC. The Africans ask why, if it is their continent and they supply many or most of the troops, a European is chosen. And then Diaz flees, compounding the problem. Whistleblower or coward? That appears to be the question.

Alain Le Roy, who graciously takes questions that the spokespeople for some reason will never answer, said that he was in Kabul when the UN called Doctors without Borders "totally unfounded." He asked for a more credible response, and later a detailed letter went from Doss to MSF. But why is the UN's first reaction always one of defending the indefensible?

The other senior UN official, who asked not to be quoted by name, said that the fault was the Americans', who funded the Ugandans' attack on the LRA and provided satellite photos, but no back-up. Why don't you ask them, he suggested. While we intend to, questions about the UN should be answered, too.

And more than is usually the case, some Congo questions were answered Friday afternoon by UN Humanitarian Coordinator John Holmes. He returned Wednesday from the Congo, providing a description of "positive dynamics" in the Kivus, including the integration of the CNDP militias into the Congolese army, and describing civilian suffering in the aftermath of the three-country offensive against the LRA. His long diplomatic training showed through -- he said the assault on the LRA, which has been going to badly, might work out for the best. Inner City Press asked about the MSF report, and he split the difference between MONUC and Le Roy, stating that he found the report "exaggerated," but that MONUC can do more.

Unlike Spokesperson Michele Montas earlier on Friday, who said MONUC does not have access to the zones of the Kivus in which the Rwandan-Congolese offensive against the FDLR is taking place, Holmes said the UN has 41 positions, and hasn't heard reports of the level of killing by the FDLR -- 100 civilians -- reported by Human Rights Watch. He said he hopes those reports are false. Or would that be, "totally unfounded"?

Holmes also defended MONUC by stressing they will not work or "sit at the table" with indicted war criminal Bosco Ntaganda, although he has now been integrated into the Congolese Army, with whom MONUC decidedly works. Earlier on Friday, Inner City Press asked the head of the State Parties to the Rome Statute of the ICC, Liechtenstein's Christian Wenaweser, for his view on Bosco's freedom and incorporation into an army the UN works with. "We are evaluating the situation," he said, and "can't comment." Video here, from Minute 17:44.

Also on the Congo, Inner City Press asked Wenaweser about the ICC's trial against militia leader Thomas Lubanga, in which the first witness virtually recanted, after Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo had left the court, too hastily, some felt. Wenaweser acknowledged it was "a rocky start," but said "I'm sure the Chief Prosecutor knows what he's doing." We'll see.

Update of 4 p.m. Friday -- we are compelled to note, and mourn, the death of Congo expert Alison Des Forges, who was killed in the crash of Flight 3407 from Newark to Buffalo on February 12. Her reports on the DRC helped many civilians. She will be missed.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/drc2diaz021309.html